1984: LAST ISSUE ALERT: THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL (SECOND SERIES) ISSUE 17

From October 1984: the finale of the second (not to be confused with any of the Panini-era reboots) run of THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL, published - of course - by MARVEL UK.

This was an underwhelming I-wonder-why-they-bothered last hurrah which seems to have been published simply to set up the merger with - of all things - THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN THE BARBARIAN the following month.

MWOM had suffered from a weak start (thanks to an all-reprint line-up and colour printing so poor the strips were a chore to read) but had settled down nicely after the merger of DAREDEVILS to become a best-of-both-worlds mix of US reprints (hard-to-find in the UK limited series), original UK strips (notably Captain Britain) and features (including fanzine reviews and the Night Raven text stories).

Unfortunately the British Bullpen seemed to have lost faith (or interest) once the CB strip shifted across to headline his own anthology book and this issue has more than a whiff of if-we-must.

The page count is reduced and there is no interior colour... and yet the cover price remained the same.  Sneaky.  Kicking of the four-part Magik reprint (an X-verse strip with fantastic elements well suited to... you get the idea...) looks purely like a way to tempt some of the MWOM readership to sample Conan for the first time.  You can't imagine the overlap in audience was massive... and it is hard to imagine the SSOCTB readership being too impressed with having the mainstream Marvel universe suddenly imposed on them.  Maybe colour interior pages and the start of the CONAN THE DESTROYER movie adaptation softened the blow.  At least for a few months.  Savage Sword was cancelled within the year.

1976: THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL HITS 200 ISSUES

From July 1976: British Marvel's THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL weekly celebrates 200 issues in print.

The black & white anthology, launched in 1972, started life as a vehicle for heavy hitters Hulk, Spider-man and the Fantastic Four in a plan to raise the characters UK profiles in the hope of shifting more copies of the imported US comics.  Early success meant that plans changed and the line expanded to become a fully-fledged operation, albeit largely planned and managed out of the New York Bullpen.

MWOM has a bit of a reputation - with justification - for being a vehicle for characters (with the exception of the Green Goliath, who became the title's anchor star) who had performed less well elsewhere.  A succession of mergers saw the likes of FURY, PLANET OF THE APES and DRACULA LIVES (as well as a humbled FF) pop up in its pages.

By issue 200, the line-up consisted of the Hulk, the Avengers (previously stars of their own fairly successful weekly) and Conan (star of a less successful weekly who enjoyed greater success in the back of the Avengers comic).  The latter two had both crossed over from the collapse of The Avengers comic, cementing a weird partnership which also extended into the British annuals.

As this was the first Marvel UK launch, it was also the first to celebrate this milestone.  As the decade dragged on, the Bullpen found it harder-and-harder to keep subsequent titles in business for any length of time.  Hatch-match-dispatch became the order of the day.  Not even the runaway success of STAR WARS came close, thanks to a frequency change after 1980 and a reboot - with a new issue one - in 1983.

MWOM soldiered on, probably bolstered by wave of refugee readers from defunct titles, until January 1979 when it was radically retooled as MARVEL COMIC.  Which didn't last long.  The masthead returned in the Eighties (albeit for less than two years) and has enjoyed an extended run as part of the Panini line.  It's almost surprising that Marvel have never adopted the brand in the States.

That's a very happy Hulk.

1983: THE FINAL ISSUE OF MARVEL UK'S THE DAREDEVILS

From November 1983: MARVEL UK's THE DAREDEVILS closes after a mere 11 issues.

This is probably one of the most famous failures in the whole pantheon of British Marvel books... and let's be frank... there were an awful lot of short-run titles in the 20+ years the British Bullpen was open for business.

One of the funny things about the failure - and subsequent merger with (the revived) MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL is that it didn't transfer the title star in the merger.  Frank Miller's DD didn't make the cut.  And the tie-up also sqeezed out the new X-Men, stars of MWOM.  Clearly critical success did not automatically secure you a place.

Captain Britain, the main selling point of The Daredevils, did fortunately make the cut.  Which is surprising considering Marvel UK's accountants were always looking at ways to end expenditure on new material in favour of freebie reprints.

The makeweight strip - Sixties Spider-man adventures, rehoused from the SPIDER-MAN POCKET BOOK the previous year, never stood a chance.

I must admit that - at the time - I rather liked the results of the merger.  And I still think the new MWOM was one of the stronger titles M-UK ever published.  Shoddy printing not withstanding.  I think the combined line-up pulled together the best of both worlds and - at the time - I lapped up the fanzine reviews (no longer written - like much of the original content in The Daredevils - by Alan Moore), the reprints of hard-to-find US limited series, the (just reprinted) Night Raven text stories and the showcase feature (my first introduction to H.M.S Conqueror, Britain's STAR TREK knock-off).

1985 GRACE JONES, FROM CONAN THE DESTROYER, ON THE COVER OF THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN ISSUE 88 (MARVEL UK)

From February 1985: Grace Jones graces the eye-catching cover of MARVEL UK's THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN THE BARBARIAN magazine issue 88. The still is, of course, from the sequel flick CONAN THE DESTROYER. 

This is from the UK title's final year in print (although the Barbarian would make two further comebacks over the next decade), issue 93 was the last, and it's safe to say that it was probably the feature films that were keeping the venture afloat at this point. 

The MWOM masthead continues to adorn the cover as one of the most incongruous mergers in the history of the Annex of Ideas officially continued. In reality this was the reprints of the X-Men limited series MAGIK and a few feature pages. The reprint, launched in MWOM's lacklustre finale, was presumably chosen because its fantasy fare was a reasonable post-merger fit but it still seems unlikely that Conan's self-contained audience would have been overwhelmed by the sudden invasion of the superhero universe. Did the merger prolong Savage Sword for a few more months... or did it hasten its demise?

1974: MARVEL UK GOES GLOSSY House Ad

From January 1974: Another Mighty Marvel UK landmark moment: glossy covers!

I always think of glossy covers and the defining feature of British Marvel.  They always helped the line standout when racked alongside the IPC and DCT weeklies and their (usually) bargain-basement production standards (of course, they were investing a lot more in originating new material rather than just recycling from the States).

So, it's easy to forget that in the early (and late) Seventies, Marvel's British weeklies had newsprint covers.  THE AVENGERS, their third launch (September 1973), was the first to dabble in the new format... and their two existing titles followed at the turn of the year.  

Glossy covers and 36-page interiors remained the default format (with a few exceptions: CAPTAIN BRITAIN sacrificed the glossy covers in favour of colour interior pages, FURY deliberately aped the low-fi formats of its war rivals and STAR WARS WEEKLY sliced four pages to make life easier for the pushed-for-filler Bullpen and to recoup the costs of the license) until the Marvel Revolution of 1979 tried to make Marvel's comics look the same as all the others.  

STAR WARS WEEKLY and DOCTOR WHO WEEKLY retained their glossy exteriors throughout the Revolution (because it allowed them to showcase stills to catch the attention of casual browsers) and shiny covers returned (coinciding with the start of the SPIDER-MAN live-action TV show in the UK) in late 1981.  

They remained, with the occasional exception (the experimental THE THING IS BIG BEN), throughout the rest of the history of the Annex of Ideas... although some formats were more glossy than others. 

1978: IRON MAN House Ad (Marvel UK)

From August 1978: MARVEL UK announces the return of Iron Man, in the pages of THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL.  As well as his continuing slot in the Avengers... currently booked into the pages of Spider-man's weekly. 

I imagine some readers had to re-read this... it does, at first glance, look awfully like the announcement of an IM solo title. 

1983: THE DAREDEVIL POSTER/ PLUG (Marvel UK)

From 1983: MARVEL UK devoted the centre-spread of SPIDER-MAN issue 533 for a glossy plug for their DAREDEVILS monthly.

Come to think of it... it does look pretty appealing.

This appeared in May and DD was defunct by November.  It mustered only 11 issues before folding into THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL. 

1973: ON SALE THIS MONTH: THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL Issue 17 (Marvel UK)

On sale this week in 1973: MARVEL UK's THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL issue 17, cover-dated 27 January 1973.

This was still the British Bullpen's only title (SPIDER-MAN would follow in a few months) so it still boasted the premium tier line-up of THE INCREDIBLE HULK, FANTASTIC FOUR and SPIDER-MAN.  All of the reprints would have been familiar to readers of the Power Comics line of the previous decade... but it's a safe bet that many of those readers had long since moved on from comics... leaving the next generation of Marveldom to discover them for the first time. 

1973: ON SALE THIS MONTH: THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL Issue 14 (Marvel UK)

Another British comic that you would have found on-sale this very week way-back-when... the fourteenth issue of the original THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL from 1973.

MWOM was Marvel's first official venture into the British market (although all the strips here would already have been familiar to anyone who had read the Power Comics weeklies of the previous decade) and, as such, cherry-picked the best (and most bankable) strips from the Bullpen's back catalog: The Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic Four and Spider-man.  

The cover is a brand-new composite prepared by the "British Desk" in the New York Bullpen. 

1984: ON SALE THIS MONTH: THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL ISSUE 8 (Marvel UK)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!  I hope one-and-all had a great festive break.

To start the New Year off... here is the first in a series of random on-sale-this-month blasts-from-the-past: the eighth issue of the revived THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL from early 1984.

MWOM and the short-lived THE DAREDEVILS had merged the previous month, a combination that bolstered MWOM by adding first-run Captain Britain adventures, Night Raven text stories, the Showcase feature and various text features.  Unfortunately, to clear space MWOM jettisoned the New X-Men reprints, ending a run that dated back some five years via MARVEL SUPERHEROES to RAMPAGE MONTHLY.  

The blow was softened by making Frank Miller's four-part Wolverine series the latest limited series to appear in MWOM.  

The Daredevils logo vanished from the cover after the tenth issue but the Captain Britain strip continued through to issue sixteen.  The seventeenth issue was the last. 

1977: THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL and DRACULA LIVES (Marvel UK)

 

The end of PLANET OF THE APES the previous week left the way clear for THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL to, belatedly, add Tomb of Dracula reprints to the line-up.  The strip had, despite the DRACULA LIVES masthead continuing to appear post-merger of the POTA weekly, been absent from the British line-up for months. 

So, issue 247 (cover-dated 22 June 1977) included this two-page text feature refresher before picking up the action...

1985: THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN THE BARBARIAN Issue 93 (Marvel UK)

The end of another chunk of MARVEL UK history: the hefty (84 pages!) finale of THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN THE BARBARIAN.

Cover-dated July 1985, a ninety-three issue run seems remarkable longevity.  Even more so considering that the first volume of Savage Sword, published weekly, had been the British Bullpen's first significant failure: canned after a mere eighteen issues a decade earlier.

The only M-UK monthly to surpass this run was, of course, DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE which celebrated its 100th the same year… but that had the advantage of a 43 issue head start as a weekly.  STARBURST MAGAZINE also soared way past the centenary mark… but only after M-UK had passed it onto Visual Imagination.

At his peak, circa early 1981, the Barbarian was appearing simultaneous in three titles: this monthly, the Pocket Book (also monthly) and in VALOUR/ FUTURE TENSE AND VALOUR.

Conan's fortunes were no doubt boosted by the two early eighties Arnie outings (the adaptation of the second, CONAN THE DESTROYER, had graced the pages of the magazine from issue 85 onwards) which, in turn, had spawned a flurry of (not always terribly good) cinematic imitators.  Ironically, SS was cancelled just as Conan's co-star Red Sonja was also making her (underwhelming) screen debut.

Savage Sword had, for the most part, been left to do its own thing throughout the lifespan of the title.  The only significant (and arguably ill-advised) intervention from the rest of the M-UK line being the merger of THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL spanning issues 85-90.  Did this uncomfortable combination extend the life of Savage Sword by another few months… or hasten its demise as traditional readers turned away from the unwelcome infusion of the mainstream Marvel Universe?

Conan had nowhere to merge (a sign of the times) but this didn't end his British run entirely.  After a five year hiatus he returned as part of the line-up of the short-lived anti-heroes weekly HAVOC and then vanished again until the even-more-short-lived CONAN THE ADVENTURER.  

1984: SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN and MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL MERGE (Marvel UK)

The end of another MARVEL UK era: THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN THE BARBARIAN issue 84 (October 1984) announces the impending merger of THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL.

Although MWOM's second volume only clocked-up seventeen issues, it's line could be tracked (with a couple of brief hiatuses along the way) all the way back to the launch of the original MWOM, the British Bullpen's first title, in 1972.

The Marvel Revolution transformed MWOM weekly into the new MARVEL COMIC in January 1979 (February's copies were lost in a distribution strike which forced Marvel to briefly shut up shop) only to see another relaunch, as the monthly MARVEL SUPERHEROES, that summer.

MARVEL SUPERHEROES clocked-up 397 issues (retaining the original numbering dating back to 1972) before expiring in May 1983, giving way for the revived MWOM.

Folding MWOM into SAVAGE SWORD wasn't an obvious combination (indeed, it seems to have been design to annoy readers of both) but it's a sign of how few options Marvel had left.  For the first time since the launch of RAMPAGE's second volume, Marvel UK had no monthly superhero book.  

The British Bullpen had at least been canny enough to cue up a fantasy strip (a reprint of the X-Men spin-off MAGIK, another four-issue limited series) in MWOM's final outing rather than try and shoehorn in a pure tights-and-flights story.  

Despite (or perhaps because of) the combination, Conan's own time was coming to an end and Savage Sword itself shuttered with a hefty extra-length 93rd issue within a year.  

Savage Sword 85 was also the first issue of the Conan monthly to boast colour interior pages.

Marvel UK also issued the CONAN THE DESTROYER movie adaptation as an annual.  

1984: CAPTAIN BRITAIN and THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL House Ads (Marvel UK)

This full-page of MARVEL UK House Ads appeared in the 84th issue (the last with all black-and-white interiors trivia fans) of THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN THE BARBARIAN monthly from October 1984.

The top one previews the about-to-launch (it was slightly delayed, actually going on sale in December/ January) CAPTAIN BRITAIN monthly, a return to his own title after half-a-decade bumming around assorted (always about to close) M-UK monthlies.  What's interesting here is that they still hadn't quite nailed the line-up: Jeff Hawke (presumably reprints) never did appear.  Incidentally, a fanzine article from this period revealed that Alpha Flight was part of the in-house dummies, a strip that eventually went into MARVEL SUPER HEROES SECRET WARS instead.

The other half-pager is promoting what was actually the final issue of THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL's second run (finally ending a run that, despite various name and frequency changes, could be traced back to the launch of M-UK back in 1972) and the beginning of a reprint run of the X-Men related Magik four-parter.  Another full-page add elsewhere in the same issue announced that, as of the following month, it would be continuing in the pages of Conan itself (a merger every bit as bonkers as when the original Savage Sword was folded into THE AVENGERS in the seventies).

The final issue of MWOM itself was distinctly lacklustre and apparently only allowed out the door to prime readers for the upcoming merger.  The page count was dropped and the interior colour abandoned altogether.  Needless to say, the changes extracted no downward pressure on the cover price.  

1977: DRACULA LIVES IN MWOM (Marvel UK)

DRACULA LIVES! Again.  

The Prince of Darkness was temporarily laid to rest following the demise of PLANET OF THE APES AND DRACULA LIVES when only the movie tie-in made the immediate leap into the pages of THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL.

However, with the last of the US Apes strips exhausted (and the license running out), Tomb of Dracula reprints were belatedly used to plug the gap.

Here's a House Ad from MWOM 15 June 1977 announcing his imminent resurrection. 

1982: MARVEL SUPERHEROES and RAMPAGE MERGE (Marvel UK)

Two half-page house ads from the end of 1982:

Two Winter Specials, Conan and The Avengers, which - unusually - were full-colour affairs just before the format became the norm for MARVEL UK.

The other announces the merger of RAMPAGE (after 54 issues) with MARVEL SUPERHEROES (from 393… remember: that numbering stretched all the way back to the first issue of MWOM in 1972), transferring the New X-Men into MS.  

RAMPAGE retained a mention on the cover of the merged title for only two issues (it vanished after 394) but the X-Men stuck around for the rest of the run (Marvel Superheroes shuttered with 397) and then resurfaced in the replacement: the revived THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL.

Rampage was replaced by THE DAREDEVILS and Marvel Superheroes by the aforementioned second volume of MWOM.

The MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE strips that were left homeless when Rampage closed were revived in March 1984 with the launch of THE THING IS BIG BEN weekly.

1982: THE DAREDEVILS LAUNCH AD (Marvel UK)

THE DAREDEVILS, edited by Bernie Jaye, is often lauded as one of the greatest of MARVEL UK's offerings, although it only managed to scrape an underwhelming 11 issues before merging into THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL (a combination which, to my mind, was actually superior… until the last issue anyway).

The line-up featured brand new Captain Britain strips by Alan's Moore and Davis alongside reprints of Frank Miller's run on Daredevil and some out-of-place sixties Spider-man reprints ported across from the recently defunct SPIDER-MAN POCKET BOOK.  A hefty number of text features (including new Night Raven prose adventures), most penned by Alan Moore (the copious amount of Moore material makes this a more popular than usual run of back issues), rounded out each issue and gave it a more adult for-the-fans feel.  

Launched at the end of 1982, this was amongst the final black & white comics launched by Marvel UK.  The following year saw the revival, as a colour monthly, of THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL… a title that would absorb this one within the year.  

The other half-page (I actually forget where I swiped this page from) is a Quinn/ Howett gag strip… a reliable standby in most of Marvel's British titles during this period.  

1979: THE MICRONAUTS MICROSHIP: ENDEAVOR (Marvel)

Think of it as a missing page from THE OFFICIAL HANDBOOK OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE…

THE MICRONAUTS were firmly established as mainstays of the late seventies/ early eighties Marvel Universe (gosh, they even featured in a four-issue team-up with the X-Men which crossed the Atlantic in the pages of THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL), regularly featuring guest-shots by other Marvel characters (a win-win situation: kids who liked the toys might be tempted to pick-up other Marvel books whilst Marvel fans, predisposed to giving the licensed book a wide berth might be motivated to pick it up to see what another character was doing).  Only Rom (another MCU interloper) was off-limits.

Until Marvel scrapped the series, to make way for the ill-fated NEW UNIVERSE, and surrendered the license.  Suddenly, like the aforementioned Space Knight, Godzilla, The Transformers and others, it was as if the 'nauts never lived.

This, a one-page guide to their ship the Endeavor, is the sort of thing that - a few years later - would have been a Handbook mainstay.  It appeared in the 4th issue, cover-dated April 1979.

I'm sure a b&w variation of this page also appeared in MARVEL UK's STAR WARS WEEKLY at some point.

1973: SPIDER-MAN COMICS WEEKLY ISSUE 1 (Marvel UK)

Salutations Spider-Friends!

Here it is, the second launch from mighty MARVEL UK: SPIDER-MAN COMICS WEEKLY from February 1973.

Spidey had, of course, been part of the inaugural line-up of THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL, launched a few months earlier but it didn't take long for him to graduate to his own weekly.

The strip picked-up where MWOM (after 19 issues) left off with a reprint from US AMAZING SPIDER-MAN issue 9.

Spidey's slot in the Marvel anthology was taken, sensibly enough, by Daredevil (from issue 20) as the House Ad below shows.

The long-running back-up strip was Thor, beginning with his first solo appearance from US JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY issue 83.  The Thunder God would bounce around the Marvel UK line-up for another decade before, finally, graduating to his own (short-lived) weekly.

Stan also invited Brits to sign-up for Marvel's fan club: F.O.O.M (Friends Of Ol' Marvel) for a mere 50p.  Membership included a subscription to the club's newsletter but British readers soon noticed a lack of coverage from the British Bullpen and a regular column was added to the line-up.

The Web Head already had a track record in the UK predating the opening of the Annex of Ideas: he'd been part of the POW! line-up from 1967 before being squeezed out as the Power Comics line condensed down from a peak of four titles.  Long-time British readers would have found many of the early British Marvel adventures rather familiar as the weeklies covered a lot of familiar ground.

The launch proved a canny one: although it went through a number of name changes (and even more format swicheroos), the weekly clocked-up a highly respectable 666 issues (through to December 1985) before succumbing to patchy distribution, falling sales, a declining market and a disastrous relaunch.  It returned, for another year, as SPIDER-MAN AND ZOIDS, a few months later.

1977: THE COMPLETE FANTASTIC FOUR TEASER HOUSE AD (Marvel UK)

Here's another MARVEL UK House Ad, this time plugging the impending launch of the 1977-78 THE COMPLETE FANTASTIC FOUR weekly, the British Bullpen's first punt at launching the foursome in a solo title.

This ad appeared in THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL issue 259, cover-dated 14 September 1977.