1986: MARVEL SUPER HEROES SECRET WARS UK STICKER ALBUM

From 1986: The MARVEL SUPER HEROES SECRET WARS STICKER ALBUM.

Buyers of MARVEL UK's 1986 weeklies will be familiar with this one... the (empty) album came bagged with copies of SECRET WARS II issue 66, SPIDER-MAN AND ZOIDS issue 31 and TRANSFORMERS issue 81.  All cover-dated 4 October.  So, if you were a True Believer, there was a good chance you ended up with three of the things!

The following week's issues all included a packet of stickers to help fuel the addiction.

The timing of this one seemed a bit weird back-in-the-day.  MARVEL UK was deep into the sprawling SECRET WARS II saga (the weekly switched storylines, and title, from issue 32) and the original Battle World romp seemed a little like ancient history.

Secret Wars - probably because it lacked the support of an animated series (although this album did briefly spark playground rumours that one was on its way) - never became the same mass marketing event in the UK that it was in the States... but we did get some spin-off merchandising, including the Mattel action figures that sparked it all.

As for the album itself: it basically takes the Jim Shooter-created premise of the original limited series and fleshes it out with more events, as illustrated in the not-seen-in-the-comics page below.  Maybe Shooter should get more credit for creating a scenario where - in theory - the heroes and villains could encounter an unlimited number of new threats and challenges.  Much like the we're-on-a-quest SF shows of the 1970s.  Except they never seemed to last long.

The artwork is uncredited throughout.  The panels are not lifted directly from the comics so I assume they were probably done by one (or maybe a team) of jobbing artists somewhere.  It must have kept them busy for a while... which may explain the relatively late launch.

The events of the sequel are - possibly because it was something of a sprawling mess - ignored.

The giveaway didn't seem to have much of an impact on my peers.  Unlike the TRANSFORMERS album given away earlier in the year, no one I knew (including me) bothered with this one.  Maybe it's because superheroes weren't quite as cool in the mid-eighties or maybe it lacked the all-important shiney cards (a gimmick nicked from football sticker collecting).  The art - whilst cool - couldn't compete with actual animation stills as seen in the TF collection.

Marvel Productions did - btw - punt the idea of a Secret Wars animated series to the US broadcasters but couldn't find any takers.

This isn't one of the three albums I ended up with that week.  All are now long-gone.  I found a completed copy (result!) in a store and couldn't pass up the chance to finally own it.

1985: SECRET WARS HOUSE ADS (Marvel UK)

The above is a selection of MARVEL UK House Ads for MARVEL SUPER HEROES SECRET WARS from 1985.

1985: CYRIL MEETS THE SECRET ARTIST (Marvel UK)

I realised the other day that it has been a VERY long time since I last posted an instalment of CYRIL's adventures on STARLOGGED.

Normal service will be resumed soon (I must... I must) but - in the meantime - here's a rather special episode: When CYRIL met the Secret Artist!

For those unfamiliar with the mysterious menace of Redan Place, the Secret Artist was a regular two-page humour feature in the earliest issues of MARVEL SUPERHEROES SECRET WARS (aka SECRET WARS).  It always followed the same formula as this episode: a page of strip followed by a full-page revelation of the latest "character assassination" by the purveyor of twisted portraiture.

Of course, CYRIL was also working at the British Bullpen so it was inevitable that the two would cross paths.

This strip originally appeared in an issue of SECRET WARS (I'm not sure which one) but was reprinted in RETURN OF THE JEDI issue 115 (31 August 1985), which is where I scanned this from.

A full run of SECRET ARTIST scans is buried (deep) in my mental STARLOGGED to-do list but it won't happen anytime soon as I have to unearth the issues from storage.

1983: ALPHA FLIGHT LAUNCH AD

Here's the 1983 launch advert for Marvel's ALPHA FLIGHT regular series, written and drawn by John Byrne.

UK reprints were originally pencilled-in for CAPTAIN BRITAIN's new monthly before M-UK decided to run all-British strips (albeit a mix of new and archive material) before finally becoming the regular supporting strip in MARVEL SUPER HEROES SECRET WARS (presumably because it only enjoyed limited interaction with the rest of the Marvel Universe and worked well reprinted in isolation).

1984: SECRET WARS EXTRA 1

COMICS FEATURE 29

Cover dated: May 1984

At the end of 2011, Marvel issued (yet another) collected edition of MARVEL SUPERHERO SECRET WARS (written by Marvel's Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter with art, mostly, by Mike Zeck).  As with the previous trade paperbacks, it collects the full 12-issue limited series.  This version also includes more detailed accounts of how the various participants gathered at the Beyonder's Central Park 'fly trap' and several text features.

The best of these extras is a detailed article on the Mattel Secret Wars action figure line, the licensing deal that kick-started the comic book.  Briefly: Mattel's arch-rival Kenner signed a deal with DC Comics (whose characters had a far higher mainstream profile, thanks to movies and TV) to create the (superior) SUPER POWERS COLLECTION and Mattel, fearing that it was missing the next best thing, turned up at Marvel's Park Avenue South door.  Unfortunately, Mattel's efforts were so poor that failure was assured from the start and the toy line shuttered after two releases (with the final figures dumped onto the European market... to the benefit of local collectors).

The new edition also reprints the (familiar... yet different) cover and article from MARVEL AGE MAGAZINE 12 (March 1984).  But, there was a lot of other interviews and coverage in the fan press at the time... and Slow Robot has it!

Marvel also (finally) released Shooter's shoddy sequel SECRET WARS II (albeit the core 9-issue limited series and none of the boggling number of official and unofficial tie-ins) in an affordable trade paperback format (the full saga is available in a hefty shelf-busting hardback volume).  Which gives Slow Robot an excuse to run some SW II material in future too!

COMICS FEATURE ran for 57 issues, beginning in 1980, published by New Media Publishing.  It also spawned six specials.

Marvel UK, after a slight delay, also published SECRET WARS, followed by the sequel, as a fortnightly/ weekly.  Reprints of the first limited series (along with ALPHA FLIGHT, the ICE MAN limited series and the first regular home for the UK-originated ZOIDS strip) filled the first 31 issues before switching to SECRET WARS II (and sundry tie-in's and unrelated reprints) for the remaining of its 80 issues.  The UK also saw a hardback annual and three specials.