Unexpected Questions with Bill Spangler

Bill Spangler has been writing science fiction oriented comics since the late 198t0s, primarily media tie-in books. He’s probably best known for his original stories set in the Robotech universe, starting with Malcontent Uprisings and including Invid War, Return to Macross and Robotech Warriors. He has also written comics based on Quantum Leap; Alien Nation and Tom Corbett  Space Cadet, in addition to adapting H.G. Wells The Time Machine and stories featuring Larry Niven’s character Gil “the Arm” Hamilton. He’s sold a piece of flash fiction to the latest incarnation of Weird Tales, and  wrote about comics and sf  for Amazing Stories in 2013 and 2014.

I think I would go with Blood, from Harlan Ellison’s “A Boy and His Dog.” I think he would be a great companion and a great ally in a fight.

As it turns out, I’ve already written one, with the human Max Sterling, and the Zentraedi Miriya Parino. They were introduced in the

Robotech anime and I used them as the protagonists in my comic Malcontent Uprisings. In the story, the challenges they faced were mostly social, discrimination and related issues. With any such couple, there would be medical challenges, paritcularly if they wanted to start a family. Max and Miriya had their baby off-screen, so I’m not sure how they dealt with things.but I think it would be similar to what Spock’s parents. One of the odder pieces of Trek merchandise was a spoken word album where they talked about Spock’s birth.  (I think it was a monologue by Mark Lenard as Sarek, but don’t hold me to that.)  In any case, I think they said that Amanda was under intensive medical care much of the time and that the embryonic Spock was in an incubator for a while, out of an excess of caution. In contrast, the fifth Trek movie says Amanda had Sybok on a rock in the desert., Go figure.

The robot-sized duck. You would only have to do it once.

Strictly speaking, this may not be answering your question, but from time to time I’ve played with the idea of transforming robots that don’t transform into weapons or anything exotic. They would transform into telephones or refrigerators. And I still want to do something with Homina-Homina, a giant robot whose weapons are old vaudeville props like seltzer bottles and custard cream pies.

Space explorer. I image that a time traveler would be able to make major discoveries about history, but being  a space explorer, and seeing things that no one has ever seen before, still sounds more appealing to me. FWIW, I’ve been playing space explorer since i was a kid. Our family had a trailer on a piece of land we called the Camp. The land was adjacent to a played out strip mine. Whenever we spent time at the Camp, I would go to the strip mine and play space explorer.

I’m not sure choice has anything to do with it. Whenever I make a long term commitment to a story, either as a comic book series or a novel, I feel like I’m living in that world.

I’ve got a strong attachment to Tom Corbett Space Cadet. I didn’t see the actual TV show until I was an adult, but there were tie-in novels–eight, I think–and they were practically the only SF in my hometown public library. So I became more attached to the main characters–Tom, Roger and Astro–and the general setting than any visuals or special effects. I’ve written three Tom Corbett limited series for two different comic publishers over the years. I think the challenge with a big-budget remake would be do give you give the spaceships a contemporary look or some variation of the 1950s big fins look (which the actual TV series didn’t do, BTW, but I think a lot of modern fans would be expecting it.)

If you want to find some of Bill’s comics, he would like to recommend that you start with the back issue boxes at your Local Comics Shop.  If that isn’t successful, many of the comics are available through Amazon. Bill has a Facebook account, if you’d like to drop by, and he’s going to be appearing at the Anime Los Angeles convention Jan. 9-12, 2025, where they’ll be celebrating 40 years of Robotech.