1983: THE MIGHTY THOR by BOB WAKELIN (Marvel UK)

I must admit that I've never been much of a fan of THOR (to the extent that I had very low expectations of the film... and was very pleasantly surprised by how good it was) so I gave his 1983 colour weekly a wide berth.  I still don't have many issues (mental note: I need to do something about that some day) but I stumbled across this lone issue in a charity shop at the weekend and was struck (ahem) by this impressive cover by British artist Bob Wakelin.

THE MIGHTY THOR earns a footnote in the history of the Annex of Ideas by being the first of the (initially disastrous) colour weeklies.

The Thunder God had been knocking around the British line since the dawn of Marvel UK (actually earlier: the sixties strips were part of the Power Comics line-up) but this was his first (and only) solo outing (CAPTAIN AMERICA took the back-up slot, a reversal of the final weeks of his own early-eighties weekly.  See here for more).

The weekly survived 19 issues before absorbing fellow colour weekly THE X-MEN, which was launched two weeks later (it should have appeared a week later but there was a hold up at customs on its way from the Irish printers).  THOR AND THE X-MEN (split half/half between reprints of Thor and sixties X-Men) survived another 19 weeks.  The 39th issue was the last.  Both strips continued briefly in (a rather packed) SPIDER-MAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS.  See here for more.