1990: RELAUNCH ALERT: THE NEW 'NEW EAGLE'

From April 1990: the 'new' New EAGLE!

Another year... another relaunch.  And this one is interesting because it took the comic back towards its 1982-83 origins with a greater mix of 'real world' celebs and subjects likely to appeal to the target readership.  Definately a move towards a more magazine-centric format... albeit no sign (of course) of the return of the signiature photo-strips from those first 15-odd months.

I think the move reflects how much the comics market was struggling at the time and a recognition that the contents had to have a broader appeal.

Comic strips were - of course - a mainstay... including yet another DAN DARE makeover.  And a DD badge (still attached) as a freebie.

1995: LAST ISSUE ALERT: THE VERY LAST TIGER

From March 1985: The end of the dirt track for IPC's venerable TIGER.

Published weekly (barring, no doubt, the odd bout of industrial action) since September 1954, the sports-centric 'paper' was a mainstay of the IPC Youth Group offering for decades and ultimately clocked-up 1555 regular issues and who-knows-how-many spin-offs.

Along the way it spun off ROY OF THE ROVERS into his own weekly in 1976 and - as was the IPC way - also absorbed a lot of its own, more vulnerable, sibblings.  HURRICANE, JAG, SCORCHER and SPEED all shared the masthead at some point.

Unusually, the combined EAGLE AND TIGER ('Big news for all readers...') was a pretty balanced combination of the two weeklies.  It really felt like someone in management thought TIGER deserved a fair send-off.  Of course, over time, the TIGER strips started to fade away and the shared masthead became smaller and smaller... and eventually (and with no fanfare) vanished entirely.  The Tiger logo was even redesigned for the merger so that it sat neatly alongside the Eagle's.

I was never a fan of TIGER so the merger - whilst a bit of an event - wasn't 'great news' for me.  Indeed, the likes of Star Rider and Golden Boy were strong clues as to why Tiger was no longer in business.  I had only ever bought one copy, published the previous summer, which just happened to be the week that BATTLE, EAGLE and TIGER all gave away free ACTION FORCE figures.  Palitoy's purge of their warehouse overstocks is still, officially, the Best Free Gift.  Ever.  I probably ended up with several copies of that week's Tiger (I was already reading the other two) but I don't remember actually reading any of it.  But I recently bought a copy of that very same once-owned issue (with convention-busting Billy's Boots cricket cover!) with the intention of finally getting around to dipping in.

1988: LAST ISSUE ALERT THE BEST OF EAGLE MONTHLY ISSUE 6

From October 1988: Last Issue Alert: the sixth issue of THE BEST OF EAGLE MONTHLY, reprinting the Bloodfang strip from the weekly.

The 'Not for the nervous' cover flash has been nicked from SCREAM.

Management didn't seem to have much luck with their branded EAGLE spin-offs... the creaky PICTURE LIBRARY run didn't amount to very much either... although at least BEST OF... had strips that regular readers of the weekly might recognise and remember.  And the pick-ups from SPEED, TIGER and SCREAM might even have been new to them.

The EAGLE annuals and holiday specials, much more traditional brand extensions, did a lot better... for longer.

1989: THE ORIGINAL DAN DARE RETURNS TO EAGLE

From August 1989: another EAGLE landmark... the return of the original DAN DARE.

It's safe to say that the new Eagle was ever quite sure what to do with their biggest brand.  The relaunch started with Daniel Dare, action-packed gandson of the original Pilot of the Future.  The reboot was partly down to the fact that a TV version of the character was in pre-production (the ATV series went nowhere because of changes within the ITV system... possibly a lucky escape as the plan seemed to be along similar lines to CAPTAIN ZEP: SPACE DETECTIVE) and partly down to trying to put some clear blue water between the incarnations.  As if kids actually cared... as long as the strip was good.

They even decided to mess around with the original from afar by suddenly making him a WWII pilot who was sucked into the future (ala the plot of the BIGGLES movie) by a Treen mishap.  Thus the Mekon accidentally created his own greatest foe.  Bad day in the office.

After The Return of the Mekon played out, the character and the strip seemed to get a little lost.  Subsequent stories couldn't match the epic scope of the first outing and it all became a little average.  They even teamed New Dan and Old Dan together for one adventure.  I forget how they did it.  One ill-advised reboot saw the character sporting a lot of Magnum-esque chest hair as a 'Space Commando'.  Surely Starfleet would not have approved.  Which might have been the point.

This particular reboot not only saw the original character return but also one of the original art team with Keith Watson taking over the strip.  It's unlikely, beyond novelty value, that kids cared but maybe Fleetway were hoping some nostalgic dads might grab an issue... and some nostalgic journos would devoite some time to the oft-overlooked weekly.

This is also the cover that the Dan Dare copyright holders are mostly likely to turf out whenever a Dare revival is mooted... and the press are happy to run with it.

1988: THE FIRST EAGLE AND BATTLE MERGED ISSUE

From January 1988: the first combined issue of EAGLE AND BATTLE.

As with the previous week's house ad for the merger, the combo is pretty low key.  I almost missed that this was the first combined issue when I was flicking through a stack of random back issues in one of my boxes...  There's none of the hoopla that surrounded the TIGER merger of previous years and there's a real sense of 'that'll do'.

The transferred strips were Stormforce (which appears to have already been doing double-duty in both BATTLE and EAGLE anyway), Charley's War and Johnny Red.

BATTLE did continue to appear as the occasional annual and special... I certainly have a copy of a special that was published (in the old tradition) several years after the main comic had been killed off.

1988: MERGER ALERT: EAGLE ANNOUNCES THE MERGER OF BATTLE

From 1988: MERGER ALERT!  Here's how the EAGLE announced the impending arrival of the refugees from the fall of BATTLE.

Despite the traditional hype ('Big News Issue!') it's obvious from the two-page house ad that this is now EAGLE AND TIGER style combination of equals (at least until the dust settled).  The BATTLE logo is conspicuously smaller than the Eagle's.  Funny that.

I think, by this point, two-thirds of the BATTLE strips were reprints anyway with only the fairly new Stormforce (introduced - after a treading-water hiatus - to plug the large gap left by the withdrawal of ACTION FORCE).  Maybe that helped to stunt in-house enthusiasm for the merger.  

1988: LAST ISSUE ALERT! THE FINAL ISSUE OF BATTLE

From 1988: Last Issue Alert!  Years after the first predictions of its impending demise, BATTLE was finally overwhelmed by enemy forces (the enemy being changing tastes and a changing market) and plucked from the battlefield by - yup, you guessed it, EAGLE.

Given the deadlines and the on-sale date, it's easy to imagine that this issue, number 673, was put together just before the staff broke for the Christmas holidays and the end-of-year break.

By this time, despite the better printing that IPC/ Fleetway had switched to the previous year, BATTLE was a mere shadow of its former self.  The loss of the ACTION FORCE franchise had done some serious damage (although Marvel's glossy successor was faring little better in a tough market) and Stormforce, their in-house successors were more gimmick than traditional military might.  Charley's War and (as seen here) Johnny Red were really holding the fort... although one or both may have slipped into reprints by this point.  Overall, BATTLE followed the same slow decline as the other IPC weeklies... more and more reprints as budgets got tighter and tighter.

IPC had launched BATTLE back in March 1975 to counter the early success of WARLORD, launched by DCT the previous September.  Marvel UK also had a crack at their own me-too weekly, FURY, but that didn't work out so well.  Battle eventually outlived Warlord, which closed in September 1986.  The genre champion was, without doubt, Warlord's older sibbling VICTOR.  Launched in January 1961, it didn't retire from active service until November 1992.

Battle folded into EAGLE, management's go-to title for failing comics.  It's almost surprising that SUPERNATURALS and RING RAIDERS didn't go the same way but Fleetway opted to burn-off the remaining inventory from both early cancellations in end-of-run one-shots.  Stormforce had already been appearing in Eagle for a month-or-so, presumably part of a plan to prepare for the merger.  Or an indicator that the Eagle was also short of material pre-merger.  Charley's War and Johnny Red remained Eagle mainstays for the rest of its run.

1988: THE BEST OF EAGLE MONTHLY ISSUE 4

From August 1988: THE BEST OF EAGLE MONTHLY issue 4.

This is another hefty batch of cheap-and-cheerful IPC reprints which is gard to find today.  This issue compiled a run of Death Wish (nope, not Paul Kersey) strips.

Blake Edmonds was an F1 driver who had it all... until a crash left him badly burned.  Thereafter he took on any stunt or challenge - no matter how dangerous - because he had - yup - a death wish.

The strip started in 1980 in SPEED (from where, I suspect, these strips hail... making the mag even more collectable).  When that weekly went belly-up after a mere 31 issues the strip transferred to TIGER.  Thereafter it remained a mainstay until it transferred (along with the likes of Billy's Boots and Golden Boy) to EAGLE.  It continued to appear, albeit with a supernatural twist, long after TIGER was quietly dumped from the masthead.  He didn't have much luck for someone determined to die.

1987: EAGLE CELEBRATES 300 ISSUES

From December 1987: the now not-so-new EAGLE celebrates 300 issues with a 'photo' opportunity and the hoisting of a flag.  Tharg did something similar - on a more impressive scale - to mark the 2000AD on sale at the turn of the millennium.

1987: NEW FORMAT ALERT: EAGLE GETS A MUCH NEEDED REBOOT

From March 1987: EAGLE gets a much needed makeover.

IPC really let their comics go in the early 1980s... the better formats enjoyed by some of the titles (notably TIGER and EAGLE) had been lost and - across the line - print and paper quality (mostly courtesy of Southern Print) had declined to not far from newsprint standards.  And IPC's standard slighty-more-square page dimensions made the artwork ill-suited for international sales and - in the case of 2000AD - recycling in the States.

Meanwhile, competitors MARVEL UK and London Editions, bolstered by their strong relationships with toy and media properties, had romped ahead with glossy paper and colour interiors.  The IPC line-up, shrinking fast, was beginning to look very tired just as the audience for all comics was declining.

The relaunch (better - but not glossy - paper, new page dimensions, the end of the hefty white page borders and better reproduction) roughly coincided with Robert Maxwell's purchase of IPC Youth Group and the creation of his new Fleetway business (reviving a pre-IPC brand that had continued to appear on the company's myriad of annuals).  The move was probably not coincidental and almost certainly part of a plan (like moving the group out of King's Reach Tower and into neighbouring IPC premises) to prepare the titles for sale.

These format changes are a handy way for collectors to limit filling their home (a problem I really have at the moment) by only collecting and retaining select, format-dictated, sub-runs rather than every copy of long-runners.  

1988: THE BEST OF EAGLE MONTHLY ISSUE 3

From July 1988: THE BEST OF EAGLE issue 3, starring Manix.

BoE was one of a bunch of BEST OF... monthlies published by IPC around this time.  The benefits were obvious: quick to paginate, no origination costs, no back-end payments to the creators.  In short: a very profitable way of making the IPC archives work harder to offset falling sales in the core comics business.

Some of these titles did very well.  THE BEST OF 2000AD MONTHLY ran for a decade AND spun-off a JUDGE DREDD solo version and a few specials as well.  This one, on the other hand, shuttered after a mere six issues.  Despite being a spin-off from IPC's most successful new launch of the decade.  Very strange.

Maybe the strips were too recent.  Maybe EAGLE's readership had no interest in revisiting the past.  Maybe IPC couldn't secure decent distribution.  Or maybe they realised that they would need to run more and more reprints in the core title in the years ahead... so didn't want to run them all in a spin-off.

It's not to be confused with the dying days of the main EAGLE comic.  It switched to a monthly frequency and - with a few exceptions - became a mostly reprint title as the sales dropped through the floor.

These six issues are now pretty hard to find.  They are worth picking up if you do.

1992: THE BEST OF BILLY'S BOOTS HOLIDAY SPECIAL

From 1992: THE BEST OF BILLY'S BOOTS HOLIDAY SPECIAL VOLUME 2.

This was a late-in-the-day compilation of old strips which (along with its predecesor) passed me by completely at the time.  I guess I wasn't spending enough time in newsagents.

Billy Dane, owner of the supernatural footy boots of Charles 'Dead Shot' Keen lived a transitory life in British comics.  The strip started in SCORCHER in 1970 before transferring to TIGER when the titles merged in 1974.  He spent the next eleven years of his playing career in the pages of the sports weekly.  Billy's Boots was one of the better strips to transfer to the 'new' EAGLE AND TIGER in 1985.

The strip was shuffled in the IPC portfolio again the following year, findinga  more natural home in ROY OF THE ROVERS weekly (itself a Tiger spin-off, launched in 1976) where it remained until 1990.  When Billy's playing days were finally over, the new strips were (true to Fleetway form at the time) reprints from the vaults.  The reprints later shifted to THE BEST OF ROY OF THE ROVERS.

1983: JAMES BOND: OCTOPUSSY EAGLE/ SHREDDED WHEAT PROMOTION

From August 1983: a two-page promotional tie-in between EAGLE and SHREDDED WHEAT promoting the Roger Moore JAMES BOND outing OCTOPUSSY.

Has anyone still got the in-box stickers?

1984: ON SALE THIS WEEK: EAGLE

Onsale this week way back in 1984: EAGLE.

I thought it would be fun to take a little more time and look at all the strips that appeared in the copy of EAGLE that went on sale on this date way back in 1984.

For copyright reasons I've only included the first page (or pages in the case of Dan Dare) of each story... just enough to bring the memories flooding back.  I hope.

The Happy Families done-in-one-pager is a little grim... and a little unusual.  It's the sort of thing you probably wouldn't get in a kids comic today without a flurry of compaints from parents, a social media storm and someone turning-up in the paper complaining of "traumatized' kids and demanding some compo from the publisher.  It seems better suited to SCREAM!, which was still just about in business at this point.

1984: EAGLE DOOMLORD CROSSWORD PUZZLE

From 1984: Something for the weekend (or the long commute): a page-filling DOOMLORD CROSSWORD, possibly concocted by the IPC Puzzles Department, from the pages of EAGLE.

Enjoy.

1984: EAGLE HOLIDAY SPECIAL HOUSE AD

From April 1984: an IPC House Ad for the second EAGLE HOLIDAY SPECIAL.

On sale now... way back when...

One of the joys with getting every new copy of a regular comic was flicking through the pages to see what other stuff you could go out and get.  Holiday Specials (restricted to one a year at King's Reach Tower but published 2-4 a year over at the British Bullpen) were always a good excuse to hunt the shelves of various local newsagents until a copy could be tracked down.  Or sometimes they'd hit BEFORE the first sightings of the adverts. Always a pleasent surprise... unless you had to dash home to get (beg!) more pocket money and then dash back to the shop... all the time hoping no-one else had spotted and snagged it.

How many of you used to tuck must-have purchases behind something less enticing until you could broker a deal to secure the cash?

1983: THE EAGLE RELAUNCH

From 1983: EAGLE's big news revealed!

After a week of waiting to find out what the latest exciteing development from the South Bank would be... it just amped up again!

Four extra pages!  Nine 'great stories'!  A spud gun! File that one under: freebies you are unlikely to see today.

What's not to love?

I know I couldn't wait for the next issue.  But... all was not as it seems...

I assumed that the illustrations were just for consistency.  It never crossed my mind that Eagle was about to abandon the photo-strips for good.  Four extra pages also sounded a pretty good deal.  But the IPC ad men had neglected to mention that the trade-off was that the weekly, previously one of the best looking on the shelves, was about to switch over to the newsprint formula already adopted (one suspects with no great enthusiasm by their editorial teams) by most of the rest of the Youth Group.  The con was - very much - on.

And I had a week to find out...

1983: EAGLE TEASES 'IMPORTANT NEWS' AHEAD

From 1983... and the days when even news about news was enough to generate excitement amongst comics readers.

The tease that something was to be announced in the follow week's issue was a sure-fire way to ensure a fortnight's worth of tension and anticipation.  A week to wait to find out what the news was... and another week to wait for the relevent issue to arrive.

Sometimes the announcement would be disappointing (like a really duff free gift.  Or even worse: a freebie that was actually just part of someone else's marketing campaign for cornflakes or baked beans) but sometimes - if the gift looked promising or a relaunch/ reboot was involved - it would ratchet up the anticipation to at least eleven.

The masterclass in this regard was 'Tharg's Megaplan', an extended piece of multi-week puffing that promised something whopping.  Playground rumours suggested a bold new look.  Or a Judge Dredd spin-off (we didn't know, of course, that IPC had wrestled with that one for years).  Or the impending merger of THE EAGLE (Dan Dare and - especially - Doomlord looked natural transfers... even if older Tharg acolytes might have been horrified by the idea).  In the end it turned out to be a record.  Which seemed like the sort of project that engaged the staff of the weekly far more than it excited the readership.  Despite the cross-promotional opportunities if it became a hit.  Which it didn't.

This was the first official notice that change was coming soon.  Although readers more attentive than I might have already been able to read the runes.  EAGLE had already dropped in its first reprint strip (One-Eyed Jack... now about to be issued in book form) and was generally shifted from photo-strips to more traditional comic strips.  Which didn't demand the same high-quality printing.  Many other IPC weeklies already appeared in the cheaper 'newsprint' format so it would make sense, from a production and economic point-of-view, to align Eagle with the rest of the line.

A fortnight to wait... but only seven days until more stickers for the RETURN OF THE JEDI sticker album (which - curiously - I always found very dull.... possibly because so many stills from the film were available across so many sources).

1988: MIDLAND BANK GRIFFIN SAVERS ACCOUNT

From the summer of 1984: the ubiquitous MIDLAND BANK sign-up-the-kids-and-we'll-have-em-for-life GRIFFIN SAVERS 'starter kit', as advertised in the pages of EAGLE.

This has a huge nostalgia quotant:
- A long-gone from the High Street brand name.
- A cunning way of making a staid-and-stuffy brand identity look more - ahem - human.
- An ace marketing slogan that's outlived the bank itself in the public conscious. Beat that HSBC UK!
- A school bag that everyone seemed to have... especially if you had parents who saw the value in savings AND saving money. As the term went on, sightings would become rarer as the good-but-not-great quality succumbed to daily wear-and-tear.
- A dictionary which was likely to be defaced on the first day of term... and almost certainly didn't have any rude words in (the ones that did were always deemed to be THE BEST dictionary).
- A stationery set once again pitched at the price-sensitive parent.  With a compass ideal for unexpected attacks on classmates during a dull GCSE English Lit. class.  How many people have actually ever used one - for anything - since they left school?  Except - maybe - for pipe fitters and circular hole makers.  It's bonkers to think that this was a time before Poundland and free stationery kits as comics freebies when such a set would actually represent a considerable start-of-term investment.
- A folder.  Because everyone knows that a folder is a great starting point for any project.

1983: ON SALE THIS WEEK: THE EAGLE ISSUE 58

It's a snatch raid!

On sale thiis week back in 1983: EAGLE issue 58, cover-dated 30 April (remember: the date on the cover represented the 'off-sale' date rather than the day the comic hit newsagents).

By this point, the DAN DARE strip had regained its traditional starts-on-the-cover status, officially maintaining the three-pages-a-week count.  I always considered this to be a bit of a con (and not just because it saved the time, trouble and expense of designing a decent cover each week) as the cover splash demanded strong, bold visuals which - although eyecatching - often didn't add much to the overall story.  Effectively an expanded panel subbing for what would have been a full page of traditionally structured art under the previous layout.

I suspect deadlines and weekly churn played their part and the art remained top-notch throughout.  There was just a need to deliver less panels per week.  Although, look at the detail in that first panel... lovely stuff.

The Dare strip had - at this point - drifted away from the core Return of the Mekon storyline into an extended astronauts-in-training flashback which couldn't hope to measure up to the Mekon and Earth occupied by the Treens. But it was still a lot better than some of the dross - and reboots - that would follow over the next decade.

But, just like the whole photostory era in general, there is still innovation to be found.  Check out the successful inclusion of well made (and well lit) model work into the art!  Another benefit (soon to be lost) of the superior printing used during the early run.  I wonder if the editors of the other weeklies looked on enviously... or whether they were thankful their titles weren't carrying the additional overheads.