1984: EAGLE SEPTEMBER ISSUES (IPC)

September 1984: my 11th birthday, back-to-school, the first sightings of the 1985 Annuals and a resolution to the conundrum of the summer: "whatever happened to SCREAM?"

After vanishing, after 15 issues, at the end of June the mystery was finally solved: the scare-fare horror weekly had been quietly cancelled and belatedly merged (with, frankly, little fanfare) with EAGLE.

Two strips, The Monster and The Thirteenth Floor, continued herein whilst the others were all quietly buried.  Both of the survivors began their second life with one-page story-so-far recaps, both of which I've posted below.

The Thirteenth Floor became an Eagle mainstay, thriving in its new home long after Scream! had vanished from the masthead.  Its star, the computer Max, started moonlighting as the weekly's first fictional editor following the tie-up with TIGER in '85.  The strip survived, albeit as reprints, well into Eagle's final monthly incarnation and also took centre-stage in the short-lived BEST OF EAGLE MONTHLY.

1984: KP SKIPS FREE COMICS PROMOTION (IPC)

The KP SKIPS (crispy corn fries to the uninitiated) FREE COMICS promotion was a big marketing push for IPC's weekly comics during the summer of 1984.  Unfortunately, it fell foul of an industrial dispute between the publisher (comics being a small, but lucrative, part of the vast publishing conglomerate) and the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) which saw the publication of titles across the business disrupted.

The promotion, which was also featured on packs of the snack, started in June and ran all the way through until September in the titles featured below.  Note one obvious omission.

30 June 1984

30 June 1984

The strike disrupted several titles (I can remember finding new issues became more difficult although I don't remember which - with one exception - vanished and for how long.  By the end of July, IPC were forced to change the promotional copy running in the weeklies (below).

The girls comic TAMMY was one (of two) titles that didn't survive the disruption.  Along with SCREAM! which - for whatever reason - was never part of the promotion.  It's possible these two weeklies were the most marginal sales-wise and IPC felt readers wouldn't return after the hiatus in sufficient numbers to make them viable.  Another option, which I personally think is likely, is that IPC's management wanted to send a clear message to the workforce that industrial action was not without consequences... and sacrificed two comics (one from the boys department, one from the girls) to underline the point.

But why wasn't SCREAM one of the free comics?  The legendary horror weekly ("not for the nervous!") launched in March of '84 so could have been.  Maybe the lead times demanded by the promotion meant that its launch wasn't finalised when the campaign had to be ready to roll?  Or, maybe, KP were a little skittish about being associated with a horror comic.  If that's the case, maybe that was an early warning shot across IPC's bows that the new comic could be trouble.  Or, were the upper echalons already pondering the fate of their latest launch and suspected it wasn't going to survive the duration of the promotion.  Did Scream's absence help ensure that it was the sacrificial lamb selected by management?

28 July 1984

4 August 1984

25 August 1984

1984: SCREAM! ISSUE 15 (IPC)

Fifteen. And out.  Regular SCREAM! readers would have had no idea that this issue would be the last. There's no "Great News Inside!" type cover flash.  No positive-spin message from Ghastly inside.  No hasty attempt to wrap-up the strips that didn't make the merger.  It looked like business-as-usual.

Except... issue 16 never appeared.

IPC, the vast British publishing house (of which comics were a small - and diminishing - division) was about to succumb to one of its periodic industrial disputes... and SCREAM was one of a number of comics and magazines that - without warning - vanished from sale.

When the strike finished, Scream didn't return with the other titles.  Conspiracy theories abound: some suspect that IPC, after the ACTION debacle of the previous decade, suddenly became nervous about the possible consequences of a horror comic (although IPC's own MISTY and Marvel's DRACULA LIVES seemed to have avoided the watchful eye of the moral majority ).  Others say that the publisher had come under pressure to discontinue the title.  Some say that the weekly had been sacrificed by management in the fallout from the strike for internal political reasons.  Others - and this is frankly more likely - just think that the sales of the early issues (in an industry already well into decline) just didn't justify continuing.

The real reason - despite a gap of nearly thirty years - is still frustratingly unclear.

But, during the summer of 1984, Scream reigned supreme.

Taking everyone by surprise, the long-delayed return of Ghastly never happened and - instead - a low-key merger with EAGLE took place later in the year.  Presumably, no-one in management thought the addition of such a short-lived title was worth making much of a song-and-dance about compared with some of the other longer-established weeklies that merged with Eagle, notably TIGER the following year.

IPC, typically, kept the Scream name alive in a series of holiday specials over the next few years.

Reprints of The Thirteenth Floor were subsequently collected in an issue of THE BEST OF EAGLE.  

1984: SCREAM! ISSUE 14 (IPC)

It's Halloween week... and our Advent Calendar of Chills continues with SCREAM! issue 14, the penultimate issue of the weekly.

1984: SCREAM! ISSUE 13 (IPC)

It's the 13th issue of SCREAM! so it's appropriate that The Thirteenth Floor should be the cover star.

It's a pity they didn't go for the obvious cover splash: The terror of crabs down below!

1984: SCREAM! ISSUE 12 (IPC)

Another stunning wraparound cover from SCREAM! issue 12.

1984: SCREAM! ISSUE 11 (IPC)

The chills continue!  Here's the front and back covers for SCREAM! issue 11.

An ongoing Scream Theme was "what did Editor Ghastly McNasty look like under his hood?"  IPC obviously thought this piece of reader art, by Lee Williams, worthy of a full-colour back cover.

Or... was IPC just being cheap?  Getting a page of full colour art for a mere fiver?  Shame on them!

And... whatever happened to Lee?  Are you out there?

1984: SCREAM! ISSUE 10 (IPC)

It's The Dracula File on the cover of SCREAM! issue 10.

1984: SCREAM! ISSUE 9 (IPC)

A fantastic ensemble of freaks from the wraparound cover of SCREAM! issue 9!

1984: SCREAM! ISSUE 8 (IPC)

Another fantastic SCREAM! cover!  With art this good, it really is surprising that it didn't fare better on newsagents shelves.

1984: SCREAM! ISSUE 7 (IPC)

The Thirteenth Floor gets an impressive wrap-around cover for SCREAM! issue 7.

This was one of only two strips to survive the merger into EAGLE.  The strip's star, Max the computer,  eventually found himself promoted to "editor" following the Eagle's merger with TIGER. 

1984: SCREAM! ISSUE 6 (IPC)

 The Halloween countdown continues with SCREAM! issue 6 from April 1984.

The back cover art is from Scream's take on THE BIRDS: Terror of the Cats!

1984: SCREAM! ISSUE 5 (IPC)

1984: SCREAM! ISSUE 4 (IPC)

1984: SCREAM! ISSUE 3 (IPC)

More seasonal scares from issue 3 of IPC's SCREAM!

1984: SCREAM! ISSUE 2 (IPC)

The second issue of SCREAM! came with a free cover-mounted black plastic spider, which linked nicely to both the cover and the cover-featured self-contained story inside.

1984: SCREAM ISSUE 1 (IPC)

The countdown to Halloween continues with - errr - number one.  Of SCREAM!  Here's the impressive front and back cover artwork as well as the editorial page.  With special guest star: Bruce Forsyth!  Some thing's never change.

I went to the London Dungeon (for those not-in-the-know: a pricy London tourist attraction with, as the name suggests, an horrific persuasion) for the first time earlier this year (hurrah for two-for-one tickets) and, although I imagine its changed a lot in the intervening decades, I couldn't help but recall its incessant plugging by its near-neighbours on the South Bank.

1984: SCREAM! WEEKLY HOUSE ADS (IPC)

Judging by SCREAM's lack of longevity (a mere 15 weeks, although it did enjoy an afterlife as a series of Holiday Specials), the above advert (a teaser from IPC weeklies dated 3 March 1984) really worked!

Halloween is approaching fast so - like Poundland and Asda - I thought I'd start getting in the mood, with some old old-fashioned scares.  

Today, I thought I would unearth a bunch of SCREAM! House Ads, published in IPC's other weeklies during 1984.

These small ads, initially buried on editorial pages, were sufficiently intriguing.  In an era of copious computer game adverts and Dungeons and Dragons, it wasn't immediately obvious that IPC were concocting a new launch.  

Scream! vanished without warning, its demise coinciding with an industrial dispute at the publisher which closed-down several titles for several weeks over the summer.  The others drifted back... but Scream! didn't.

The next thing anyone heard was the announcement (see the final ad below) that it was merging with EAGLE.  The other strips vanished without any further mention... or resolution.  

The most likely explanation for the cancellation was simply poor sales.  But that hasn't stopped conspiracy theorists claiming that the comic was cancelled because IPC management didn't fancy the potential press frenzy (remember ACTION?) that a horror comic could ignite.  That didn't stop them printing the first 15 issues (or subsequent specials) however and - it's often forgotten - Marvel UK quite happily cranked-out DRACULA LIVES! in the seventies without anyone apparently noticing.

BTW, I love how IPC were so confident of their own distribution that they couldn't cite a firm on-sale date for each issue.

I *think* there was also a TV advert to accompany the first issue.

Remember: the dates below are the cover-dates of the comics the adverts appeared in.  They would, typically, have gone on sale around a week earlier.

10 March 1984

17 March 1984

24 March 1984

1 April 1984

7 April 1984

1 September 1984