1989: THE BOG PAPER ISSUE 1, WITH FREE GIFT (MARVEL UK)

On sale right now back in 1989: the first issue of the - ahem - unusual MARVEL UK weekly THE BOG PAPER. As the title suggests, this humour weekly was devoted to all things toilet.

It's unusual because the British Bullpen seldom embraced humour with any real enthusiasm, clearly preferring to leave it to the genre masters on the South Bank and in Dundee. Maybe, at the end of the decade,  Marvel sensed their traditional grip on a declining market was starting to weaken. Or maybe Marvel just had a mad moment.

It was also unusual for Marvel UK to invest so heavily in originated material (no reprints here) without a toy or media tie-in to prop up sales.

I've posted this initial issue before but my previous copy had long since parted company with the free gift. I found a replacement with gift still attached. Bog on!

1989: IT'S WICKED HOUSE ADS (Marvel UK)

These are two 1989 (from June and July) MARVEL UK House Ads for their rare, and short-lived, humour venture IT'S WICKED.

This bordering-on-the-traditional all-originated weekly had a spooky theme (shades of IPC's long-defunct MONSTER FUN) and cannily used Slimer from THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS (a license that Marvel UK mined a great deal during this period) as the anchor character.

It didn't last long… but the British Bullpen had another stab at the market later the same year with THE BOG PAPER… to equally lacklustre results.  

1989: THE BOG PAPER LAUNCH AD (Marvel UK)

This is the House Ad for the November 1989 launch of Marvel UK's THE BOG PAPER.  I think you get the general idea....

1989: THE BOG PAPER: DOCTOR PHOO (Marvel UK)

More Phoo from Marvel UK!  

The cover of THE BOG PAPER issue 2 (11 November 1989)

1989: THE BOG PAPER from MARVEL UK

Here's an improbable entry from the Annex-of-Ideas back catalogue: the toilet-obsessed humour weekly THE BOG PAPER, launched in November 1989 (making it a contemporary to the similarly short-lived THE INCREDIBLE HULK PRESENTS).

This is a massive departure from the usual Marvel UK style: heading in the direction of comics-for-big-kids like VIZ.  I can only assume that Marvel's mandarins looked at the collapsing British comics market and thought humour titles looked a better bet than traditional action/ adventure fare (a genre that had gone into steep decline since the middle of the decade).

Marvel UK had tentatively toyed with humour comics before (notably the Mad-inspired FRANTIC and MARVEL MADHOUSE in the early eighties) but those were reprint-based monthlies.  This was an all-new weekly, with all the origination costs that go with it.  

May of the same year had seen the launch of IT'S WICKED! - a humour weekly in the MONSTER FUN tradition - which used that annoying ectoplasm Slimer from THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS as its star.  Despite the media tie-in (and, lets face it, M-UK bunged the Ghostbusters in every possible comic during this period) and some unsubtle attempts to clone the look of DC Thompson's fare, it shuttered after only 17 issues.

I've showcased the weekly's most memorable strip - DOCTOR PHOO (do you see what they did there?) but other strips included Flush Gordon, Chicken Vindaloo, King John, Super Lu and other shit-based strips.

So obscure is the BP that I'm not sure how many issues in clocked-up, I'm betting no-more (and quite possibly less) than 15.