Bob Newhart Waits in Line for ‘Star Wars’, 1977
The impact the original Star Wars had on the pop cultural landscape was so huge that it created ripples reaching to the most unexpected corners…
‘Heavy Metal’ Advertisement, 1984
By the mid-1980s, the outside world had to some extent caught up with the aesthetic of Heavy Metal, an American science fiction and fantasy comics magazine originally licensed from the French magazine Métal Hurlant beginning in 1977…
‘Xenon’ Pinball Machine, 1980
Released by Bally in 1980, Xenon was the first pinball game to feature a female voice (the first speaking pinball machine being the previous year’s sword and sorcery-themed Gorgar). Designed by Greg Kmiec and featuring sensual artwork by Paul Faris—which clearly showed the influence of underground and European comics…
Unused Title Treatment for Ridley Scott’s ‘Alien’, 1979
Michael Doret, a Brooklyn, New York-born illustrator and graphic designer, started working professionally in the early 1970s, and is responsible for several iconic images, including a series of Time magazine covers…
“Rabies Is a Killer” Poster, Circa 1977
With endemic labor disputes, recession, and social upheaval threatening from within, the Britain of the late 1970s and early 1980s increasingly saw itself as under siege from external threats…
Stonehenge Stereo Speakers, Circa 1975
Along with Atlantis, the Bermuda Triangle, and several ancient monoliths attributed to ancient astronauts in Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods? (1968), Stonehenge became a symbol of occult mystery in the 1970s…
“Biotronic Man” Stickers, 1977
As the 20th century grew more precarious, humans often found comfort in the idea of incorporating “superior” technology into their all-too-fragile flesh and blood…
‘Pops In Space’ by John Williams and the Boston Pops, 1980
John Williams cut his teeth as a composer for B-movies and TV series in the 1950s; his creative partnerships with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas in the 1970s, beginning with Jaws (1975), catapulted him into super-stardom…
The Corviale Housing Project
Known colloquially as the Serpentone (“big snake”), the Corviale is a vast housing development on the outskirts of Rome originally intended to house some 8,500 inhabitants in three structures dominated by a single, kilometer-long, eleven-story block…
‘Necronomicon’ Advertisement, 1980
The Simon Necronomicon, as it has come to be called, was first published in 1977 and has been in print continuously since the Avon Books edition of 1980…
We Are the Mutants 