Swiss Family Crusoe

At first glance you’d assume that the Gold Key/Western Publishing comic “Space Family Robinson” was based on the TV show “Lost in Space”. Actually it was the other way around. The comic began in 1962. The TV show first appeared three years later in 1965, and had obviously stolen the characters and idea from the comics. (Although I guess both owed a debt to the 1812 novel and 1960 film entitled “The Swiss Family Robinson”.

In the 1960s “Lady Penelope” comic in the UK featured the adventures of the Robinsons in original to the UK stories using the Gold Key Characters. There were at least two Annuals here published by World Distributors. They featured reprints of the Gold Key strips interspersed with new text and art. Dark Horse Publications have collected all the Gold Key “Space Family Robinson” comics into five (expensive) hardbacks.

Innovation comics in the early 1990s also produced a couple of dozen “Lost in Space” comics including two annuals. Like the earlier Gold Key comics they sported great painted covers.

PS: “Robinson” doesn’t sound like a Swiss surname does it? Of course the novel was originally written in German and had the title “Der Schweizerische Robinson”, referring of course to “Robinson Crusoe”. Perhaps a more accurate title for this novel would have been “The Swiss Crusoes”?

PPS: Robinson Crusoe was originally written in 1719, almost 100 years before “The Swiss Family Robinson”. I find it quite amazing that Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe” of 1719, and “Moll Flanders” from 1722, are still so readable almost 300 years after they first appeared.