in an emerging network of comics stores. Lee and Kaluta took this opportunity to expand their storytelling while retaining sole ownership and control of their creative property. Lee would script and Kaluta would illustrate prequel stories that expanded the backdrop and character relationships in a lead-up to the events of the stage play. Since DC and Marvel Comics were dominated by superheroes, the first market they looked at was the mature comic magazines of Europe. Their initial model was Heavy Metal magazine, which channeled the adult fantasy serials of France's Métal Hurlant. Lee told an interviewer: "The stuff in Heavy Metal completely blew me away and I wanted to do a play that was something like the stories they published". One year earlier, the original path for Starstruck had been paved when a fight scene between two women that Elaine had written reminded actor Dale Place of the style of Heavy Metal: "Oh, that would be fun, to do a kind of science fiction play" for her company, the writer recounted. Kaluta was a fan of the contributing artist Moebius, particularly his kinetic line and non-linear, surprising stories. The Starstruck prequel series they first produced were firmly in the template of these magazines; hallucinogenic narratives, elaborate fine art, epic backdrops, farcical humor, and adult themes, printed in serialized segments across many issues. Starstrucks move from New York stage play to comic series anticipated a similar path for Warp!. This 1971 sci-fi play had played a limited run on Broadway, with Art Direction by comics innovator (and Kaluta's friend/mentor) Neal Adams. It eventually became a comic series from First Comics in 1983, after Starstruck. Another contemporary parallel is A Distant Soil, a challenging sci-fi/fantasy series by writer/artist Colleen Doran which had print runs and revised expansions across multiple alternative comic companies, also starting in 1983. The first serials of Starstruck comics were printed in Spain's Ilustracion+Comix Internacional, and then America's Heavy Metal, in 1982. Story Centuries in the future, Earth's population has been halved by a nuclear war. Humanity has emigrated out into the universe, colonizing worlds and interacting with aliens. Various regimes have held power, most recently The Great Dictator. After his overthrow by revolutionaries, a power struggle rages on between his heirs, the Bajars, and the revolutionary leaders, the Medeas. Mary Medea fakes her death and begins an elaborate plan to eventually take control and stabilize the anarchic era.