 Hey guys welcome back to Come Again TV the only place on YouTube where all geek culture collides. I'm Shannon and today on the show I am John Blackstar produced in 1981 by Lou Shimer and Norm Prescott for Filmation. Thirteen episodes of the series were produced. Blackstar to this day is thought to have been inspired by Thundar the Barbarian which premiered a year earlier. Where Thundar the Barbarian was set in the post-apocalyptic wasteland of the future Blackstar takes place in another galaxy. John Blackstar was an astronaut from Earth and stranded on the planet Cigar after he and his spacecraft were swept through a black hole that took him to the ancient alien universe. On Cigar John makes allies with the Trubbits the shape-changing clone the dragon warlock and Mara the Enchantress with his allies Blackstar pose the overlord who sought to take over Cigar. The Earth in which Blackstar hails from is rarely elaborated on in the series. The only thing that is known is that it's incredibly advanced perhaps being in a future time period neither Blackstar nor Katana bear any insignia related to any agencies in the real world. Blackstar's race isn't really specified in the series but it's often speculated that he may have Native American heritage or ancestry preceding Bravestar by six years. He was originally designed as an African-American keeping with Filmation's pro-election for socially positive messages in its shows. He was subsequently changed to a deeply tanned Caucasian. It's been mentioned this was done at the behest of the network but Filmation producer Lou Shimer has disclaimed all memory of any such directive. As an astronaut Blackstar was most likely extensively trained in many fields. The series presents him as intelligent and often prefers to outspark his opponent rather than rely on physical talent. Even though his constant contact with star sword grants him superhuman athletic abilities and near invulnerability. Blackstar uses the star sword as his primary weapon which is one half of the magical weapon known as the power star. The power star was split in two by mysterious means with Blackstar and the overlord each possessing one half. The star sword is able to absorb, store and reflect any external form of energy and is virtually indestructible. It can also produce blasts of pure energy capable of destroying a target. The weapon generates an invisible aura which imbues Blackstar with superhuman senses, strength, endurance, reflexes, speed, agility and a limited invulnerability to harm and extreme temperatures. Presumably the overlords power sword can for similar abilities. For a brief time in the episode Space Wrecked the star sword and the power sword were reunited into the power star. Galoo produced action figures at a five and a half inch scale for the series from 1983 to 1985 after the show's cancellation attempting to tap into the he-man boom of 83. Evil characters were packaged with demons which came in different colors and everyone had a demon figure back in the day. They were everywhere. While good characters were packaged with traubits, traubits were also packaged individually with Riff, Taric and Gossamer being the tougher ones to find. Warlock the dragon and the spaceship were each released in two color variations. Also released were Triton, Kadre's flying bowl, the traubit wind machine and battle wagon. The ice castle was constructed with very thin plastic making it very fragile as you guys can see in Retro Blasting's video on the topic. Two independent comic series were made for the French market. One was a three issue series published by Editions Valiant in their long-running comic magazine Piff Gadget. The other was a 46 page one-shot published by Editions which mostly published Marvel comics into French while Gettignal's version stays close to the original. Mitten went his own way with the Black Star mythos creating new enemies for Black Star to fight such as Antrax the cold giant, Telecrain the phantom witch and stating that Black Star and Murrah had a romantic relationship. While Katana does not appear she has a counterpart in Black Star's original girlfriend from Earth, Leia who appears in a flashback. It is also explained that Black Star suffers partial amnesia from his crash on Cigar and had all but forgotten Leia when he started his relationship with Mera. BCI Eclipse LLC released Black Star the complete series in Region 1 DVD on August 22nd 2006. The two disc set features all 13 original uncut episodes of the series in story continuity order fully restored and remastered for optimum audio and video quality plus several bonus features. Episodes were released on a DVD named Heroes and Heroines with episodes from many series on August 5th 2008. By early 2009 this release had been discontinued and is out of print as BCI Eclipse ceased operations. In 2007 three PAL DVDs containing two episodes on each were released by Boulevard Entertainment in the UK though no subsequent DVDs have been released leaving the remaining seven episodes unreleased as Boulevard Entertainment went into liquidation in 2014. Surprisingly there isn't really very much about the show online and every website I was able to find on it had the exact same information. I don't remember a whole lot about the series but I do remember having the Overlord figure and the Green Demon figure that came with him but that's it. I don't think I had Black Star at all and may have only seen the cartoon in passing. There's quite possibly more online about Thundar the Barbarian than there is Black Star. Filmation's entire intellectual property library is now owned by DreamWorks Animation which itself is owned by Universal and has been since 2016. Only time will tell if they plan on providing new content from Filmation's library. If you enjoyed that video make sure you hit the subscribe button right there so you stay up to date on all thanks geek culture. Also go ahead and check out one of these two playlists on the side for more videos just like the one you just watched. I'm Shannon from Comic NTV the only place on YouTube where all geek culture collides. Take care Geeks!