Full?

According to my dictionary “full” means whole or all or complete. So Marvel UK aren’t being truthful saying that these comics are in full colour. Half the comic is still in black and white. What is worse, the main cover story isn’t even all in full colour. The first eight pages are. The 9th and final page of the story is in black and white.

What is funny is they even attempt to make a feature of the last black and white page saying that it is a “special bonus” and gives you an opportunity to get your crayons/felt tip pens out to colour the panels yourself!!!!

MWOM

Images of MWOM Number 1 are often posted so, for a change, here are Nos 2 and 3.

Marvel UK began with the weekly comic The Mighty World of Marvel. First on sale for 5p Saturday 30th September 1972 and consequently that first issue was only available to purchase from newsagents for 7 days until Friday 6th October 1972. Approx 225,000 copies of this first issue were printed. Issue No 2 appeared Saturday 7th October 1972. Sales were healthy and settled down to approx 200,000 per week for the first few months.

Interior pages were sometimes Black and White, sometimes in Colour and often in the bonkers Green and Black.

Whoops! Someone has cut out the coupon. Fancy placing it in the middle of the comic!

Back issues of these comics are still cheap considering that the early issues are now over 40 years old. Marvel collectors in the USA have yet to appreciate them, probably not being aware that these comics often contained material unique to them. And an added interest was that the reprinted stories were always on larger page sizes then the original issues.

Many covers featured unique-for-us covers drawn in the States by Marvel’s top artists. Even Jim Starlin did at least two dozen covers including issues 2, 3 and 160 shown here. The artwork for the cover of MWOM 160 would appear often in other UK Marvel comics in the autumn of 1975 as part of an advert for the Xmas 1976 hardback annuals. It may well also have appeared as a poster. It is certainly an iconic image.

In 1975 someone made the surprising decision to issue a new Marvel UK comic named Titan in landscape format shrinking the US pages slightly to fit two to each page.. This shape had been tried before in the 1950s by Classics Illustrated. Some K.G Murray comics had dabbled with two reprinted pages of DC strips but as those comics were still portrait shaped you had to turn the comic sideways to read it. The UK Spider-Man comic was produced in landscape format for a while too. All these oddly shaped comics required unique covers (and sometimes pinups/centre spreads) to be drawn. 

There would be a surprisingly large number of Marvel UK titles appearing and disappering over the next 20 years. Too many (and too boring for me to list). But Rob Kirby plans to list them if his long promised book ever sees the light of day.

https://a-distant-beacon.blogspot.com/2020/01/from-cents-to-pence-2020-update-story.html

This was the final issue of the UK Captain Britain (Vol 1). The next week the comic combined with Spider-Man so at least the Captain’s adventures would continue for a while longer.

Captain Britain

Not exactly the cheapest book I’ve ever bought (£60 !!!) but probably the most enjoyable. Captain Britain began in the mid 1970s as another identikit hero. His origin escapes me. Was he bitten by a radioactive hedgehog or did he find the sword Excalibur leaning against a tree?? I remember being underwhelmed by his pedestrian adventures in the first run of his title (overseen from the USA).

However once he was being handled by writers and artists with imagination this great run of 47 stories from various 1980s UK titles are perhaps the equal of any superheroic antics before or since, including the late/great (soon to be resurrected) Marvelman. Perhaps if I’d got a week or so to spare I could have dug out all my original copies of these magazines featuring Captain Britain. They’ll still be around here somewhere. But it’s nice to have them all collected together in this one volume…and now in colour too……. Highly recommended.

Oh, and if you click on the above image it might enlarge enough for you to make out the original comic covers in more detail.

The decline and fall of British Comics

Once there were dozens and dozens of weekly comics catering for all age groups available in the average UK newsagents. All that remains is The Beano, The Dandy, 2000AD,  Judge Dredd Monthly and the various (usually TV related) magazines for infants with titles like Thomas the Tank Engine and Shaun the Sheep. There might still be a Spiderman comic for youngsters also. Yes there are other magazines like Dr who, Torchwood, Charmed etc etc but they are magazines with photos and articles and although they may contain an odd comic strip I don’t class them as comic books. Yes I know there are other publications (usually reprints only) such as DC Thompsons Classic Comics and Commando, and fanzines such as “Crikey” but you have to really search them out. They are not available at every corner shop. Yes, I know there are a dozen or so monthly books from Titan and Panini such as Batman, Superman, X-Men, Spiderman, The Avengers, Fantastic Four, Wolverine etc, but they are reprints also. Perhaps the current UK version of “Transformers” features  some new stories but compared to the second half of the 20th Century the amount of new material in UK produced comics is now virtually zero. And yet it doesn’t seem so long ago that there was a thriving industry.

When The Beano celebrated its 60th birthday in August 1998 even adults who had purchased it as children in the 1950s through to the 1970s would have still recognised the characters inside such as Dennis the Menace and the Bash Street Kids.The back cover of this issue had a homage to the first ever issue from 1938.

The Eagle had numerous relaunches over the years. Although it never managed to recapture the glory days of the early 1950s it was still available in the 1990s. The Eagle is no more but Dan Dare survives to this day.

Captain Britain is another character that despite great art and stories never really became a household name like Captain Marvel/Marvelman before him.

 After featuring in his own weekly comic in the 1970s and cropping up in many other Marvel UK comics subsequently he finally received his own UK monthly. Sadly it only lasted for 14 issues. Happily he still appears in the Marvel USA Universe to this day.

In the 1980s and 1990s there were a number of Adult Comic Books such as “Warrior”, “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Deadline”. In its earlier days “Deadline” introduced the world to “Tank Girl” (and my particular favourite “Hugo Tate”). By the time No 64 appeared it was turning into more of a music magazine with added comic strips. It ended shortly after this issue.

Oops I’ve just remembered one British Comic still being published today. Although “Viz” hasn’t the huge circulation it once had, it is still on the (top) shelves. Its “adult” content also contains affectionate pastiches of Beano and Dandy type comic strips of old. Although “Sid the Sexist” and “The Fat Slags” being all thats available today probably sums up just what the UK comic industry of the 21st Century has come to !!!