1989: STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER COMICS ADAPTATION - BRITISH EDITION

From October 1989: the British edition of DC's STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER movie adaptation, issued by London Editions.

The UK edition benefited from better paper stock and enhanced printing compared with the US original. 

This marked the first time that a Trek comics adaptation had been widely seen on this side of the Atlantic for a decade. Marvel UK had published The Motion Picture as an annual and serialised the strips in the pages of FUTURE TENSE. 

STAR TREK II fell into the gap between Marvel ditching the license and DC launching their post-Kahn ongoing series. Treks III and IV had been given the DC treatment but, with no British editions, they could only be found in specialist stores. 

London Editions were also publishing licensed Superman and Batman British editions (and tried, with no success, to grow the line over the next few years) so this was a natural fit.

The success of THE VOYAGE HOME clearly convinced British publishers that the franchise was gaining mainstream traction as Marvel UK, under the FANTASY ZONE banner, reissued Starlog's official movie tie-in mag. Neither experiment was repeated although Titan eventually added the Trek movies to their stable of licensed tie-in. 

1989: FANTASY ZONE Launch Ad (Marvel UK)

From 1989: The pre-launch House Ad for MARVEL UK's ambitious, but ultimately doomed, genre magazine FANTASY ZONE. 

It ran for six issues. 

1989: STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER OFFICIAL MOVIE MAGAZINE (Marvel UK)

From 1989: The British edition of STARLOG's done-in-one STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER OFFICIAL MAGAZINE.

The release of Shatner's movie coincided with MARVEL UK's ill-fated (and hard to explain) decision to plunge back into the Media Magazine market only four years after they'd flogged-off STARBURST to Visual Imagination at a knockdown price.  

Core to the cunning plan was the new monthly magazine FANTASY ZONE (see here for more on its brief run).  The new launch also spawned a couple of branded spin-offs: this one and GHOSTBUSTERS II.  

The contents are the same as the American edition, with the exception of tweaks to the cover and substituting US ads for British replacements.  

This was the first Marvel UK TREK special since the 1982 Winter Special (see here).  The Annex of Ideas launched a Next Gen tie-in the following year but badly misjudged the audience... and paid the price.  

London Editions, having renewed its licensing arrangement with DC Comics after the best part of a decade, also published a British edition of the one-shot comics adaptation of the film.  This was the first time one of the movie adaptations had been widely available in Great Britain (the regular monthly was part of the bundle of DC titles sold in newsagents) since the British Bullpen had published the MOTION PICTURE adaptation in annual form and serialized in the pages of FUTURE TENSE. 

The film itself is always dismissed as one of (of not THE) worst of the franchise.  I've never understood that.  I had a chance, coutesy of CIC Video and the IDIC Fan Club, to see it on the big screen at London's Empire Leicester Square (which, I believe, was operated by UiP which also owned CIC Video) in 1989 or 1990 (just before the VHS release) and, although the shortcomings (notably in the clearly cash-strapped visuals) were obvious... I also thought it was a good character piece... at least for the three principals.  

Having seen it a few times since over the years, most recently as part of the BR set, my opinion hasn't really changed.  I like the cast more than any of their successors and I think this stands above most of the TNG era movies.  

Incidentally, I must be the only person anywhere to think that NEMESIS was a reasonable attempt to reboot the stale franchise by upping the action quota... although I could have done without seeing Riker in the buff. 

1990: GHOSTBUSTERS II MOVIE MAGAZINE (Marvel UK)

From January 1990, and hot-on-the-heels of the latest (in a long succession) of announcements regarding the NEXT movie, here's a MARVEL UK House Ad for their GHOSTBUSTERS II movie tie-in magazine.

The observant will spot that this FANTASY ZONE magazine spin-off (the logo of the short-lived monthly genre mag in the STARBURST tradition is hidden under the "Out now!" splash) looks very similar to the US one-shot from Starlog Press.  Sure enough, like Marvel's STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER tie-in, this is indeed a rebadged edition of the US original.  

Top marks to the Annex of Ideas at having such a concerted stab at making Fantasy Zone into a franchise… if only it had lasted a bit longer.  Unlike the spin-offs, it did at least feature all-new material.  

The British Bullpen were, of course, also publishing THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS during this period, a cash-cow that stretched way beyond their own comic and also spawned (or, at least, appeared in) MARVEL BUMPER COMIC, IT'S WICKED, BLIMEY, IT'S SLIMER and the obligatory annuals, specials, Collected Comics and books.  

1989: FANTASY ZONE MAGAZINE (Marvel UK)

FANTASY ZONE was STARBURST redux: an attempt by Marvel UK to re-enter the SF/ Fantasy/ Horror media magazine market only a few years after flogging their previous monthly to Visual Imagination.

The logic of such a move is lost in the mists of time.  Maybe Marvel had seen that VI had managed to keep Starburst in business and coveted a piece of the action.  Maybe they wanted to get a spoiler onto the market to counter the launch of Starburst's first regular spin-off, TV ZONE (which launched in September 1989), even through VI wasn't directly competing with M-UK and Fantasy Zone had a broader editorial catchment than the new VI magazine.  Perhaps Marvel saw the glut of new fantasy movies, spearheaded by BATMAN, and thought the time was right.  Or, just maybe, they sensed the DOCTOR WHO TV show was faltering badly and wanted to try and get a new magazine out which could - if need be - replace DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE in the future.  

Marvel seemed to be pretty keen to make FZ work.  The magazine was well written and contained a fair amount of text, especially compared with its main UK rival which often resembled a scrapbook.  It also benefitted from some good layouts.  The indefinable problem was simply that it didn't feel very engaging.  It was - somehow - hard to get excited about the new issue when it appeared.  The commitment was there, but the emotion seemed lacking somehow.

M-UK used FZ as a (brief) spearhead for an expansion into SF movie tie-ins: they signed-up to publish UK editions of Starlog's officially licensed STAR TREK V and GHOSTBUSTERS II one-shot magazines, making them FZ specials in the process.  

Fantasy Zone shuttered suddenly (and the spin-offs halted) after only six issues.  The seventh (although misleadingly billed as the sixth) was previewed but never appeared.  TV ZONE, in comparison, continued until 2008 (and spawned a number of other magazines, all revolving around similar material).

As we've already seen (and will see again), Marvel UK didn't abandon the idea of media-based magazines (although they wouldn't attempt another Starburst wannabe): the next decade saw the DOCTOR WHO magazine franchise expand and contract (Classic Comics, Poster Magazine and Yearbooks), the (brief) return of BLAKE'S SEVEN (two specials and a poster magazine), a regular Hammer Horror magazine and the BIZARRE and PLAYBACK one-shots.

1985: V: THE SERIES IN STARBURST MAGAZINE

Here's some coverage, including a really distinctive cover, of V: THE SERIES from STARBURST MAGAZINE issue 85 (September 1985).

The weekly series (1984-85) had already been cancelled stateside by the time it reached the UK, on ITV, in June 1985.

This issue was amongst the last published by Marvel UK.  The publisher had acquired the magazine, along with the services of its publisher Dez Skinn, in 1978 and had persevered with it after Skinn's departure in 1980 but attempts to build a magazine division with CINEMA MAGAZINE (9 issues + 1 special, 1981-82) amounted to nothing and Starburst remained odd-man-out alongside Marvel's comics business.

Starburst was sold to independent publisher Visual Imagination shortly after this issue was published.  The last to appear under the Marvel banner was issue 87 (November 1985).

Starburst closed (after 365 issues and innumerable spin-offs) in 2008 but returned to newsagents shelves in 2012.

Ironically, Marvel had another stab at a very similar magazine, FANTASY ZONE, in 1989.  M-UK tried to use it as a springboard for a range of media tie-ins (such as the UK edition of the STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER OFFICIAL MAGAZINE one-shot) but it closed after only 6 issues.