Via Chris Roberson, here’s an awesome piece of art by a guy named Dusty Abell that probably won’t mean a damn thing to any of the younger folks out there in InternetLand, but ought to bring a smile to the faces of all us aging thirtysomethings.
In case you’ve forgotten (or never knew them), these are the heroes and villains of all those great live-action TV adventures that used to alternate with cartoons on Saturday mornings back in the ’70s. Children’s television back then was blissfully un-self-conscious, utterly lacking in the cynical sense of irony, marketing potential, and self-aware references to other pop culture that infest today’s kidvid stuff. It was also incredibly low-budget, heartbreakingly earnest, and broadly (i.e., poorly) acted. But it was wonderful stuff anyhow. Mostly fantasy or science fiction in nature, it stretched the imaginations of many a wide-eyed young viewer, and I didn’t realize how much I missed these shows until just now. I feel sorry for modern-day kids; Saturday mornings these days just suck.

Click on the image to blow it up large and see how many of these characters you can name. The complete roster is below the fold…

Front row, left to right:

• Morgan (Danger Island)
• Chongo (Danger Island)
  [Ed. note: I’ve got to confess, some of these shows are pretty dim in my memory, but I have absolutely zero recollection of Danger Island. I’m guessing it didn’t air in the Salt Lake market. Too bad, because these character s look like exactly the high-adventure pulp stuff I’ve always grooved on. Pirates and scary tribespeople!]
• Isis (Isis)
• Jason (Jason of Star Command)
  [Ed. note: I really liked Jason of Star Command. I believe it probably had the highest budget of any of these shows and was a real slam-bang space opera, complete with stop-motion monsters and even Jimmy Doohan fromStar Trek!. It didn’t hurt that my name appeared in the title. It gave me hope that one day I, too, could be a swashbuckling space hero. Jason is holding W1K1, pronounced “Wiki,” not to be confused with either this wiki or that Twiki.]
• Jonah (Ark II)
• Peepo (Space Academy)
• Shazam (Shazam!)
• Cha-ka, and Rick, Holly, and Will Marshall (Land of the Lost)

Second row, left to right:

• A pair of Skeleton Men (Danger Island)
• Dragos (Jason of Star Command)
• Enik and his pylon (Land of the Lost)
• A Sleestak (Land of the Lost)
• Dyna Girl and Electra Woman (Electra Woman and Dyna Girl)
• Billy Batson (Shazam!)
• WildBoy (Bigfoot and Wildboy)
  [Ed. note: I’m pretty fuzzy on this series as well, but still not the complete blank of Danger Island…]
• Queen Medusa (Jason of Star Command)
• Another Sleestak

Back row, left to right:

• A Ghost Man (standing atop The Ark, Danger Island)
• Captain Mu-Tan (standing atop The Ark, Danger Island)
• Grumpy the T-Rex (looking a lot more Jurassic Park-y than he actually did on Land of the Lost)
• Bigfoot (Bigfoot and Wild Boy)
• Another Skeleton Man (Danger Island)
• Mentor (in the doorway of the motor home, Shazam!)

The vehicles, left to right:

• Jason’s Starfire (Jason of Star Command)
• The Ark (Ark II)
• The “Open Road” motor home (Shazam!)
• A Seeker shuttlecraft (Space Academy)
• The Space Academy (duh, Space Academy)