Astounding Space Thrills
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| Astounding Space Thrills | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Author(s) | Steve Conley |
| Website | http://www.astoundingspacethrills.com/ |
| Launch date | 1998 |
| End date | 2001 |
Astounding Space Thrills is a science-fiction webcomic by Steve Conley that ran from 1998 until 2001. Consisting of around 500 pages, Conley made use of GIF images and an early precursor to a "share" button while creating Astounding Space Thrills.[1] The webcomic was first published as a comic book series by Image Comics starting in 2000, and it was remastered as a webcomic in 2016.
Astounding Space Thrills follows the adventures of Argosy Smith around the year 2030 as he travels through space on a new type of space ship. He is often accompanied on his adventures by Theremin, formerly a human antique dealer whose body is now composed of "bioglop".
Development
Conley was inspired by 1940s and 1950s science-fiction pulp magazines, comic strips, and television serials such as Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Commando Cody, and Rocky Jones, Space Ranger to create his webcomic. The protagonist of Astounding Space Thrills shares his name with the classic pulp magazine Argosy, though his name was initially chosen for its naval definition. In an interview with Sequential Tart, Conley stated that these stories "had a grandeur that modern SF stories lack." The webcomic is presented in black and white because it was illustrated and inked on Conley's Macintosh computer, and this influenced Conley's decision to attach the story to the retro science-fiction genre, which many readers would instinctively link to classic black and white serials and pulps.[2]
The first cover art of Astounding Space Thrills was a digitally painted collaboration between Conley and graphic artist Jim Steranko, with whom he previously worked with on internet and multimedia development. Conley went on to approach the Brothers Hildebrandt, Drew Struzan, and Kelly Freas for subsequent covers.[2]