Lancelot Strong: The Shield # 1
“The Deathstar Dilemma!”
Writers: Stan Timmons & Rick Buckler
Penciller: Alan Weiss
Inker: Sam Delarosa
Letterer: Victor Gorelick
Colorist: Barry Grossman
“Steel Sterling faces the Man Mountain of Musclemen: Humongous”
Writers: Stan Timmons & Rick Buckler
Penciller: Adrian Gonzales
Inker: Rudy Nebres
Letterer: Rod Ollerenshaw
Colorist: Barry Grossman
Cover Date: June 1983
Rating: 
With the 4th of July come and gone, I figured I would celebrate America’s birthday by looking at “Lancelot Strong: The Shield # 1” from Red Circle Comics.
We get a quick introduction/origin story of one Mr. Lancelot Strong and on the first page, we find out that his powers were a result of an experiment by his father, Professor Malcolm Strong, who developed his powers when he was just an infant. Impressive origin and I feel like it made him stand out from the other versions of the character. Lancelot finds himself in a life-or-death battle against The Negatron, a Soviet spy who’s been turned into a living black hole.
The writing team of Stan Timmons and Rick Buckler (Who’s known more his artistic merits) crafted a story that not only shows Lancelot at his best (And frankly, it’s charming to know that a patrotic hero like himself can have a name like that) but they amp up the action and suspence to where it feels like they’re channeling any of the concepts that Stan Lee himself would have came up if he was writing The Shield; Yes the dialogue may feel a little outdated and stuck in the Silver Age era but Timmons and Buckler manage to make it feel fresh seeing as how this series came out in the early 80s and from what i read it defintely feels like Timmons had to do most of the work for this issue’s script since it looks like Buckler might have settled in as co-plotter; Alan Weiss’ art brings a slick yet dynamic feel to it that screams Golden Age and for this series, it works well….even better than if Rick Buckler himself was penciling (Not that i’m saying that Weiss is better than Buckler); The Steel Sterling story, which sees the character go up against a muscled-up monster named Humongous while two movie produced seek out Steel to use him in a movie. It’s a great story and it’s got a rugged 1940s feel to it but it’s just filler material (The script was handled by Stan Timmons and Rick Buckler, pulling double duty for this issue); “Lancelot Strong: The Shield” could have been a real game-changer for the imprint that would have made a huge impact for the 80s. Too bad it feels stuck in the era of the 60s to gain any momentum or build up any goodwill with the audience but Red Circle fanatics may want to seek this out if the modern stuff gets overwhelming.
Well, that’s it for me this week. Thanks for sticking around and I will see you all next time.
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