This one was another oddity from Marvel UK: BEA, a monthly aimed at the girls market.
Unsurprisingly, I know very little about this one. I have one copy floating around somewhere but back issues are elusive (making Bea amongst the rarest Marvel UK titles) and I paid very little attention at the time. I recall seeing one issue in a branch of Safeway (ahem) once and I'm sure it was rerunning First Comics' BEAUTY AND THE BEAST: PORTRAIT OF LOVE, the TV tie-in also reprinted as a one-shot by Marvel UK.
There's no mention of Vincent or Catherine here so I assume that strip was added to the line-up later.
The drama with the escalator, above, clumsily reveals that Bea's strips originated elsewhere in Europe and were being translated into English for this edition. Being no expert on such matters, there's little more light I can shed.
It's not the first time they'd tried to expand into that lucrative (but, for Marvel, elusive) pre-teen girls market. The weekly KIM (which, I must admit, I've never seen) had appeared in the early eighties. Marvel later added SINDY (why not? US Marvel had BARBIE) as part of their expanding toy tie-in activities.
I have no idea how long Bea survived, nor weather it merged with another title.
No comments:
Post a Comment