STARLOGGED - GEEK MEDIA AGAIN: THE TITANS

Showing posts with label THE TITANS. Show all posts

Friday, 23 January 2015

1975: STAN LEE PROMOTES THE TITANS (Marvel UK)

From 1975: Smooth, sophisticated, Seventies super-salesman Stan Lee cranks-up the MARVEL UK hype machine to announce the impending launch of a new weekly!

Such announcements (along with anything that hinted at a new look, format change, relaunch or free gift) were also most welcome and, in those pre-internet days, usually the first hint that something new was about to land on the shelves of the local newsagent.

Stan was, of course, hawking the new TITANS weekly, which used the new fangled landscape technology to cram two US pages side-by-side on one A4 page.

The checklist below includes Marvel's adaptation of ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES, which includes a whole pre-title sequence which isn't in the film version (and may... or may not... have been filmed).

1976: MARVEL UK TITANS-FORMAT WEEKLIES HOUSE AD

From 1976: Two landscape luvlies from the British Bullpen. This MARVEL UK House Ad appeared in late May.

Saturday, 3 January 2015

1976: ON SALE THIS MONTH: THE TITANS Issue 12 (Marvel UK)

Another past-blast from this week in history: the twelfth issue of the legendary THE TITANS from 1976.

Legendary? Because it dared to be different! The (Manhattan-based) British Bullpen tried to give cash-strapped Brits more bang for their pence by flipping The Titans (and Super Spider-man) and placing two pages of art side-by-side on landscape pages.

For some reason (anyone got any ideas?), the previous issue and this one were "emergency issues" and appeared without their usual glossy covers (and with only 32 rather than the usual 36 pages). Marvel, bless 'em, at least softened the blow by reducing the cover price by a penny.

It the inefficient and strike-ridden Seventies there could have been any number of reasons for the sudden change but it's always struck me as odd that Marvel knew in advance that the problem was going to occur. Something of a "planned outage".

The time of year may have had something to do with it: maybe the need to pull production ahead of the Christmas break (an annual ritual I'm all too familiar with) may have meant there simply wasn't enough glossy paper and press time around to produce the normal issues.

Wednesday, 20 November 2013

1976: GHOST RIDER TITANS HOUSE AD (Marvel UK)

Introducing... the Ghost Rider!

This was a MARVEL UK House Ad from May 1976 plugging his first appearance in the pages of THE TITANS.

Wednesday, 20 June 2012

1975-76: THE TITANS IN-HOUSE ADVERTISEMENTS

As a postscript to our TITANS coverage (here, here and here), here's a selection of house ads (from 1975 and 1976) plugging the wares of the weekly.

There are probably others floating around the weeklies. If we uncover more, we'll post them in the future.

11 October 1975

26 October 1975

8 November 1975

10 January 1976

17 January 1976

24 January 1976

14 February 1976

22 May 1976

9 May 1976

Monday, 18 June 2012

THE TITANS PART THREE

Here it is true believers... the third (and final) chunk of covers from Marvel UK's 1975-76 experiment: THE TITANS.

The axe fell, according to seventies fanzine BEM, because the split-page landscape format devoured reprints too quickly. Something that surely must have occurred to Marvel's masterminds when they conceived the idea (and then extended it to SPIDER-MAN).

Talking of Spider-man, Titans merged with its stablemate to form SPIDER-MAN AND THE TITANS. For a while at least.

ISSUE 50

29 September 1976

ISSUE 51

4 October 1976

ISSUE 52

12 October 1976

ISSUE 53

20 October 1976

ISSUE 54

27 October 1976

ISSUE 55

3 November 1976

ISSUE 56

10 November 1976

ISSUE 57

17 November 1976

ISSUE 58

24 November 1976

- Final issue -

Merger announcement.

Thursday, 14 June 2012

1975: THE TITANS - PART TWO

Part two of Slow-Robot's complete cover gallery of Marvel UK's whacky landscape-format weekly THE TITANS.

ISSUE 25

10 April 1975

ISSUE 26

17 April 1976

ISSUE 27

25 April 1975

ISSUE 28

1 May 1975

ISSUE 29

8 May 1975

ISSUE 30

15 May 1976

ISSUE 31

22 May 1976

ISSUE 32

29 May 1976

ISSUE 33

5 June 1976

ISSUE 34

9 June 1976

The cover-dates seem to do a little 'reset' with this issue as the date for this issue is only four days later than the previous week. As cover-dates were always one week ahead of publication, this was presumably an administrative move rather than a sudden (and short-lived) increase in frequency.

ISSUE 35

16 June 1976

ISSUE 36

23 June 1976

ISSUE 37

30 June 1976

ISSUE 38

7 July 1976

ISSUE 39

14 July 1976

ISSUE 40

21 July 1976

ISSUE 41

28 July 1976

ISSUE 42

4 August 1976

ISSUE 43

11 August 1976

ISSUE 44

18 August 1976

ISSUE 45

25 August 1976

ISSUE 46

1 September 1976

ISSUE 47

8 September 1976

ISSUE 48

15 September 1976

ISSUE 49
22 September 1976

- TO BE CONTINUED -

Wednesday, 13 June 2012

1975: THE TITANS - PART ONE

In October 1975, British Marvel flipped! On a mission to give British kids more punch for their pence, Marvel experimented with the eccentric landscape format.

The so-called TITANS format involved turning the A4 comic on its side so that the staples now ran along what would have been the top. The paper format was still the established mix of glossy colour covers and black and white interiors on cheap paper.

The new format required the production of new landscape "widescreen" cover artwork.

Inside, some new landscape splash pages and posters were producers (by uncredited US artists) while the existing US pages were shrunk to A5 size and printed side-by-side, two to a page. The reduced size, and Marvel's patchy printing, did the artwork no favours.

The two-to-a-page formula allowed Marvel to (give or take) run twice as many story pages as one of their traditional portrait-style weeklies. The Titans' line-up consisted of (all reprints) Captain America, The Sub Mariner, The Inhumans, Captain Marvel, Nick Fury, The X-Men, Fantastic Four and Ghost Rider.

The new weekly was accompanied by a major promotional push. Coinciding with the first issue, Stan Lee travelled to the UK for a series of media interviews and personal appearances including a display of Marvel art at London's ICA and a talk hosted by Lee at Camden's Roundhouse (a sell-out thanks to heavy promotion in the weeklies). We'll do more about Lee's UK visit in a future post.

Inexplicably, issues 11 and 12 were special "emergency" issues with a reduced page count and no glossy cover (and a penny off the cover price to compensate). Marvel clearly knew this was on-the-cards as they had time to change the pagination of the issues and include a line of cover text. An explanation (of a kind) appeared in issue 14, placing the blame on mysterious "technical problems". Presumably this was either a lack of paper or mechanical problems at the printer. Marvel used to print two weeks worth of issues in one hit, explaining why the problem affected two issues.

The Titans format was obviously deemed successful enough to also be adopted by SPIDER-MAN, partially to allow it to accommodate refugees from the just-cancelled THE SUPER-HEROES. Spidey flipped from issue 158.

What no-one at Marvel seemed to have seriously considered is that the Titans format devoured material twice as fast as the existing weekly package, exhausting strips even quicker. That's fine for strips with years of back-issues available to plunder but dangerous for the likes of Spider-Man which was already rapidly catching-up with the US editions.

The Titans folded after a year, merging into SPIDER-MAN from issue 199 (1 December 1976) and retained cover-billing until issue 230.

The Titans brand was revived, briefly, in 1980-81 for THE TITANS POCKET BOOK.