STARLOGGED - GEEK MEDIA AGAIN: June 2012

Saturday, 30 June 2012

ACTION FORCE TV SPOT

Here's a British TV advert for the Baron Ironblood-era ACTION FORCE toys from Palitoy. Perennial also-rans Q-Force (water) and Space Force (err... space and stuff) don't even merit a mention.

The spot would have ran during the Children's ITV afternoon programming block and, possibly, during TV-am and Saturday morning kid-vid too.

It's pretty unsophisticated stuff compared with the adverts Hasbro produced when they took over the toy line and made it G.I. JOE in all but name. Their adverts used animated sequences created, by Marvel Productions, for similar American adverts and the Joe TV show.

2010: BLACKSTAR WARRIOR "TRAILER"

Forget EWOKS, DROIDS and the HOLIDAY SPECIAL. This is the STAR WARS spin-off we wish Lucas had really made. Lock up your heirs to the Royal Throne of Alderaan, Lando is on the loose!

Friday, 29 June 2012

1979/ 1983: SPIDER-WOMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES

Here's the title sequence of the Fall 1979 SPIDER-WOMAN animated series. The show belatedly reached the UK in January 1983. Better late than never I guess.

The show was produced by animation old hands DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, shortly before their purchase by Cadence Industries and their metamorphosis into Marvel Productions.

Marvel UK capitalised on the show's UK debut by adding Spider-Woman reprints, as a back-up feature, to SPIDER-MAN weekly (from issue 517, cover-dated 2 February 1983). The comic had previously featured the character, again as a supporting feature, in its SPIDER-MAN AND HULK WEEKLY incarnation, from issue 376 (cover-dated 22 May 1980) alongside Spider-man, Hulk and She-Hulk strips. Jessica never did get her own British comic but she did earn an (inexplicably timed) Winter Special one-shot in 1989.

In the US, Spider-Woman's own comic ran from (cover dates) April 1978 to June 1983 following a one-issue copyright-nabbing debut in MARVEL SPOTLIGHT 32 (February 1977). Her solo adventures clocked-up 50 issues (collected in two MARVEL ESSENTIALS volumes).

The complete Spider-Woman animated series (16 episodes) is available on DVD in the UK.

1983: MARVEL UK/ GRANDREAMS ADVERTS

Here are two adverts for Grandreams 1984 annuals, published in the autumn of 1983. The spots appeared in the pages of Marvel UK's weeklies in the later part of '83.

There's a few fun things to note:

- The action/ adventure shows we were watching at the time: it looks like an ideal action/ adventure route-to-midnight today. Boxleitner's BRING 'EM BACK ALIVE (another show, like TALES OF THE GOLD MONKEY, keen to recreate the success of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK) has largely been forgotten by history (it aired on ITV here in the UK) and really deserves a belated box set release.

- The RETURN OF THE JEDI annual in the advert has a different cover than the published one and the image is presumably (unless you know better) a pre-press mock-up. The 1984 annual featured Marvel's movie adaptation and actually used the familiar cover artwork which also graced the US SUPER SPECIAL and issue one of the UK weekly.

- THUNDERBIRDS 2086, a Japanese animated series loosely based on Gerry Anderson's classic (ITC couldn't sue, their Tokyo office made it!), was something of a premature release. Grandreams obviously expected a UK broadcast to coincide with the annual's release but BBC ONE didn't run the show until 1986! The annual, especially the copious amounts of geek-friendly hardware, was still cool enough to go on the Christmas list... especially as it teased televisual treats to come.

- SPIDER-WOMAN was basking in the success of her 1979 animated show which, belatedly, reached the UK in early 1983.

- Readers to lazy to wander down to their local John Menzies or W.H. Smith were encouraged to mail-away for their goodies. Marvel were still using their Jadwin House address (shared with.... Grandreams!) as their publishing and editorial address but Redan Place, their new home, was already their mail-order base.

- Marvel and Grandreams were thick-as-thieves but only some of the annuals (the obvious ones.. plus Return of the Jedi) were official co-productions.

1982: COMICS SCENE ISSUE 1 CELEBRATES MARVEL'S 25th ANNIVERSARY

Marvel celebrated their 75th anniversary in 2009 but we're going back to 1982 and - errr - their 20th anniversary (it's true, time really does work differently in the four-coloured world!), as celebrated in the first issue of Starlog's COMICS SCENE magazine.

Below is their Lee/ Shooter head honchos interview.

COMICS SCENE applied the same formula STARLOG had been using since 1976 to comic books (and spin-off movie and TV projects), creating a professional-looking, widely distributed, article-based "fanzine". A sure sign that comics were growing up.

The magazine enjoyed a chequered history: the initial run lasted a mere 11 issues (to September 1983) although Starlog continued to run comics reportage under the Comics Scene banner.

Volume 2 arrived in 1987 and enjoyed greater success during the industry's boom years, clocking-up 56 editions until folding again in 1996. COMICS SCENE 2000 was a short-lived third go, publishing three issues in 2000.

Starlog continued until 2008 before succumbing to bankruptcy.

Thursday, 28 June 2012

1980: BATTLESTAR GALACTICA IN LOOK-IN - PART THREE

It's another BATTLESTAR GALACTICA feature from the pages of Britain's LOOK-IN weekly, this time plugging the release of the second Battlestar fake feature film MISSION GALACTICA: THE CYLON ATTACK.

The second movie was entirely assembled from the (well-funded) TV episodes The Living Legend and Fire in Space. The former supplied most of the plot, the latter the disaster movie-style effects work.

Look-In were still running their regular Battlestar comic strip during this period.

Elsewhere, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK had been on British cinema screens since 21 May and Marvel UK were just launching their new range of Pocket Books, including US Battlestar reprints in STAR HEROES.

21 June 1980

Wednesday, 27 June 2012

1979: BATTLESTAR GALACTICA IN LOOK-IN - PART TWO

Sandwiched between the release of the "fake" feature film and the premiere of the TV series proper (still a year away), BATTLESTAR GALACTICA returned to the pages of Britain's LOOK-IN in October 1979. Another article accompanied the debut of the full-colour comic strip.

The strip ran for a year, ironically ending just as the TV show was beginning to do the rounds of the ITV network, albeit in a haphazard fashion on a station-by-station basis.

Created specifically for LOOK-IN, the strip was never reprinted elsewhere and hasn't been seen since it first appeared. This makes it amongst the rarest and hardest to track down pieces of merchandise related to the show. The artist throughout the run was Martin Asbury.

Almost simultaneously, Marvel UK issued STAR HEROES WINTER SPECIAL which, along with THE MICRONAUTS, also reran Marvel USA's two-part adaptation of the TV episode LOST PLANET OF THE GODS. This wouldn't be the only time that Universal would allow two British publishers to run strips based on one of their properties at the same time: LOOK-IN ran an original A-TEAM strip at the same time as Marvel UK issued two specials reprinting the US limited series. See here and here for more.

Tuesday, 26 June 2012

2012: DREDD 3D TRAILER

Here's the first official trailer (except for a disappointing 10" teaser) for the upcoming JUDGE DREDD movie, starring Karl Urban, directed by Pete Travis and shot in South Africa.

Safe to say, this has not been greeted with universal enthusiasm by Dredd-heads.

1979: BATTLESTAR GALACTICA IN LOOK-IN - PART ONE

This is the first of several BATTLESTAR GALACTICA articles that appeared in the UK's comic/ magazine hybrid (it always featured a mix of comic strips and articles related to TV, pop music and films) during 1979 and 1980.

This first feature, from the issue dated 14/21 April 1979, coincided with the UK release of the first Battlestar 'fake feature film' (a truncated edit of the opening TV extravaganza Saga of a Star World, aired on US TV the previous September*). It's a four-page centre-spread "pull out" consisting of a full colour poster-spread with a two-page text feature on the reverse.

For the unfamiliar, LOOK-IN was a mixed colour/ black-and-white weekly based on programmes aired on Britain's ITV network (the only commercial channel in the country at the time). Published by ITV Publications, it launched in January 1971 and eventually shuttered (under the ownership of IPC, who bought ITVP's titles in the early nineties) in March 1994.

The "Junior TV Times" subtitle relates to TV TIMES magazine, ITV's equivalent to the BBC's RADIO TIMES and the only place to see ITV's schedules for a whole week. ITV's complex regional structure required a local edition for each regional ITV franchise operator whilst Look-In published one national edition including basic programme listing for children's programmes in each region.

Note how the article doesn't refer to the film's small screen origins. Nor does it mention that ITV planned to air the TV version even through, presumably, the broadcaster had already acquired rights to the show.

The cover painting is by Armaldo Putzu.

We'll return to Battlestar and Look-In in a future post. We looked at Look-In's BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25th CENTURY strip here.

*Battlestar's 'feature film' had first been seen in Canadian cinemas, ahead of its US TV premiere, the previous summer.

Monday, 25 June 2012

1983: MARVEL'S RETURN OF THE JEDI ADAPTATION: PAPERBACK EDITION

Repackaging the same material in numerous different formats is nothing new for comic book publishers, especially if they had an eagerly awaited blockbuster movie adaptation on their hands. As our coverage of Marvel's 1970s and 1980s movies-to-comics adaptations (here and here) has shown, it was common practice to churn out the same material in a variety of formats.

Marvel's adaptation of RETURN OF THE JEDI back in 1983 was no exception. This is the paperback edition of the Archie Goodwin/ Al Williamson adaptation, sold in the US and imported into the UK (I got mine, not the copy pictured, in Martins in Colchester, Essex).

REDAN PLACE: THE HOME OF MARVEL UK

Last week, the Slow-Robot drone hovered on Arundel Street to snap some surveillance pix of Arundel House, former home of Marvel UK (1987-1995 or thereabouts). So successful was the mission that we've donned our disguise again and, this time, revisited 23 REDAN PLACE, Marvel's London HQ between 1983* and 1987.

Redan Place is located alongside Whiteleys Shopping Centre in London's Bayswater.

Number 23 is tucked away at the end of the short road. The building currently occupying the site looks rather modern so its unlikely that this is the exact same building that Marvel occupied. Bah. But, nevertheless, here's a couple of hastily snapped snaps to give you an idea.

The Whiteleys connection almost ended in tears. As mentioned in our Arundel House rundown, a crane that was converting the former department store into its current incarnation toppled and narrowly missed demolishing Number 23. Fortunately no-one from Marvel was hurt. The Whiteleys entry on Wikipedia suggests several people were killed in the accident but this has proven hard to confirm online.

* M-UK seem to have been dual running offices for a while. Late 1982 issues use Redan Place as the mailing address for offers but still use Jadwin House as the editorial address and for readers correspondence.

Friday, 22 June 2012

SLOW-ROBOT'S TIMEWARP: THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS

It's been another busy week of posts from the Slow-Robot Nerve Centre:

- We celebrated our 2000th post (hurrah!) with the TV advert for 2000AD Prog 1 here.

- We completed our review of Marvel UK's widescreen weekly THE TITANS with the final part of our cover gallery and a selection of House Ads.

- We looked back at MARVEL SUPER SPECIAL MAGAZINE, Marvel's main outlet for movie adaptations in the late seventies and early eighties, here and here.

- We unearthed the STAR WARS WATCH and DOCTOR WHO T-SHIRT adverts from early-eighties Marvel UK.

- We went back to ARUNDEL HOUSE, UK base of the Annex of Ideas in the late eighties and mid-nineties.

- We dug up a vintage UK press advert for (the original) CLASH OF THE TITANS.

- We looked back at Glen Larson's SF-trucker show THE HIGHWAYMAN.

- And looked back at the TV action show career of Richard Lynch, including a chance to watch his 1979 tele-flick VAMPIRE.

1979: VAMPIRE (TVM) starring Richard Lynch

The actor Richard Lynch died this week at the ripe old age of 76. His scarred face (the result of an accident while freebasing) and menacing acting style will make him instantly familiar to a whole generation of avid viewers of US action/ adventure shows (as well as a host of movies). He really was the go-to guy for menace.

To give you an idea how busy this guy was (and to help you organise your own DVD tribute to the great man), here's a partial list of his TV series work from the late seventies and into the eighties: BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (Gun on Ice Planet Zero), BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY (Vegas in Space), CHARLIE'S ANGELS (Angels on the Street), GALACTICA 1980* (Galactica Discovers Earth), THE PHOENIX (series regular), BRING 'EM BACK ALIVE (Escape From Kampoon), T.J. HOOKER (Carnal Express), MANIMAL (Illusion), MASQUERADE (Flashpoint), BLUE THUNDER (Second Thunder), AUTOMAN (Renegade Run), MATT HOUSTON (Apostle of Death), COVER UP (Murder in Malibu), THE A-TEAM (Hot Styles), THE FALL GUY (The Winner, Pleasure Isle, Stranger Than Fiction), RIPTIDE (Curse of the Mary Aberdeen), SCARECROW AND MRS KING (You Only Die Twice), AIRWOLF (The Horn of Plenty), THE LAST PRECINCT (Never Cross a Vampire), ONCE A HERO (The Return of Lazarus), WEREWOLF (Nightmare at the Braine Hotel), HUNTER (Legion), STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION (Gambit) and many more!

He was also the villain in the Slow-Robot favourite TRANCERS II (1991).

*Lynch's role as renegade Colonial Xavier was meant to be the show's recurring villain. Lynch signed the contract but ABC rushed the (short-lived) weekly series into production so quickly that Lynch was oversees filming throughout. When Xavier did eventually return, he was played (improbably) by Jeremy Brett. The episode, Spaceball, was a stinker (in a show full of stinkers), so Lynch had a lucky escape.

A quick rummage around You Tube for a suitable tribute uncovered VAMPIRE, a 1979 piece of classic Lynch. Enjoy!

PART ONE

PART TWO

THE CYBERMAN AND THE DOCTOR WHO TEE

Here's another familiar advertisement from the pages of Marvel UK in the early 1980s: the ubiquitous Peter Davison (NOT Davidson!) DOCTOR WHO tee, as modelled by this pleased-as-punch Earthshock Cyberman.

The art is by Rod Vass, the identity of the Cyberman unknown. According to the text, the t-shirt was "approved by the B.B.C" which, certainly today, is a non-standard way of writing the Corporation's name. But the Beeb must have authorised the copy in the advert too, surely.

This advert appeared across the Marvel line at the time... for months.

Thursday, 21 June 2012

MARVEL SUPER SPECIAL - PART TWO

The second, and final, part of our romp through Marvel's late seventies/ early eighties Movie adaptations published under the MARVEL SUPER SPECIAL MAGAZINE banner.

See Part One for more details.

1981

October 1981

1982

August 1982

OTHER EDITIONS:

CONAN THE BARBARIAN MOVIE SPECIAL 2-issues*

CONAN THE BARBARIAN ANNUAL 1983 (Marvel UK/ Grandreams)**

THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN serialisation (Marvel UK)

* Standard comic book format limited series

* *Published 1982

September 1982

Published standard comic-book sized rather than magazine format.

OTHER EDITIONS:

BLADE RUNNER 2-issue comic book format limited series

BLADE RUNNER ANNUAL 1983 (Marvel UK/ Grandreams)*

STAR WARS: RETURN OF THE JEDI WEEKLY (Marvel UK)**

* Published 1982

** Serialised as back-up strip

September 1982

OTHER EDITIONS:

ANNIE TREASURY EDITION

1983

March 1983

OTHER EDITIONS:

THE DARK CRYSTAL 2-issue comic book format limited series (US)

August 1983

Published standard comic-book sized rather than magazine format.

September 1983

Creative and editorial by Marvel UK

OTHER EDITIONS:

OCTOPUSSY ANNUAL 1984 (Marvel UK/ Grandreams)*

* Published 1982

September 1983

OTHER EDITIONS

RETURN OF THE JEDI 4-issue comic book format limited series (US)

RETURN OF THE JEDI PAPERBACK (US)*

RETURN OF THE JEDI ANNUAL 1984 (Marvel UK/ Grandreams)**

RETURN OF THE JEDI WEEKLY serialisation (Marvel UK)***

*Pages reworked to fit paperback page size. Copies shipped into the UK

**Published 1983

*** Originally published to coincide with the movie (and the relaunch of the comic), the adaptation appeared again in the weekly's final months.

Marvel's US distribution of the Super Special created an unexpected headache because, inadvertently, copies shipped earlier than planned and went on sale too early, revealing the story line (and its revelations) before Lucasfilm planned. Mark Hammill apparently spotted copies on-sale and blew the whistle.

The proliferation of limited series meant this was the first Star Wars movie adaptation from Marvel to appear outside the normal run of the US monthly comic book.