Cover Of The Day

[Stuart Wallis]

And DC ended up with the rights to Captain Marvel as well! Absolute farrago!

[Alex]

This was one of my favourite comics of the late eighties, at least issues #1 to #8 and #31 to #50 as they were written and drawn by John Byrne. What made this run so interesting was that Jen knew she was a comic book character, and quite often took Byrne to task for shoddy plotting / the ridiculously skimpy outfits she ended up wearing. It was a very unique series, and very funny as well, with Jen being a strong, independent female character, something which there wasn't a lot of in comics back then.

[MacNimon]

I remember the original She-Hulk series from the 70s, which was more straight-laced and traditional than this sounds. It was OK but it was simply jumping on a feminist bandwagon (along with Ms Marvel), but this sounds more fun. If John Byrne was involved, it'll certainly be worth checking out!

Sticking with Marvel for today, here's an early 60s Fantastic Four which introduced us to Doctor Doom for the first time...

[MacNimon]

Anyone remember those 'Treasury'-sized editions of comics we got from Marvel and DC back in the 70s? Those giant-sized (and I mean giant - they must have been about a foot wide and 18" tall with card covers) editions which were usually filled with reprints? But not always because occasionally they would use the format for special editions, special stories not seen in the regular format and which they wanted to publicise in a big way. Usually team-ups, featuring not only characters from different companies such as Superman vs Spider-Man, Batman vs Hulk, etc but also slightly stranger meetings such as...

Written by Denny O'Neill and with art by Neal Adams, Dick Giordano and Terry Austin, this super-sized comic told the story of how Superman and Muhammed Ali teamed up to save the world from invading aliens...

The wraparound cover features a host of celebrities and politicians of the day in the crowd. Can you spot any of them?

[MacNimon]

It's been a little while since we had the Doctor featuring on a cover, so today we return to the highly popular TV Comic, which had so many cover stars over 1697 issues ranging from Muffin The Mule to Doctor Who to Tom & Jerry and so many, many more.

Although the strip had already been running several years at this point, the Doctor had only just made it to the cover slot the previous week but as I haven't yet been able to find a scan of that first ever UK DW comic cover appearance, you'll have to make do with his second cover appearance...

I'll be starting to slip in repeat appearances now of a few titles which have already appeared in this thread simply because there have been so many great covers, in both long and short running comics. There are still loads of titles to come though, which haven't made yet appeared here...

[Andrew Curnow]

Just playing 'catch up' on the past couple of covers - I love the absurdity of Ali teamed with Superman, it's the same sort of blurring of reality that gave us things like the ABBA comic strip in Look-In!! I can recognise a few of the celebrities there, although conversely there are some who must have obviously been 'huge' at the time who I don't recognise at all. So I know that's Jimmy Carter bottom right, but he surely can't be stood next to Barbara Wright??? And although Cher stands out in the crowd, the very bottom left corner appears to be (but I'm certain ISN'T) Lech Walesa!!!

I didn't realise there was a 'series' of these large, super-sized magazines, the only ones I ever saw (and indeed still have) are of the original Star Wars film adaptation, which was split across two such issues.

And nice to see the Doctor make an appearance again, in a scene actually rather similar (albeit on a different planet) to a bit out of The Invasion. Are they now going to follow the train?

[Dirk Gently]

I can recognise a few of the celebrities there, although conversely there are some who must have obviously been 'huge' at the time who I don't recognise at all. So I know that's Jimmy Carter bottom right, but he surely can't be stood next to Barbara Wright??? And although Cher stands out in the crowd, the very bottom left corner appears to be (but I'm certain ISN'T) Lech Walesa!!!

The Jackson 5 stand out a bit. Almost as much as Batman.

[Stuart Wallis]

I think Donny and Marie Osmond and Lucille Ball are in there too.

[MacNimon]

[Andrew Curnow]

That's a very thorough list, thanks Mac!

[MacNimon]

Today, we have a cover from the late 80s/early 90s experimental spin-off from 2000AD which was aimed at adults...

Crisis ran for 63 issues, initially fortnightly from 1988-1990, then monthly till its cancellation in 1992. Strips included Third World War, New Statesman, Sticky Fingers, The New Adventures Of Hitler, and Troubled Souls. The type of strips varied from sci-fi/ecological and superhero, through to contemporary strips with settings such as the Northern Ireland Troubles and flatsharing(!) Creators included Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis, Mark Millar, Pat Mills, Carlos Ezquerra, Jim Baikie and more.

[MacNimon]

While many comics ran for years, some for several decades even, at the other end of the spectrum were those short-lived titles which have been forgotten about over the years. Here's one example from 1950...

As you can tell from the cover, the title character is a Space Investigator called Martin Power. I can't find any details about what else appeared in the comic, info on it seems to be in very short supply as it had a very short run...it lasted only the one issue! So in today's post you have the complete run of Power comic...

[Alex]

Today, we have a cover from the late 80s/early 90s experimental spin-off from 2000AD which was aimed at adults...

Crisis ran for 63 issues, initially fortnightly from 1988-1990, then monthly till its cancellation in 1992. Strips included Third World War, New Statesman, Sticky Fingers, The New Adventures Of Hitler, and Troubled Souls. The type of strips varied from sci-fi/ecological and superhero, through to contemporary strips with settings such as the Northern Ireland Troubles and flatsharing(!) Creators included Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis, Mark Millar, Pat Mills, Carlos Ezquerra, Jim Baikie and more.

I was quite fond of Crisis, but I think the problem it has was that Third World War, which ran for way too long, was overtly serious and preachy whilst not being that much fun. Once the comic became a bit more varied it was a lot more interesting, but by then the damage was done and it was struggling for readers. The New Adventures of Hitler could have been quite exploitative but was actually very intriguing, and it's a shame there weren't further runs of it.

[MacNimon]

We haven't had any of those Picture Libraries yet, have we? Those digest-sized little comics mostly published by DC Thomson. While Commando is the most famous and successful title in that field (and the only one still in publication today), there have been many other titles in that format. Here's a science fiction/fantasy title which ran from 1979-1991, for 281 issues...

Each issue featured a complete new stand-alone story. While each story was a 'one-off', a few recurring a few characters appeared during its run. Creators who worked on the title included Grant Morrison, Mike McMahon, John Ridgeway and Cam Kennedy.

[Jeff]

"#51. Pele"

I was sure it was Will Smith.

[MacNimon]

Another of those many forgotten Alan Class series of comics, those which you always came across at holiday times in gift shops, book shops and newsagents around the country. Creepy Worlds was one of the longest lasting titles reprinting classic American monster/sci-fi comics for the British market, published between August 1962 and April 1989, nearly the entire lifespan of the company. As with most Alan Class titles, there was little pattern to what stories were reprinted, and it was common for characters from one company to appear one issue, and characters from an entirely different company to appear the next. Creepy Worlds #32-38 was a rare exception to this rule, reprinting an almost straight run of early Fantastic Four stories.

This particular early 80s edition is a perfect example of how the company worked it's titles...a totally random reprint policy over all its titles, using the same material several times over the years. Even the cover in this case...the contents of this issue include a reprint of Charlton's Unusual Tales #29, which had already been reprinted twice by Alan Class, once in Creepy Worlds #40 and again in Creepy Worlds #156. This was the second time the cover had been used, previously appearing as the cover of #40.

Given how much cover styles had changed in general over the period that Class printed these comics, it's interesting to note that theses are unusual in that after 25 years or so these long-running titles all retained exactly the same format and style they started off with...the same logo, and still reprinting the original 1950s/1960s covers rather than updated versions to appeal to modern audiences as was the norm with reprints elsewhere. That's part of their enduring appeal...they were obviously so cheap to produce and printed on low quality paper. As I said before, they were maybe cheap and tacky but they were a goldmine of classic comics. After all, why change what was a successful format?

[MacNimon]

Another DC Thomson humour comic today...

Nutty first appeared in 1980 and ran for almost 300 isssues until September 1985. Late in its first year, after a period of rotating the cover stars, it became clear that Bananaman was the most popular character and so he claimed the cover spot permanently until the comic was merged into the Dandy. Other characters included Dick Turban; Desert Highwayman, Cannonball Kid, Scoopy, Micro Dot and Samuel Creeps.

[Stuart Wallis]

See them trying to get away with a character name like Dick Turban now! the past is a foreign country, so to speak.

I'd always wondered where they sourced these AC stories from. I'd honestly thought they'd been knocked up on the cheap, but that they'd got them to draw them like they had in the old days - that is, until I'd noticed that Steve Ditko had signed a story in one issue, and another comic published a Phantom story. Now I know...

[MacNimon]

Back to 1954 today and the first appearance of a character who would go on to be one of the most popular and longest-published in British comics history.

Tiger was first published in 1954, and was one of IPC's most successful titles, running for 1555 issues until 1985 when it was merged into the resurrected Eagle. Originally subtitled "The Sport and Adventure Picture Story Weekly", it was heavily sports-influenced for all of its run although it featured other types of strips such as space adventure, etc. Popular strips such as Football Family Robinson, Hot-Shot Hamish and Skid Solo would all appear after mergers with other comics but the most popular character was footballer Roy Race, better known as Roy Of The Rovers, who was the cover star of that first issue and finally got his own comic in 1976, which itself ran well into the 1990s. The final ROTR strip was published in 2001.

[MacNimon]

Superheroes today, pre-Marvel UK from the 1960s...

Fantastic (1967-68) was the first time that British readers were ever able to follow the exploits of Thor, Iron Man and the X-Men on a regular basis in a British reprint comic. It featured b&w reprints of these strips in a similar format to that which Marvel UK would adopt several years later, cutting each (US) monthly issue into several weekly segments so that several strips could fit in each issue. There was only one token British back-up strip, The Missing Link, which featured a Hulk-like creature found in an isolated part of the world. The creature was bombarded with radiation in issue 15, which caused rapid evolution and he (and the strip title) became a superhero, Johnny Future, which was a better fit with the reprint material.

Fantastic was the fourth of five 'Power Comics' launched by Odhams, and was the first to concentrate mainly on reprint material rather than vice-versa. A few months after its launch, the final 'Power Comic', Terrific, was launched featuring solely American reprints. However, given that the Marvel range they were reprinting had only been in publication for a few years at that time, there was a very limited amount of material for publication and the range soon began to implode. Terrific merged into Fantastic with Fantastic & Terrific #52, which saw the Avengers and Doctor Strange join the title, pushing out Iron Man and Johnny Future. Fantastic was cancelled itself with issue #89 when it was merged into Smash! and Pow! , practically bringing the superhero era to an end with only Thor seeing print in the new publication. Comic fans would have to wait several years until Marvel launched their own reprint range in 1972 before they would get another regular dose of superhero action...

[Andrew Curnow]

Playing 'catch up' again, my brother used to get Tiger for many years - although isn't old enough to have got number 1 above!!! Hot-Shot Hamish, who you mention Mac, was a favourite, but there was also a wrestling character of some sort I think... I'd better Wikipedia it, because it's sort of on the tip of my tongue. Hold on--

Johnny Cougar! Of course it was.

And also we used to chuckle at Billy's Boots - a little bit like the Red Shoes I guess, the boots made him play really well... but what used to make us laugh was that he had a football pair for the football season, and then suddenly he'd have a cricket pair for the cricket season!! How very convenient!

And Nutty... I used to get that, and yes I remember Bananaman from there, in the days before the TV cartoon.

[Alex]

And Nutty... I used to get that, and yes I remember Bananaman from there, in the days before the TV cartoon.

Blimey, I didn't know that the tv series was based on the comic strip, I always thought it was the other way round - you learn something new every day, and all that kind of thing!

I'm enjoying these as always Kenny, especially the covers to Creepy Worlds and Starblazer. Sadly my local newsagent never got those in so this was the first I'd ever heard of them, but they both look a lot of fun (and if Grant Morrison wrote for them, I'm sure they were pretty great, too).

[MacNimon]

Back to tv land today. Not comic versions of live action tv series/characters/presenters this time though...today we enter the world of kids tv cartoons with the first British comic to be based solely on the works of Hanna-Barbera...

Unlike many licensed comics of the kind from later years which were often short-lived, Huckleberry Hound Weekly was extremely successful for much of the sixties, running from 1961-1967 for 308 issues absorbing its companion title, Yogi Bear Weekly, along the way in 1964. Strips included Mr Jinks, Pixie and Dixie, Yogi Bear And Boo Boo, The Flintstones, Top Cat, Wally Gator, Atom Ant, Johnny Quest and Space Ghost among others.

[MacNimon]

Today, we have a look at the late 80s/early 90s Marvel UK revival...a period when Marvel had a more successful second attempt at creating new series and characters using British creative teams. Captain Britain had already been the star of his own failed title (twice - in 1976/77 & 1985/86); although the second series had been critically acclaimed, this didn't translate into enough sales to keep him in his own title. The character was later used as the star of an American superhero series set in the UK, Excalibur, but he was set to return to his home of Marvel UK in a new series which appeared in 1990...

The Knights Of Pendragon was a modern day version of King Arthurs Knights Of The Round Table, the first volume ran for 18 issues in a storyline which featured spirits characters from Arthurian legend possessing the bodies of modern-day characters. A second volume (of 15 issues) followed immediately afterwards featuring a different cast of characters. The title ran for 33 monthly issues in total, from June 1990-September 1993.

[MacNimon]

Just while I'm on the Arthurian characters being reincarnated/souls taking over bodies of living characters theme, Knights Of Pendragon wasn't the first time this idea had been used although here it was a totally different scenario.

Several years earlier, in 1983, DC Comics released a limited stand-alone 'maxi-series' (ie a 12-issue series published over the course of a year which told a complete story and had no ties whatsoever with the wider DC Universe). Camelot 3000 was set a thousand years in the future during an alien invasion of Earth. When the aliens attack Britain, the tomb of Arthur is accidentally (and pretty easily/conveniently! ) found and disturbed; and just as stated in the legend, in Britains greatest hour of need, the 'Once And Future King' does indeed rise again. Once Arthur has awoken, several people around the world find their lives changing...reincarnation is real in this world, and the souls of the original Knights Of The Round Table are reawakened in new bodies, some very different from what they had been used to...The reincarnation aspect of the story is the most interesting plot strand, at the same time and in the same body seeing how the futuristic characters come to realise who they 'really' are at the same time as seeing the reincarnated Arthurian coming to terms with who they are 'now'.

Written by Mike W Barr and with great art by Brian Bolland, this series is certainly worth seeking out if you've never read it.