THE MARVEL UK HANDBOOK
The four-part BATTLETIDE limited series reads like one of those ideas that popped into Paul Neary's head late on a Friday afternoon and arrived on his desk as a (allegedly) fully formed concept at 9am the following Monday.
It was a cack-handed combination of Shooter's SECRET WARS and - off all things - WWF (1992 remember) wrestling. The basic plot revolved around aliens kidnapping various bankable Marvel characters (Hell's Angel, Psylocke, Wolverine, Sabretooth, Kill Power and - inevitably - Death's Head II) and pairing them off in tag teams to fight various non-discript aliens. The titular "tide", since you asked, was a cloud of cosmic evil (not dissimilar to Galactus in RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER) drafted in when the plot began to splutter.
The script was by the ubiquitous Dan Abnett with art by Geoff Senior, who makes the best of a bad situation.
Sales were stellar at the height of the boom and a second, slightly superior, four-parter followed during the 1993 GENESIS EXPLOSION and a third instalment was on the cards when the IMPLOSION snuffed out the lot.
Marvel combined the entire four-parter into one staple-straining UK edition as the (one-and-only) OVERKILL EASTER SPECIAL. The first part of the sequel appeared in the final issue of OVERKILL (indicating that the cancellation order arrived rather late) leaving would-be readers to seek out the original US format back issues if they wondered what happened next.
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