1986: MARVEL UK TREASURY EDITIONS/ COMPLETE WORKS House Ad.

From May 1986: A MARVEL UK House Ad for the first three releases in the hardback TREASURY EDITION (not to be confused with the oversize tabloids of the past) line.

These were sold in book stores/ departments rather than alongside the regular comics so, despite heavy plugging in the core line, were easily overlooked.

The two younger-reader entries, THE CARE BEARS and THE GET ALONG GANG, recycled material from the respective weeklies.

THE TRANSFORMERS: THE COMPLETE WORKS (something of a misnomer as it only reprinted the first two issues of the initial US limited series) is the one most likely to resurface today.  It recycled the specially-commissioned cover art from the first UK issue, based on the toys rather than the more commonly used animation model sheets from Marvel Productions (they reached New York after the first issue of the limited series was already completed... and took far longer to reach Redan Place).  

The contents would already have been familiar to anyone who'd read the first four issues of the fortnightly or the first (summer 1985) Collected Comics edition.  The latter, and this hardback, had the advantage of presenting the material in colour (the fortnightly, after the first issue, was a mix of colour and black & white interior pages) and with the pages in the intended order.  The British Bullpen sliced the meet-the-Autobot-team double-page spread (an invaluable reference tool) out of the main strip and made it the centre-page poster in the second issue.  

A second edition of THE TRANSFORMERS followed... but we'll get to that.

As well as being Marvel weeklies, all three had something else in common... their animated counterparts were all part of TV-am's early morning schedules. 

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. 

1985: CARE BEARS Launch Ad (Marvel UK)

Soft, cuddly and full of love: the MARVEL UK House Ad trumpeting the launch of the CARE BEARS comic, part of a multi-media merchandising and media tsunami to shift the cuddly toys.  

The weekly launched in October 1985 and was something of a pre-school blockbuster for the Annex of Ideas, clocking-up an impressive 147 issue run (plus annuals and specials).  In comparison, THE GET ALONG GANG (which established the formula for this sort of offering) fell out after 93 weeks and ACORN GREEN (which lacked animated support) mustered only 36 issues.

Although not of much interest to collectors of M-UK fare, this is significant because it shows why the company so decisively turned its back on its own characters in favour of licensed properties throughout the second half of the eighties.  

The flexi-disc (quaint technology from the past) was rarity for the British Bullpen.  The monthly incarnation of WORZEL GUMMIDGE had featured one in 1981 and M-UK repeated the trick with the launch issue of ACORN GREEN the following year.  

The strips were a mixture of reprints from the US Star Comics book and newly commissioned material from the folks at Redan Place.

The back-up strip was (initially) Strawberry Shortcake.  The CB animated series was part of the roster of toy-based cartoons served up by TV-am.  

1983: MARVEL UK COLOUR PRINTING PROBLEMS

As I posted previously, MARVEL UK's first forays into colour printing (since the original CAPTAIN BRITAIN anyway) were a bit of a disaster.  The first issue, THE MIGHTY THOR 1, wasn't bad but - a week later - the quality control nosedived and subsequent issues, and the early issues of THE X-MEN and THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL monthly, were rendered all but unreadable by the debacle.

Here are three clippings, all from THOR, where the British Bullpen apologised, explained and - eventually - 'fixed' the problem by - errr - drastically cutting the colour pagination each issue (down to only 12 pages).

They only really cracked it in 1985 when they introduced the full-colour, glossy 24-page format with THE GET ALONG GANG 1.

It's worth noting that M-UK were still light years ahead of the competition who were still churning out the cheapest possible comics on antiquated presses.

15 June 1983

29 June 1983

20 July 1983

1985: GET ALONG GANG ISSUE 1 (Marvel UK)

This is a Blast-from-the-MARVEL UK-past which, at first glance, probably wouldn't be deemed worthy of interest to many fans.

But. It is. Honest.

The first issue of the GET ALONG GANG weekly was the first M-UK comic to introduce the 24-page, full-colour glossy format that became the standard for the weeklies and fortnightlies over the next few years.

Marvel had been experimenting with colour interiors, with varying degrees of success, since the painful launch of THOR and X-MEN in 1983 but all their previous attempts all relied on a mix of colour and black & white pages, occasionally recreating the sensation of watching a TV about to die.

GAG (hmm!) was the first to crack all-colour interiors on a regular basis (THE TRANSFORMERS issue 1 was full-colour… but that was a one-off lure that didn't last).

The Robots in Disguise switched from issue 27 (cover-dated 21 September 1985), followed by RETURN OF THE JEDI (26 October 1985) and SECRET WARS from issue 19 (9 November).  SPIDER-MAN AND ZOIDS adopted it from launch (8 March 1986), as did ACTION FORCE (7 March 1987), THUNDERCATS (21 March 1987) and THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS (26 March 1988).

New additions to the range for younger readers, including THE CARE BEARS, MUPPET BABIES and ACORN GREEN all followed the same formula.

The comic itself was based on the US syndicated animated show which, as was the eighties way, expanded out to encompass all possible licensing opportunities.  The gist of the cartoon was that friendship and co-operation (some would say conformity) was the key to a better world, all delivered in a heavy-handed kid-friendly pro-social way.

The show itself formed part of TV-am's weekend line-up, the theme tune ("Get up with the Get Along Gang") being an absolute gift to the breakfast broadcaster (who was seldom averse to running merchandising-flogging animation unless chastised by the IBA).  For what it is, it isn't bad but it seems to have escaped the DVD era entirely.

Marvel US picked-up the GAG license and published a mere six issues under the just-created Star Comics brand.  Those six outings crossed the Atlantic and appeared in the UK edition but, with such poor pickings, the bulk of the British editions contained new strips from British creators.  The first back-up strip was Top Dog, also from the Star line.

The British edition ran for a highly creditable 93 issues through to early 1987 and also spun-off Collected Comics specials (from Winter 1985), annuals and other sundries.