Sunday 4 October 2015

October 4th, 1975 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

In this week in 1975, there were two versions of Fattie Bum Bum and two versions of Una Paloma Blanca on the UK singles chart at the same time. How on Earth did we ever survive the 1970s with sanity intact?

We survived because we had the world's greatest comic company to restore our equilibriums at the end of each and every week.

Spider-Man Comics Weekly #138

Speaking of which, Spider-Man's definitely in need of some equilibrium restoration as he hits full-on hallucinatory mode this issue.

And Iron Man's up against AIM. Frankly, he's making a meal of it. He seems to have been up against them for months now.

Marvel UK, Avengers #107, the Squadron Sinister

"The master of kung-fu begins his wildest adventure yet!" it tells us. But I don't know what it is, as I never had this issue.

I do though spot that the Squadron Sinister storyline isn't over yet.

Marvel UK, Dracula Lives #50

Dracula Lives confounds many a doomsayer by hitting the big 50.

Marvel UK, Planet of the Apes #50, Escape From The Planet of the Apes

Planet of the Apes makes the big 50 as well - and does so by launching into its adaptation of Escape From the Planet of the Apes, which I seem to recall was drawn by the mighty Rico Rival but I could be wrong.

Mighty World of Marvel #157

I don't have a clue what any of the stories are in this issue - unless one of them is that one where the Hulk grows to be five hundred foot tall and holds the Fantastic Four and Daredevil in his hands. I think we all remember that one.

Marvel UK, the Super-Heroes #31, the Cat

The Original X-Men, Ant-Man and the Cat?

All in one comic?

It's like Marvel UK asked, "What's the lineup most likely to get a comic cancelled in the shortest possible amount of time?" and then published it.

5 comments:

John Jenkins said...

Now that we have survived the seventies, eighties, nineties, noughties and are halfway through the teens, I'm finding my favourite survival technique is 'living in the seventies'. No wonder I love this site.

TC said...

They played Una Paloma Blanca on the radio about every 15 minutes in the US in 1975. I don't even know which version. George Baker, Jonathan King, Slim Whitman, Bobby Vinton. Maybe all of them; they all started to sound alike to me. And it might be easier to list the singers who did NOT cover that song.

The Whitman version turned up again ca. 1980 in TV ads for a compilation album of his greatest hits. The ad said he outsold Elvis Presley and The Beatles in downtown France or something.

Offhand, I can't name one good song from the 1970's that wasn't written by either Ann Wilson or Stevie Nicks. Even the Bay City Rollers had a hit in 1975.

Re: The Super Heroes loser line-up, I guess it's just as well that The Cat and Ant-Man weren't huge smash hits. DC might have sued Marvel, claiming that the characters were swiped from Catwoman and the Atom. By the time the (new) X-Men really caught on, the statute of limitations for a copyright suit had probably already expired. And the Doom Patrol had already been cancelled by then, anyway.

Anonymous said...

Una Paloma Blanca? That's what that thing was?
TC is right. They played that constantly. It was seared into our brains.
I HAD forgotten about it...

Thanks. Thanks a bunch.
M.P.

Steve W. said...

I'm genuinely shocked that Una Paloma Blanca was played in America. In Britain, there's a long and dishonourable tradition of terrible European songs becoming hits, thanks to people hearing them on their summer holidays in Europe and then buying them when they get back home, to remind themselves of their holiday. In the UK, Una Paloma Blanca definitely fell into that category. I'm not sure how it came to catch on in America, unless lots of Americans had holidays in Spain that year, for some reason.

Anonymous said...

Don't forget the Wurzels' parody version - 'I Am A Cider Drinker'. Funny how Dracula Lives gets a blurb to celebrate the 50th issue but POTA doesn't. And Dracula Lives also keeps its' original corner-box picture, if only POTA had too. The adaptation of "Escape" was indeed drawn by Rico Rival - all the apes strips from the UK POTA issues can be read on the Hunter's Planet Of The Apes website.