Story-time! In 1966, my family spent the summer in San Jose, California as my Dad took some Masters Degree course work or something. Anyway, being 9 years old and living in a 2 bedroom apartment with 6 people, I spent nearly the entire summer OUTSIDE. On TV at the time was a Saturday morning puppet show called “Fireball XL5” by Gerry Anderson (Thunderbirds guy). My older sisters hated it, mainly because it was a kid’s show and being they were all older than me, they weren’t in the target age group of Saturday Morning Cartoons.
Anyway, a movie came out that summer call “Fireball 500” with Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, and Fabian (all teenage heart-throbs of the times). I wanted to go see it because it was a movie about NASCAR (yes, was a racing fan at age 9). My sisters refused to go see it as they thought it was the puppet show. Silly girls! Turns out ALL of their friends were jumping up and down about the film and they couldn’t figure how little ol’ me, a hyper-active 9 year old boy would know about a cool teenager film. I was ahead of my time, of course. We did go see it and enjoyed it.
The car in the movie, the Fireball 500, was built by George Barris, the 1966 Batmobile guy and the car looks a LOT like the Batmobile. I found a model kit of this car about 10 years ago or so and built it up. One of my hypre-active sons destroyed if memory serves.
So the term Fireball has always made my head turn, and today’s comic bares that title, but mainly because it was a 1971 album by Deep Purple that I think is their best album ever, but then, I’m ahead of my time! 🙂
UPDATE:
I am, as time allows, updating the older comics on here. The fonts and word balloons I used in 2008 were just… horrible. So they’re being replaced and I’m fighting the urge to completely redraw the entire comic, but I do make changes here and there as I just can’t let them go. The original is posted below.
Original Comic
Anderson was also behind another puppet TV-show, called “Supercar”. My guess is that it was inspired by a Jules Verne story, “Master of the World”, about a man who invents a vehicle which combined the functions of boat, submarine, ultra-fast car, & airplane. The TV-show updated the concept to the 1960’s, & in one episode the Supercar (piloted by “Mike Mercury”) gives a demonstration to military officials by lifting a full-sized army tank via electromagnet & flying it through the sound barrier.
aww man i read that book! awesome story!