Forty Years Ago Today! The 1982 Marvel UK annuals for 1983.

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

***

A wise man once said, "It's CHRISTMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAS!!!!!!!!"

That man was Noddy Holder and, once again, that man is on the UK charts, thanks to his lead role in Slade's evergreen classic Merry Xmas, Everybody.

But was he on the chart exactly 40 years ago?

Yes, he was. And, intriguingly, besides that track, Slade were also on it with a single called (And Now - the Waltz) C'est La Vie. I'm sure we all remember that one well.

More of that chart, in our monthly look at Marvel UK's output, later this week.

But, for now, what was on TV, as we made our way through Christmas Day, back then?

That afternoon, BBC One was serving up a plateful of Top of the Pops, featuring Duran Duran, Dexy's Midnight Runners, Culture Club, Haircut 100, Spandau Ballet, Captain Sensible and Bucks Fizz.

Later that day, it treated us to International Velvet, Jim'll Fix It, The Paul Daniels Magic Christmas Show, Last of the Summer Wine, The Two Ronnies, Death on the Nile, Perry Como and, spookiest of all, Charles Dickens' The Signalman.

BBC Two, meanwhile, gave us The Islanders, Gold from the Deep, The Book Game, Horizon, The Millionairess, On the Tracks of the Wild Otter, The World of James Joyce, Richard Baker's Christmas Dozen and Fedora. Of all the shows I've listed so far, Fedora is the only one I remember watching, although I'm sure I must have watched Top of the Pops because only a barbarian wouldn't.

ITV, that day, was offering Journey Back to Oz, Enid Blyton's Island of Adventure, Andy Williams' Christmas Special, The Parent Trap, 3-2-1, Game for a Laugh, Bruce Forsyth's Play Your Cards Right, The Black Hole, Chas and Dave's Christmas Knees-Up, Cleo and John, and Christmas at Radio GOSH.

Thrilling stuff indeed but all of that was doomed to pale into insignificance the moment we sat down to read whatever annuals Marvel UK could be motivated to throw at us that year.

And it could be motivated to throw four of them at us.

It seems we can always rely on the Hulk to have an annual, whatever the fate of his weekly comics.

And, this time, our hero finds himself battling a whole host of corny old Marvel monsters, thanks to the machinations of Xemnu the Titan who, himself, once went by the name of, "The Hulk."

Happily, the current holder of that title quickly sees off those lesser monsters and, finally, wins out with the help of a collapsing dam.

I also happen to know there's also at least one text story in this book but don't ask me what happens in it.

Can Spider-Man possibly survive when he encounters a masked crackpot, with a sword, who goes by the sobriquet, "The Rapier?"

Too right he can. It's going to take more than a cut-price Swordsman knock-off to stop everyone's favourite wallcrawler.

As with the Hulk's annual, this too contains a text story whose plot escapes me.

We also get what seems to be an episode guide to the TV show. A feature I'm sure we've all been praying for.

And, most nostalgically of all, there's yet another chance to read Lee and Ditko's Secrets of Spider-Man which, I think, appeared in the first US Spider-Man Annual and, also, Fleetway's 1972 UK Marvel Annual.

Because Santa loves us, we're also treated to a Worzel Gummidge annual.

Or are we?

Infamously, this year, thanks to a printing error, the book was entirely filled, not with tales of a loveable scarecrow, but with reprints from Skywald's horror mags and it, thus, treated us to tales of mutilation, blood loss and cannibalism. An event that caused a major scandal, an investigation by Esther Rantzen's That's Life TV show and even led to questions being asked in Parliament.

Fortunately, the following year, things were back to normal.

It's a Star Wars annual and, no, I don't have a clue what happens in it.

Well, that's not strictly speaking true. I think I can guess it features the likes of Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Darth Vader.

Exactly what they're up to, though, I cannot claim to know. Sadly, when it comes to this summary, The Force is very definitely not with me.

Marvel UK Collector's Editions 1981.

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

***

As all regular readers know, I have a feature where I look back at what Marvel UK was up to, forty years ago this week.

However, in 1981, the imprint unleashed several collector's editions which weren't tied to any particular month or week.

As I don't have a clue when, exactly, they came out, I've decided to give them a post of their very own.

And this is that.

It's a book that's truly worth having, as it reprints the whole of Jaunty Jim Steranko's, admittedly, short run on America's fightingest national treasure.

Cap gains a new Bucky, in Rick Jones, gets "killed" by Hydra and then gatecrashes his own funeral to give that criminal gang the smack in the teeth it's asking for.

It is, of course, the storyline which gave us our first taste of Madame Hydra and, no doubt, set the world asking, "Who'd win a fight between Madame Hydra and Madame Masque?"

I think we all know the answer to that one.

Actually, looking into it, it seems Madame Hydra made her first appearance eight months before Madame Masque. So, people probably weren't asking that.

Then again, Whitney Frost made her first appearance exactly a year before Madame Hydra but hadn't yet adopted her Madame Masque identity.

Just as we get a big slab of Steranko from the Captain America collector's edition, we get a healthy chunk of Neal Adams from this one.

First, the titanic teens have to deal with the Living Pharaoh turning himself into the Living Monolith and then they must stop the Sentinels from merrily rounding up all the world's mutants.

How can even the X-Men possibly hope to defeat such menaces?

But it does seem to me that the Living Pharaoh/Living Monolith's far too keen on letting everyone know he's alive, as though he thinks it's a major achievement. I mean, I'm alive but you don't hear me calling myself The Living Steve.

It's a tale I've never read, as Superman and Spider-Man meet for the second time.

On this occasion, they take on the mind-numbing threat of Dr Doom and the Parasite.

Surely, this is too much to ask of even Marvel and DC's totemic heroes.

But I must confess I don't know too much of what happens in this one, other than that it's drawn by John Buscema, written by Jim Shooter and also features Superman vs the Hulk and Spider-Man vs Wonder Woman.

I don't know if it's any good but it certainly sounds like it's giving us plenty for our money.

Christmas Day, 1979 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

Hang onto your reindeers, Yule lovers, because it's Christmas!

Or it will be tomorrow!

And that gives me a perfect excuse to look at what our favourite comics company was serving up on Christmas Day 1979.

But, first, what else were we doing on that day?

BBC One, that morning, was giving us The Spinners at Christmas. This was, of course, not the American band of that name but the British one, famous for singing folk songs about Liverpool and doing blood donation adverts with jokes about skin colour you'd struggle to get away with these days.

We also got the Black Beauty movie, a documentary about Olympic ice skater John Curry, and the inevitable Christmas Day Top of the Pops, featuring Blondie, Boney M, Dr Hook, Lena Martell, Gary Numan, the Police, Cliff Richard, BA Robertson and Roxy Music, presented by Kid Jensen and Peter Powell.

That evening, the channel gave us The Mike Yarwood Christmas Show, To the Manor Born, The Sting and Parkinson at Christmas.

BBC Two, that afternoon, was giving us A Hard Day's Night, while, that evening, it unveiled A Christmas Carol and Baboushka.

The latter of those had nothing to do with the Kate Bush song of the same name but was a musical which presented the legend of a woman who gives hospitality to the Three Kings as they pass through on the way to Bethlehem. Too busy to join them, she says she'll follow on later but, when she finally gets there, it's too late and she's missed all the fun. The legend says she's still searching.

Personally, I'd give up if I were her. I think I'd conclude that, after two thousand years and Christ's crucifixion, the boat's well and truly sailed on that one.

To close off the evening, the channel gave us the film Cabaret.

Over on ITV, that morning, we received Lassie: The New Beginning and then, that afternoon, Christmas Oh Boy! with Joe Brown and the Bruvvers, Billy Hartman, Freddie "Fingers" Lee, Alvin Stardust, Shakin' Stevens, Rachel Sweet, Tim Witnall, Fumble, the Oh Boy! Cats and Kittens and the Oh Boy! Boogie Band. I would love to claim I know who Fumble were but I don't have a Scooby.

Also, that afternoon, the channel broadcast Goldfinger before taking us into the evening with the 3-2-1 Dickensian Xmas Show with Ted Rogers, Terry Scott, Bill Maynard and Wilfrid Brambell.

The evening saw George and Mildred, The Three Musketeers, Christmas with Eric and Ernie and Cleo Lane's Christmas. Not one person will be surprised to learn the big guest on the latter show was John Dankworth.

And the channel finished off the night by showing Death at Love House, a movie I cannot claim to have ever heard of.

But, of course, the big thing that everyone wanted to know was, what was the Christmas Number One?

Well, as I write these deathless words, in 2019, a song about sausage rolls is currently the UK's Christmas Number One but what of exactly 40 years ago? Could the 1970s possibly hope to match the cultural and societal impact of a song about sausage rolls?

No, they couldn't. We had to make do with Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 at Number One. It achieved this by gamely holding off ABBA's I Have a Dream. This meant that both the Christmas Number One and Number Two featured children singing on them. This is not a totally unknown phenomenon at Christmas.

The only actual Christmas songs on the chart that week were Paul McCartney's Wonderful Christmastime at 7, It Won't Seem Like Christmas by Elvis Presley at 25, Christmas Rappin' by Curtis Blow at 36 and A Merry Jingle by the Greedies at 47. Were the Greedies an unlikely team-up of Thin Lizzy and the Sex Pistols or am I just going mad?

So, those were the records we may have been unwrapping on that epic day but you know what else we all love to unwrap on Christmas Day?

Annuals!

And these were the ones Marvel UK had forced Santa to deliver to us.

This is a strange one, we get the whole of the Spidey vs Stegron vs Lizard story that, I think, involves the liberation of dinosaur skeletons in New York.

But that's not the strange thing. What is strange is that not all the annual's in full colour. Some pages are in a quaint combination of black, white and pink, creating a feel reminiscent of the days of the old Fleetway produced Marvel annuals of the very early 1970s.

On top of those reptilian antics, we get a text piece telling us all about Stan Lee's supreme and unique importance to the triumph of Marvel Comics and we also get a Spidey text story called Fun-House of Fear.

And the partial pinkness continues, as Marvel dishes out a reprint of the FF's first encounter with Salem's Seven.

There's also a cut-out Thing mask and a text story about our heroes fighting alien duplicates of themselves. I don't think the aliens are Skrulls but I cannot say that with certainty.

I do have to say that cover's almost identical to the one for last year's Fantastic Four annual.

And we get even more partially pink goodness.

We also get Thor going to Hel to confront Hela about something or other.

We get the Silver Surfer vs the Abomination, which, as I've remarked on more than one occasion, may well have been the very first Marvel story I ever read, back in the ancient TV21 comic that predated even Mighty World of Marvel.

And we're also served up Sub-Mariner vs Tiger-Shark in a Marie Severin drawn tale.

But now here's where we get the real odd one out, as the only hint that this is an official Marvel publication is a copyright statement at the beginning of it.

Otherwise, it's definitely aimed at fans of the TV programme, rather than those of the comic, with heavy use of informational text and photo features about the show.

The picture strips that are included are clearly UK originated material and not all of them seem to be about the Hulk.

Mostly the book's in black and white, with occasional outbreaks of colour, giving it a very very British feel.

1978's Marvel UK Annuals for 1979.

What were you doing on Christmas Day 1978?

I know what I was doing. I was playing with my Christmas presents and watching TV.

Yes, those were the days when you'd watch whatever was on television, no matter how bad it was, because they hadn't invented the Internet yet and you didn't have a choice.

But just what were we watching?

That morning, ITV gave us Christmas Clapperboard which I would assume was presented, as normal, by Chris Kelly.

At noon, the channel gave us Living Free, the sequel to Born Free, followed by the no-doubt thrilling Christmas Day at Crossroads Motel. I do always feel they should have done a crossover between the Crossroads Motel and the Bates Motel, in order to make it more fun.

Mid afternoon, ITV gave us Battle for the Planet of the Apes and their early evening film was Diamonds Are Forever.

That was followed by The Morecambe and Wise Show, guest-starring Harold Wilson.

Most promisingly, late night, my local ITV station was showing Twist in the Tale. I suspect this may have been a retitled broadcast of the 1977 show Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected but cannot guarantee that.

BBC Two, that afternoon, was broadcasting an adaptation of The Snow Queen.

That evening, it treated us to the not noticeably Christmassy Anne Hughes: Her Boke, in wiche I Write what I Doe, When I Have thee Tyme. Apparently, in the 18th Century, a young farmer's wife wrote a diary. She wrote about her cooking, her quarrels, her butter making and the love story of her maid, and this film re-created it all.

Later on, the channel gave us Fred and Ginger in Swing Time. I must confess I do associate Christmas more with Fred and Ginger than I do with 18th Century farmers' wives.

Meanwhile, that morning, BBC One was treating us to The Spinners at Christmas. They were, of course, the UK Spinners, not to be confused with the US Spinners who were always referred to in Britain as the Detroit Spinners to avoid confusion. It is a strange thing that, all these years later, my only memory of the Spinners is of them doing blood transfusion adverts.

Later that morning, that selfsame channel treated us to Elvis Presley's Clambake. I'm not an expert on The King's cinematic oeuvre but isn't that supposed to be his worst ever celluloid outing?

Early afternoon, before he went completely weird, Noel Edmonds introduced Top of the Pops '78.

Around teatime, the channel gave us the first ever UK television screening of The Sound of Music. This brings back strong memories for me, as I do remember building a Meccano clock while it was on.

Sometime after that, we got The Mike Yarwood Christmas Show. Poor Mike does tend to get a lot of stick these days because all his impressions basically sounded like Mike Yarwood but, let's be honest, all our impressions of famous people from the 1970s are based on his impressions of famous people from the 1970s, rather than on what those people actually sounded like. That's how much impact he had.

After that we got True Grit? A Further Adventure, a TV movie about which I know nothing but it starred Warren Oates as Rooster J. Cogburn.

Later that night, we got the nightmarish sounding Parkinson at the Pantomime, as Michael Parkinson and Arthur Askey explored the world of Panto, with help from Charlie Cairoli, Les Dawson, Lauri Lupino Lane, Little and Large and Pat Kirkwood. I must confess to not previously having heard of Pat Kirkwood but a quick Google search reveals her to have been an old-style British movie star who looked strangely like Marilyn Manson.

But, of course, for all Horror fans and traditionalists, the highlight of BBC One's Christmas Day schedule was bound to be that year's Christmas Ghost Story which was The Ice House by John Bowen. I've no memory of it at all but I can pretty much guarantee I must have watched it. After all, who could turn down the chance to watch a ghost story on Christmas Day?

Well, that was all spiffing and dandy but, before we could sit through all that, we had to read that year's Marvel UK annuals.

And these are what they were:

Up until researching this post, I never even knew this annual existed.

I do now know that, in its first tale, something's changed human history and the FF have to go back in time to team up with the Invaders, in order to prevent the Nazis winning World War II.

Many will be happy to know this tale's drawn by John Buscema and not Frank Robbins. It had originally appeared in the US Fantastic Four Annual #11.

The book's other tale would appear to feature the FF's Human Torch fighting his Golden Age predecessor in the Mad Thinker driven tale that originally appeared in The Fantastic Four Annual #4.

And here's another one whose existence I was previously unaware of.

As far as I can make out, it reprints the Hulk's first encounter with the Inhumans, from Incredible Hulk King-Size Special #1, the one with the Jim Steranko cover depicting the Hulk straining to support his own name on his back.

The second tale looks to be from The Defenders #52, in which a dodgy Russian called Sergei is plotting to turn himself and the Red Guardian into god-like super-beings.

The story features a punch-up between the Hulk and Namor, hence the cover image.

Unlike the above annuals, I actually had this one.

If memory serves me correctly, it features a very long and not overly interesting tale in which Daredevil and the Panther team up to rescue a youthful kidnap victim, and then a shorter, more interesting tale in which the Beetle and Gladiator attack a train for some reason I can't remember.

Needless to say, the man without fear ensures the dastardly duo end up having to face justice.

The lack of any Mighty World of Marvel regulars apart from Daredevil was a major disappointment to me at the time, although I do now realise it was because the Hulk and FF had their own annuals this year, rather than appearing in their more obvious home.

I had this one as well.

This annual's taken up almost entirely by a team-up between Spider-Man and the Human Torch as they go to Hollywood in expectations of movie fame but end up having to tackle the Wizard and Mysterio who have a plan I can't remember.

I do, though, recall that it was drawn by Larry Lieber.

The rest of the book was taken up by various pin-ups, mostly drawn by John Romita, depicting such things as the gang hanging around in the Coffee Bean.

Again, it was a majorly disappointing annual, as the Spidey/Torch tale wasn't exactly awesome.

I'm not sure to what degree this is genuinely a Marvel UK annual but it is built around a reprint of Howard Chaykin's Marvel adaptation of the movie and features the words, "Stan Lee Presents," on its introductory page, so I assume it must have some kind of link with the company.

Christmas 1977 - Marvel UK annuals, 40 years ago this month.

It's Christmas Eve!

And that can only mean one thing!

That it's time to get all over-excited and start feeling at our wrapped presents to see if we can guess what they are.

But we don't need to guess what they are - because it's 1977 and we all know what we're going to get.

We're going to get Marvel UK annuals!

Admittedly, I only got one Marvel UK annual that year but that's not going to stop me listing all of them here.

But first, there's need for a quick look at what else was happening that Yuletide. Mull of Kintyre was still at Number One on the UK singles chart, while, across the Atlantic, the Bee Gees held top slot, with the not-at-all Christmassy How Deep Is Your Love.

Meanwhile, on TV, Christmas Eve, saw BBC Two give us the original movie version of MASH.

Elsewhere, that morning, BBC One gave us Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (which he didn't). That afternoon, they gave us, Soviet Gymnastics Spectacular and White Christmas. While, that evening, we received The Duchess of Duke Street, The Dick Emery Christmas Show and that good old festive standby Starsky and Hutch.

On Christmas Day itself, BBC Two's late film was The Big Sleep.

That morning, BBC One gave us National Velvet before serving up such treats as Are you Being Served, Top of the Pops, Billy Smart's Christmas Circus, Basil Brush Through the Looking Glass, The Wizard of Oz and The Mike Yarwood Show, featuring that legendary studio performance of Mull of Kintyre by the aforementioned Wings.

But surely the most Herculean televisual feat of that Christmas Day was by Morecambe and Wise whose show attracted a gigantic twenty eight million viewers, which, needless to say, is one of the highest viewing figures ever for a TV show in Britain.

I must confess that I'm somewhat confused. I'm pretty sure the cover to this relates to the tale in which Peter Parker sets out to discover what happened to his parents and discovers the Red Skull was behind it all.

However, I could have sworn that that tale was included in the previous year's Spider-Man annual. Did they reprint the same story in two consecutive years or is my memory misleading me?

Britain's greatest super-hero since Billy the Cat and Katie may have had his comic cancelled and recently had his name removed from the cover of Spider-Man's comic but that, bizarrely, didn't stop him having an annual.

As far as I can tell, the book reprints early Herb Trimpe drawn stories.

It also appears to include a pin-up of Dr Strange, which seems a little random and anomalous.

Hooray! I had this one - although I didn't get it at Christmas. I got it in my summer holidays.

If I remember right, it features the Gil Kane drawn tale in which Mar-Vell merges with Rick Jones and then gains revenge on Yon-Rogg.

It also gives us an adventure that features Luke Cage against Moses Magnum, a villain who always gave heroes more trouble than he probably should have.

I'm pretty sure that, despite the cover image, Daredevil doesn't appear in this annual at all, although the Hulk does fleetingly appear in a quick Rick Jones flashback.

If I remember correctly, The Titans comic was cancelled in 1976. Needless to say, with true Marvel UK logic, that didn't prevent it getting an annual for 1978.

I have no idea which tales are featured within, although my Sherlockian intellect tells me that Annihilus may be involved.

This is a very odd thing. Up until I Googled for info on this year's books, I had never before been aware of this annual's existence. Equally, I can pass no comment on its contents.

I can say, however, that the colouring on Goliath's costume is a little odd. He's also missing his antennae, which were always my favourite part of it.

A vaguely Starlinesque cover that appears to not be the work of Jim Starlin, unless he was drawing under the pseudonym of, "Gary Brodsky," which I suspect he wasn't. I assume that Brodsky was Sol Brodsky. I know not who Gary was.

Again, of the contents, I know nothing.

Anyway, that aside, Merry Christmas to you if you celebrate Christmas. Happy Hanukkah if you celebrate that. Happy Kwanzaa if you celebrate that. Happy Pagan Winter Solstice Feastings if you celebrate that. Happy Holidays if you celebrate nothing much in particular. Happy Normal Day That Means Nothing To You if you don't celebrate anything. Happy Pointlessness if you're a nihilist.

No one can accuse this site of not covering all bases or of not spreading the love around evenly.

Marvel UK's Savage Sword of Conan, Take 2.

What a strange time 1977 was. It was a time in which Marvel UK appeared to be approaching death at full speed, with its roster reduced to just two comics, thanks to poor sales and plunging profits.

But then, just as it hit its lowest ebb, it bounced back like a super-charged yo-yo, launching The Complete Fantastic Four and Rampage within a month of each other.

And then, the month after that second title was introduced, it did it again. This time launching not a weekly title but its first ever monthly mag.

That mag was Savage Sword of Conan which was a familiar title indeed to the handful of people who'd bought the weekly comic of that name two years earlier, before its cancellation after just eighteen issues.

But Conan's not a man to go down without a fight and, despite that failure, Marvel UK refused to give up on the hyperactive Hyborian.

And so it was that November 1977 saw the start of his second bid for British stardom.

On the face of it, it was a strange move, as the new book was virtually indistinguishable from its US forebear which, judging by the number of issues I had of it, was readily available in Britain. Still, it must have been a good idea because, unlike every other Marvel UK book that had been launched since 1975, it was actually a success, lasting for a walloping ninety three issues and eight years.

Not only that but it signalled the start of a new direction for the company and led to them creating a whole bunch of monthly titles to supplement their weekly staples.

The first issue of the original US magazine - and the first Conan comic I ever owned - was issue #4 which reprinted John Buscema and Alfredo Alcala's take on Robert E Howard's Shadows in the Moonlight. So, how strangely ironic it was that the UK mag featured that very tale in its first issue. Why it was in issue #1 and not #4, I have no idea. Perhaps the good people at Marvel UK just liked the cover?

As for me, I can't say too much about the UK mag, as I only ever had one issue of it, which was issue #20 from 1979.

By that point, its similarity to the US book had been reduced by it adopting a cover layout that noticeably resembled Dez Skinn's Starburst magazine, a change which I assume Skinn himself was responsible for.

As for the insides, I remember the Conan tale featuring art by Pablo Marcos, which was a bit of a disappointment to me after being used to the likes of Buscema and Alcala.

The Red Sonja tale in that issue was drawn by Dick Giordano, which might be the only work I ever saw him produce for Marvel. I vaguely recall the Sonj working her way through a crypt or some such and having to see off various threats along the way, including something that resembled Pan.

Sadly, I've no memory at all of the Solomon Kane story. In fact, my knowledge of Solomon Kane comes entirely from that James Purefoy movie of a few years ago. The one that I remember so well that I thought it starred Hugh Jackman, up until I Googled it five seconds ago.

Anyway, there you have it. From a sea of failure, Marvel UK suddenly found a success and a whole new direction for the company, proving that barbarism can have its upside.

This is why, to this day, I insist on wearing nothing but a loin cloth, smiting my foes and drinking nothing but mead.

No wonder I lost my job at the bank.

Rampage!

Unless my maths fail me, this week is the fortieth anniversary of the launch of the comic that let us know Marvel UK meant business when it came to fighting back against the nightmarish forces of  falling sales and dwindling market share.

Why?

Because, hot on the heels of The Complete Fantastic Four, the company launched Rampage which replicated that other comic's formula of reprinting an entire issue of a team title each week.

In this case, that title was The Defenders.

Unlike the FF, the self-declared non-team had no ancient stories to use as back-up tales and so, in this comic, the subsidiary strip was provided by the man called Nova, which meant that one thing was for sure.

We were going to be getting an awful lot of art by Sal Buscema in the months to come.

As with The Complete Fantastic Four, I had very few issues of Rampage.

In fact, I think I may have had just one - issue #10 - which wrapped up the Evil Eye Saga.

Such a thing must have been more than a little confusing for new readers, as the comic hadn't bothered reprinting the Evil Eye Saga itself - thanks to it already having been published in Spider-Man's book - meaning this mag jumped straight from the epic's prologue to its epilogue, with nothing in between.

As for me, my lack of issues of this new title didn't matter in the slightest, as I had a great big pile of the original Defenders comics.

Thinking about it, this may have been the first great flaw with the comic's concept. Unlike the Fantastic Four, it seemed to be ridiculously easy to get hold of Defenders comics. You seemed to be able to get them everywhere, which can't exactly have created massive demand for the UK reprints.

The other flaw, of course, was that, as with The Complete Fantastic Four, it was madness to reprint an entire monthly comic every week, meaning that, if successful, it would have quickly caught up with the source material and be rendered no longer viable.

Fortunately, Marvel UK avoided that problem by scrapping the comic after just thirty four issues.

Unlike other cancellations, however, this turned out not to be a retreat so much as a change of tactics and, after that last fateful issue, Rampage switched from being Marvel UK's latest weekly mag to being their latest monthly.

But that venture is a story for another day. All that mattered right now was that the company was suddenly publishing a massive four titles a week, which might not have seemed that great but it was at least a turn around from the recent story of cancellations and mergers and gave hope that the company's future wasn't, after all, one of imminent and inevitable extinction.

Of course, what really matters with any comic isn't the contents. It's the free gift that comes with it. And, true to recent form, Marvel UK decided to give away a model plane with issue #1.

At least this time it wasn't a Boeing.

It was a Concorde.

What a Concorde has to do with the Defenders or Nova, I have no idea but I'm sure it was a wonderful thing to behold.

The Complete Fantastic Four.

This was it! This was the week, forty years ago, when, following a string of setbacks, cancellations and mergers, the once juggernautal Marvel UK decided to hit back with the launch of a brand new comic.

And what better way to do it than with the team who'd been there right at the start, in the very first issue of Mighty World of Marvel, all the way back in 1972?

In truth, there were probably much better ways of doing it, bearing in mind that the idea of the Complete Fantastic Four was to reprint an entire issue of the world's greatest comic every week.

Bearing in mind that, even in its previous form as a truncated back-up strip in various other mags, it had managed to draw ominously close to catching up with the original mag it was being reprinted from, it meant the venture was inherently doomed from the start.

The title only lasted thirty seven issues but, by the time of its last week, it was less than eighteen months behind its parent comic, meaning that, by my off-the-top-of-my-head calculations, had it lasted just another five months, it would have completely caught up with that parent mag, would have run out of material to reprint and would have been facing the chop no matter how successful it had been. It has to be said, it didn't seem like a lot of foresight had gone into this venture.

Then again, maybe Marvel UK could have done an Apeslayer on us and redrawn old Killraven stories as Fantastic Four tales. Old Skull redrawn as the Thing, Killraven as Reed Richards, Hawk as the Human Torch, Carmilla Frost as Sue Richards, Grok redrawn as Willie Lumpkin, M'Shulla as Alicia, the Martians as Skrulls? Let's face it, who wouldn't pay good money to see that?

As for the comic we actually got, I'd like to say it made a big impression on my life but I only ever saw two issues of it.

The first was issue #6 which reprinted the opening part of the Miracle Man's return. This was pleasing for me, as I already had the tale's second part in its original form and it was satisfying to finally read its first instalment.

By clear coincidence, its back-up strip featured their introductory meeting with the Miracle Man, a tale I always recalled with fondness from my first reading of it.

This does pose a mystery to me though because I also recall reading an issue of the The Complete FF whose back-up story was an early tale in which Doctor Doom gets inflatable dummies to follow the FF around for reasons that totally escape me. No doubt it was all part of a truly diabolical plot the like of which would take the world's breath away had the world known about it.

The trouble is, when I look at the covers of the mag's other issues, none of them ring a bell for me at all. So, which issue that was, I have no idea.

Anyway, with its inherently short life-span, the mag might not have proven to be Marvel UK's salvation but, in being a statement of intent about the company's determination to fight back against declining sales, market share and profitability, it has to be viewed as a title of some significance.

And, as it turned out, it wasn't to be the company's last stab at a comeback - because even more exciting news for UK Marvel lovers was just around the corner.

But what could that be?

What?

What?

Captain Britain!

This week in 1976 was a good week for all rampant nationalists, as Marvel UK gave us their first ever super-hero.

Admittedly, he wasn't really their first ever super-hero because they'd already given us the epic legend that was Apeslayer but this one was at least their first ever British super-hero.

I'd like to claim I was blown away by issue #1 of this mag but I never saw it. I don't think I got hold of a copy of the title until it hit its third issue.

What I recall of that comic was that it was mostly in colour, with one page generously left in monochrome so we could colour it in ourselves.

The other thing that most struck me was its rather magnificent smell which was like that of no other comic I'd ever owned. When it came to scents, it was somewhat in the marker pen envelope and was therefore a good thing. Frankly, I could have sat there inhaling its fumes forever.

In all honestly, apart from the smell, the comic never particularly grabbed me. Captain Britain and his cast owed far too much to the early days of Spider-Man for my liking, and the Britain he inhabited was far more like Britain as Americans imagine it to be than it was like the Britain I actually inhabited. Thus we got cobbled streets, gas lamps, knights in shining armour, highwaymen, wizards, sceptres and the Royal Family.

After issues #3 and #4, I didn't see the comic again until after it had switched to the format of Marvel UK's other mags, meaning glossy covers and black and white interiors. To be honest, it was a format I preferred. The colour had always been a bit too bright for my liking and the matt covers had made it feel like it wasn't a proper Marvel mag.

Sadly, the loss of colour robbed it of its special smell - but it now more than made up for that by being drawn by John Buscema and Tom Palmer.

This did strike me at the time as being something akin to a miracle. Bearing in mind Marvel had initially refused to use Buscema  on Conan The Barbarian because he was too expensive, his presence on this title does suggest the paymasters in New York were taking the comic surprisingly seriously. As did the decision to team our hero up with Captain America and SHIELD in a battle to prevent the Red Skull bumping off Jimmy Carter and James Callaghan. It does seem like the parent company was making a genuine attempt to turn the thing into a success, even if they didn't really know how to achieve it.

Sadly, Buscema didn't hang around forever and the art soon deteriorated, as did the stories. By the time his own title had failed and the good Captain had moved into the pages of Super Spider-Man, I'd come to regard it as a strip to avoid and I can't tell you how relieved I was when it was finally scrapped and replaced with something else.

But there was a surprise in store - because, some time later, a mysterious figure turned up in the pages of the Black Knight's strip in Marvel UK's Hulk comic.

It turned out that that figure was Captain Britain who was now involved in a strange Lord of the Rings type fantasy. It did strike me at the time that the new strip seemed classier than the old one but, not being a fan of that particular style of Fantasy, I couldn't be altogether sure. I have a feeling it was now being drawn by Steve Parkhouse but don't quote me on that.

What I could be sure of was that when I next encountered him, I definitely liked what I saw. Now he was in the pages of the monthly Mighty World of Marvel mag and was being produced by Alans Moore and Davis. It was instantly obvious that the whole thing was a drastic cut above anything I'd seen from the character before, as he found himself in an alternate Britain ruled by a seemingly all-powerful Enoch Powell type intent on making Britain not at all a nice place to be. Reader, thank God that prophecy never came true and that Britain now has no one in power making Enoch Powell type noises. This tale was far darker, far more stylish and far more potent than we'd come to expect of the stiff Spider-Man knock-off we'd once been given.

Sadly, after a few months of this, I lost touch with him again until, in the early 1990s, I bought a trade paperback that reprinted his adventures from the immediate post-Moore era.

My knowledge of his career since then can only be called sketchy. I believe he got dragged into Marvel's mutant corner, despite not being a mutant himself. Beyond that, I can say little. But I do know that his sister Betsy became Psylocke and somehow changed from being a blind, posh, non-mutant Englishwoman to being a Japanese mutant ninja martial arts expert. Comics. You have to love them.

So, was Captain Britain a good idea?

No. He was a terrible idea, a British super-hero, for a British audience, created by people with virtually no knowledge of Britain and cast from a mould far too derivative of already existing Marvel heroes. Still, after a number of false starts, he finally came good in the end, so I suppose we should be glad of his creation even if it was all a terrible mistake.

Marvel UK annuals, 1976.

As we all know, the greatest feature on the internet is the one where I post the covers of what Marvel UK were publishing forty years ago and then declare that I don't have a clue what happened in any of them.

But, of course, this time of year in 1975 was a very special one - because it was the time of year when the youth of Britain were ploughing their way through big Marvel UK comics. Big Marvel UK comics with hard covers.

That's right.

It was annual time!

Despite the company publishing seven weekly titles in late 1975, there were only three annuals that year. I didn't have any of them. What a nightmare Christmas it must have been.

It would appear that this book features the Valkyrie's debut, the first appearance of Arkon and a battle with the Squadron Supreme.

The Arkon one must have been a bit of a disappointment, bearing in mind that it had only recently appeared in the weekly mags.

I find it hard to believe that anyone could have been disappointed with the Valkyrie tale.

I can find nothing at all on the internet that tells me what's contained within this book.

I assume, from the cover, that the Hulk's in it and that it features the work of happy Herb Trimpe but couldn't swear to that in a court of law.

It seems that this features Ship of Fiends, Spider-Man Tackles the Torch and Dinosaurs on Broadway.

I'm trying to recall if the first of those is the Spider-Man vs Dracula tale and the third is the one where Stegron brings dinosaur skeletons to life. The Human Torch story could, of course, be one of a whole host of tales.

Maybe it's just me but I can't see the phrase Dinosaurs on Broadway without thinking of the Dr Who story Daleks in Manhattan. The shot of the half-human/half dalek at the end of that episode will be burned into my mind forever.

And not in a good way.

Steve Does Comics - A Man Of Letters: Part II.

Gasp, primitive humans, for I am now going to try and write an interesting post about sheets of paper.

I could claim that I'm doing this as a personal challenge designed to explore the very depths of my literary talent.

But the truth is I can't think of anything better to write about.

Admittedly, this isn't strictly speaking true.

Excitedly inspired by recent talk of Sheffield, Leeds, Bradford, Liverpool and Manchester agglomerating into one huge mega-city of ten million people, I was going to declare that the only thing wrong with the plan is that Mr Bumbleton, my local Community Support Officer, has now been replaced by Judge Dredd and that the bottom of my street is now populated entirely by hostile mutants. I was then going to use this as an excuse to write a review of a Judge Dredd tale from the 1978 2000AD Annual.

Sadly, this scheme hit the buffers when I actually read the tale and decided it wasn't a substantial enough story to  review, and then remembered that scanning hardback books is difficult. I must confess that, while I might live in a mega-city, I somehow fail to have mega levels of commitment.

So instead I fall upon my back-up plan, much as a failed samurai falls upon his sword, and bring you my thoughts on writing paper.

It's not just any old writing paper, of course.

That's because it's Marvel writing paper, as advertised on the back of early 1970s Marvel UK mags.

It's at this point that I must confess that my mind has long been tortured by thoughts of chocolate bunnies.

The reason for this is that fifty percent of the reason you buy them is that they look like bunny rabbits. But, the moment you start to eat one, you begin to wreck its innate bunniness and therefore diminish its spiritual appeal to you. Therefore, you don't want to eat it.

But the other fifty percent of the reason you bought it is that it's made of chocolate and can be eaten. Therefore, if you don't eat it, it fails to serve its purpose as chocolate and is therefore a waste of money.

That very same dilemma smacks you in the face when it comes to the subject of writing paper letterheaded with your favourite super-heroes. If you use it for its intended purpose and send it, in the form of letters, to other people, you won't have it anymore, depriving you of the item you coveted enough to hand over money for.

On the other hand, if you don't use it, then it has no purpose and you've wasted your money.

What is the solution to this emotional trial?

I have no idea.

That aside, the one thing that does always strike me whenever I see an offer on the back of an old comic is what happens if I cut out the coupon and - over forty years later - send it off?

Will I still get my goodies? Will I get a reply from a totally unrelated body telling me that Marvel UK no longer live there anymore? Will the coupon and the postal order simply disappear, never to be seen again? Perhaps all such orphaned coupons are placed in bottles by a government agency and then flung into the sea to float forever, gaining, in the process, a romance that one could hardly ever imagine would be bestowed upon a forty five pence postal order.

And there was me thinking that sheets of paper were less interesting than mega-cities. What a fool I was. Judge Dredd and his big stroppy Chopper bike might be one thing but I see now that, within that very subject of writing paper, lies the route to a madness from which no human mind could ever hope to escape.

January 18th, 1975 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

On January 18th, 1975, Status Quo were Number One on the UK singles chart, with Down Down, while the day's televisual highlight had to be Hammer's Frankenstein Created Woman, on BBC2.

Could Marvel UK's offerings for the week possibly match up to such excitement?

Here's where we find out.

If I remember right, this cover's a total cheat and the Hulk isn't up against a cross between the Sandman and a leprechaun at all.

He's simply up against a sandstorm in one of his desert adventures. A sandstorm that doesn't speak and doesn't have a face. Had Marvel never heard of the Trades Descriptions Act? Next they'll be selling us brine shrimps advertised as monkeys of the sea.

Iron Fist is still bashing people up.

I wonder what the Avengers tale is in this issue?

Jason and Alexander could certainly use the help of Iron Fist right now.

I wonder if anyone on the Planet of the Apes has superpowers?

I wonder how Planet of the Apes fits in with Marvel continuity? Does it happen before or after Guardians of the Galaxy? Is it before or after Killraven? Is it before or after Deathlok?

Those cobbles. That fog. Those medieval buildings. It can only be 1970s London.

But let this be a warning to you. Never interfere with Dracula's evening meal.

I believe this is the one where Spidey guests on a TV show where Electro just happens to be working as an electrician.

Peter Parker's right. He really doesn't have much luck, does he?