Mar 01
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Alessandra Comments: The cover isn’t really awful, although it is pretty behind the curve for 1975. What got me was the hideous font lightning effect, the confusing typography (the title is actually “The Blood Stones”), and the extreme genericness of the cover — oh, and the Conan-gets-a-mullet hairdo.
Published 1975
(Average: 6.85 out of 10)
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March 1st, 2012 at 9:33 am
Love the mini-skirt!
March 1st, 2012 at 9:46 am
I also like to think of the little light-bulb that must have gone off in the author’s head when he realised he could create an instant sci-fi version of Tarzan by the simple expedient of substituting “outer space” for “Africa” and “cat people” for “apes”.
March 1st, 2012 at 10:19 am
Speaking of apes, that cat person in the background is dressed in a gorilla uniform from the original PLANET OF THE APES movie!
And speaking of missed opportunities (which we weren’t, but often are), surely there should be a foregrounded cat person in there. Holding a sword. One that goes ting!
March 1st, 2012 at 10:34 am
Phil beat me to it. Of all the times to actually have a cat person on the cover stage centre and they put some muppet cross dressing in a cheerleader skirt!
March 1st, 2012 at 11:03 am
My dear Mr. Balls On, that planet’s staying where it is, no matter how viciously you swing your dirk at it.
March 1st, 2012 at 11:06 am
The Cat People stand at a distance waiting for Balzan to stop posing and open their cans of Whiskas.
March 1st, 2012 at 11:11 am
SHAZAM!
(That one practically wrote itself)
March 1st, 2012 at 11:13 am
Isn’t “The Tarzan of outer space” equivalent to “The utterly out of his depth”?
March 1st, 2012 at 11:44 am
“BALZAN of the Woodcraft People” would’ve sounded better…
March 1st, 2012 at 11:44 am
BALZAN – lord of the lightweight model airplanes!
March 1st, 2012 at 2:28 pm
Catz love their Ballz.
That’s the best that I could come up with. I’ll try again later.
March 1st, 2012 at 2:50 pm
You can’t help but be tough if you grow up wearing fluttery fringed skirts around a bunch of cat people. Might also explain the Blood Stones title.
March 1st, 2012 at 3:26 pm
@Yoss–spay or neuter your Balzan, maybe? But then it would be Balzoff.
Mayhap that explains his wince…
March 1st, 2012 at 5:08 pm
Is that ‘The Tarzan of Outer Spacel’, or the more Latinate ‘The Tarzan of Outer Spacei’?
March 1st, 2012 at 5:21 pm
When 70′s tennis players go bad!
March 1st, 2012 at 5:32 pm
Tarzan didn’t need a belt. And this leaves me with a craving for Magnus Robot Fighter set in Colonial America.
March 1st, 2012 at 7:08 pm
Robot fighting is cool, but to me the name “Magnus” always sounded a bit off — like “Melvin – Ninja Commando”.
March 2nd, 2012 at 8:30 am
Wikipedia has this (and this only– it’s a very short article) to say about Balzan and his furry friends:
“The protagonist is a young human who was accidentally ‘transferred’ as a baby to an alien world during the trip to Mars in the 26th century. The planet has green skies, 2 moons, and several different sentient species. The similarity to Tarzan of the Apes is rather obvious, as the young Brian Rice was rescued from the stasis cube in the crashed spacecraft by the Endorian ‘Cat People’.
It has been derided on the internet as ‘cretinous swill meant for slack jawed teenagers [1]. Balzan is well armed with his therb, a 40-foot whip with a hollow handle containing a highly virulent poison and a wicked barb on the business end, with the poison fed through the whip by capillary action. One scratch and an opponent is dead. He has a neutron sword for close in fighting.”
March 2nd, 2012 at 12:26 pm
@Rachel J: I guess the lawyers for the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs must have missed this one.
March 2nd, 2012 at 7:16 pm
Alessandra – I submitted this exact cover to GSS a while back! Great minds think alike.
March 23rd, 2012 at 5:22 pm
If he’s “The Tarzan of outer space”, he must have had a really, really looooong vine to swing from one planet to another….man, that even sounded cheesy to me
August 12th, 2012 at 5:00 pm
I have #2 and #3 of these- guess I will have to send them in.