Comics and Magazines you used to buy?

[Milky Tears]

WARNING!! A tragic anal geek thread... inspired by me finding a box full of old Look-In mags the other day!


I found over 100 Look In Collect-A-Pages, 50+ front covers and about twenty complete issues from the 1983-88 period... plus a Kylie cover from July 1989.

You can now ask me anything about those obscure 1980s music, film and TV stars?


Did you know that...

Kim Goody's favourite TV show is I Love Lucy, Steve Davis' favourite food is Steak & Kidney Pie, Haywoode went to Selig Brodesky Jewish Day School, Matt Bianco used to be an upholsterer, Amazulu's Anna dislikes "being hungry", Marcus from Living In A Box has a Persian cat called Cerruti, Belouis Some dislikes fried food, Sinitta's ambition is "to be really tall and thin", Colonel Abrams was married!!, Kent from Drum Machine wants to "direct a TV documentary series" and Five Star's Stedman "didn't really have" a childhood hero.

Some great comic strips in Look-In as well: Robin of Sherwood, The Madonna Story So Far ("An Important Meeting For Madonna...") , Some Guff With Duran Duran, Danger Mouse, Alias The Jester, Bucks Fizz, Knight Rider The A-Team, Alf, Gilbert (from Get Fresh), Duckula, Inspector Gadget, Super Gran, Galaxy High School, Five Star (plus The 5 Star Life), Jimmy Cricket and bloody Rock On Tommy! with Cannon & Ball (seemed to run throughout the entire five years).

Read some of them (including Space:1999, The Tomorrow People and Sapphire & Steel) at The Look-In Picture Strip Archive and John's Look-Out.


I also used to get Tiger, Whizzer & Chips (I was a Chip-ite), Eagle, The Beano, The Dandy, Beezer, Topper, Hoot (ran for about three months), Victor, Buster, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi Weekly, Shoot, Batman, Superman, Match, Smash Hits, Fast Forward and Scream!

Shame my mum made me bin my Scream collection when we moved house back in 1988. A complete set (plus Specials) goes for over 50 on eBay these days.


http://www.backfromthedepths.co.uk/ (Superb Scream! fansite. Recommended)


My brother got Nutty, Transformers, 2000AD, Oink! (think he's still got the free flexi-disc) and loads of Marvel efforts.




What about you lot?

Who were your favourite characters?

What were your favourite strips/features?

What about the FREE GIFTS?






More classic comic memories at these excellent websites:

http://www.comicsuk.co.uk/index.asp

http://www.26pigs.com/comics.html

http://www.britishcomics.com/comics.htm

http://www.phil-comics.com/

http://www.rebelscum.com/marvelcomics11.asp (Includes all of the UK Star Wars/Empire Strikes Back/Return of the Jedi Weekly covers)

http://www.notbbc.34sp.com/ (Oink! online)

http://blog.newsarama.com/2007/06/06...-girls-comics/ (Don't forget the girls! )



P.S. I also think I've still got a box of Beano/Dandy/Commando Comic Libraries kicking about somewhere.

P.P.S. Quick Quiz: Who plays the part of T.J. Hooker's partner Romano?

[Andrew Curnow]

Kim Goody's favourite TV show is I Love Lucy

Whose favourite TV show is what?!!

I've recently come across a few (a very few - I'm not as tragically anal a geek as James). It's surreal to see the comic strip adventures of the likes of Bucks Fizz... (I've also come across the 7" single of Billy Connolly's theme to Super gran, but that's another story!)

I certainly used to get Nutty (that was the one that gave the world Bananaman wasn't it?) and I've still got a complete set of the UK Star Wars/ESB/ROTJ Weekly/Monthly/Weekly magazines upstairs in two cardboard boxes.

Ain't comics brilliant?

P.P.S. Adrian Zmed, who also starred in Grease 2 and.... Nope, just Grease 2.
P.P.P.S. Heather Locklear was in TJ Hooker as well. I'm just saying...

[Wayne]

When i was a kid i used to vary between Topper, Whizzer & Chips, The Beezer, & The Beano. But i never bothered much with The Dandy, which for some reason i always thought was a bit crap.
I also used to get TV Comic for the Dalek & Dr.Who strips. (Not mention things like U.F.O. etc...) I also used to get the Beano & Dennis the Menace annuals, & i used to avidly read my sister's 'Jackie' magazine.
Roundabout 1977 i started getting into music related mags like 'Record Miirror', & was soon getting 'Sounds' magazine every week. I never bothered with 'Kerrang', though.
My favourite comic strip characters were "The Numbskulls". (sp?) I can't remember now which comic they were in, but they were the little people that lived inside yer head & controlled yer brain functions. A bit like in the Woody Allen film 'Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex'.
I also liked "Dennis the Meance", the "Bash Street Kids", & naughty girls like "Beryl the Peryl" & "Minne the Minx".
A few years ago i bought all the Dalek Annuals (which i used to have) off eBay, & a 'Countdown' annual with Dr.Who in it. I still sometimes think about getting the Who annuals that i had as a kid, which were the Pertwee ones & the first TB one.

[Rob McCow]

We used to get the Transformers comic delivered once a week. It would slip out of the daily newspaper, usually on Wednesday or Thursday and make me very happy. I upgraded to DWM in 1989, then ditched it in favour of SFX around 1995. Finally, SFX hit the bin with the 'Buffy Changed Everything' article around 2005. Since then we've tried Sci-Fi Now and DeathRay, but the winner is: DeathRay. Fab magazine, tonnes of content.

I also pick up Interzone, the sci-fi short story magazine, whenever possible.

[Pip Madeley]

The only comic I bought regularly...



Classic.

[Andrew Curnow]

My favourite comic strip characters were "The Numbskulls". (sp?) I can't remember now which comic they were in, but they were the little people that lived inside yer head & controlled yer brain functions

I remember that! Little bald chaps weren't they.

[Alex]

I used to get The Beano when I was very young, but it was the relaunched Eagle that really made an impact on me. I used to love the photo stories, especially Doomlord which initially was really dark stuff. I found the first 10 issues at a car boot sale last year and it wasn't just my memory playing tricks on me either - it really is quite disturbing as Doomlord arrives on Earth, judges us worthless, and decides that everyone on Earth must be killed!

After a bit it went a bit weak though, with the evil Doomlord being killed off, and then a good one replaced him, and it all got a bit samey, but for the first year or so it's superb stuff, I'd love it if they collected them all together as a graphic novel.

I got in to 2000AD when I was about 12 and was really in to that for about 10 years, but looking back it does seem a bit of a golden age for the comic, with people like Grant Morrison and Peter Milligan writing for it, along with John Wagner and Alan Grant always turning in strong stuff too. I used to love Zenith, Bad Company, Hewligan's Haircut and various others, but I do remember finding it getting all a bit samey by the time I got to my late teens...

When I was about 14 I got in to American comics, but to go in to all the ones I used to love would take ages and ages...

[Wayne]

How could i forget to mention DC & Marvel comics?
The Newsagent on the way to school used to get the proper American DC comics in for me & some mates. (Mainly Batman & Superman & Captain America) I remember they always had yellow pages with ads for X Ray Specs & things in $Dollars at the back.
Then there were the Marvel comics. Spiderman & The Hulk were my favourites, & also the Fantastic Four!

[Dirk Gently]

I remember that! Little bald chaps weren't they.

Oh yes, I remember The Numskulls. They were in the Beano IIRC.


Just found a link.

[Captain Tancredi]

A Scottish comedian (Craig Ferguson, I think) as part of his act used to speculate on whether the Numskulls had wee men inside their heads telling them what to do, and if they did, whether those guys had Numskulls in their heads, and so on...

[Dirk Gently]

I think it was on Q.I where I heard that Edison actually believed in Numskulls.

[Captain Tancredi]

Edison read the Beano?

I can just see it now- the invention of the lightbulb put on hold because the Bash Street Kids have just balanced a bucket of water on the classroom door and surely the teacher can't be about to walk in...

[Andrew Curnow]

Alex's mention of the 'new' Eagle reminds me that I've got a drawer full of those upstairs too - not all of them by any means (I think it kept going into the late-80s?) but certainly a good five or more years' worth. I'm pretty sure that the hero of Doomlord (Reporter Howard Hughes) was the same guy who gets a Dalek Mutant on the neck in "Resurrection of the Daleks".

[Alex]

After a bit it became a normal comic and just wasn't the same. Though I always did enjoy "Computer Warrior", especially when they turned a particularly naff C64 game in to something which looked amazing and fun to play. Oh, and the Thirteenth Floor, which survived the merger with Scream, though that stopped being fun when they tamed Max the computer and made him far more friendly rather than insanely psychotic!

There was just something so fun about the photo strips, something like Sgt Streetwise in comic form wouldn't have appealed to me at all, but in photo form in just seemed so exciting. They did have a bit of a tongue in cheek attitude to them too which helped, and to this day I'm quite impressed by some of the effects they pulled off back then, presumably on a fairly small budget too.

If you ever find yourself wanting to sell them on ebay Andrew, some of the early issues have photo strips written by Alan Moore (normally The Collector one offs, I think the first is in no 3 if my memory serves me correctly), and if you've got that or other ones, the issues go from between 10 - 20 alone as he's so popular in the comics field.

Edit:



Doomlord - still freaking me out to this day!

[Andrew Curnow]

I might dig them out later on - Didn't Doomlord have a sort of catchphrase? I've been trying to think of it, but I keep coming up with "The sentence is death" which was (I think) Judge Death in 2000AD. Thanks for the info, though, Alan, it's certainly not impossible that eBay might beckon, if only to clear the space from my cupboard!!!

[Logo Polish]

I might dig them out later on - Didn't Doomlord have a sort of catchphrase? I've been trying to think of it, but I keep coming up with "The sentence is death" which was (I think) Judge Death in 2000AD. Thanks for the info, though, Alan, it's certainly not impossible that eBay might beckon, if only to clear the space from my cupboard!!!

"I am Doomlord,

Servant of Nox,

Master of life,

BRINGER OF DEATH!"

And there was also "Energiser to disintegrate!" for when he was using his ring to zap someone or something.

I always found the way he'd drain someone's brain by clamping their ears and making their eyeballs disappear creepy. Then, if he wanted to take over their identities, he'd strip the corpse, put its clothes on himself, disintegrate the body lying there in its underpants, and then transform himself into a copy of his victim.

Sometimes wondered what Doomlord's underwear must have looked like, as he never bothered stealing that from his victims...

[Dirk Gently]

...for when he was using his ring to zap someone...

I've heard about men who do that!

[Andrew Curnow]

Thanks Logo - it was the 'Master of Life, Bringer of Death' bit I was thinking about.

[MacNimon]

The new Eagle was after my time. But I've managed to pick up a copy or two of the 1950s incarnation of the title, and it's fascinating stuff. Like that Tin Tin book which has been in the news recently, it's fascinating to see how other cultures were represented in years gone past...some of the artwork could never be reprinted nowadays without being called racist.

As for what comics I used to read, there weren't many titles available throughout the 70s that I didn't read, for a short time at least. It didn't matter if it was the Beano, Warlord, 2000ad, any of the Marvel UK reprints, Look-In, Tiger, Victor, Warlord...I even loved such titles as Shiver & Shake, Cor! TV Comic and Cheeky. And that's before I even mention the American Marvel and DC titles....

Comics were a major part of my childhood, they went hand-in-hand with watching Doctor Who, Star Trek, etc on tv. Kids these days are missing out in a big way with the lack of comics available in the newsagents nowadays...everything seems to be a tv/film/merchandising tie in, or a US reprint. Except for the Beano/Dandy etc. Surely there's still enough homegrown talent around to get the British comic industry kick-started again?
Although it's certainly a very different marketplace out there compared to 30 years ago...

[Andrew Curnow]

Tiger, yes - my brother used to collect that. Johnny Cougar, Hamish Hotshot, Skid Solo... and Billy's Boots. Marvellous stuff!

[Darren]

I had enough comics to open my own newsagents.

The Beano, Buster, Whizzer & Chips, The Dandy, The Beezer, Look In, Eagle, Scream!, Oink, Whoopee! (that may have been a monthly thing).

I also collected Story Teller, two 26 part magazine/tape fortnightlys. Discovery, a historical magazine & activity thing. And I started collecting The Star Trek Database, but lost interest.

[Rob McCow]

Memory Lane for Transformers Comics.

Sigh. They were awful, weren't they? I loved them as a kid, though.


Here's some of the covers I like. Shockwave was well cool and awesome, he should have been Decepticon leader! And he nearly was too.