1987: MARVEL UK ANNUALS House Ad

From 1987: a cavalcade of MARVEL UK ANNUALS.

It says a lot that there's no SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL in the bunch... that's how far the mighty had fallen in the second half of the eighties.  The MARVEL SUPERHEROES edition was, however, an excellent alternative and must rank as one of the very best single annuals of the Star Age.

The rest are a motley bunch of licensed titles... and equally good indicator of the direction of travel for the Annex of Ideas... and the state of the annuals business.

The ACTION FORCE edition was the first from Marvel UK... and also the first time the Force had gone solo in a yearbook.  The previous three years had (logically enough) seen them sharing the pages of the BATTLE ANNUAL from Fleetway.  Unlike the previous years, this was (with the exception of a new text story) an all-reprint affair, drawing on the US G.I. JOE strips.  

THE TRANSFORMERS ANNUAL was the third, and the first year that the movie characters had featured.  For some... this marked the end of the golden age of the Robots in Disguise.

THE THUNDERCATS edition was the second, spun-off from the popular weekly, toys and animated series (aired on the BBC). 

The seldom seen DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS book, presumably (like the one-shot special I've covered before), reprinted the Spanish strips based on the Marvel Productions TV show. 

The rest, pitched at younger readers, are all based on toy or animated (or both) characters.  I think the INSPECTOR GADGET (who I'm sure also had a slot in LOOK-IN... although I don't know if the two licenses overlapped) strips also came from Europe.  ACORN GREEN was a toy line that also had it's own Eco-themed comic from the British Bullpen.  POPPLES, CARE BEARS and MADBALLS all had Star Comics in the States.  MY PET MONSTER was another toy tie-in which spawned an animated series (and straight-to-tape movie). 

1984: CBS SATURDAY MORNING ADVERT

From 1984: the annual Fall Kid-Vid plug from CBS, as seen in multiple US comics.

This was clearly a year where video games (and Role Playing games) held sway with SATURDAY SUPERCADE, POLE POSITION and DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS. 

Younger kids were catered for by the Emmy-grabbing MUPPET BABIES and THE GET ALONG GANG (Conform.  Conform.  Conform). 

PRYOR'S PLACE, starring Richard Pryor, never crossed the Atlantic.  Surely a surprising choice for a Saturday morning TV star, coming only four years after the potty-mouthed multi-award winning comedian and actor had set himself alight whilst freebasing cocaine. 

1987: MARVEL UK SUMMER SPECIALS House Ad

From the barmy summer of 1987: a MARVEL UK House Ad for three of that summer's specials: INSPECTOR GADGET, MUPPET BABIES and DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS.  

1987: DUNGEONS & DRAGONS SUMMER SPECIAL (Marvel UK)

The MARVEL UK DUNGEONS & DRAGONS SUMMER SPECIAL (1987) is one of those Holy Grail items that I never quite believed existed.  Until now.

I wasn't paying quite as much attention to the Annex of Ideas output in 1987 but I was still keeping one eye on the comics shelf at the newsagents and I don't recall ever seeing a copy of this.  And, in all my subsequent years of collecting, I've never seen a copy... at any price.

I was first tipped-off to its (purported) existence several years ago on a website dedicated to the D&D animated show... but I wasn't convinced.  Not only had I never heard of it, but Marvel US had never published a TV show tie-in, despite the fact that that the series was produced by their own west coast animation outfit AND had a several season run on CBS' Saturday morning schedules.

Marvel UK also didn't (to my knowledge) do anything else with the property.  This wasn't a spin-off from a regular comic and a strip didn't appear as a supporting feature in any other title.

I FINALLY spotted a copy on online recently and - without hesitation - snapped it up!  It's real.  It exists.

It's 36 colour pages with 34 pages of strip plus cover and a back-page House Ad for Marvel's 1987 Summer Specials (MUPPET BABIES and INSPECTOR GADGET, for the record).

The strip, an adaptation of the TV episode A Prison Without Walls (I think I've seen said episode but I don't recall the details so I can't say whether this is a faithful retelling), doesn't have any credits (including for the original TV screenplay which - fact fans - was penned by comics legend Steve Gerber) but I strongly suspect it wasn't originally published in English.  The word balloons throughout are (overly) generously sized suggesting (to me) they were either originally prepared for a language more verbose than English - or - were prepared so that any language could easily be accommodated just by switching-out the black plate when printed.

The first two pages (below) summarise (as per the show's title sequence) how the kids ended-up transported to the D&D realm.  No, my scanner hasn't gone on the fritz: that's how they're published in the comic.  I assume its deliberate.

I've also posted the first - and - last pages from the main story.  Just so that you get a flavour....

The show was cancelled stateside by the time this was published although it did hang around on BBC ONE longer (they always seemed to get their monies worth out of any animated series they acquired with multiple runs over several years) including part of GOING LIVE on Saturday mornings.  Its entirely possible this was timed to coincide with another outing of the show.

Does anyone have any more information on this?  I'd love to know... and share!

1984: MARVEL PRODUCTIONS IN 1984/85

COMICS FEATURE 33

JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1985

Throughout the 1980s, Marvel's West Coast animation off-shoot MARVEL PRODUCTIONS was responsible for many familiar animated series (and several long-forgotten).  The studio was previously DePatie-Freleng (of PINK PANTHER fame) and was acquired by Marvel in 1980 to spearhead their expansion into areas seen as being more 'future-proof' than the core comics business.

Stan Lee, of course, departed Marvel's New York offices to relocate to California to become MP's creative director, chief pitch-man and sometime TV show narrator.

Principally created to exploit Marvel's own creations (the company's remit always included live-action film, TV and theatre but it never seemed to expand out of animation), it enjoyed its greatest success in partnership with Hasbro's marketing agency Sunbow as a producer of toy-based animation.

Former Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter (dismissed from Marvel mid-decade.  More on that from Slow Robot in future) has claimed in his excellent blog that Marvel Productions only appeared profitable because the accountants budgeted the shows on the assumption that Marvel would enjoy a regular revenue stream from reruns and, eventually, go into profit once the initial costs of making the shows was covered.  But, according to Shooter, Marvel's deals were on a work-for-hire basis and the company had no profit participation.  So, if Marvel didn't cover all its costs up-front (and Shooter claims they didn't), they had no further income to push them into profit.

With no apologies for running a second Marvel-themed COMICS FEATURE article so soon, Slow Robot presents this excellent article from early 1985 (which would have been penned sometime in 1984).  Some notes follow.

SLOW ROBOT NOTES:

SPIDER FRIENDS (which sounds awfully like DC's rival, and more successful SUPER FRIENDS) was the working title for SPIDER-MAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS.  Heatwave, obviously, became Firestar.

MEATBALL AND SPAGHETTI really did exist although it appears to have never run in the UK.  Here's the title sequence:

THE TRANSFORMERS.  According to Jim Shooter's blog (here again), Marvel Productions had a very different plan for how to realise the Robots in Disguise.  Hasbro opted to use the ideas concocted by the comics creatives across all media.  The pitch artwork shown below the box artwork presumably reflected MP's thinking (with kids as 'pilots').

PANDOMONIUM appears to have never gone into production.

MUFFY IN CAR AND CABLE.  The Transformer-a-like Bumblebee-wannabe, which has something of the GOBOTS about it, never happened.

DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS.  The artwork contains a few differences in design and colouring compared to the finished series, which ran on CBS and BBC ONE.  And never had an official first or last episode.

The pitch artwork for IRON MAN, ANT MAN and (new creations) THE MONSTRESS and THE ALIENS didn't sell.

HOWARD THE DUCK never became an animated hero but did become an infamous George Lucas live-action mis-fire.

HULK HOUND and TEEN HULK, unsurprisingly, went nowhere.  

DAREDEVIL AND LIGHTNING THE SUPERDOG did sell to ABC after Mark Evanier wrote a series bible and pilot script.  But according to his account, an executive at Marvel Productions pissed-off someone at ABC and the project was swiftly dumped.

And, finally, here is the memorable MARVEL PRODUCTIONS logo that appeared (unless the BBC faded it too soon or cut it off) at the end of their shows after Marvel were acquired by New World Entertainment in 1985.  It contains similar design elements to New World's own logo.