Fireball XL5 Comic Anthology: the 2022 announcement

From the archive: 8 October 2022. This was the first announcement of the Fireball XL5 60th Anniversary Comic Anthology. The preorder and launch period described at the time has ended.

Fireball XL5 returns to the comic page

Following the two UFO comic anthologies, Anderson Entertainment announced a collection of Fireball XL5 strips to celebrate the series’ 60th anniversary in October 2022.

The television series was made in black and white, but its adventures in TV Century 21 brought the World Space Patrol to readers in full colour. Fireball XL5 had first appeared in TV Comic in 1963–64; its later run in TV Century 21, subsequently TV21, developed a particularly ambitious approach to action and continuing stories.

Several artists worked on the strip, with Mike Noble’s dynamic pages becoming especially closely associated with it. The anthology’s cover also featured Noble’s XL5 artwork.

A shared Anderson universe

The stories brought Steve Zodiac’s crew into encounters with giant animals, zombie snowmen, the schemes of Piil and Truen, time travel and the hijacking of the Electrode 909. The assassination of the Astran Kaplan developed into a crossover involving the Stingray and Lady Penelope strips, linking different corners of the comic’s Anderson universe.

The collection also included new linking material by Lee Sullivan, inspired by his affection for Fireball XL5 and Mike Noble’s work. The initial announcement described a 330-page volume; the later edition announcement confirmed the final 336-page hardback and its seventeen pages of new material.

The original announcement video

Revisit the 2022 discussion of the project below. Any release dates or offers mentioned in the recording belong to that original launch.

Explore Fireball XL5 today

Visit the Fireball XL5 hub for characters, spacecraft, production history and more stories from the World Space Patrol. The hub links to the store’s currently available Fireball XL5 range.