But what's this? These aren't new! They're from exactly forty years ago this week!
She has to be the slowest papergirl ever!
I wouldn't mind but the shops are only four hundred metres away.
That means she's managed to travel a hundred metres every decade.
At this rate, it'll be 2054 by the time she gets back to the shops, meaning she'll have spent her entire life travelling from and to the shops.
It's a tragedy that could make a grown man weep.
Is that a Dan Adkins cover?
Whoever it's by, I remember the cover but not the actual story.
There are no clues as to what this week's Shang-Chi and Avengers tales are.
I'm going to try and be psychic and guess that the Avengers story may have been the one where Goliath gets beaten up by Dragon Man. I have no reason at all to believe that that's the story featured, so don't quote me on it.
Dracula's in London.
Cue the fog and gas lamps.
Thinking about it, how ridiculous would someone have looked if they'd really tried running around 1970s' London dressed like that?
Hooray! Doc Samson is still making his debut.
Mr Google tells me this was the issue where Gullivar Jones made his first UK Marvel appearance.
Planet of the Apes, Ka-Zar and Gullivar Jones? All in one mag? How could anyone not love this comic?
It's a classic warning about the quest for eternal youth, as Spidey concludes his struggle with Silvermane.
Was Silvermane the Spider-man villain whose super power was being old?
ReplyDeleteAl
Al, Silvermane was indeed very good at being old.
ReplyDeleteThe neatness of that Avengers cover shows how the merger with Conan SHOULD have been done - instead of an illogical and clumsy merger with a cluttered masthead Conan should have become a back-up strip in the Avengers and he could have featured on the cover every now and then like Dr. Strange, Iron Fist and Shang-Chi etc.
ReplyDeletePlanet of the Apes, Kazar, and Gulliver Jones!
ReplyDeleteWas the U.K. ready for that titanic trio in one issue?
I didn't see that one over here on this side of the pond, I guess we got screwed. mp
Forget WH Smith's! - I'm coming HERE every week for MY comics! And this time round I'm not going to miss ANY!
ReplyDeleteWhile agreeing that Planet of the Apes, Ka-Zar and Gullivar Jones was indeed a fantastic line up, Steve, I was always slightly disappointed that Marvel UK chose to run Shang Chi in the Avengers and not POTA. I mean, how great would a comic with apes AND kung fu in it have been?
ReplyDeleteEven better, they could have included it at the same time as Warlock. Hard to come up with a more 70s artefact than a Planet of the Apes comic with Master of Kung Fu and a cross between the Man Who Fell to Earth and Jesus Christ Superstar.
-sean
Thanks John.
ReplyDeleteSean, I'm now trying to remember if Marvel ever did a strip that featured apes doing martial arts. A Karate Apes strip would have been the ultimate early '70s cash-in.
Ape-Fu is a BRILLIANT idea.
ReplyDeleteGullivar Jones made his debut in POTA#2, surely.
Yes, that is Adkins Strange. I'm guessing the Shang-Chi story is from one of the early giants or his visit to the Amazon rain forest.
Yes - Master of Ape-Fu! Marvel UK have Shang-Chi partially redrawn, Apeslayer style. That's even better.
ReplyDeleteSteve - now you've got me searching my memory for old Marvel stuff with apes in it; I can't recall much other than the Red Ghost's super apes (unless you count assorted simian creatures from Conan) none of whom were martial arts experts.
Seems like that would be more of a DC thing, really... maybe they did a karate gorilla or something?
-sean
Just did a quick search online and it turns out that Marvel actually have a whole alternative ape universe. I'm not much up on modern Marvel, but apparently they did some comics a few years back with characters like the amazing Bpider-Monkey, Ape-vengers and so on (personally, I like the sound of Iron Mandrill)
ReplyDeleteSo there may well be an official Master of Ape-Fu somewhere....
-sean
Surely an ape martial artist would have to be a master of Kong Fu?
ReplyDeleteHold on. Shang-Chimp - Master of Kong Fu? How come Marvel never did this?
Good grief. I've just Googled it and it turns out Marvel have done a character called Shang-Chimp. What kind of madness is this?
ReplyDeleteI know, Steve.... Shang-Chimp makes me think my general antipathy to modern Marvel comics might be misplaced. Perhaps I've just read the wrong ones....
ReplyDeleteMarvel's next big crossover event should be a revival of Apeslayer, unleashed against the parallel ape universe. That would surely be the very definition of senses-shattering.
-sean
I think they should rename him, "Humanslayer," and redraw the old Apeslayer strips, so that the apes now have human heads and Apeslayer and his gang have ape heads.
ReplyDeleteWith Gorillavar Jones and Warlock as back-up features?
ReplyDelete(According to the Wikipedia entry for Marvel Apes, the simian version of Warlock is called...er...Warlock. That seems pretty slack, but then, I couldn't think of anything either)
-sean
Steve, this is indeed the Good Stuff. The seven-year old me owned all of those comics back in the day and their cover art is permanently burned into my brain. That issue of POTA was my first and I loved it... even though I was gutted to have missed the first two. Thanks for posting - you've made a happy man old etc. etc.
ReplyDeleteCer, you beat me to POTA by one week! ( I did manage to buy back-issues though! ) :-)
DeleteYou're welcome, Cerebus. :)
ReplyDeleteThe ape version of Warlock could be Pawlock :)
ReplyDeleteSteve, I just popped in again to read the comments when it occured to me, if I HAD been reading the first 3 Marvel UK titles from the start, then long before now I would have been asking them when they were going to start on the X-Men! Wonder why it took them so long?
ReplyDelete