Cover Of The Day

[Nyder]

Tanya simply uttered the phrase as above, and turned themselves back into their ordinary selves. "Crikey Sue, how's this help?" said one of the men plaintively, as they sank further. But then Sue just said it again, transforming them once more into the Amazing Three, and hence, the Magic Cane was back in the Blue Wizard's hand, and they could make good their escape.

What a clever girl Tanya was! Clara could learn a thing a two from her Just been having a look at some of the characters from Jackpot. Some I remember, some I don't:-

Laser Eraser - a boy who had an alien pen that could teleport objects to the planet Splod
Full O'Beans - a boy who grew strong when he ate beans (did Popeye sue??)
Angel's Proper Charlies - mickey-take on a certain US programme
Jake's 7 - mickey-take on a certain UK programme (did Terry Nation know about this??)
The Teeny Sweeney - mickey-take on .... you get the picture!
The Incredible Sulk - ditto
Funtastic Journey - up up and away in the Wellycopter
Oh Brother - two brothers always arguing (doesn't sound the most exciting strip!)

[Nyder]

[Logo Polish]

Little and Large Lenny was another one, a boy who could shrink and grow his entire body at will.

[MacNimon]

Although I have quite a few British comics not covered yet, this wasn't on my list because I had forgotten it even existed! I've no idea why, it was another of those great IPC titles...Thanks for reminding me of that one, Dave, and the more I read about it the more familiar it becomes... Jackpot was named after a character who originated in Cor! years earlier...it ran from May 1979-January 1982 for 141 issues after which it merged into Buster. Here's a cover featuring the aforementioned Amazing Three...

A more detailed look at the strips from ComicVine:

Jack Pott, a gambling obsessed kid who would bet on anything.

Richie Wraggs, a country bumpkin out seeking his fortune.

Gremlins, tiny furry balls of destructive mayhem who took delight in plaguing the unfortunate Gilbert.

Angel's Proper Charlies, about three love-besotted lads constantly manipulated by the girl, Angel, they all fancied.

Milly O'Naire and Penny Less, the story of stuck up rich girl Milly and her poor but good-hearted rival Penny.

Incredible Sulk, a boy who would throw massive and destructive temper tantrums over the slightest upset. Even his own parents only ever called the boy Sulk.

The Amazing Three, a trio of teenagers who could transform into superheroes to battle the evil alien Volger.

Full O'Beans, involving a boy who discovered a brand of baked beans that transformed him into a superhuman powerhouse whenever he ate some.

Jake's Seven, a gang of kids led by Jake who enjoyed adventures with a SF bent. Their name was a parody of TV series Blake's 7.

Terry and Gaving's Funtastic Journey (the name parodying the TV show Fantastic Journey), the story of two boys travelling across a strange world in a Wellycopter built by their friend, the "Professor."

Teeny Sweeney, a group of pre-teen crimefighters (the name taken from TV show The Sweeney).

It's a Nice Life, following a family who give up the rat-race and try to turn their suburban home into a self-sufficient farm (parodying TV comedy show The Good Life).

Sporty, a boy obsessed with every sport going.

Robot Smith, the adventures of a robotic boy.

Cry Baby, about Tina, a young girl who could be set off crying by virtually anything, and would then produce a literal flood of tears.

Laser Eraser, in which young Ernie was given an alien device which could erase (and then restore) anything from existence.

[Nyder]

Oh wow thanks for posting that cover. That certainly brings back memories :-)

[MacNimon]

Comics based on films and tv go back a long way, and came in many different forms. It's hard to believe nowadays that people such as Terry Thomas, Peter Sellers and Bruce Forsyth had their own comic strips, never mind those strips being popular enough to feature on the cover...

Brucie was one of the last cover stars of this long-running title, which first appeared in 1920 and was cancelled in 1962, when it was merged into Buster. Previous cover stars also included Laurel & Hardy, and Harold Lloyd.

[Nyder]

You can tell how long ago it was when he's being called "Brucie Boy" in the story!

[Alex]

You can't leave us hanging like that Kenny, I want to know what the twist was, and whether Brucie got his money in the end / was paralyzed for life after a fall like that!

[MacNimon]

Just by luck Alex, I was prepared just in case anyone asked that question...

Nabbed from Lew Stringer's blog...

http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/20...ts-bigger.html

[Alex]

Ha, thanks for that! It's quite a fun little story, and I especially liked the old man's running commentary.

[MacNimon]

Today will be my last post for the best part of a week or so, we've got a few days holiday and will be away visiting relations for much of that time so you guys feel free to add favourites of your own (as you're welcome to do at any time, anyway! )

So far, this thread has been a mixture of being a nostalgic look at comics of my youth (and before that, on occasion) and an appreciation of some great artwork. However, nostalgia and appreciation of such great cover needn't be limited to comics alone...so today I'm expanding the horizons of this thread (and it's lifespan!) a bit to include old book covers as well as comics. Old paperback covers in particular...

So todays post features one of my favourite pieces of fantasy art. In the early 80s, Edgar Rice Burroughs Martian Tales were reprinted with editions featuring a great new logo and some fantastic covers by Micheal Whelan. Here we have the first in the series, A Princess Of Mars which introduced us to the characters of John Carter and Dejah Thoris...

For any fan of fantasy or sci-fi, this was a cover guaranteed to make you want to read the book. Our hero, rescuing a scantlly-dressed princess, surrounded by armed aliens apparently baying for their blood...

[MacNimon]

Time to squeeze in a quick one before we leave! Another from Marvel UK this time, from 1980...

Savage Action was a Marvel Monthly which was aimed at a slightly older audience than the majority of the fare available at the time. It featured reprints of some of the more mature strips published by Marvel in America, much of which was from the B&W magazine range. Night Raven was the only non-reprint story, and the contents changed from issue to issue featuring such characters as the Punisher, Moon Knight, Man Thing, the Black Widow, and Ka-Zar. It lasted 15 issues, from November 1980-January 1982.

[Nyder]

You'll be pleased to know Kenny that following our discussions of Jackpot earlier this week, I've bought a whole batch of them on EBay for £1.

Hoorah for eBay!

[MacNimon]

I hope you enjoy them, Dave. Sounds like you got a bargain there!

Today we look at another long-running British comic.

The Hotspur began in 1933 as a 'story paper' ie it featured text adventure stories with illustartions, and ran for almost 1200 issues until 1959, when it was relaunched as The New Hotspur, now consisting of all comic strips, a week later on 24th October 1959 (though the 'New' was dropped with issue #174) which itself lasted another 1100 issues or so before being incorporated into the Victor in 1981. Strips included Coral Island by Bill Holroyd, Jonny Jett by Dudley D. Watkins (this was a reprint), Union Jack Jackson, Limpalong Leslie by Bert van de Put, The Wolf of Kabul by J.T Higson, Nick Jolly and King Cobra, both by Ron Smith, Zigimar the Master Spy by Terry Patrick, The Scarlet Hawk, Napper Todd, Spring Heeled Jack by Steve Chapman, the superheroic X-Bow and later, sci-fi strip Starhawk and The Doom Wardens, amongst others.

[Rob McCow]

Good cover - plenty of explosions and fire, very dynamic. Plus a green man who's head seems to be screwed on backwards.

[MacNimon]

Lifted from the other thread...

but I do recall a wonderful Captain Britain strip in, I believe, Hulk Comic which was a UK original strip - to do with King Arthur and Excalibur (the sword, not the later group!)? Can anyone help me out with this?

This will be the comic you remember, Jonno, and the strip you're thinking of is actually the fantasy serial The Black Knight by Steve Parkhouse and John Stokes, in which Captain Britain plays as big a part as the title character. The fact that the amnesiac stranger isn't revealed to be Captain Britain/Brian Braddock until at least several episodes into the story, means to me that it was intended to be a surprise...a treat for long-time readers and even at that there was no fanfare; no big advertising splurge ("The Return Of Captain Britain...coming soon!" or some such!) across all the titles as you'd expect widely advertising the return of the character. This looks to me as if they had faith that they had a story to be proud of here, something special that would stand on its own merits without any unneccessary hype...

The strip and characters made several cover appearances during the run, the first of which I've chosen for today's cover...

Dez Skinn's Marvel Revolution of 1979 got into full swing with this title, released in March 1979, which featured for the first time a substantial amount of UK-created material alongside a few US reprints.

Hulk Comic (later retitled The Incredible Hulk Weekly) lasted 63 issues before cancellation and being merged into Spider-Man Weekly. It was notable for it's variety of UK-produced strips; apart from the afore-mentioned Black Knight/Captain Britain strip it introduced us to the mysterious Night Raven character, as well as British takes on the Hulk and Nick Fury. The UK Hulk strips bore much more resemblence to the tv series of the time than they did to the existing Marvel universe...with the exception of BK/CB which lasted the entire run, the UK originated strips gradually faded and were replaced by cheaper US reprints and it just became another standard reprint title.

[Rob McCow]

The Hulk seemed to serve as an umbrella title for other comic strips a fair bit. I suppose the TV series gave him a bit of extra popularity, but I don't seem to remember anyone talking about the really great Hulk comic strips of yesteryear?

[Jonno]

I had got up to page 7 of this thread as of yesterday, but must just pop in now to say big thanks to Kenny for that particular cover and background info. I did buy that particular issue - we came back to the UK for a couple of months in July/August - and just seeing it it's amazing what a nostalgic thrill it gives!

Also shows how the memory can play tricks, as I'd forgotten that it was a Black Knight strip with CB as a guest, and also cannot recall that the Hulk strips were UK originals! That would have made the comic more appealing for that short period to me I guess as otherwise it would have been reprints of the same stories I was reading as originals in Africa!

[Stuart Wallis]

Moon Knight!

[MacNimon]

Moon Knight!

A proper comparison coming up in the next day or two...

Today, we've got the second cover that Jonno mentioned...the 1977 Doctor Who Winter Special. While I had the choice of 3 in my list to choose from, Jonno's comments prompted me to go for this one...hopefully it'll bring back a few memories, Jonno!

Polystyle published the first Doctor Who Holiday Special in 1973, reprinting some of their previously published TV21 Doctor Who strips alongside new material. The Doctor had previously appeared in several TV Comic Holiday Specials, but this was the first time Polystyle had given him a title to himself. The success of the first issue saw a second released a year later, but Polystyle then left it three years before publishing their next (and final) special, the Doctor Who Winter Special in 1977.

This third Polystyle Doctor Who special was the only one to specify a season (ie Winter) on the cover - the previous two were called 'Holiday Specials' rather than 'Summer Specials'. Like its predecessors it included articles, comic strips and a text story, but unlike the previous issues the comic strips were not strictly speaking new. The 1977 edition obviously stars the Fourth Doctor but is far poorer in terms of its original offerings when compared to the previous Specials. Instead of new stories, it used reprints of past stories from TV Action, with artwork modified to replace Jon Pertwee's third Doctor with Tom Baker's fourth. As is common to the final years of the Polystyle comic license, a (usually poor) attempt at Tom Baker's likeness is merely dropped into the part of the frames previously occupied by Jon Pertwee. Its one contribution to the body of Doctor Who fiction is a short story featuring the Fourth Doctor and Leela in Victorian England. Its illustrations are photos from The Talons of Weng-Chiang, meaning that there aren't actually any original illustrations in the 1977 edition, much less comics. Only the text story was completely new. This would be Polystyle's last Doctor Who Special before losing the license to Marvel UK.

Contents of the issue:

The Labyrinth - Comic strip

The Living Wax - Text story

The Doctor Pin-up

Leela Pin-up

Invasion - Comic strip

Marathon Machines

Travel with the TARDIS - Game

The Spoilers - Comic strip

Space Shuttle

Doctor, Who?

The Crew

Who is the Stranger - Comic strip

[Rob McCow]

Cor... I'm sure I didn't know about this one!

[Jonno]

Wow, thanks Kenny! Lovely to read more detail about it, though I can't really remember any of the contents now and I certainly at the time as an 8 year old would have been oblivious to the fact that it was Tom's head pasted onto Jon's body!

Do you have this issue yourself in your collection? Mine is long since gone!

[MacNimon]

No Jonno, unfortunately I don't have it. I had to check this one out online...while I recognise the cover pic, I don't think I ever owned this one. I recognised the covers of the 1973 & 74 covers so probably had them at one point...they're long gone though!

[MacNimon]

One of my favourite Marvel superhero titles of the early 80s today.

There was a noticable rise in quality (or so it seemed to me at the time at any rate, although it might all just have been my imagination), both in terms of writing and art, in many of the comics that Marvel were putting out around that time compared with a lot of the stuff which had been getting released years earlier...it was as if the company was finally becoming aware that it's readership was growing up, and was trying to keep them by improving the standard of their range to make them appeal to more mature readers rather than just young kids. Over the period of a few years, we had Epic Illustrated, a range of Graphic Novels, Frank Miller's Daredevil, the Chris Claremont/John Byrne X-Men, and Byrne's Fantastic Four just to name a few. One of the highlights of these 'new' comics was Moon Knight, written by Doug Moench with art by Bill Sienkiewicz. I suppose that Moon Knight from this period, and Millers Daredevil, were Marvel's closest equivalents, stylistically, to DC's Batman of the time.

This first issue was obviously an origin story for the character, an introduction and jumping-on point to the character for new readers such as myself, although it was actually a continuation of an already ongoing back-up strip by the same creative team which had been appearing in Marvel's Hulk! magazine. It was shortly after this this title was released that Marvel UK began reprinting those earlier stories in their Savage Action monthly, conveniently giving us two Moon Knight doses a month for quite some time. Obviously cashing in on the success of the US title, andf plugging it at the same time. Not that I was complaining

[Jonno]

I'm assuming that's his human alter-ego in playboy, soldier and spiv modes!

I have a feeling Moon Knight was in Rampage Monthly in the very early 80s? It was never a favourite of mine, sorry!