On sale this week back in 1984: the 39th (and final!) issue of MARVEL UK's accident-prone THOR AND THE X-MEN.
TatXM was actually, as the name hints, an amalgamation of two previous M-UK weeklies. Unusually for comics, the combination had been a fair fifty-fifty combination with neither being the dominant partner or creating the impression that it was only a matter of time before the interloper's logo started to shrink on the masthead (a sure sign that it would vanish entirely within weeks or months).
Technically, this is a continuation of THOR's weekly as the first issue was number twenty, picking-up where the Thunder God's solo title left off.
The problem with the solo titles, and the combination, is that the strips weren't very strong (Marvel's merry mutants seemed particularly dated by 1983) and the print quality was dire. These were the British Bullpen's first colour weeklies... but they neglected to check whether the Irish printers could cope with the new-fangled technology (they couldn't). Marvel hadn't got their sums right either so, as circulations started to fall, they had to drastically cut the number of interior colour pages anyway.
Both strips continued (crammed in with the Fantastic Four) in the pages of SPIDER-MAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS the follow week.
This issue is cover-dated 11 January 1983. Which is a year adrift from reality. Slap-dash Marvel had forgotten to change the year (although they'd remembered the previous week).
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