Friday, 13 April 2012

1985: MARVEL SUPER HEROES SECRET WARS UK EDITION - PART ONE

Let the SECRET WARS super-powered slam-jam begin!


Slow Robot's ongoing celebration of (what would have been) Marvel UK's 40th anniversary (1972 - 2012) continues with MARVEL SUPER HEROES SECRET WARS/ SECRET WARS II, which reprinted the two US limited series (originally 12 and 9 issues respectively, and A LOT of crossovers).

Secret Wars featured a lot of new, UK-commissioned, cover designs unseen elsewhere.  As well as the occasional UK-created strip.

VITAL STATISTICS
80 issues
27 April 1985 - 10 January 1987

TITLES
MARVEL SUPER HEROES SECRET WARS (Issues 1-9)
SECRET WARS (10 - 19)
SECRET WARS FEATURING ZOIDS (20 - 26)
SECRET WARS (27 - 31)
SECRET WARS II (32 - 80)

FREQUENCY
Fortnightly (1 - 10)
Weekly (11 - 80)

ISSUE 1
27 April 1985

Reprints US MARVEL SUPER HEROES SECRET WARS issue 1.
Free gift rub-down transfers loosely inserted into copies.
Card "War World" backdrop for transfers attached to centre pages.
ISSUE 1
Free transfers

ISSUE 2
11 May 1985

First "appearance" of Marvel UK's Secret Artist.
ALPHA FLIGHT back-up strip begins.  Reprints had previously been pencilled-in for CAPTAIN BRITAIN monthly pre-launch.
Free giant poster with spaces to attach sticker badges (free with issues 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11).
Free cover-mounted Captain America sticker badge.
Removing the cover-mounts usually resulted in tearing making undamaged copies with the gift removed hard to find.
Surplus sticker badges were also cover-mounted to SECRET WARS II issues 64 & 65, SPIDEY COMIC 653 and RETURN OF THE JEDI 123.

ISSUE 3
25 May 1985

Free Doctor Doom sticker badge.

ISSUE 4
8 June 1985

ISSUE 5
22 June 1985

Free Magneto sticker badge.

ISSUE 6
6 July 1985

ISSUE 7
20 July 1985

Free Wolverine sticker badge

ISSUE 8
3 August 1985

ISSUE 9
17 August 1985

Free Enchantress sticker badge.

ISSUE 10
7 September 1985

Title change to SECRET WARS.

Free cover-mounted Kellogg's Corn Flakes model airliner mini-kit.  Kits were also given away free with SPIDEY COMIC 652 and RETURN OF THE JEDI 114.

ISSUE 11
14 September 1985

First weekly issue.
Free Spider-man sticker badge (last in collection).
Ice Man limited series back-up strip, previously announced for SPIDER-MAN weekly, begins.
Alpha Flight continues.

ISSUE 12
21 September 1985

Free ZOIDS (insert 2) four-page insert.

ISSUE 13
28 September 1985

ISSUE 14
5 October 1985

ISSUE 15
12 October 1985

No comments:

Post a Comment