1979: DRACULA IN MARVEL COMIC HOUSE AD (Marvel UK)

Here's another MARVEL COMIC House Ad (from May 1979) from Marvel UK.

DRACULA LIVES! had, of course, been the title of the British horror weekly, of a few years earlier, that reprinted (in glorious black & white) TOMB OF DRACULA alongside a smorgasbord of seventies supernatural scares (Werewolf By Night, Ghost Rider, Legion of Monsters etc.).

Much more MARVEL COMIC coming soon....

1984: CARAVAN OF COURAGE in RETURN OF THE JEDI weekly (Marvel UK)

THE EWOKS ARE BACK!

Statement.  Or warning?  Here's a cover feature, from Marvel UK's RETURN OF THE JEDI weekly issue 79 (22 December 1984), promoting the UK theatrical release of the first of the Lucasfilm/ ABC Ewok live-action teleflicks: CARAVAN OF COURAGE: AN EWOK ADVENTURE.

The faux feature film, strictly for the kids, was released in British cinemas on 14 December 1984, just in time for the school holidays.

As you'll see, Marvel went to town to promote the release, devoting four feature pages to the new film. That's more detailed coverage than they devoted to the main Star Wars films.

Unearthing this issue got me thinking about something: has this film, and the sequel THE BATTLE FOR ENDOR, ever been shown on British terrestrial television?  I don't remember seeing either.  I think they snuck onto satellite (possibly on the ill-fated BSB MOVIE CHANNEL, although I'm not sure why I think that) during the early days of extraterrestrial telly... but I don't know if they ever appeared on 'normal' TV.

Both the TV movies are now available, unfortunately without extras, as a DVD release.  Neither film is very good but they make an interesting addition to Star Wars lore.

The first film was simply AN EWOK ADVENTURE when it aired on US TV a month earlier.  Caravan of Courage (which - in the UK at least - sounds pretty naff) was added to the European theatrical release.

I'm not even sure the sequel received a theatrical release here in the UK, it may have gone direct-to-tape.  If it did reach cinemas, Marvel certainly didn't give it the same fanfare (or - indeed - any coverage at all) despite the fact that ROTJ's readership was obviously getting younger, the ideal demographic for the family-friendly films.

I was also surprised (then and now) that Marvel UK didn't reprint the Star Comics animated (also courtesy of ABC) Ewoks tie-in in ROTJ as it seemed an ideal fit.  They did commandeer the final STAR WARS ANNUAL (sitting uncomfortably alongside a reprint of the third US annual) but reprints were serialised in SPIDEY COMIC instead.

1979: THE INCREDIBLE HULK POSTER MAGAZINE (Marvel UK)

This is a 1979 Marvel UK House Ad (from MARVEL COMIC 331) giving readers the opportunity to mail away for the US ($1.50) TV tie-in THE INCREDIBLE HULK POSTER MAGAZINE, published the previous year.

1979: GODZILLA in MARVEL COMIC HOUSE AD (Marvel UK)

COMING SOON TO STARLOGGED... 

MARVEL COMIC

This is a House Ad, from MARVEL COMIC 332 (7 March 1979), announcing the imminent arrival of GODZILLA in the just (re)launched weekly.

The text below the add is - I assume - a production error.  It relates to the about-to-launch HULK COMIC but doesn't correspond to anything else in the issue.

I'll be doing much more on the short-lived successor to THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL in the near future.

1983: THE MIGHTY THOR by BOB WAKELIN (Marvel UK)

I must admit that I've never been much of a fan of THOR (to the extent that I had very low expectations of the film... and was very pleasantly surprised by how good it was) so I gave his 1983 colour weekly a wide berth.  I still don't have many issues (mental note: I need to do something about that some day) but I stumbled across this lone issue in a charity shop at the weekend and was struck (ahem) by this impressive cover by British artist Bob Wakelin.

THE MIGHTY THOR earns a footnote in the history of the Annex of Ideas by being the first of the (initially disastrous) colour weeklies.

The Thunder God had been knocking around the British line since the dawn of Marvel UK (actually earlier: the sixties strips were part of the Power Comics line-up) but this was his first (and only) solo outing (CAPTAIN AMERICA took the back-up slot, a reversal of the final weeks of his own early-eighties weekly.  See here for more).

The weekly survived 19 issues before absorbing fellow colour weekly THE X-MEN, which was launched two weeks later (it should have appeared a week later but there was a hold up at customs on its way from the Irish printers).  THOR AND THE X-MEN (split half/half between reprints of Thor and sixties X-Men) survived another 19 weeks.  The 39th issue was the last.  Both strips continued briefly in (a rather packed) SPIDER-MAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS.  See here for more.

1985: EAGLE OCTOBER COVER GALLERY (IPC)

There was a treasure trove of eighties 'stuff' up-for-grabs in EAGLE in October 1985, as the first cover below shows.  All lovingly rendered by some poor unfortunate (uncredited) artist.  Many of which (I think) had been prizes in previous competitions, suggesting the IPC powers-that-be had been stashing away a few extras.

And - btw - Disney's lawyers really should have sued the designers of that robot.

For some reason (and I only spotted this when uploading the covers this morning), I'm missing the issue dated 19 October 1985.  I assume it was published so I've either misfiled it or I don't own a copy.  I'll try and do something about that at some point.  Sorry!

1980: THE BATTLESTAR GALACTICA TV MOVIES in STARLOG MAGAZINE

This is a generally overlooked footnote in the history of the original BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: the syndicated tele-movie package hastily assembled from the just-cancelled TV show and sold to local stations in the Fall of 1980.

Universal must have been pretty bummed when ABC pulled the plug on the show a year earlier.  The studio's business plan was to take a hit on the high up-front cost of production (deficit financing) on the assumption that the money would later be recouped from a successful after-life in the world of syndicated reruns.  Battlestar - obviously - also had numerous other revenue generators including overseas theatrical releases, merchandising and the BATTLE FOR GALACTICA attraction on the studio tour.

But - for all those ancillary aspects to deliver - the show had to remain on-the-air.  Syndication relied on the ability for local stations to strip schedule a show daily for months at a time.  That needed at least three seasons of material (the original STAR TREK) or - ideally - 100+ episodes from a show that had been on-air for five years (the economics of TV, and the diminishing returns of syndication, ironically made adding additional seasons less lucrative because the original costs of production tended to edge upwards faster than the additional syndicated revenue from having extra shows).  Battlestar had only one season, making it an unattractive (albeit high profile) buy for local station managers.

So the studio borrowed from how other prematurely-cancelled shows (like KOLCKAK: THE NIGHT STALKER and PLANET OF THE APES) had snuck back on air: recutting the existing inventory into TV movies.

Larson had made the job easier by producing a higher-than-average number of two-part stories over the course of the season (partially a legacy of the original plan to shoot a series of occasionally-scheduled TV movies) so those were reworked simply by slicing-out titles and recaps and bolting the two parts together.  As with the theatrical release of the pilot, the opening episode was truncated for television.

The single episodes were more problematic.  The easiest way would simply have been to glue the two stories together with an obvious beginning-middle-end to each part.  New World Video did this for their TOUR OF DUTY and CRIME STORY rental releases, and CIC Video did likewise for STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION and WAR OF THE WORLDS.

Universal's far more creative solution was to weave the two unrelated plots, helped by some sneaky editing and dubbing, into one (fairly coherent) storyline.  The results are surprisingly satisfying.

The episode guide below, from STARLOG issue 39 (October 1980), outlines the plots of the ten tele-flicks.  The origins of the most are obvious but - for the record - the 'new' movies are as follows:
- THE PHANTOM IN SPACE (The Lost Warrior & Hand of God)
- SPACE PRISON (The Man With Nine Lives & Baltar's Escape)
- SPACE CASANOVA (Take the Celestra & The Long Patrol)
- CURSE OF THE CYLONS (Fire in Space and The Magnificent Warriors)
- MURDER IN SPACE (Murder on the Rising Star & The Young Lords)

EXPERIMENT IN TERRA extended the standard-length original episode with a specially-shot new opening sequence (involving a NASA astronaut finding Adama's log adrift in space) and footage lifted from GALACTICA 1980's Return of Starbuck.  The remainder of G80, despite containing several double-length stories, was (wisely) ignored.

MISSION GALACTICA: THE CYLON ATTACK (the original promotional art for which was used to accompany the Starlog piece) and CONQUEST OF THE EARTH were both omitted from the package, possibly because they were assembled by Universal's theatrical - rather than television - division.

The package was never sold to British TV (all three of the theatrical releases have been shown however) but most of the movies did turn-up, without explanation, in an amazingly-shoddy (a very flimsy silver cardboard box housing - from memory - six tapes) BATTLESTAR GALACTICA VHS box set just as the format was being superseded by DVD.

None of the movies - along with CONQUEST OF THE EARTH - have ever been released on DVD.  I doubt they have been seen on TV anywhere for decades.

1976: ENTERPRISE INCIDENTS Issue 1 (Fanzine)

Here's the front and back cover of the second printing (with added colour and some slight tweaks to the interior text) notable seventies US STAR TREK fanzine ENTERPRISE INCIDENTS.

Published in 1976, this was when Trek's pre-movie fandom was in full swing, celebrating a series that had premiered a decade earlier.

The 'zine's title comes from the third-season episode The Enterprise Incident.  Between '76 and cancellation around 1985, it evolved into a professional magazine targeting largely the same fandom market - with similar mixed-media contents - as the Log/Burst double-act.

1994: The unpublished DEATH'S HEAD II Vs. THE PUNISHER (Marvel UK)

Hot on the heels of my post on Marvel UK's aborted LOOSE CANNONS project, here's another would-be Marvel UK book that was cancelled when the US-format GENESIS 92 line succumbed to the imploding market in early 1994: DEATH'S HEAD II Vs. PUNISHER.

Frank Castle may be a spent force today (despite three movies!) but this was the BIG GUNS era (see here) so teaming him with M-UK's most bankable (albeit pretty overexposed) character for a limited series would surely have been a sales generator.

I'm not sure how far this project, from Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning (writers) and Bryn Hitch (artist) had progressed when it was cancelled.  Certainly a number of pages of (partially) completed artwork exist and its likely that the whole series had been plotted.  Unlike LOOSE CANNONS, it hadn't progressed to a firm slot on Marvel's upcoming schedules although it was announced for publication in the first quarter of 1994.

For more details of the entire Marvel UK Genesis '92 line, and other assorted ventures into the US market, see here and here.

1985: DC SUPER POWERS ANNUAL (Marvel UK)

This is probably one of the strangest Marvel publications of the 1980s: the DC SUPER POWERS ANNUAL.  Yup, for one time only (I think!) Marvel reprinted DC's marque name characters here in the UK.

The 1985 annual, based on the DC/ Kenner toy tie-in, reprinted three DC strips.  The line-up consisted of the first chapter (more of that in a mo) of the first SUPER POWERS limited series, Superman and the Green Lantern in Between Friend and Foe (from DC COMICS PRESENTS 26) and Batman/ Hawkman in The Treasure of the Hawk God's Tomb (THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD 186).

It's a poor line-up as the the Super Powers strip ends with an obvious cliffhanger and a vague promise that the strip would be continued in the near future.  Quite where (and when) Marvel thought this would happen is something of a mystery.  If they harboured plans for a regular Super Powers comic then it would be a bit tough on readers to start the storyline on the second instalment.  And it's unlikely that readers would want to wait a whole year for a second annual (which never appeared anyway!).  All-in-all, not a great way to treat the reader!

I've posted about SUPER POWERS once before (see here) so - to summarise:
- The toys, and other pieces of merchandise, were sold in the UK.
- This was the only British edition of the Super Powers strips published in the UK, although I think the limited series were included in the monthly batch of DC books available in British newsagents.  The tie-in was also (of course) available through comic book stores.
- The TV show was - surprisingly - not shown on British TV.

The reprint was part of a deal between Marvel UK and DC to reprint selected output in Great Britain.  Quite how wide-ranging this arrangement was meant to be is unknown but - ultimately - the only other comic to emerge was the 1985 MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE SUMMER SPECIAL (see here).

Around the same time, and presumably entirely unrelated to the UK deal, Marvel and Warner Brothers entered into preliminary talks to explore the possibility of Marvel publishing DC characters under license.  Warner Brothers saw the value of the characters in other media but were less sure that they actually needed to go through the motions of publishing the comics.

The Marvel UK/ DC tie-up proved short-lived.  Whether this was the result of poor sales on the initial projects (both the Super Powers Annual and the MOTU one-shot appeared to suffer from limited distribution and are amongst the hardest to find Marvel UK publications of the eighties) or whether someone more senior in the companies nixed the deal is unclear.

The DC license was subsequently acquired by London Editions who launched regular titles reprinting Batman and Superman material.  These survived through various relaunches, and the merger of LE with Fleetway, into the nineties before eventually succumbing to poor sales.  Attempts to expand the line further, with titles like DC ACTION (see here), ZONES, SHOCKWAVE (see here) and HEROES (see here) all floundered.