Sunday 22 May 2016

May 22nd, 1976 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

You can never accuse me of ignoring Melodramatic 21st Century Neo Prog Rock. Why, even as I type, Muse are on my radio, doing that song about not letting me bury it.

But I don't want to bury it.

I want to let the whole world see it.

What is it?

It's my look back at what thrills Marvel UK were giving us in this week of 1976.

Marvel UK, The Titans #31, Ghost-Rider

I do always wonder where super-heroes get those big hoops from for each other to jump through. I have never yet encountered a shop that sells them.

If Johnny Blaze models himself on Evel Knievel, he will, no doubt, crash upon landing and do himself a mischief.

Marvel UK, The Avengers #140, Captain Marvel

It's the start of what was, at the time, the greatest super-hero epic I'd ever read, as everyone's favourite Kree captain makes the mistake of using the most over-powered hairdryer in history.

Marvel UK, Dracula Lives #83

Unless I'm going completely mad, this story was reprinted in The Mighty World of Marvel some time later. It almost makes me glad I didn't used to read Dracula Lives, or I would've felt disappointed to see a quarter of my favourite comic devoted to a tale I'd already encountered.

Ghost Rider would appear to have a strip in both The Titans and Dracula Lives this week. Marvel UK clearly had a lot of faith in his ability to lure in readers.

Marvel UK, Planet of the Apes #83

Are we back on the big ships, with Tom Sutton, or is my memory playing tricks on me?

Mighty World of Marvel #190, Hulk vs Adam Warlock

It's disappointing news for all Adam Warlock fans, as everyone's favourite golden grappler meets his maker.

Super Spider-Man with the Super-Heroes #171, Death of Gwen Stacy/Green Goblin

Speaking of people popping their clogs, this is it, the issue that left me positively traumatised as a youth, as we get not just the death of Gwen Stacy but also the death of the Green Goblin.

To be honest, I still haven't recovered from it all.

And you can find out just how unrecovered I am, by reading my review of this issue, which can be found by clicking on this very link.

9 comments:

londonlee said...

Not over Gwen either. I think I actually cried at the time. What a sad git I was

dangermash aka The Artistic Actuary said...

No mention on the Titans cover of SHIELD or Captain Marvel. One of them must have been dropped for Ghost Rider. Anybody have any idea which?

Dougie said...

It might've been SHIELD,which appeared in colour in Captain Britain in October but I suspect it was Mar-vell, skipping a couple of early Starlin stories and popping up again in MWOM.

paul said...

I just checked my copy of Titans # 31 and it was Captain Marvel that was dropped. The Ghost Rider Story in Titans is his second story from Marvel Spotlight #6 so presumably they introduced him in Dracula Lives and then ran the series in Titans.

John Pitt said...

The question is....did Spider-Gwen survive the Marvel Secret Wars multiverse amalgamation?

Anonymous said...

If memory serves, that Dracula story was the one where he actually did get killed, or made more dead, at any rate, by a giant Chinese guy with a knife for an arm.
However, Frank Drake, Rachel van Helsing and the rest of the fearless vampire hunters revived him, in the belief that only an ambulatory Dracula could defeat the mind-boggling menace of Dr. Sun, who was at this point a brain in an aquarium case, but like all disembodied brains, wielded eerie mental powers.
The logic escapes me, but it was an action-packed comic.
M.P.

Anonymous said...

My biggest regret from those days is that I dropped Spider-Man Comics Weekly just a few weeks before it went "landscape" and, apart from the odd issue now and then, I didn't get Spider-Man regularly again till it had merged with Captain Britain and returned to the normal upright format - I was such a nitwit to miss Spidey's landscape period. This week's issue of The Titans also featured the FF story "A House There Was" where the Mole Man built that super-cool, futuristic house as part of his dastardly plan to turn the whole world blind...and then Reed & Sue Richards move in - D'OH !! But what a cool house it was - I so wanted to live there, minus the death-traps of course :D

Steve W. said...

Thanks to everyone for your comments. I feel far more informed than I did previously. :)

I never did understand why the Mole Man made his people-blinding device in the form of a house. I mean, did it have toilets in it and a kitchen and bedrooms? If so, why?

Plus, where did the estate agent get the keys from, in order to give them to the Fantastic Four, so that they could move in?

Anonymous said...

Steve, that's a darn good question. I can only assume he got them from a Moloid, posing as the original owner. The Mole People no doubt have their fingers in a lot of lucrative economic pies.
M.P.