1980: PAUL NEARY DISCUSSES TIMESMASHER (Marvel UK)

From 1980: MARVEL UK boss man (the first time) Paul Neary discusses the (now long forgotten) British strip TIMESMASHER in the pages of MARVEL SUPERHEROES Monthly.

The strip itself appeared in RAMPAGE.  

This article appeared in MSH 379, cover-dated November. 

1979: MARVEL UK MONTHLIES House Ad

From 1979: A bevy of MARVEL UK monthlies, proudly plugged in this full-page House Ad. 

1981: MARVEL SUPERHEROES and RAMPAGE House Ad (Marvel UK)

From 1981: A MARVEL UK House Ad for their two super-powered monthlies: RAMPAGE and MARVEL SUPERHEROES.  

Both were getting a new look (the "new direction") and aiming more at collectors and fans than casual readers.  The Inside Comics feature covered a wide range of topics (some penned by Alan Moore) and I've posted a few here in the past. 

1982: SAVAGE ACTION BOWS OUT WITH ISSUE 15 (Marvel UK)

From 1982*: the British Bullpen Spin Machine cranks up again to put a positive gloss on the demise of SAVAGE ACTION Monthly after fifteen issues.  

SA was a "mature readers" comic before the term had been invented... a hotch-potch of adventure and horror fare assembled (for the most part) from the US black & white magazine line. 

As Bernie says, putting a brave face on it, SA was about to fold into the pages of MARVEL SUPERHEROES from 382.  Which also happened to be the only issue to officially incorporate SA although the Night Raven text stories (the only survivor to emerge from the wreckage of SA) did continue. 

* This would have gone on sale in December 1981. 

1983: ON SALE THIS MONTH: MARVEL SUPER-HEROES Issue 393 (Marvel UK)

On sale this month in 1983: MARVEL SUPER-HEROES issue 393, the first to incorporate RAMPAGE following the demise of its monthly stablemate, after 54 issues, the previous month.

The tie-up meant the best of both titles... The Avengers continuing to appear in their old home but now joined by the (new) X-Men, just in time for the epic Dark Phoenix saga.  

The British Bullpen marked the momentous moment with the new Alan Davis poster in the previous post.  

RAMPAGE had already hoovered-up the unmemorable BLOCKBUSTER the previous March.  MARVEL SUPER-HEROES had snaffled-up SAVAGE ACTION a month earlier in February.  

1983: ON SALE THIS MONTH: ALAN DAVIS X-MEN POSTER from MARVEL SUPER-HEROES 393 (Marvel UK)

On sale this month in 1983: Some early Alan Davis Mighty Marvel Magic: an X-MEN poster from the glossy centre pages of MARVEL UK's MARVEL SUPER-HEROES Monthly issue 393 (the first to feature Marvel's merry mutants, thanks to the recent closure of RAMPAGE Monthly). 

1980: MARVEL SUPERHEROES ANNUAL (Marvel UK)

Published (probably... there's no date anywhere) in 1980... The MARVEL UK MARVEL SUPERHEROES ANNUAL.

The reprints were yet another outing for the first X-MEN adventure (not the last time that would crop-up in the pages of Marvel UK), Bridge of No Return (from Ms. Marvel issue 5) and A Ghost Of Stone (from The Avengers 157).

1993: MARVEL SUPER-HEROES AUTUMN SPECIAL (Marvel UK)

This is the 1993 MARVEL SUPER-HEROES AUTUMN SPECIAL published by Marvel UK.

The mixed-bag of reprints hailed from THE INCREDIBLE HULK, MARVEL FANFARE and WHAT IF?

This appeared during M-UK's early 1990s resurgence, just as the British Bullpen were expending stateside with the GENESIS 92 initiative.  

1982: MARVEL SUPERHEROES and RAMPAGE MERGE (Marvel UK)

Two half-page house ads from the end of 1982:

Two Winter Specials, Conan and The Avengers, which - unusually - were full-colour affairs just before the format became the norm for MARVEL UK.

The other announces the merger of RAMPAGE (after 54 issues) with MARVEL SUPERHEROES (from 393… remember: that numbering stretched all the way back to the first issue of MWOM in 1972), transferring the New X-Men into MS.  

RAMPAGE retained a mention on the cover of the merged title for only two issues (it vanished after 394) but the X-Men stuck around for the rest of the run (Marvel Superheroes shuttered with 397) and then resurfaced in the replacement: the revived THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL.

Rampage was replaced by THE DAREDEVILS and Marvel Superheroes by the aforementioned second volume of MWOM.

The MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE strips that were left homeless when Rampage closed were revived in March 1984 with the launch of THE THING IS BIG BEN weekly.

1979: SPIDER-MAN AND MARVEL COMIC MERGE (Marvel UK)

Continuing - literarily - from my MARVEL COMIC post - here's another Minor Marvel UK Landmark: the first merged issue of THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN WEEKLY (previously SPIDER-MAN COMIC) and MARVEL COMIC (334, 1 August 1979).

Spidey's weekly added eight extra pages to accommodate the refugees (Godzilla and Daredevil) from the defunct successor to THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL alongside Spider-man, Thor, The Sub-Mariner, The Avengers, Thor, the Fantastic Four and Nova.

The Avengers soon shuffled again, taking pole position in MC's successor MARVEL SUPERHEROES. Phew.

1979: MARVEL COMIC JULY COVER GALLERY... AND CANCELLATION (Marvel UK)

Oh dear...  it's been a turbulent six-or-so months over at the MARVEL COMIC.  A relaunch in January, publication suspended by industrial action the following month... and two week's of sub-standard emergency issues the next.  What could possibly happen next?  Howzabout... cancellation?!?

Yup, the bold experiment that was the relaunched THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL succumbed to poor sales over the summer of 1979, the first victim of Dez Skinn's Marvel Revolution.

Would it have fared better if Dez had left well alone?  Would it have survived if the TV-featured Hulk had remained the anchor strip?  Were the production and distribution problems too much for such a (relatively) young comic?  Was Dez's faith in the power of Godzilla misplaced?  Were readers rejecting the loss of the glossy covers and rejigged interiors in favour of the US originals (if you could find them)?

I'll guess we'll never know but they're probably all contributing factors.  The brand continued - briefly - on the masthead of THE SPIDER-MAN COMIC before vanishing forever.  Numerically, MWOM/ MC continued as MARVEL SUPERHEROES: A MARVEL MONTHLY.

1979: MARVEL UK SUMMER SPECIALS HOUSE AD

The sun is out in London today (a rare thing indeed) and no rain is forecast (surely even rarer) so I thought I'd get into the mood with this May 1979 half-page House Ad for two of Marvel UK's SUMMER SPECIALS: SPIDER-MAN and MARVEL SUPERHEROES.

These marked another turning point in the history of the Annex of Ideas: the first time the British operation had published holiday specials.

The concept was nothing new to other publishers: they'd been doing it for decades to take advantage of kids with time on their hands (and parents looking for something to keep the brats entertained) during the long school holidays.  M-UK hadn't ventured into this territory before partly because the US-controlled operation had little empathy (or - at times - grasp) of the British market and partly because they were busy shipping over copies of the various US one-shots (like the treasury editions and the Super Specials) and regular magazines and saw no need to add more.

Dez Skinn's newly semi-autonimous British Bullpen was briefed to expand the British offering and one-shots specials were an obvious way to do that.

The Spider-man special was a no-brainer: the web-slinger was, after- all, the most consistent performer in the British portfolio.  Marvel Superheroes, on the other hand, was a good example of how Skinn was going to use one-shots as a way of testing new titles and formulas without the risk of launching - and loosing - a regular title.  Marvel Superheroes paved the way for the second 1979 relaunch of the former THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL when the MARVEL COMIC formula proved a bust.

1979: MARVEL COMIC ISSUE ONE (Marvel UK)

New year.  New comic.  And the next stage of Dez Skinn's Marvel Revolution*.  Despite the hype, readers of THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL must have been more than a little confused when, in mid January 1979, they found MWOM AWOL, replaced by a 'new' weekly: MARVEL COMIC.

The venerable MWOM (Marvel's first British weekly, launched in 1972) had spent much of the seventies as a weather-worn dumping ground for Marvel's failed weeklies and sales were moribund.  Stan's new man in London, Dez Skinn, decided radical surgery was the only thing to avoid cancellation.

The new Marvel Comic was an adventure weekly with only a sprinkling of superhero strips.  As you'll see below, a wider range of reprints included horror (from TOMB OF DRACULA), fantasy (SKULL THE SLAYER and the inevitable CONAN THE BARBARIAN) and martial arts adventure (MASTERS OF KUNG FU) alongside THE INCREDIBLE HULK and DAREDEVIL.

To cut costs, and make the UK line more closely resemble their homegrown rivals, Skinn also pruned the page count (down to a mere 24 pages) and jettisoned the glossy covers in favour of newsprint.

To fit more material into less pages, and increase readers perception of value, Skinn took his scalpel to the original US pages and crammed more panels per page (he did the same to the similarly relaunched SPIDER-MAN COMIC but left STAR WARS WEEKLY well alone... partly because he was already struggling to find enough material to fill the existing format).  Splash pages, recaps and creator credits were also done away with.

SI-6 THE SPECIALISTS was a shameless riff on LWT's popular post-watershed show THE PROFESSIONALS (the fictional CI-5) in an attempt to pass-off dated (but still excellent) MASTERS OF KUNG FU reprints.

The Green Goliath, a mainstay of MWOM since the first issue, briefly survived the changes but only to allow time for Skinn to launch the third stage of his British revolution: the launch of HULK COMIC.

I've posted the first pages of each of the strips below.  I'm not familiar enough with the original material to be able to identify where the strips first appeared stateside.  Can anyone help?

To emphasis the 'newness' of the MC, the issue number was dropped from the cover for the first few weeks.  This would have been the 330th issue of MWOM.

The Marvel Comic incarnation wasn't a sales bonanza and - by the summer - Skinn was forced to admit defeat and rolled it into SPIDER-MAN COMIC.  At the same time, he announced plans for a new monthly - MARVEL SUPERHEROES - which would (subtly at first) retain the same numbering.

Over several posts, I'll run a full cover gallery for MC as well as some other supplementary material.

* Phase 1 was an overhaul of the monthlies.

For more on the Revolution, follow these posts:
- Marvel House Ads promoting the new SPIDER-MAN COMIC and MARVEL COMIC (here).
- The history of THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL can be found here.
- The first issue of THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL, marking the launch of Marvel UK, can be found here.
- A MARVEL SUPERHEROES: A MARVEL MONTHLY cover gallery begins here.
- Dez Skinn writes about the Marvel Revolution in Bullpen Bulletins here.

1982-83: MARVEL SUPERHEROES - PART FOUR (Marvel UK)

Here's the last part of my MARVEL SUPERHEROES Cover Gallery spanning 1982-83.

Unfortunately, this entry is pretty patchy as I have some gaps in this latter part of the run and I apologise for that.  If anyone has the missing copies to flog - at a reasonable price - please get in touch.

The beginning of 1982 saw the demise of SAVAGE ACTION, followed by RAMPAGE a year later.  The former added the Night Raven text stories (which ultimately continued through to the demise of CAPTAIN BRITAIN monthly) whilst the latter added The New X-Men to the line-up.

Looking elsewhere on the 'net, the other shocker is the stonking price rise between issues 389 (45p) and 390 (60p) which is a rampant bit of inflation.  It probably shouldn't come as a surprise that sales dropped over the next seven months.

MSH didn't merge with another title and 397 is officially the final issue of the run.  However, as THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL volume 2 launched shortly thereafter I consider that part of the MWOM > MARVEL COMIC > MSH succession.  Using that logic, the run that started in 1972 eventually runs out of steam in 1984 with the merger of MWOM's second volume with (of all things) SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN.

ISSUE 381

January 1982

ISSUE 382

February 1982

SAVAGE ACTION merges.  

ISSUE 383

March 1982

ISSUE 387

July 1982

ISSUE 393

January 1984

RAMPAGE merges.

ISSUE 394

February 1983

ISSUE 395

March 1983

ISSUE 396

April 1983

ISSUE 397

May 1983

Final issue.

1981: MARVEL UK's PAUL NEARY INTERVIEWED

One of the first INSIDE COMICS features in MARVEL SUPERHEROES (see my previous post) was this interview with Marvel UK Editor-in-Chief Paul Neary from issue 376.

I'm always a little suspicious when media companies interview their own bosses as they're seldom more than uncritical puff-pieces designed to shift something.

I wouldn't say this interview has many revelations but, considering how important Neary became to the history of the company in the early nineties, it's worth posting here.

One interesting point is the Spider-man, Fantastic Four and 'football' strips apparently being prepared specifically for the European market.  I assume all three were subsequently nixed (one wonders why you'd need additional locally produced super hero strips considering the New York office was churning them out in ever-increasing numbers) but does anyone have any information about how far they progressed?  Was anyone assigned to the projects?  was any work completed?

The TIME BANDITS movie adaptation DID see the light of day.  British readers will remember it serving belated back-up duty in the pages of RETURN OF THE JEDI weekly.  Surprisingly, Marvel UK never issued it as a one-shot special or annual.

1981: MARVEL SUPERHEROES - PART THREE (Marvel UK)

I didn't have much to say about the 1980 run of MARVEL SUPERHEROES issues... but things got MUCH more interesting the next year!

The strip line-up (The Avengers, The (Original) X-Men and The Champions) remained static through the first part of the year but the September issue (on sale in August) marked a major turning point for Marvel UK (and - to a lesser extent - the whole Marvel U): the arrival of the new (and overhauled) CAPTAIN BRITAIN.

The character had been left to drift around the Marvel line since the (swift) demise of his own weekly way back in 1977.  A run of new stories in SUPER SPIDER-MAN AND CAPTAIN BRITAIN weekly made way for a reprint of his US debut, a two-part story from MARVEL TEAM-UP.

Back in the UK, Dez Skinn made him a supporting character in the UK-originated Dark Knight supporting feature in HULK COMIC (the only one of the UK created strips to survive until the title's cancellation).  Several one-shot specials also reprinted selected material from the weekly as well as the TEAM-UP story.

But Marvel Superheroes marked the beginning of his revival, and an extended run of strips that jumped about from MSM to THE DAREDEVILS onto THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL before graduating (again) to his own title.

The other big innovation of the year was the introduction of the INSIDE COMICS text feature, often penned by a certain Alan Moore, that added a fanzine sensibility to the Marvel monthlies and belatedly recognised that readers might also be fans.

ISSUE 369

January 1981

ISSUE 370

February 1981

ISSUE 371

March 1981

Issue 371's editorial announcing Marvel UK's refresh of the monthlies (the "new direction"), notably the imminent launch of the Inside Comics text feature, a nod to comics fandom rather than casual readers.

The 1/2 page advert for the POCKET BOOKS line was also fairly rare by this point.  Marvel gave them less and less plugs in the weeklies and monthlies, possibly because they knew they were living on borrowed time.

ISSUE 372

April 1981

ISSUE 373

May 1981

ISSUE 374

June 1981

ISSUE 375

July 1981

First House Ad for the revived (and revamped) CAPTAIN BRITAIN from issue 375.

ISSUE 376

August 1981

ISSUE 377

September 1981

ISSUE 378

October 1981

ISSUE 379

November 1981

ISSUE 380

December 1981

- TO BE CONTINUED -