1986: SPEAKEASY ISSUE 60

From March 1986: SPEAKEASY issue 60 cover features METALZOIC, the Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neil collaboration which first appeared as one of the early DC Comics graphic novels in the States before being serialised in 2000AD (progs 482-492) here in the UK.

The timing is right as I'm currently reading Mills' recolections of his time on 2000AD in the book BE PURE! BE VIGILANT! BEHAVE! which is now available as a print edition.  I find Mills to be rather too opinionated at times (he certainly has a lot to say in FUTURE SHOCK, now available in a swanky new BR edition from Arrow) but his writing here is most agreeable and it's hard to deny the creative force that he has been in British comics.  Indeed, his contribution is almost certainly still undervalued in the grand scheme of things.

1988: UK FANZINE SPEAKEASY ISSUE 58

From January 1988: SPEAKEASY issue 58.

1985: SPEAKEASY ISSUE 56

From November 1985: UK fanzine SPEAKEASY reports big changes at DC... and the launch of Marvel's ultimately ill-fated NEW UNIVERSE.

1985: SPEAKEASY ISSUE 56

From November 1985: SPEAKEASY issue 56 reports a busy month of comics news. 

1985: SPEAKEASY FANZINE ISSUE 55

From September 1985: SPEAKEASY, the UK comics fanzine, issue 55.

I have, somewhat to my surprise, a long run of this 'zine stuffed into various boxes.  But ths is the earliest one that I have in my (obviously very incomplete) collection.  Back issues don't generally seem to come to light very often, especially compared with some of the higher profile 1970s and '80s titles like FANTASY ADVERTISER.  I imagine this is everything to do with how widely these were sold in comic book stores rather than via Marts and Mail Order.

It evolved, over the next few years, into the leading British news title for comicbookdom, even going tabloid for a while to emphasise its news credentials.  It then switched back to a magazine format, initially still on crappy newsprint, before settling down as a glossy mag.

It then went all professionals and became BLAST magazine, riding the coat tails of the brief boom in 'mature' comics early in the next decade.  Copies of that incarnation can still be found, without too much trouble, stuffed into dealer's mag boxes across the land.

1990: SPEAKEASY ISSUE 114

From October 1990 (and the Random Scans File): British fanzine SPEAKEASY (now presented as an A4 magazine with colour covers, black & white interiors and pretty decent print quality) with an interesting line-up of contents.

Including a piece on the Fleetway lawyer baiting British movie HARDWARE, which turned out to have more than a passing resemblance to a 2000AD strip.

1988: SPEAKEASY PREVIEWS DEATH'S HEAD

From 1988: UK fanzine SPEAKEASY previews the new MARVEL UK series DEATH'S HEAD in its November issue. 

1988: DEATH'S HEAD in SPEAKEASY FANZINE

This is a November 1988 cover feature from British comics fanzine SPEAKEASY, pegged to the launch of Marvel UK's regular DEATH'S HEAD US-format monthly (which clocked-up ten issues before being canned).

By this point, Speakeasy had abandoned its unwieldy tabloid-newspaper format in favour of a more traditional A4 affair, albeit still published on god-awful news-print.

Unlike his successor, the original Death's Head adventures have been reprinted several times: Marvel UK issued a trade paperback collection shortly after the regular series was cancelled.  The run, which had limited North American distribution, was recycled along with the bulk of DH's non-TRANSFORMERS UK appearances as THE INCOMPLETE DEATH'S HEAD during the Genesis 92 boom years.  More recently, Panini has issued two trade paperback collections which include the bulk of DH's Marvel Universe appearances.  Good reading, yes?

1987: SPEAKEASY FANZINE: MARVEL SOLD and SKINN QUITS QUALITY

Here is the Breaking News, albeit from January 1987!  New World Pictures have snaffled up Spidey and the rest of the Marvel Comics Group.

This was the lead story from British fanzine SPEAKEASY issue 70, cover-dated January 1987.

The prediction that the sale would have no effect on Marvel's staffers turned out to be wide-of-the-mark, Marvel's new owners didn't waste too much time in dispensing with the services of Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter.  But we'll get to that.

I've covered the post-Corman rise and fall of New World Pictures/ Entertainment in a previous post but, to cut a long story short: their core business of movies and television production lost shedloads of money, Marvel was sold-off to keep the wolf from the door and NWE eventually reinvented itself as a TV station group (with some production, including the GENERATION X tele-flick) before being absorbed by News Corporation (who wanted to add New World's local stations to their existing Fox station group) and ceasing to exist in any meaningful sense.

Marvel after New World had a turbulent 1990s, spent the first part of the noughies redefining itself and is now, of course, a lucrative part of the Disney empire.

The other front page story that issue was Dez Skinn's hasty departure from Quality Comics over - ironically - quality issues.  QC, and Skinn, had been making a splash in '86 having acquired the rights to repackage and reprint the 2000AD back catalogue (as well as other IPC archive strips) from Eagle Comics (the joint-venture between IPC and Titan Books).  Skinn had planned to use these low-cost (creators, notoriously, didn't receive extra payments for reprints or reuse of their work) reprints as the basis to grow the Quality line.

After his departure, Quality became notorious for poor production standards and sloppy reprints.  Numerous titles were released under the Quality/ Fleetway banner and, one day, I'll get around to featuring some of them here.

SPEAKEASY was a well-established British fanzine which, by this point, had positioned itself as the main "newspaper" for British comics fandom.  Taking this to it's logical conclusion, it had adopted a newsprint tabloid format, folded to A4 size for display and sale (which explains that nasty brown line through the news stories, that's where the fold is!).