Star Rovers

Superteambox


imagesize=
caption=The three Star Rovers, art by Sid Greene.
publisher=DC Comics
debut="Mystery in Space" #66
(March 1961)
creators=Gardner Fox (writer)
Sid Greene (artist)
base=
members=Homer Gint
Rick Purvis
Karel Sorensen
memberlist=
subcat=
hero=
villain=
sortkey=PAGENAME

The Star Rovers was an ongoing science fiction American comic book series published by DC Comics. The series first appeared in "Mystery in Space" #66 (March 1961), they were created by Gardner Fox and Sid Greene.

Publication history

The series first appeared in the DC Comics magazine titled "Mystery In Space". The magazine was an anthology comic book that told short science fiction stories generally without continuing characters. "Mystery In Space" did sometimes have ongoing series for a while. The Star Rovers was one of these ongoing features and it always appeared along with several non-continuing character stories. The series appeared for seven issues of "Mystery in Space", six issues of "Strange Adventures" and in DC's later reprint anthology comic magazine "From Beyond the Unknown" #18 through #22. All three of those comic magazines were dedicated to publishing short science fiction stories with some ongoing features. The very first Star Rovers story was called "Who Caught the Loborilla?", featuring an elusive monster part lobster and part gorilla. [http://home.aol.com/MG4273/space.htm#StarRovers Star Rovers from Mystery in Space anthology website] ]

Members

The Star Rovers series lead characters were a 22nd century team of adventurers consisting of Homer Gint a "novelist-sportsman" who clamed to have "hunted on hundreds of star-planets". Champion markswoman and space beauty queen Karel Sorensen, and playboy athlete Rick Purvis. The three of them each own their own private spacecraft which they refer to as a "spacer". Each Star Rover has his or her name on their space vehicle.

Plot

Every story portrays the three Star Rovers as friendly rivals. Each plot begins with each one of the trio on their way to some interplanetary social event when they would stumble upon a mystery. The Rovers would then go their separate ways to investigate the situation. The trio would then regroup and share three totally different explanations for the mysterious events they were looking into. Only one of their explanations could be right and sometimes none of them were.By the time the story was almost over something would happen that would enable the three of them to figure out the correct answer. Once the rivals had the correct answer they would take then take heroic action,as a team, and save the day. Often they would save the Earth or otherwise aid their home worlds interests or help some other planet as a result of their actions. Those actions only happened because they solved the mystery first and put their rivalry aside.

One typical example story, published in August 1961, was titled "What happened on Sirius-4?" [http://www.geocities.com/tourist5010/cmkeller/srovers/mis69.html "What happened on Sirius-4?" from tribute website] ] The plot begins with a very brief discussion of the history of Radio telescopes. The story then really starts in the year 2160, almost two hundred years after the publication date. Radio Astronomers receive a distress call from an unknown planet in the Sirius star system. The signal came from a world nine light years from Earth and that world is called Kalmoral, the fourth planet from the Sirius sun. The signal does not say what the danger was.

The astronomers put out a reward for any one who can learn the nature of the danger. The Star Rovers hear about this and each vow that they will go to Sirius-4 and solve the mystery themselves and beat the other two out for the reward. Their spaceships travel along something called magniwarp waves which enable them to travel 9 light years and reach their destination in one week.

Once the trio reaches the planet Kalmoral they separate for a while. They find the planet deserted and go separate ways to conduct their investigations. The three then regroup with three totally different answers as to the question of what happened to the native populace. Rick feels the kalmoral people were destroyed thousands of years ago in a war, Karel feels they teleported off their world recently and Homer has found thousands of the natives in suspended animation and he feels that they were avoiding a natural disaster.

The story comes to and end when the Star Rovers have to work together to destroy an alien space ship and then one of the natives appears to explain everything. What is really happening is that the planet Kalmoral is at war with the planet Sorn. The only way they can win that war was to go into suspended animation and combine their telpathic powers into one single energy weapon. This will only work as long as their weapon is kept secret. Since the war is still ongoing the Star Rovers agree to forgo the reward for solving the mystery in order to protect the Kalmoral natives. [Adventure Heroes: Legendary Characters From Odysseus To James Bond by Jeff Rovin Facts on File Pg 251] [Pulp Fiction Libray: Mystery In Space published by D.C comics pg 164-171 (What Happened on Sirius-4)]

Other versions

Another version of the trio appears in the Twilight mini-series by Howard Chaykin and Jose Luis Garcia Lopez in 1990.

References

External links

* [http://www.dcuguide.com/who.php?name=starrovers DCU Guide: Star Rovers]
* [http://home.aol.com/MG4273/space.htm#StarRovers Mystery in Space] , Includes a detailed study of the Star Rovers tales.