1980: STARBURST MAGAZINE Issue 26 (MARVEL UK)

From 1980: Another random scan... this time issue 26 of MARVEL UK's STARBURST MAGAZINE.  

Starburst went through a frustrating phase of not dating issues anywhere obvious (possibly to accommodate any hiccups in the publishing schedule) so i can't be more specific than the year.  

The DOCTOR STRANGE TV Movie, starring Peter Hooten and SLEDGE HAMMER's Anne-Marie Martin (albeit billed as Eddie Benton), had aired on CBS in September 1978 (part of their brief flirtation with all things tights-and-capes) so the British Bullpen were a little behind-the-times.  This may have coincided with the British broadcast.. although I don't ever remember seeing it on British TV.  

The movie doubled (of course) as a pilot for a perspective TV show but, probably thanks to the abundance of similar product already on the schedules (CBS was already the home to WONDER WOMAN, THE INCREDIBLE HULK, SPIDER-MAN and the two CAPTAIN AMERICA tele-flicks), never progressed beyond this first outing.  

Director Philip DeGuere (latterly to also take credit for THE TWILIGHT ZONE and WHIZ KIDS (see here) amongst others) was, despite his best efforts, never going to be able to match the sheer outrageous spectacle of the Dikto comic books but, nevertheless, this is a watchable effort. 

There was a UK VHS, for the rental market, back in the Eighties but this has otherwise remained pretty much buried ever since.  Along with the SPIDER-MAN TV show and NIGHT MAN (the pseudo Marvel show airbrushed from the corporate history), it's one of the few Marvel screen outings that hasn't been allowed to resurface.  

There's also a link to today's JURASSIC PARK post... Anne-Marie Martin was married to novelist/ screen writer/ director Michael Crichton between 1987 and 2003. 

1992: TIME SCREEN Magazine Issue 19 (Engale Publishing)

From Autumn 1992: Dragged from the random-scans file... the eye-catching cover of TIME SCREEN ("The magazine of British Telefantasy") issue 19.

1993: JURASSIC PARK Issue 1 (Dark Horse International)

From June 1993: the first issue of the British all-reprint edition of JURASSIC PARK.  

With JURASSIC WORLD smashing all sorts of box office records (who would have thought there was that much pent-up demand for another outing?), it seemed a good moment to go back into the vaults and pull out the first part of the adaptation of the original film from (ye gods) 22 years ago.

Topps Comics had the license but the short-lived Dark Horse International picked-up the UK rights.  Fortunately for them, Topps continued to publish a number of post-movie series totaling, based on my maths, twenty-nine individual issues. 

I'm not sure how long the UK edition survived (the Dark Horse wiki entry doesn't even mention their British expansion) but I do recall this stuck around long enough to reprint some of the US follow-ups. 

1983: E.T. DIGITAL WATCH Advert (Marvel UK)

From 1983: an ad, published in assorted MARVEL UK comics, for the Official E.T. digital watch. 

1984: V: THE SERIES in SPACE VOYAGER Magazine

From December 1984: an extensive article on "V" from the pages of the oft-overlooked (and, in my experience, largely forgotten) UK magazine SPACE VOYAGER issue 12.

The Jane Badler (who I had the pleasure of briefly meeting a couple of years ago... she was really lovely and, I can honestly say, it was a dream come true) picture was the double-page spread.  Rewatching the first mini-series, it's amazing to see how little she appears, and how understated her performance is, compared to the camporama of the later weekly series.  It's a testament to her performance that she does both so well. 

She spoke enthusiastically about her time on the ABC remake although I think she was utterly squandered on the show.  She seemed to be confined to one murky CGI set throughout the second season.  And, even after two seasons, I was far from clear as to what the Visitors motives and plans were... the writers seemed to be making it up as they went along... and desperately trying to avoid too many parallels with the original series.  The episode where the alien masterplan seemed to consist of kidnapping people and bundling them into the back of an old van seemed to sum things up perfectly....

The SFX shot of the Visitor shuttle appeared on the magazine's back cover.  

SPACE VOYAGER, as the issue's cover suggests, was one of those hybrid entertainment/ science mags (like Starlog's late-seventies FUTURE/ FUTURE LIFE) that tried to mix the serious brain-expanding stuff with TV and film coverage.  That was never a good mix for me... I'm too superficial... but I'm sure there was a contingent of model-making, TV-watching scientists out there to keep the mag afloat. 

Sir CHRISTOPHER LEE 1922 - 2015

From 1995: Sir Christopher Lee on the cover of MARVEL UK's HAMMER HORROR Magazine issue 2, edited by Marcus Hearn.  

There are many, many people far more capable of writing the detailed obituary he deserves than I, so i will leave that to others.  But his enormous (media coverage yesterday couldn't seem to decide if he had made over 250 films or 250 screen appearances) body of work is formidable. 

The covers of all eight issues of HH can be found in a previous post here.

1976: QUEEN KONG NOVELIZATION (Everest Books)

From 1976: The novelization of QUEEN KONG.  Really.  

When I found out a few years ago that the plucky Brits had actually made a film called QUEEN KONG... and it starred Robin (sex Comedies-a-plenty) Askwith, Rula Lenska and Valerie Leon... I decided immediately that I HAD to see it.  Fortunately, Amazon came to my rescue with a R1 DVD release paired with another movie.  QK even came with a commentary track.  Hurrah.

I had low expectations but a bad flick is usually no impediment to enjoyment (I'm slowly working my way through the Cannon back catalog... and really enjoying it... even SUPERMAN IV) and, sure enough, I thought this spoofy take on women's lib (apparently conceived through the prism of a very Seventies Benny Hill-esque world view) was a great deal of fun and miles better than it might have been. 

The one low point, but all part of the fun, was the wretched effects work... a haphazard combination of traditional bloke-in-a-suit stomping and some hopeless CSO that would shame the BBC.  

I'd assumed the film had passed without making much of dent on popular culture (although, as you'll see above, it did keep the lawyers busy for a while) so i was amazed to stumble across the NOVELIZATION in a second hand book store.  Instant purchase.  I was even more chuffed to see that the original owner had tucked a newspaper clipping (source unknown but clearly dated) into the front cover. 

1989: DWB Issue 66

From June 1989: Another scanned-at-random (sometimes its whatever happens to be at the top of the box) issue of DWB (number 66).

Clearly, in the intervening months since the last issue I posted, they'd finally switched from one-colour to full-colour covers... and the results look pretty classy.  

Their new, expanded, remit also allowed for welcome coverage of the BBC's initial (and fairly tentative... a full release of all 52 episodes followed a few years later) flurry of BLAKE'S SEVEN tapes.

DWB (unlike DWM who, for obvious reasons, had to wait until the Production Office had confirmed a story before running it) had a more free-spirited (and often JNT-bashing) approaching to reporting news... which occasionally meant they got it badly wrong.  Despite the Stop Press cover line, DOCTOR WHO season 27 turned out to be a long time coming...

1983: RUPERT WEEKLY Issue 55 (Marvel UK)

From November 1983: Dragged from the Random Scans file, a copy (issue 55) of the usually very elusive RUPERT WEEKLY, published by MARVEL UK. 

It ran for 100 issues between October 1982 and September 1984 and, somewhere along the way, absorbed the WORZEL GUMMIDGE weekly (launched in March 1982). 

1985: FANTASY EMPIRE Issue 15

From May 1985: The cover of US magazine/ fanzine FANTASY EMPIRE issue 17, plucked from the "random scans" file.  

Colin Baker (why did we think he looked fat?  In retrospect he looks perfectly average.  Or did we all just get bigger in the intervening decades?) accompanies the news that DOCTOR WHO was on an eighteen month hiatus as BBC management unsuccessfully tried to dump the unloved show.  It would take them another four years (and a more nuanced and less fan-baiting strategy) until Mission: Accomplished.   

The writer Tanith Lee died last month at the age of 67.  I had a quick flick through the issue to see whether the piece was worth scanning and posting... but I couldn't actually find any reference to her and her work inside.  I guess I wasn't looking closely enough.  Sand, her script for BLAKE'S SEVEN's finale season, remains one of my favorite episodes of the whole run.