1974: BUSTER BOOK OF SPOOKY STORIES 1975 (IPC)

From 1974: Not the sort of thing you'd expect from BUSTER...

In what must constitute one of the oddest brand extensions from the IPC stable, Kings Reach Tower issued this not-quite-like-the-weekly BUSTER BOOK OF SPOOKY STORIES (described as an "annual" but actually more akin to a softback album) in late 1974 for the Halloween/ gifting season.  

Does Skinn (him again) put this (and the following year's second and final outing) together after his pitch for a new IPC horror weekly (to be called CHILLER... a name he finally revived as one of the MARVEL UK POCKET BOOKS in 1980) was staked by the publisher's higher echelons. Apparently they didn't see the potential/ didn't fancy the backlash (delete as applicable) of a horror comic but thought they would get away with it... and shift more copies... by making it into a spin-off from one of their venerable humour weeklies (Buster turned out to be a good choice... it eventually became the once mighty humour group's last-man-standing title... before eventually succumbing as well). Despite the association, the links with the weekly were actually few and far between with the normal Fleetway mix of new commissions and vintage already-paid-for reprints residing in the Fleetway vaults. 

Copies of these two books don't seem to surface very often. I found this in a secondhand bookstore last year for a couple of pounds. 

1981: GIRL ISSUE 1 (IPC)

From February 1981: the first issue of IPC's somewhat (in retrospect) familiar looking new weekly: GIRL.

I stumbled across this recently in a secondhand magazine store and although I initially dismissed it, I was tempted enough to look inside and was surprised to see it really was the prototype for the relaunch of the EAGLE a year later,

The tone is the typical prepubescent chumminess ("Your very best friend") but the style, features and - most importantly - the photo-stories that defined the EAGLE's first (and, for me, best) eighteen months (give or take) are all piloted here.

The original GIRL, subtitled "Sister paper to Eagle", was launched in November 1951 by Hilton Press and survived various corporate takeovers to end in the care of IPC. The conglomerate was streamlining its acquisitions and folded GIRL in October 1964.

This 1981 revival ran through to 1990. 

1990: JUDGE DREDD THE MEGAZINE Issue1

From October 1990: one of the great survivors of British comics (and the only one of the wave of Mature Reader chasing title to launch in the early 1990s to get any traction): the first issue of JUDGE DREDD THE MEGAZINE.

This was seen as far from a safe bet back at the launch and IPC, and then Maxwell, had toyed with launching a ROY OF THE ROVERS type spin-off for the best part of the previous decade but always backed off for fear of cannibalising the success of 2000AD.  The collapsing market for traditional weeklies was the final shove Fleetway's management needed to take a chance.

The success of DREDD stateside in he licensed Eagle and Quality reprints also convinced the publisher that they could double their income streams by issuing a bookshelf/ prestige format US edition. That part of the project ultimately proved short-lived.

Its been a rocky 25 years as the megazine has endured a sucsession of relaunches, bloated confidence that the 1995 movie misfire would catapult Joe D into the mainstream and a succession of budget cuts that forced the editors to reprint some good, but not always appropriate strips, just to stretch finite budgets further and keep the book alive. 

Volume 1 ran for 20 issues through to May 1992.

Deemed a success, the second volume saw the frequency upped to fortnightly for an 83 issue run, ending in 1995 to coincide with the overhaul of the 2000AD family of titles on the eve of the movie release.

The 79 issue third volume startedfortnightly but, once it became clear that the movie was not the success that everyone had hoped for, management lost faith and the schedule was dropped back to monthly. This was accompanied by a new fortnightly, LAWMAN OF THE FUTURE, chasing a younger crowd attracted to the franchise by the Stallone outing.

Volume four ran a mere 18 issues, ending with the overall 200th issu of the Meg's run.

Volume 5 is the one currently on sale. It launched, with issue 201 in January 2001 and is still going strong. 

Happy Birthday Joe! 

1977: 2000AD ANNUAL 1 (Fleetway/ IPC)

From September 1977: the very first 2000AD ANNUAL, from IPC's Fleetway imprint.

Yup... that REALLY is Dan Dare on the cover!

The galaxy's greatest comic always played fast-and-loose with the Pilot of the Future but this interpretation really demonstrates how far Tharg was willing to deviate from the established formula.

The Fleetway annuals that accompanied most of IPC's weeklies (even the long-defunct ones) were assembled by a different team which allowed, by (bad) luck or (bad) judgement, the spin-offs to sometimes only enjoy a passing resemblance to the 'mothership'.  A situation compounded by finite budgets (which meant that much dipping into the combined IPC vaults was required), key creators already committed to the remorseless weekly schedule of the core title and, in 2000AD's case, an annual that (because of extended lead times) had to be put together alongside the earliest regular issues.  

This was one of the two earliest spin-offs from the weekly: IPC also issued a DAN DARE POSTER MAGAZINE one-shot circa August '77.  See here for more.  

It total, 14 2000AD annuals appeared cover-dated between 1978 (published 1977) and 1991 (published 1990).  Another four appeared as softcover "yearbooks" dated 1992 - 1995 (published 1991 - 1994 respectively).  The sudden decline in the sector sealed the fate of what had been a sure thing throughout the Star Age.

The following year (cover-dated 1979) Tharg added a DAN DARE ANNUAL to his hardback offering.  Although still hindered by Fleetway's set-up, the spin-off was actually better than the core title.  A second outing followed a year later before it became obvious that Dare, by now the subject of a possible TV adaptation and a mooted move to a revived EAGLE, was not going to become 2000AD's breakout character.  

The first JUDGE DREDD ANNUAL appeared in late 1980 with a 1981 cover date.  A total of eleven were published with the late appearing in 1990.  Four Yearbooks appeared between 1991 (cover-dated for the following year) and 1994 (for 1995).

1990 saw a concerted effort to elevate Rogue Trooper from the strip ensemble to make him the comic's next big star.  Unfortunately, he failed to break out and the ROGUE TROOPER ANNUAL 1991 was the only one to appear. 

1985: IPC JUNE FREE GIFTS HOUSE AD

From 1985: a June free gift boom courtesy of the IPC weeklies...

The humor (BUSTER and WHIZZER AND CHIPS) and boys 'adventure' weeklies (EAGLE AND TIGER and ROY OF THE ROVERS) served up, courtesy of a hook-up with stodgy breakfast biscuit provider (now, apparently, making inroads into China if the SUNDAY TIMES is to be believed) WEETABIX for cover-mounted promo badges featuring the briefly ubiquitous marketing creations (stars of TV ads, the improbable Weetabix Club and on-packaging appearances).  The badges were, probably, randomly distributed across the four titles.  

Odd-man-out was BATTLE ACTION FORCE who were fully engaged in the battle against global terror with a free, no-doubt Palitoy bankrolled, ACTION FORCE poster.

2015: IPC (International Publishing Corporation) TRIVIA.

IPC (International Publishing Corporation) was formed by the merger of Fleetway Publications and Odhams (both of which had been formed by previous mergers and consolidation) in 1961.

IPC itself was created as a holding company for these diverse separate entities in 1963.  Despite their common ownership, they continued to operate as individual entities, often in direct competition with each other.  The business was amalgamated into six distinct divisions in 1968.

Although the Fleetway brand (named after Fleetway House in Farringdon Street: ironically prone to flooding from the underground Fleet River which ran under Fleet Street) was jettisoned from the periodicals business, it was retained as the brand name for IPC's annuals through to the 1980s. 

Kings Reach Tower was opened in the early 1970s to house IPC's various magazine and comics titles.  It replaced a sprawling portfolio of properties that had been acquired through various mergers and purchases.  IPC eventually moved out in 2007, making way for extensive redevelopment (left) which included adding a further 11 floors to the original 30 stories.  

IPC, at one time, simultaneous owned and published arch Fleet Street rivals THE DAILY MIRROR and THE SUN (formally the Daily Herald).  The notoriously loss-making (sizzling soar-away) Sun was sold to Rupert Murdoch in 1969 for £800,000. 

The circulation of the revitalized SUN, once considered an albatross, overtook the Daily Mirror in 1978. 

MIRROR GROUP (which also included the Sunday Mirror and Sunday People) remained under IPC's ownership until it was sold to Robert Maxwell in 1984 for £113 million. 

IPC's YOUTH GROUP was similarly sold to Maxwell in 1987.  It was renamed Fleetway and moved out of Kings Reach Tower.  It was merged with rival London Editions (owned by Egmont), creating Fleetway Editions, in 1991.  Following the publisher's death in November 1991, and the subsequent financial unraveling of his business empire, Egmont took full control of the business.  The Fleetway brand was eventually ditched entirely. 

MIRROR GROUP was headquartered and published in a building (completed in 1963) overlooking London's Holborn Circus.  The cavernous basement housed the paper's printing presses.  The building was eleven stories above ground and included a helicopter pad on the roof.  The building was vacated in 1994 and subsequently demolished and replaced by the current headquarters of Sainsburys. 

2015: ITV's KENT HOUSE and KINGS REACH TOWER

From 2015: Kent House and the redeveloped Kings Reach Tower.

I was over on London's South Bank yesterday and took the chance to snap this shot of a new addition to the skyline: the extensively refurbished (I would argue: basically rebuilt) Kings Reach Tower, former hope of IPC.

It's now known as the South Bank Tower and is being redeveloped for mixed use as retail, office and residential (imagine the view!) use. 

KRT was built in the early 1970s to house IPC's sprawling print empire (although printing itself was handled elsewhere) and allowed the publisher to concentrate their previously sprawling estate (built up by various acquisitions) onto one site.  The original tower was thirty stories, the replacement will boast forty-one.  

The Stamford Street icon will have been familiar to anyone who read 2000AD and SCREAM during the Star Age because it managed to house both Tharg's Command Centre (the whole building was basically a giant rocket... which may explain the need for extensive modifications now) and Ghastly McNasty's dungeon.  

Tharg was forced to decamp to less salubrious accommodation in the late Eighties when IPC management, realizing that comics were no longer going to be a mainstream cash cow and were evolving into a niche product unworthy of the conglomerate's attentions, flogged everything still in print to Robert (Money's no object) Maxwell in 1987.  The cast adrift Youth Group revived the Fleetway brand (originally created by Mirror Group when they acquired Amalgamated Press, based in Farringdon Street's Fleetway House, in 1959.  The brand was formally phased out, in favor of IPC, in 1968 although it continued to appear on the publisher's annuals for decades to come.  

IPC was sold to Time Inc (part of the huge Time Warner media mammoth notorious for its disastrous purchase of AOL in 2000) in 2001.  The rapidly contracting IPC decamped from the tower in 2007.  The IPC name was dropped, in favor of Time Inc UK, in September 2014.  

The white building to the left will be instantly recognizable to any Star Age Warrior who lived in London and watched TV at the weekends.  The 24-storey Kent House, opened in 1972, was built to house London Weekend Television, the ITV franchise holder that went on-air in 1968.  The iconic building survived the mergers and contractions (and the competitive franchise round which swept away fellow London operator Thames in the Nineties) and eventually (probably because they like the view) became the corporate HQ for ITV.  Most of the broadcaster's other regional centres closed as the business was streamlined.  

The tower has studios at the base and offices above (it's a sign of ITV's former complexity that a whole tower was required to house the operations of a broadcaster that only operated from Friday evenings to Sunday night... although programme making, of course, happened all week) but rumors persist that ITV plans to vacate the offices and make a killing by selling them for (you guessed it) residential use.  LWT's original bosses were smart enough (and well aware of the fragile here-today, gone-tomorrow awarding of ITV franchises at the whim of the ITA and latterly IBA) to design the building to make subsequent conversion possible.  Future proofing. 

1983: 2000AD with free JUDGE DREDD POSTER House Ad (IPC)

From September 1983: an IPC House Ad, from EAGLE, promoting a free Judge Dredd poster in stablemate 2000AD.

The poster was slipped into prog 335 (cover-dated 24 September) and accompanied the launch of two new series for Strontium Dog and Nemesis the Warlock. 

1984: ACTION MAN STICKER ALBUM House Ad (BATTLE ACTION FORCE and EAGLE)

From 1984: An IPC House Ad for impending freebie ACTION MAN STICKER ALBUM (plus starter stickers), the tried-and-tested giveaway in the following week's EAGLE and BATTLE ACTION FORCE.

By the time the album came out, my loyalties were aligned to ACTION FORCE (the man's successor) so this seemed something of a throwback.  I never collected the stickers... and I've never met anyone else who did. 

1983: ON SALE THIS MONTH: EAGLE Issue 46 (IPC)

On sale this week in 1983: EAGLE issue 46 (although the issue itself is annoyingly unnumbered) with an eye-catching cover that somewhat blows the tease by revealing the mystery up front, eliminating the need to actually read the strip.

Other goodies inside included Dan Dare, Manix and Jake's Platoon. 

1986: ON SALE THIS MONTH: THE BEST OF MISTY MONTHLY Issue 1 (IPC)

On sale this month in 1986: the first issue of THE BEST OF MISTY MONTHLY, another of IPC's archive-driven compilations.

What made this one slightly different is that, unlike most of the others, it wasn't a brand extension of an existing weekly.  It resurrected a title that had been cancelled almost exactly six years earlier.

It ran for eight issues. 

1984: THE A-TEAM DUVET ADVERT in the EAGLE (IPC)

On these cold winter nights... and even colder mornings... wouldn't it be great if you could snuggle-up with the entire A-TEAM?  Or, at least, the male members thereof.  And not the new guy from season five.  

This half-page mail-away ad appeared in the EAGLE cover-dated 24 November 1984 which - as the advert handily points out - was just in time for Christmas (or sometime in January in the Royal Mail was slow).

1984: THE THIRTEENTH FLOOR GETS FESTIVE in the EAGLE (IPC)

From December 1984: MAX's Thirteenth Floor gets festive in this EAGLE wraparound cover. 

1982: CHRISTMAS EAGLE IS GAME FOR A LAUGH (IPC)

From December 1982: A blast-from-the-past as the revived EAGLE celebrated its first Christmas by pushing the boat out and calling in LWT's GAME FOR A LAUGH team for a festive photo-call. 

Note the strategically-placed copy of the first (of the new era) EAGLE ANNUAL. 

1985: JUDGE DREDD US MONTHLY UK House Ad (IPC)

From January 1985: An IPC House Ad for the fifteenth issue of the imported JUDGE DREDD US monthly which, by this point, was distributed through newsagents and branches of WH Smith.  

The publisher, Eagle Comics, was a joint-venture between IPC and Titan Books. 

1984: BATTLE ACTION FORCE House Ad (Marvel UK)

From 1984: a half-page House Ad for IPC's BATTLE ACTION FORCE, promoting the first instalement of a four-part BARON IRONBLOOD mask.  

It utilized one of the colour pages each week to print one quarter of the poster which, when all were removed from the comic (yikes), and accurately aligned, could be used as a poster. 
 

Marvel UK would have just given away a glossy poster...

1989: JUDGE DREDD'S CRIME FILES 1-4 (Fleetway)

This set of four JUDGE DREDD trade paperbacks were published in August 1989 (except, oddly, volume three which lists its month of publication as September instead).

What makes these full-colour Fleetway-published tomes stand out amongst the deluge of other 2000AD trade paperbacks, graphic novels and assorted strip collections (lets be honest, Tharg's seldom held back at unleashing blasts from his Thrill Powered past) is that they collected colour strips first published in the various annuals, yearbooks and Sci-Fi Specials throughout the eighties.  Some other characters, including Rogue Trooper and Sam Slade, also snuck in.  

1985: EAGLE HOLIDAY SPECIAL House Ad (IPC)

From April 1985, a House Ad for that year's EAGLE HOLIDAY SPECIAL.

1985: THE BEST OF 2000AD House Ad (IPC)

IPC House Ad, from October 1985, for the second issue of THE BEST OF 2000AD MONTHLY.

1985: 2000AD MONTHLY (US) Issue 1 (Eagle Comics)

This stunning Brian Bolland cover launched the US edition of 2000AD MONTHLY (not to be confused with the, also reprint-diven, UK BEST OF 2000AD MONTHLY which allowed IPC to plunder its own vaults), a 'spin-off' from Eagle Comics' successful Judge Dredd title.

Unsurprisingly, a serialised reprint of JD's Cursed Earth encounter with The Black Plague topped the bill to attract readers to what was otherwise something of an unknown quantity.  Previous attempts to ship copies of the original weekly across the Atlantic hadn't met with much success although they do seem to have piqued the interest of US publishers who promptly snapped-up the services of the Art and Script Droids.  

The remaining two strips, all published in colour and reformatted to remove the tell-tale UK chapter breaks, were DR and Quinch Go Straight and Strontium Dog in Death's Head (no relation).

This was the first of a six issue run, cover-dated April 1985.  The title returned as an ongoing series, once again under Eagle Comics' auspices, the following year and survived, albeit retooled, the transfer to Quality Comics.