1986: ON-SALE THIS WEEK: THE FINAL ISSUE OF RETURN OF THE JEDI WEEKLY (Marvel UK)

From June 1986: MARVEL UK's long-running (all the way back to the beginning of February 1978) STAR WARS franchise finally runs out of steam with the finale of RETURN OF THE JEDI weekly.  

Like pretty much everyone else, I'd drifted away from the 'Wars by this point (although it turned out to be only a short-lived departure... the 10th anniversary issue of STARLOG and the SW RPG SOURCE BOOK... although not the game itself... lured me back into the fold a year later) but, when I heard of the impending merger with SPIDER-MAN AND ZOIDS, I felt a pang of teen nostalgia and made sure I grabbed a copy of this final edition.  

The British Bullpen must have known that the writing was on the wall for a while.  The franchise was all-but-dead at this point with no new films to fuel interest.  Even the once ubiquitous toys were gathering dust on the racks.  Oh to have snapped them up at clearance prices.  

Marvel had obviously been chasing a younger readership for several years with ROTJ.  Perhaps the assumption was that as older fans drifted away, a new generation of younger readers would discover the saga through TV and VHS (and the Ewok teleflicks) and keep things solvent as long as possible.

Unfortunately for them, the US Bullpen hadn't read the memo and, trapped in approvals hell with Lucasfilm, shifted the emphasis away from the core Star Warriors and onto sundry supporting characters and new alien races to try and keep things interesting and simultaneously honoring Lucas' wish to "do nothing" whilst he pondered the future of his cash machine.  

The UK edition was finally, after years of running behind, finally all but neck-and-neck with the American edition.  So the decision to cut the frequency of the monthly to bi-monthly created new headaches for Cyril and team.  For a while they alternated one serialized contemporary new adventure with one archive tale.  But that stop-start approach was hardly satisfying.  So they ditched the US continuity entirely after issue 147 (wrapping up, appropriately enough, The Party's Over from US 105) in favor of rerunning the RETURN OF THE JEDI adaptation (148-155) last seen in 1983.

That left the final two US issues unpublished in the UK.  Post-merger, SPIDER-MAN AND ZOIDS ran the (fairly) self-contained third US annual rather than pick-up the dangling continuity threads.  

The 'second-feature' was a reprint of Fool's Bounty which, coincidentally, also the in-continuity strip from ROTJ issue 1 in 1983.  The weekly had come full circle and bowed out as it arrived. 

Rerunning the adaptation finally gave M-UK the chance to use the cover art from the four-part US ROTJ limited series, originally dropped in favor of photo-covers back in '83.

The real oddity was the long-running Power Pack back-up.  With nowhere to shuffle the strip, ROTJ readers were left on an unfortunate cliffhanger (or chasm plunge) with the vague instruction that Jedi's young readership should track down the US edition to find out what happened next.  Conveniently overlooking that imported copies of the US edition had come and gone from newsagents several months earlier and - reflecting the fact that the US book had just switched to Direct Sales Only, had been dropped from British bundles.  Even that information was printed so poorly that it was virtually impossible to read.  

1987: THUNDERCATS ISSUE 1 (Marvel UK)

THUNDERCATS... HO!

THUNDERCATS is a toys-to-comics/ animation format that probably requires little introduction.  This is the first issue of MARVEL UK's long-running tie-in which ultimately spawned an impressive 129 issues through to 1991.

It followed the established Marvel UK formula of supplementing reprints from the US Marvel title (issued under the Star Comics imprint) with original strips from British creative teams.  The US book clocked-up 24 issues, reprints of which were generally split across two issues of the British edition.

The first British sighting of the strips was in the first annual which reprinted Marvel's adaptation of the opening story of the TV series.  Rather than rerun the same material again, the weekly opened with the three-page summary posted below.

If my memory is correct, that three pager was first distributed as a freebie flyer in British toyshops (the fourth page was - logically - a plug for the toys) with a credit to Marvel but no reference to the upcoming new launch.

With readers brought up-to-speed, the issue then dived into a reprint of (I think) the second issue of the US book.

The cover was by Lee Sullivan.

The tone of the strips, from both sides of the Atlantic, were generally pitched slightly younger than the equivalent strips in THE TRANSFORMERS and ACTION FORCE with little effort to create the sprawling epics which became a trademark of the former.

The back-up strip would have been familiar with long-time readers of RETURN OF THE JEDI: a reprise of the earliest adventures of POWER PACK.  ROTJ had left the strip on a cliffhanger when it bowed out which was never resolved on this side of the Atlantic.

The first issue came with a free cover-mounted sticker (which has long since parted company from my copy).  Issues two and three gave away Panini's tie-in sticker album and stickers which utilised images from the TV show.

The weekly spun-off a succession of Annuals and Specials.  The latter followed the Collected Comics formula of recycling British strips for a second outing.

1992: THE POWER PACK TV PILOT in COMICS SCENE MAGAZINE (Starlog)

Strange... but true: I've always liked Marvel's POWER PACK.  There: I said it.  I thought the book's first couple of years was far better than the concept deserved to be.  Later - of course - it degenerated into a succession of power-swaps, gratuitous (sales-booster) appearances by other Marvel characters and a succession of tie-ins with whatever was Marvel's latest crossover event.  I'd long ago stopped reading but when they announced the book was canned, I was relieved.

Surprisingly, just as the title was waning, Marvel's one-time owner (and still a business partner) tried to sell a PP TV show and actually shot a pilot episode.

This article, from STARLOG spin-off COMICS SCENE issue 20 (cover-dated August 1992), covers the making of that - ultimately unsold - one-shot.  The Canadian shot pilot was originally produced as a perspective series for NBC's Saturday morning schedule (the network was in the process of shifting from animation to tween-friendly live-action) but was then pitched to local stations when the peacock net passed.

According to the usual online sources, the pilot did subsequent air several times on FOX although that looks a little TBC.  Certainly a bootleg copy is in circulation as I acquired a copy several years ago.

It's not a bad little show, best described as a mix of THE RED HAND GANG and MY SECRET IDENTITY (a similar show which might have helped kill the appeal of a second syndicated teen super-power series for local stations).  The producers do play fast-and-loose with the formula but to no great detriment.  The relatively small budget meant a New York City locale was out-of-the-question and the kids powers were also made more budget-friendly.  Also jettisoned were the matching costumes but - honestly - that's no bad thing.  Not only would they have looked daft but I don't think we really want to see kids running around in lycra costumes!

One other change was making the Power parents aware of their offspring's powers (their origins are explained - via voiceover - at the top of the show) whereas - in the comic - keeping them secret was a major plot-point.  I assume the producers were skittish of the idea of kids keeping secrets from their parents in a show primarily pitched at a young audience.

The performances were all reasonable and the young cast do what they can with the thin material.  The haunted house plot seemed a little off-message for what was being pitched as a superhero show and I found myself wondering whether perspective buyers were confused as to whether they would be buying a superhero show or a supernatural show.  The scares are - predictably - virtually non-existant but at least the whole thing is played straight.

The pilot - unsurprisingly - never reached British TV although the comic strip will be familiar to anyone who read Marvel UK's RETURN OF THE JEDI weekly (serialised reprints filled 90-odd issues and only ended when the title was cancelled) and THUNDERCATS (where the reprints - beginning again at the beginning - appeared from the first issue until being ousted by the merger of THE ADVENTURES OF THE GALAXY RANGERS).

1984: AMAZING HEROES MAGAZINE: POWER PACK

Marvel launched POWER PACK in May 1984.  AMAZING HEROES ran this piece to coincide with the first issue.  The cover is an original commission not seen elsewhere.

POWER PACK itself enjoyed surprising longevity, despite some highly erratic quality control after the first few years, eventually clocking-up 62 issues (to 1991).  It reduced to a bi-monthly frequency, and went direct-sales only, from issue 26 (October 1986).

A one-shot special (POWER PACK HOLIDAY SPECIAL), reuniting the original creative team, followed in 1992.

In more recent years, the Pack have been revived on several occasions, most notably as a series of out-of-continuity limited series aimed at younger readers.

In 1991, just as the comic book incarnation was winding down, New World Television produced a thirty minute (including commercials) live-action TV pilot for possible inclusion into NBC's teen-centric Saturday morning programming block.  NBC passed and NWT explored the possibility of a first-run syndication deal before abandoning the project.  The pilot has never been broadcast but copies are unofficially in circulation.

In the UK, US copies of Power Pack were distributed via newsagents as part of a bundle of US Marvel titles.  It was dropped from the range when its frequency was cut to bi-monthly.

The Pack were a regular fixture in STAR WARS RETURN OF THE JEDI weekly for some 90-odd issues, serialising the first 23 issues.  The strip ended, along with ROTJ itself, with issue 155.  This left the end-of-issue cliffhanger unresolved and readers were directed to track down the US edition to follow the story.

Reprints of Power Pack began again, starting from the beginning, in the UK edition of THUNDERCATS beginning in 1989.

AMAZING HEROES

ISSUE 46

1 MAY 1984

POWER PACK LAUNCH

PAID-FOR ADVERTISING

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