1981: CINEMA MAGAZINE ISSUE 1 (Marvel UK)

Here's another long-forgotten oddity from the Marvel UK archives: the short-lived (a one-shot special and nine monthly issues) CINEMA MAGAZINE from 1981-82.

Cinema was a spin-off from STARBURST, and also edited by Alan McKenzie, which applied the same successful formula to general moviedom.  This was before the likes of EMPIRE and neatly filled a gap in the market.

The formula was first tested in a Winter Special, released towards the end of 1981.  That was deemed a success and work began immediately on a monthly incarnation.  This meant that M-UK were now producing three regular magazines, DOCTOR WHO being the third (technically four as, despite being pitched at a younger audience, BLAKE'S SEVEN was - basically - a features-based monthly).  M-UK's notoriously small staff soon started to feel the strain and McKenzie requested the cancellation of Cinema (the least successful of the magazine 'group' titles) after only nine issues.

Cinema didn't contain any traditional comic strips but - perhaps inevitably - a Howett (no Quinn) gag-strip was part of the line-up... and posted below.

This first issue may also mark an unexpected first for Marvel UK and - quite possibly - Marvel as well. The article on British sex films was illustrated with several (tasteful) stills of topless gals.  I imagine this was the first time that either outpost of the House Of Ideas had printed pics like that.

1979: CEREBRO: THE OFFICIAL X-MEN CLUBZINE (Fanzine)

Copies of the British X-MEN fanzine CEREBRO don't come to market very often (and seem to command a hefty premium online) so I was surprised to find this stash of five issues at a comic book store recently... and chuffed to see they were only a pound a time.  Needless to say, I snapped them up.

Cerebro, named after Professor X's mutant-finding gizmotron, was published by THE OFFICIAL X-MEN FAN CLUB, presumably with Marvel's blessing.  I recall the club recieved a mention in one mid-eighties British Bullpen Bulletins.

These issues hail from the period 1979-81.  I believe that it was published (roughly) bimonthly which - I guess - means the club was inaugurated late in '78 or earlier in '79.

Each issue is A4 and stapled along the left hand side.  The cover is printed on colour paper using coloured ink (the result is quite satisfying, in a low-fi way) whilst the interiors are mostly black print on white paper with the occasional colour sheet tucked in.

The page count - and thus cover price - varies considerably from issue-to-issue.

Contents included the latest X-news (its worth remembering that Marvel's mutant ambitions at the time were limited to the core monthly title, the occasional outing of a character in MARVEL TALES and assorted crossovers, guest slots and cameos), extensive letters of comments from club members, fan-penned articles and extensive fan art.  The fourth issue also premiered a new section which profiled a single character (beginning with the Angel although I don't know if subsequent issues followed an alphabetical pattern).

The club's launch would have - roughly - coincided with US editions of the comic book going (to use collectors parlance) "non-distributed" (ND in the price guides) at the request of Dez Skinn to avoid competing with the New X-Men reprints running in Marvel UK's RAMPAGE monthly.  One of the club's services was the ability to subscribe to the US editions through the club.

The 100th member signed-up just in time to get their name into the 4th issue.

Cerebro was obviously sent out to club members (members names, when published, would always be followed by their membership number) but - I think - it was also sold in selected comic book shops.  I remember finding a stack (or box) in Bristol's FOREVER PEOPLE store (the one that had a mezzanine floor which made it seem like the geek equivalent of a department store) in the mid-eighties and picking-up several copies (none of which I managed to keep... doh!).  Whether this was a one-off or not, I don't know.

I'm not sure when the club folded but it must have kept a (very) low profile by the end of the eighties as I don't recall ever seeing it mentioned in other fanzines.  A successor, MUTANT MEDIA, appeared during the boom years of the early nineties by which time there were oodles of X-titles and copious crossovers.  I'll get around to posting those here sometime.

I briefly posted about the 'zine once before.  See here for another cover.

1979

1979

1980

1980

1981

1980: DEZ SKINN DEPARTS MARVEL UK IN STARBURST MAGAZINE

Dez Skinn departed Marvel UK under something of a cloud back in 1980 (as this fanzine article reveals) so I never expected an official farewell.  So I was a little surprised to find this full page goodbye from the pages of STARBURST (the magazine Dez bought with him to M-UK when he signed-up in late 1978) issue 20 (frustratingly undated but published in 1980).

The interview in the fanzine BEM can be found here.

1985 THE JUDGE DREDD COLLECTION HOUSE AD

This is the IPC House Ad (from EAGLE cover-dated 22 June 1985) for the first (of five, plus a hardback compilation) edition of THE JUDGE DREDD COLLECTION, a series of landscape-orientated albums which reprinted the JD strips from the DAILY STAR newspaper (which, I don't think, was the tit-and-bum fest that it is today).

The weekly strip had made its debut (initially only in the paper's Saturday edition) on 29 August 1981 and Tharg had previously used it as filler in the 2000AD SCI-FI SPECIAL (from 1982), the JUDGE DREDD ANNUAL (from the 1983 edition, published in 1982) and the 2000AD ANNUAL (from the 1984 edition, published the previous year) so - inevitably - some of the strips were already familiar to readers.

Further editions appeared in 1986, 1987, 1989 and 1990.

The newspaper strip are one of the few parts of the 2000AD back catalogue that haven't been ruthlessly exploited in subsequent years, fortunately these collections are still fairly easy to track down although the 1990 edition, and the hardback, seem harder to find.

The other half of the page is the traditional newsagent reservation coupon so beloved of publishers.  I never understood these, surely any half-way decent newsagent would keep their own records of reservations rather than rely on some tatty form.  But they must have worked!

1985: EAGLE SEPTEMBER COVER GALLERY

The EAGLE Cover Gallery continues this week with issues with a September 1985 cover-date.

The Dan Dare strip is ousted from its usual cover slot in favour of a 'traditional' cover design, albeit featuring Dare (and those stoopid giant animals) on two out of four issues.

1987: DUNGEONS & DRAGONS SUMMER SPECIAL (Marvel UK)

The MARVEL UK DUNGEONS & DRAGONS SUMMER SPECIAL (1987) is one of those Holy Grail items that I never quite believed existed.  Until now.

I wasn't paying quite as much attention to the Annex of Ideas output in 1987 but I was still keeping one eye on the comics shelf at the newsagents and I don't recall ever seeing a copy of this.  And, in all my subsequent years of collecting, I've never seen a copy... at any price.

I was first tipped-off to its (purported) existence several years ago on a website dedicated to the D&D animated show... but I wasn't convinced.  Not only had I never heard of it, but Marvel US had never published a TV show tie-in, despite the fact that that the series was produced by their own west coast animation outfit AND had a several season run on CBS' Saturday morning schedules.

Marvel UK also didn't (to my knowledge) do anything else with the property.  This wasn't a spin-off from a regular comic and a strip didn't appear as a supporting feature in any other title.

I FINALLY spotted a copy on online recently and - without hesitation - snapped it up!  It's real.  It exists.

It's 36 colour pages with 34 pages of strip plus cover and a back-page House Ad for Marvel's 1987 Summer Specials (MUPPET BABIES and INSPECTOR GADGET, for the record).

The strip, an adaptation of the TV episode A Prison Without Walls (I think I've seen said episode but I don't recall the details so I can't say whether this is a faithful retelling), doesn't have any credits (including for the original TV screenplay which - fact fans - was penned by comics legend Steve Gerber) but I strongly suspect it wasn't originally published in English.  The word balloons throughout are (overly) generously sized suggesting (to me) they were either originally prepared for a language more verbose than English - or - were prepared so that any language could easily be accommodated just by switching-out the black plate when printed.

The first two pages (below) summarise (as per the show's title sequence) how the kids ended-up transported to the D&D realm.  No, my scanner hasn't gone on the fritz: that's how they're published in the comic.  I assume its deliberate.

I've also posted the first - and - last pages from the main story.  Just so that you get a flavour....

The show was cancelled stateside by the time this was published although it did hang around on BBC ONE longer (they always seemed to get their monies worth out of any animated series they acquired with multiple runs over several years) including part of GOING LIVE on Saturday mornings.  Its entirely possible this was timed to coincide with another outing of the show.

Does anyone have any more information on this?  I'd love to know... and share!

UPDATES TO PREVIOUS POSTS

I've updated a copy of my recent posts so, to make life a little easier, I thought I'd also summarise the changes below.

STAR WARS COLLECTORS EDITION (1978) - 
I picked-up some back issues of Jim Steranko's excellent late-seventies MEDIASCENE fanzine at the weekend and several contain a mail-away opportunity to buy this Marvel one-shot.  The adverts describe the magazine as imported from the UK which - I guess - means that it was prepared (probably by the New York Bullpen) exclusively for the international market.
See the original post here.

EAGLE PICTURE LIBRARY (1985) - 
When I posted the Cover Gallery, I was missing the 11th (of 14) issue.  By blind luck, I stumbled across the missing issue this past weekend and I've added it to the gallery.  I've posted it below as well.
See the original post here.

1986: MARVEL UK SPRING SPECIALS HOUSE AD

This is a House Ad for Marvel UK's SPRING SPECIALS 1986, timed to coincide with the Easter break.

Summer and Winter specials had been a company fixture since 1979 but this was the first time that the publishing programme was expanded further to roll-out another wave of specials.

These were the first specials to abandon the high price-point album format specials of the previous few years in favour of cheaper formats and lower cover prices.  That said, the paper stock was still better than that found on the usual 24-page colour weeklies.  The variable pricing reflected different page counts.  As far as I know, this was the first time M-UK had deviated from a one-size-fits-all format for a batch of specials.

There's several 'firsts' contained herein:

THE TRANSFORMERS COLLECTED COMICS 3 reprinted The Man of Iron, the first UK-originated strip from the fortnightly.  This set the agenda for all subsequent Collected Comics releases which all reran UK strips and never again used US material.

SECRET WARS II abandoned the Collected Comics format (used for the previous summer's SECRET WARS special) in favour of 'new' reprints.  A second, and final, special followed later in the year.  It's significant that Spider-man appears here rather than in his own special which had been a given since '79.

THE A-TEAM SPECIAL wrapped up reprints of the three-issue US limited series, begun the previous summer, by rerunning the third issue.  See here for more on the UK editions (and here for the US Limited Series)

GET ALONG GANG COLLECTED COMICS 2 also favoured UK material above further reprints of the US Star Comics material also serialised in the weekly.

ZOIDS COLLECTED COMICS 1 reprinted the first toy promotional insert and the short run of original strips from SECRET WARS weekly.  This would have been a useful refresher for readers of the just-launched SPIDER-MAN AND ZOIDS weekly who might have missed the earliest chapters.

The FRAGGLE ROCK SPECIAL reprinted US material previously serialised in the (disastrous) THE SPIDER-MAN COMIC.  The Fraggles, despite the relatively high profile of the TV show in the UK (TVS produced Brit-specific 'human' elements, featuring the light house, just for the UK), never graduated to a solo title although they did return as a back-up in MUPPET BABIES.

1983: JUDGE DREDD ISSUE 1 LAUNCH AD (Eagle Comics)

JUDGE DREDD: Welcome to the United States!

This ad, from June 1983, was quite possibly the first sighting of ol' JD for most US comic buyers.  The advert, which appeared in COMICS INTERVIEW (and, no-doubt, elsewhere too), announced the launch of the US JUDGE DREDD monthly which, behind an impressive run of new Brian Bolland covers, reprinted the 2000AD strips.

The original UK pages were reworked to fit the different dimensions of US books (taller and narrower*), altered so that multi-part stories appeared to flow as one continuous story (albeit with tell-tale cliffhangers every few pages) and - most impressively - colour for the first time.

Eagle Comics was a joint-venture between IPC and Titan Books (who'd been publishing the 2000AD reprint albums since the beginning of the decade) intended to crack the US market.  The all-reprint line expanded fast to include more Dredd titles, Robo Hunter, a US edition of 2000AD and others.  However, they struggled to make the economics work and eventually allowed the license to pass to Dez Skinn's (him again!) Quality Comics.  Although, in typical Skinn style, that tie-up proved short-lived.

The company name was, of course, inspired by the classic (and just revived) British weekly although they never reprinted anything from either incarnation.

Considering the amount of 2000AD back catalogue that was coloured for Eagle/ Quality, I'm always a bit surprised that more of it hasn't resurfaced since.  It's not as if Tharg is adverse to reissuing the same material in countless different formats.

* Typical IPC, the format and dimensions of the British comics didn't make the strips easy to export.

1980-81 WESTERN GUNFIGHTERS SPECIALS (Marvel UK)

I've always found these three Marvel UK WESTERN GUNFIGHTERS SPECIALS, published in 1980-81 pretty perplexing.  This was the height of the SF boom years (THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and MISSION GALACTICA were in cinemas, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25th CENTURY, DOCTOR WHO and BLAKE'S SEVEN were on British TV) yet - somewhat counter-intuitively - Marvel seemed to think the kids would lap-up these creaky reprints (in fairness, the Caleb Hammer strip from the '81 special was a recent import from MARVEL PREMIERE) from a bygone age.

Maybe I'm being a little unfair, the fact that three specials appeared suggests that someone, somewhere, was buying these.  Or, at the very least, distributors and newsagents remained enthusiastic.

Part of Dez Skinn's brief was to expand the British Marvel offering outside of the traditional superhero fare and make better use of the Marvel back catalogue.  And cowboys were certainly hitherto untapped.  Probably with good reason.

The original piece of Frank Bellamy art adorning the Summer 1980 edition was a piece actually owned by Skinn.

Skinn had departed the company by the summer of 1980 which shows that the enthusiasm for the title went further than Skinn himself.  Most of his one-shots were intended as pilots for possible ongoing titles, although there's no sign that a cowboy title was in the offing.

SUMMER 1980

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WINTER 1980

SUMMER 1981