can remember them being in the shops at the time,
I've got to admit that although I was going to feature both the titles that Steve picked, I've never actually read either of them! I can remember them being in the shops at the time, but at a time when my comics reading was minimal then these licensed series based on toy lines just didn't appeal to me in the slightest! However, they were very popular at the time, although Transformers had a much longer run than Action Force which became a monthly publication after a year or so. Action Force actually began life in the UK as a strip in the IPC war comic, Battle Picture Weekly (which I'll be featuring soon on this thread) which was eventually renamed Battle Action Force due to the popular licensed tales almost taking over the comic. IPC lost the license to Marvel in 1986. And the popularity of the UK version of the Transformers comic meant that once again, Marvel UK had to improvise and start to create new stories of their own once they caught up reprinting the original American material, stories which they'd slot in to run alongside the US material. Thus the UK Transformers run is nowadays more highly regarded than the US one simply because of this...but I've still never read a single page, to this day...or seen any of the movies!
And Alex, it's nice to see you mention Doom Patrol. I remember reading Doom Patrol stories back in the 70s (must have been reprints - maybe DC's 100-page Spectacular or the likes) and enjoyed them, but didn't come across them very often. I like that Bolland cover, and I'll have to check out that Morrison run now some time soon.
Seeing as it'll probably be several days before I get a chance to get back to this thread, I'll post a couple of completely different covers this morning. The first is from US publisher Gold Key's original run of Star Trek comics, the first of which was published in 1967 shortly after the first season finished its original broadcast. There were only a few issues published each year, and it ran for 61 issues until 1979 when they lost the license to Marvel who then published an adaptation of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Next up, we have a cover from a short-lived American publishing company from 1975 called Atlas, who were set up with the intention of being major competitors for DC and Marvel.
Is it a superhero comic? Is it a sci-fi comic? Is it a horror comic? It’s actually a bit of them all, totally freakish but in unbelievably bad taste. Now and again you come across something which is just so bad that it’s unmissable, and Morlock 2001 falls into that category. This really has to be seen to be believed. It’s awful! It’s also unintentionally hilarious…unfortunately (or probably that should be thankfully?) this only lasted 3 issues in 1975 and so there’s no way of knowing exactly where the storyline was going to go…
Set in a totalitarian 1984-style future where books are banned etc, a scientist manages to grow a human looking plant in a giant pod. (That’s the sci-fi bit!) The creature looks totally human but unsurprisingly is actually a living plant which is born/hatched (?) wearing what looks like a superhero costume (that’s the superhero bit!) and gets given the name Morlock after characters in a long-banned book. Unfortunately anyone who gets touched by Morlock immediately starts to transform into a plant, rooted to the ground wherever they are standing. Worse yet, If Morlock doesn’t regularly take a special serum (of which there is only a very small amount in existence) then he turns into a mindless walking tree creature, which eats anything it touches and turns their bodies to slime. In the second issue, the creature even kills off an innocent young blind girl who is trying to protect him! (Of course this is the horror bit!)
It’s impossible to say for sure if the character was popular or not, but judging by the retitled third issue Morlock 2001 and The Midnight Men (with The Midnight Men part taking up the largest part of the logo) it’s probably safe to say it wasn’t. An equally ridiculous story by a totally different creative team sees Morlock apparently killed off on the last page, bur as a fourth issue was never published it’s not certain whether this was meant to be a cliffhanger or whether the series would continue simply as The Midnight Men.
But what really makes thing worse is the people involved in creating this mess…they really should have known better…writer Micheal Fleisher (of Jonah Hex fame) and artist Al Milgrom (of various Marvel titles) were behind the first two issues. Both were replaced in the third issue by writer Gary Freidrich (Ghost Rider etc) and artists Steve Ditko (on pencils) and Berni Wrightson (on inks).
This was published by a short-lived (and largely forgotten nowadays) company called Atlas (referred to nowadays as Atlas Seaboard, to save confusion with the 1950s pre-Marvel Atlas) who were set up with the intention of being major competitors for DC and Marvel. I have vague memories of buying a couple of Atlas comics at the time in a local newsagents, although given the local distribution problems of any US comic which wasn't Marvel, it could even have been a couple of years later; unfortunately Morlock wasn't one of them...I don't think I'd forget reading that!
I love the first cover, btw...not that it makes much sense. It shows Morlock in both his human and monster form. :)