1985: V - THE VISITOR TECHNICAL INFORMATION MANUAL - PART ONE (Fanzine)

The Visitors are not our friends!

THE VISITORS: A TECHNICAL INFORMATION MANUAL is a fan publication - of unknown origin - that I've had knocking around my collection for decades.  I've finally got around to scanning it for Starlogged.

I bought this from a dealer at the Westminster Comic Mart (held at the Westminster Central Hall, just across from Parliament and the Abbey) sometime in the late eighties.  There's a very small £4.99 written, in pencil, at the bottom of the (otherwise completely blank) back cover.  That seemed an awful lot of money to a school kid... but finding anything 'V' related at the time (and now!) was pretty hard... so I snapped it up.  Lucky I did as I've never seen another copy in the UK.

There are no credits or publishing information so I've no idea who produced this.  I do seem to recall seeing it advertised in STARLOG magazine around the same time.

It would be nice to think this (or a version of it) was created by the makers of the weekly series to form some sort of writers' bible for the show.  But, knowing their slap-dash approach to their own product, I think we can safely rule that out!  I also recall reading, in the letters pages of DC's V comic, that the producers had never really thought-through the Visitor language and written symbols.  Which makes me think that the guide included herein is fan-produced.  They did a good job, the symbol for "transport" really does appear on the Mothership landing bay set.

The Manual incorporates material and information from throughout the weekly series so it was obviously written after the show's solitary season (which ended in 1985).  There's also a lot of 'gap-filling' which really amounts to fan speculation.  But whoever wrote it does show more creativity than the writers of the show did!

The manual is 32-pages (including several blank pages) printed on pretty cheap paper.  The cover is a pinkish-red colour (my scanner has made it fractionally pinker than the printed copy) and the interior is b&w throughout.  The printing is not excellent which is why some of the pages have "lighter" areas of text.

I'll post the remaining pages over the next few days.

- TO BE CONTINUED - 

1984: EAGLE JUNE ISSUES (IPC)

Back to the summer of 1984 and June's editions of the EAGLE.

The month's highlights included:
- The start of BLOODFANG, the Eagle's own devil dinosaur, as Manix bowed out.
- A freebie cover-mounted Weetabix "Shrinkie" (you colour it then put it in the oven and the plastic shrinks.  A miracle of '80's technology.  Further Shrinkies would have been available in special packs of the cereal.
- The launch of the ill-fated IPC/ KP Skips Free Comic Offer.  Which I'll cover in more detail in a future post.

1994: HAMMER HORROR (Marvel UK)

HAMMER HORROR was another short-lived title published by Marvel UK during their brief mid-ninties dalliance with expanding their magazine offering beyond the long-established DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE.

M-UK were approached by Hammer's licensing company and because head-honcho Paul Neary had worked on Dez Skinn's seventies/ eighties predecessor, it was considered to be a viable proposition.

HH launched with a one-shot special (above) in 1994.  The Collectors' Special was an overview of Hammer's entire horror output and - despite the number of books published on the subject in subsequent decades - is still an excellent primer for both new and established fans.  But good luck trying to track down a copy.

Flush with success, editor Marcus Hearn (formally of DWM) launched the regular monthly incarnation the following year.  It was a classy package, treating the Hammer back-catalogue with respect and filling a gap in the market for serious coverage.  Hearn would later write several books on "the studio that dripped blood", all of which are recommended.  

Things were looking promising and it seemed like Marvel had a niche hit on its hands.  Briefly. Until restructuring within the bigger Marvel empire shoved the Arundel House operations under the auspices of another marvel subsidiary: the recently acquired Panini sticker business.  

The Italians had no interest in Marvel UK's ambitions to expand outside kids comics and swiftly shuttered all of M-UK's "older readers" titles including the entire magazines department except DWM.  The roll-call of casualties included BLAKE'S SEVEN, PLAYBACK, BIZARRE and CLIVE BARKER's HELLBREED (all of which I've covered in previous posts).  Neary's plans to re-enter the US comics market were also nixed by the new management.

Hearn did at least get to sign-off in the seventh (and final) issue.  He expressed the hope that another publisher would take over the magazine... but that never happened.  

1978: RAMPAGE MAGAZINE (Marvel UK)

RAMPAGE MONTHLY/ MAGAZINE was the 1978 successor to RAMPAGE WEEKLY, a dull concoction of The Defenders and Nova which failed to set the world alight.

The monthly incarnation, launched in the summer of '78, initially retained both strips as supporting features but added reprints from the US magazine THE RAMPAGING HULK as the main feature.  These strips were always something of an oddity: presumably created to capitalise on the Hulk's high media profile, thanks to the TV show, yet they made no effort to mimic the elements that made the TV show a success.  Any casual viewer that stumbled across the magazine would surely be confused... and probably alienated.  Marvel management, on both sides of the Atlantic, finally recognised the problem and rebooted the US mag as a colour monthly telling stories more akin to the show whilst Dez Skinn did the same with the original Hulk strips in the 1979-launched HULK COMIC.  

Rampage Monthly was one of the last Marvel UK titles launched under the direct auspices of the US Bullpen.  Stan Lee drafted-in Skinn later in '78 to overhaul the British line and reverse years of decline and swiftly-cancelled new launches.  The Marvel Revolution of early 1979 started to come into effect from the December-dated issue.  The cover design was overhauled (a design that Skinn made standard across the UK monthlies) and - from the turn-of-the-year Doctor Strange (also appearing in the just-shot Universal TV pilot movie) replaced Nova.  

Two issues later, The New X-Men made their official Marvel UK premiere (replacing The Defenders). A by-product of this decision was that Skinn blocked imports of the US monthly as part of the package of Marvel Comics sent to newsagents.  This avoided competing with Marvel's own product but also made finding copies of the US editions pretty difficult.

Rampage also added text features based on the TV show, a logical move akin to similar articles that had appeared in PLANET OF THE APES and STAR WARS WEEKLY.

Rampage Magazine (note the subtle name-change from issue 6) ultimately ran for 54 issues, merging with MARVEL SUPERHEROES in 1983.  Along the way it absorbed the short-lived BLOCKBUSTER MONTHLY from issue 45 (transferring one survivor: Iron Fist) and published original strips in issues 40-44.

Below are the covers for the first 12 issues.  Several of them, originally created for The Rampaging Hulk, will be familiar from my THE INCREDIBLE HULK PRESENTS post from last year.

1998: TEAM KNIGHT RIDER ANNUAL (Grandreams)

Pity poor Universal (or NBC Universal now), they just can't catch a break reviving KNIGHT RIDER.  There's no doubt that the old adage "The car's the star" always applied here but - it seems - without the Hoff permanently ensconced behind the steering wheel, the punters just ain't interested.

CODE OF VENGEANCE was the only spin-off show that (however briefly) went into production alongside the original show.  The two-part episode Mouth of the Snake was a back-door pilot for a new series, originally titled All that Glitters, built around the character David Dalton.  The original plan was that Dalton (played by Charles Taylor) was going to be a government agent in the James Bond tradition (surprisingly, knowing Larson's fetish for the character, the uber-producer had already moved across to 20th Century Fox and his only ongoing involvement with KR was cashing the royalty cheques) but - when the concept was retooled for COV - he became a drifter.  The original 1985 COV tele-flick scored well and the character returned in a second TV movie and two one-hour shows before cancellation.  The KR episodes are on DVD but COV never crossed the Atlantic and has now vanished without trace.

KNIGHT RIDER 2000 was the futuristic 1991 TV movie which reunited the Hoff with Edward Mulhare in the hopes of spinning-off a new KR weekly series with a new cast and a new car - the Knight 4000.  It's not a bad tele-flick and scored highly but the planned series didn't materialise.  It aired on British TV and features - as a most welcome bonus feature - on the KR season one DVD set. 

KNIGHT RIDER 2010 was - despite the title - almost entirely unrelated to either the previous movie or the original weekly series.  None of the previous cast reprised their roles and the only connection to the franchise was the idea of a sentiment car being used in the fight against injustice.  I watched this futuristic flick - originally shot for Universal's syndicated Action Pack TV movie package in 1994 - again recently and it still made a minimal impression.  Even whilst I was watching.  It's not available on DVD but has aired on British TV on Channel Five (which is where my copy comes from). 

TEAM KNIGHT RIDER was Universal's 1997-98 single-season syndicated show which applied the (flawed) logic that more high-tech hardware (five talking vehicles!) would pull in the punters.  This did (loosely) follow the continuity of the original series (but not KR 2000) and Michael Knight is mentioned... but never appears.  This show did cross the Atlantic and - briefly - appeared on ITV's Saturday evening schedules... before vanishing without trace after only a couple of episodes.  As far as I know, it was never rescheduled in ANY timeslot and - presumably - the rights were allowed to quietly expire.  Grandreams (who, I'm surprised to note, were still in business in the late nineties) obviously thought ITV would treat the show better and dutifully issued the annual pictured below in 1998.  As far as I know, this was one of the few pieces of merchandise pegged to the show.  

KNIGHT RIDER - Jump forward to 2008 and its time for another TV movie reboot, this time *briefly* featuring an uncomfortable-looking Hoff (he's been banging-on for years - even on the DVD commentary for the original pilot movie - about a feature film revival and, possibly, saw the chances diminishing before his eyes) in yet another attempt to get a weekly series commission.  This time, with the Hoff-factor applied, they got the green light although the new weekly series managed only a single (short) season.  It's notably for featuring a homage to - of all things - Captain Jack and TORCHWOOD. Really. It's not a great show but - like the BIONIC WOMEN revival - not really deserving of its tepid reputation.  

1994 - THE PHAROS PROJECT 2 FANZINE (CUDWATS)

THE PHAROS PROJECT 2 (I'm not sure if that indicates that there was some sort of predecessor... or whether this was just a nod to the original on-WHOscreen incarnation) was a great fanzine from the mid-ninties which I really enjoyed at the time.

At the masthead says, this was published by - deep breath - Cambridge Universities' Doctor Who and Television Society (Cudwats for short) but available to anyone who mailed away for it.  Including me.  I'm struggling to recall how I knew about this - and how I knew when to order the next issue as I didn't subscribe.  I'm assuming they advertised in the classified section of TV ZONE or DREAMWATCH.  

TPP2 focused on the two big mid-decade shows, THE X-FILES and BABYLON FIVE, which - at the time - suited me just fine as they always seemed to do a better job than the equally obsessed professional magazines (and this was around the time that every magazine spotted the opportunity to boost circulations by bunging Mulder and Scully on their cover).

As you'll see from the covers below, they also ran well-written (and fun) pieces on other shows (The Wanderer! The Equalizer!  The Night Stalker!  Even - puttup Friends!).  What's not to love?

Each issue was technically superior to the last: boosting page count, grappling with new-fangled desktop publishing, adding colour covers.  All told, it was a slick package which was (and is) a pleasure to read.

Issue 5 (Spring 1996) was the last issue I ever saw advertised.  I have no idea whether any more appeared but I'm pretty sure they didn't (or, if they did, they didn't advertise them) as I would have ordered them in a shot.

1995: BABYLON FIVE MAGAZINE - US EDITION (Sendai)

This is THE OFFICIAL BABYLON FIVE COLLECTOR'S EDITION MAGAZINE, a US one-shot published by Sendai Media back in 1995.

It was the first official magazine devoted to the show and pre-dates the regular (and - frankly - superior) mag from the UK's Titan Magazines which ran 1997-2000.  It probably appeared somewhere between season's two and three, possibly coinciding with the third-season launch.  

This is the harder-to-come-by-in-the-UK American edition.  Imports were limited because Titan picked-up the reprint rights and issued a British edition with a new (and - if memory serves - distinctly underwhelming alternative cover).

As you'll see, I got this signed at the time.  I'm not 100% certain but *I think* this is the signature of JMS himself (it's certainly someone associated with the show) from a signing at London's FORBIDDEN PLANET store (when they were still ensconced in New Oxford Street).

The show, which aired on Channel Four, was (relatively speaking) a big deal at the time in the UK and it seemed like members of the cast (and JMS himself) were frequently commuting back-and-forth across the Atlantic for conventions, signings and personal appearances. 

Sendai were also responsible for CINESCAPE MAGAZINE.

1973: MARVEL LETTERPACK OFFER (Marvel UK)

Remember when people used to write letters?  

Imagine how much more impressed your aunts and uncles would have been if your grudgingly-written (sometime in March) Christmas thank-you letters had been scrawled on this Marvel stationary?

This mail-away offer appeared in Marvel UK weeklies (specifically THE AVENGERS in this case) in December 1973.

1984: EAGLE MAY ISSUES (IPC)

Here's the next four covers from the (new) EAGLE, spanning May 1984.

1982: DRAGONSLAYER MOVIE ONE-SHOT (Marvel UK)

This is the British edition of Marvel's DRAGONSLAYER movie adaptation, published by Marvel UK in 1982.

The strip first appeared, behind a different cover, in the 20th issue of MARVEL SUPER SPECIAL as well as being split across a two issue US limited series.

Marvel London, presumably thinking they had stumbled onto the next big thing, also published a one-shot Poster magazine based on the film.