This print campaign, promoting the Ray Harryhausen stop-motion epic*, appeared in UK comics cover-dated August 1981.
Note how purveyors of corn-based bagged snacks Smiths have snuck-in on the deal: plugging a COTT-related holiday competition. Details of which, presumably, appeared on packs.
*We're continuing our "Titans" coverage although, obviously, this has nothing to do with the similarly-named Marvel UK weekly we've been banging on about for the last few posts.
THE HIGHWAYMAN was a 1987-88 action/ adventure show from the fertile imagination of uber-producer Glen Larson (BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25th CENTURY, KIGHT RIDER, THE FALL GUY and a shed-load others).
It's been said that Larson is the ultimate TV salesman. During the peak of his producing career (the late seventies to the late eighties), he seemed to have no trouble at all selling shows to the US networks. However, many of them were gimmick-shows (or, notoriously, 'inspired' by a recent Hollywood movie) that quickly bored audiences (MANIMAL, AUTOMAN and others).
THE HIGHWAYMAN is a late Larson entry (although he was still producing into the nineties and boasted a producer credit on the new BATTLESTAR GALACTICA although this was purely a contractual nicety) and something of a greatest hits package: mixing KNIGHT RIDER with B.J. AND THE BEAR, adding more than a little MAD MAX to the mix.
It's another in the long-line of "hardware" shows including KNIGHT RIDER, AIRWOLF, BLUE THUNDER, STREET HAWK, VIPER and TEAM KNIGHT RIDER.
The Highwayman is a government law enforcement officer with a state-of-the-art, unfeasibly high-tech truck. His assignment: enforce the law on the high roads and back roads of America.
The Highwayman (or "Highway") is the man with no name. Played by ex-FLASH GORDON Sam J. Jones (now boasting black hair and an unfeasible amount of leather considering his desert beat). The premise of the show immediately falls down at this point as "Highway" is one of a number of law enforcement officers, collectively known as Highwaymen. It's like a police officer being called "Police".
The show's gimmick is the truck: it's packed-full of the latest state-of-the-art gadgets (ala Knight Rider although it doesn't talk and doesn't sound like a Cylon) including a sports car in the trailer, high tech communications gear, a cab that converts into a helicopter and (only in the pilot) the ability to become invisible ("stealth"), with the help of a satellite and a control room full of government boffins ala WAR GAMES.
The show debuted with a stand-alone TV movie THE HIGHWAYMAN (aka Terror on the Black Top) which is significantly different from the series that followed. In the pilot, the only overt science fiction/ fantasy element is the truck itself. The setting is contemporary USA. The plot, a biker gang menaces a small town, is a familiar eighties stand-by already used by Larson in The Fall Guy and Knight Rider. Indeed, the whole thing feels like a reheated KR episode. Familiar TV faces in the first instalment include Claudia Christian (Highway's controller who, unbelievably, doubles as a late-night sultry DJ allowing her to issue instructions to her agent over the airwaves), Jimmy Smits, Mikey Jones, Wings Hauser, Rowdy Roddy Piper and even G. Gordon Liddy.
The short-lived 1988 weekly series significantly reworked the format. The (unstated) time frame moved several years into the future and story lines revolved around aliens, clones, androids, ghosts, time travel and spare-parts surgery. Unfortunately, few of these make much sense and the show gives the impression that Larson is choosing plots by flicking through a book of unexplained phenomena.
Highway is now part of a team of law enforcers collectively called Highwaymen (you can see the confusion), each apparently issued with a high-tech truck (although none are as impressive as the show's "hero" rig) and lots of leather.
Christan, and her DJing, were ditched in favour of genre favourite Jane Badler, fresh from V (and about to decamp to Australia for the revived MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE), as Highway's new controller. Cue lots of predictable "you won't follow orders" frustrations.
Also added to the cast was the way-too-annoying Mark "Jacko" Jackson as uncouth Australian (this was the CROCODILE DUNDEE era) Jetto. Jackson was an ex Australian footballer who became flavour-of-the-month in a number of US TV commercials.
Another series regular was Tim Russ: Tuvoc in STAR TREK: VOYAGER.
The series was filmed in and around Phoenix, Arizona: a location which created its own problems with heat and inhospitable conditions. Phoenix unconvincingly doubles as New York (the palm trees are a giveaway) in the episode Send in the Clones.
Badler complained about the heat, and the tensions in caused amongst cast and crew, in a STARLOG MAGAZINE interview.
Send in the Clones reunited several supporting cast members (but not Dennis Weaver) from Larson's seventies hit McCLOUD. Ever the salesman, Larson intended the episode as a back-door pilot for a spin-off show revolving around the clone character. Unsurprisingly, no-one signed the deal.
The episode Frightmare, with flashbacks to several previous episodes, was clearly intended to be the season finale but aired earlier than planned when NBC jumbled the broadcast order.
The episode The Hitchhiker was, improbably, remade as an episode of Larson's NIGHT MAN during its first season. The script was reworked and a large amount of footage reused. New scenes included Jetto's truck (which suggests that Highway's rig was either unavailable or too expensive to hire as this would have given Larson a lot more opportunities to intercut footage from the original show). The low-budget syndicated show was based on the Malibu Comics super hero, by this point under the ownership of Marvel Comics. Another episode revived Larson's MANIMAL, in the hopes of attracting interest in a full revival.
Oft-time Larson collaborator William Conrad (CANNON, JAKE AND THE FAT MAN) supplied the opening narration.
Familiar guest stars (and former Larson collaborators) throughout the nine episodes include Anne Lockhart, Kent McCord, Lloyd Bochner, Pamela Susan Shoop and Terry Carter.
The show was cancelled after a single season.
In the UK, it aired on ITV as part of its late-night/ overnight service. It's not been seen on TV in decades.
In the late 1980's and the first half of the 1990's, Marvel UK were based here: 13-15 Arundel Street: AKA Arundel House. These were undoubtably the Annex-of-Idea's boom (followed by bust) years and the well-appointed accommodation was certainly a step-up from (the by all accounts) less salubrious environs of Jadwin House and Redan Place. Marvel were clearly enjoying the good life.
These photos were taken on an unusually sunny Saturday (London's summer 2012 has, to date, been something of a wash-out), 16 June 2012. The exterior of Arundel has undergone refurbishment over recent months but the scaffold and workmen have gone now.
Arundel House is opposite Temple Tube station and overlooks the Thames (and the South Bank beyond). Arundel Street leads up from Temple station towards the Royal Courts of Justice and The Strand.
The Arundel years coincided with a higher media profile for the UK operation. The interior and exterior can be seen in several contemporary documentaries including LWT's OPENING SHOT and Mythmakers' DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE 10th ANNIVERSARY documentary. It can also be seen in these behind-the-scenes features, published at the time.
Marvel moved into Arundel House from Bayswater's Redan Place, in the shadow of the Whiteleys shopping centre. Marvel were prompted to move after a crane, redeveloping the Whiteleys site from the eponymous department store to the current shopping centre, toppled over and came close to demolishing the UK Bullpen and Bullpenners. According to Wikipedia, the crane driver and a car driver were killed in the accident*.
Arundel housed the expanded UK operation producing M-UK's bloated US-format line. Full details of the US expansion (and hasty contraction) can be found here and here.
During Marvel's hasty expansion of the early 1990's, the US parent purchased the Italian sticker publisher Panini. The European operation was subsequently restructured and M-UK was placed under the auspices of the continental business. The new management promptly streamlined the remaining UK business and moved Marvel out of Arundel, and London, to new offices in Tunbridge Wells (where they remain, albeit at a different address, to this day).
When Marvel USA's finances started to crumble and the business filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the European operation was sold. As a parting gift, Panini were granted the license to continue reprinting Marvel material across Europe, including the UK.
The departure from Arundel House was apparently hasty with little regard for Marvel UK's accumulated history. Company records, bound volumes of comics and original art were apparently all jettisoned over one weekend.
* UPDATE: I can't find anything else online to support the assertion that the accident lead to any loss of life so, like all things Wikipedia-related, take it with a pinch-of-salt.
The building to the left of Arundel House in this photo is currently vacant and, presumably, about to be redeveloped.
It's slightly hard to read, but the address under "HSS" is 13-15 Arundel Street. This was Marvel's front door!
This will be a familiar sight for anyone reading Marvel UK's weeklies and monthlies at the beginning of the eighties: the advert for the Star Wars digital watch. A snip at just £8.95 all-in. Jadwin House must have been stuffed to the rafters with the things as Marvel re-ran this advert month after month. After month. Usually in colour (as here) but, occasionally, in black & white (which tended to look like a poorly reproduced photocopy of the colour version).
The offer is now closed. But Panini probably still have a few cases in their Tunbridge Wells basement. Probably.
In the seventies and eighties, Marvel loved their movie adaptations. After hitting pay-dirt with their STAR WARS comics, Marvel rushed to make sure they secured as many licenses as possible in the hopes that one would spawn the next-big-thing (BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: maybe, ANNIE: maybe not).
The irregularly scheduled full-colour MARVEL SUPER SPECIAL magazine was the perfect vehicle for these adaptations, publishing the whole story in a single issue in a superior format.
The MSS didn't start as a home for movie adaptations (although the first two were based on non-Marvel properties) but they quickly became the main attraction with only occasional issues featuring Marvel characters (and never their super heroes or other characters from the main four-colour line).
The movie adaptations, from numerous creative teams, were, for deadline reasons, often based on shooting scripts (or just earlier drafts of the script) and not the final edit of the movie. These inadvertently provide a fascinating insight into how a movie was intended to be structured before it entered the edited suite. Conversely, Marvel's creators were occasionally forced to make their own edits in order to make the movie work in comics form.
Some MSS were imported and distributed widely in the UK (the CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND edition was heavily plugged in Marvel's UK weeklies) whilst others didn't cross the Atlantic in any great numbers either because of lack of interest (not every film Marvel adapted became a hit) or because Marvel UK planned their own edition (often as a hardback annual).
SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND, starring the Bee Gees, was considered such a stinker that Marvel didn't even bother to publish it although foreign language editions (French, Japanese and Dutch) did appear under license.
Marvel managed to stretch the MSS material as far as possible and often reissued the same material as a limited series (often with new covers and additional interior artwork), treasury editions or paperbacks (with panels split over far more pages to ensure they remained legible).
The MSS format was phased-out in the eighties (appropriately, the HOWARD THE DUCK movie adaptation was the final nail in the coffin) as movie adaptations became less attractive in the age of VHS. However, Marvel (and other publishers) did continue to issue the occasional comic book version of films.
In this guide we've noted other US and UK editions published DURING the Slow-Robot era (roughly 1972-1995). Some (like KISS, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and, of course, STAR WARS) have been issued more recently.
1977
September 1977
Famously, KISS mixed their blood with the ink used to print this magazine.
1978
March 1978
June 1978
OTHER EDITIONS:
MARVEL SPECIAL EDITION: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND Treasury Edition* (US)
* Not part of the numbered Treasury Edition series.
Copies were imported into the UK and promoted in the Marvel UK weeklies.
Because of deadline issues, this adaptation had to be produced while the pilot movie, Saga of a Star World, was still shooting. It contains a number of plotting and artwork discrepancies compared with the final broadcast version. These were fixed for the version serialised in the first three issues of the regular Marvel monthly.
OTHER EDITIONS:
Treasury Edition (US)*
Paperback Edition (US)**
Battlestar Galactica regular series 1-3 (US)***
* Contents the same as the Super Special. Not part of the numbered Treasury Edition series. Copies distributed in UK newsagents.
** Pages reworked to fit the paperback format. Copies imported into the UK.
*** Published later. Script and artwork reworked to better reflect the broadcast version.
February 1979
OTHER EDITIONS:
Marvel UK published a belated British edition, also in full colour.
June 1979
OTHER EDITIONS:
Star Lord was serialised as a back-up strip in STAR WARS WEEKLY (UK).
September 1979
OTHER EDITIONS:
The Weirdworld series was serialised in VALOUR and continued in FUTURE TENSE AND VALOUR (Marvel UK)
November 1979
1980
January 1980
February 1980
December 1979*
* There's a discrepancy in dates here, presumably the result of some juggling of publishing schedules, possibly at Hollywood's behest.
OTHER EDITIONS:
Paperback edition (US)
STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE ANNUAL (Marvel UK/ Grandreams)
FUTURE TENSE weekly (Marvel UK)
August 1978
The version of Yoda in this edition (small and purple) was based on pre-production art. The artwork was corrected for later editions.
Features several scenes deleted from the final edit of the film.
OTHER EDITIONS:
STAR WARS issues 39-44 (US)
STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK WEEKLY issues 118-135 (UK)
STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK ANNUAL 1981 (Marvel UK/ Grandreams)*
RETURN OF THE JEDI WEEKLY (UK)**
Paperback edition (US)
Treasury edition (US)
* Published in 1980
** Serialised reprint
November 1980
1981
June 1981
OTHER EDITIONS:
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK 3-issue limited series (US)
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK ANNUAL 1982 (Marvel UK/ Grandreams)*
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.
It's Slow-Robot's 200th post so what better way to celebrate than with the original TV advert that launched 2000AD (geddit?!?) way back in 1977.
This would have run during children's programmes on ITV (the UK's only commercial channel at the time) to coincide with the first issue hitting newsagents shelves in February '77.
The practice of launching a new comic with a TV campaign was phased-out in the following decade as sliding sales no longer justified a substantial marketing budget for new titles. That left publishers to cannibalise their existing readerships by relying on in-house advertising.
New toy-based launches like THE TRANSFORMERS and ACTION FORCE did benefit from TV plugging (although the latter weekly still only survived a year) but those spots were bankrolled by Hasbro.
If you're wondering where Judge Dredd is, he didn't appear until the following Prog. and wasn't intended to be the weekly's star turn. How times have changed.
According to that column on the right (unless you are looking at the mobile device version), you'll see that this is Slow-Robot's 199th post. So far. So soon. What better way to celebrate this milestone than with a cover gallery of the US run of SPACE:1999 comics and magazines (containing - err - comics) from the seventies.
Both of these titles, published by (now defunct) Charlton Comics (who also published some seventies bionic comic books), launched in the summer of 1975 (with November '75 cover dates).
The four-colour comic appeared bi-monthly, clocking up seven issues in a year. Each issue included 22 pages of new comic strip, a two page text story (of little note) and the usual adverts to help pay the bills. The run deserves a footnote in US comics history for providing John Bryne with early work. Issues 1-6 follow the format of the first TV season (with an adaptation of Breakaway, the opening TV episode, in the first). The final issue switches to Year Two with an adaptation of the scene-setting TV episode The Metamorph.
The monthly black & white magazine was also strip-based but didn't duplicate material from the comic book. It clocked-up eight issues (so, thanks to publishing schedules, generated more issues but was actually cancelled before the comic) and, again, only adopted the second season format for its final issue.
Presumably Charlton abandoned the license after a year when it became clear that the syndicated TV show wasn't generating enough enthusiasm amongst readers to justify continuing.
The TV show, filmed by ITC Productions at Pinewood Studios in the UK, was a big budget attempt to muscle in on the US TV market with a glitzy effects-heavy show. When all three broadcast networks passed on the project (despite casting US 'stars" Landau and Bain in the main roles), ITC were forced to hawk it around local stations in first-run syndication. The po-faced first season wowed with its state-of-the-art visuals (and a stinking line-up of guest stars) but failed to capture much of the excitement of sitting on an out-of-control moon zooming through uncharted space (science not being one of the show's strong points). The re-worked second year drafted in new talent in front and behind the camera (including the departure of Sylvia Anderson as her marriage, and creative partnership with hubby Gerry, disintegrated) and a revitalised show which looked better even if the quality of the writing generally declined.
Charlton Comics, part of a larger publishing empire, was a notoriously cut-price operation which, uniquely, did every stage of the comic/ magazine-making process in-house. Established in 1946, Charlton Comics soldiered-on until 1985 before finally bailing-out of the business.
