Welcome to our overview of Starburst magazine issues 1-87, which covers the years 1978 – 1985. After going through the first 100 issues of White Dwarf I was wondering where else I could find similar comic book shops and film adverts, so Starburst was the next logical step. I found these on Archive, the scans are slightly odd, the pictures don’t look great but the text is very readable though and I made some great finds going through these back issues, starting with:

Starburst – free Blade Runner preview screening in 1982.

There’s an interesting coincidence here, just a month ago our good friend and legendary film journalist Alan Jones had mentioned this screening in a tweet here.

So it was strange to be looking at the advert for that very screening just a short time later. This stands out as it must have been quite a revelation to see Blade Runner for free so early on, seeing it fully fresh for the first time with no idea what to really expect from it. There were three screening around the UK, but the one in London is of most interest to us, the ABC Shaftsbury Avenue was still two screens back then, both of which were decent sizes, I can picture the huge crowd that was there to line up stretching all the way back up the street. I know it was busy as two issues later Starburst posted reaction letters they’re received from people saying how the screenings went, take a look further down to check them out. A small slice of Blade Runner history that was fun to find out more about.

Starburst issue 49 – 1982

Starburst issue 51 – 1982