Of course Polystyle were famous for publishing TV Comic, Pippin and Countdown / TV Action but Zero-G may be new to you. It'd be understandable if you missed it as there was only this one issue published as a Holiday Special. After the summer of 1989 it vanished from the shelves as though it had never existed.
The contents of this 48 page special contained a mixture of factual articles on space exploration and a good selection of complete adventure strips. However, the strips were all reprints from the 1971 comic Countdown.
Although most of Countdown's strips had been based on TV shows it also sometimes featured all-new complete sci-fi stories with no connection to any television series. It was these strips which were collected into the Zero-G Holiday Special. Great material too, with artwork by Brian Lewis and Martin Asbury.
There was also a four page text story Dangerous Friend reprinted from the Countdown Annual 1972 that had been laid out differently. This Martin Asbury illustrated tale featured the cast of the Countdown ship, the originated strip from the comic of that name.
Talking of layouts, the strip Murder on Ice bizarrely broke its continuity halfway through to feature a few joke cartoons, which seemed a bit foolish and unnecessary.
Was Zero-G intended to spin off into a regular comic? Possibly not, as there wouldn't be enough non-TV reprint left to fill the pages of an ongoing title, unless Polystyle would be willing to finance new material. That seemed unlikely, given that the Holiday Special was obviously done on a limited budget. Even the rocket icon on the cover had been lifted from the old Countdown logo. Times must have been hard not to afford a one inch drawing of a new rocket.
So the Zero-G Holiday Special was a here today, gone tomorrow publication, passing like a comety candle in the wind burning up on re-entry lost in splashdown, add your own metaphorical analogy thing. Like Polystyle's parrot it had ceased to be.
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