Thursday 19 January 2017

January 19th, 1977 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

It's time to grab your ballot box and grip it tight as you can because yet another exciting poll has come to a conclusion. This time last week, I asked you, "Which is best, Stonehenge or Avebury?" and I can proudly announce that the results are as below:

Stonehenge
  5 (25%)
Avebury
  4 (20%)
It's a draw!
  4 (20%)
They both stink. I've got a rockery in my garden that's better than they are and I don't care who knows it!
  7 (35%)


This means that, as I always suspected, the gardens of Britain are filled with rockeries even more impressive than the nation's most ancientest of monuments. Take that, Stone Age Man, you've been well and truly pwned like the hairy-knuckled buffoon you are.

"But that's enough about prehistory," I hear you cry. "What of history? Recent history? This day in history?"

I'm glad you asked, because January 19th, 1977, was an exciting date for all lovers of niblicks, bogeys and Plus-Fours, as BBC Two was broadcasting International Pro-Celebrity Golf featuring Tony Jacklin and Jimmy Tarbuck v Johnny Miller and Efrem Zimbalist Jr. If the Genome website is to be believed, Sean Connery had already beaten Bing Crosby to draw first blood for Great Britain in this series.

To be honest, thanks to me not being a golf fan, this news doesn't excite me greatly. I do, though, never turn down a chance to type the words, "Efrem Zimbalist Jr." It was names like that that always made American TV seem so much more glamorous than British TV back then.

But what of Marvel UK? Could they possibly rustle up anything that suited us to a tee?

Marvel UK, Captain Britain #15, unmasked

I haven't read this issue but I'm going to guess that the shocking identity of the awesome super villain is the Red Skull, which means we must be approaching the period when glossy covers and John Buscema arrived and I started reading the good captain's comic again.

Marvel UK, Planet of the Apes #118

Battle for the Planet of the Apes rumbles on.

I can reveal that this issue's advertised cut-out models are figures of Charlton Heston, Cornelius and Dr Zaius who can all be arranged so that Charlton's threatening the others with a gun.

Needless, to say, as a child, I wasted no time in making sure he did just that.

Mighty World of Marvel #225, Hulk vs the Locust

The Locust is still bugging the Hulk.

I genuinely don't have a clue what the cut-out model is on the back of this comic. Does it feature the Hulk? Does it feature Daredevil, or Luke CageCaptain Marvel or the Fantastic Four?

Sadly, I can shed no light upon the mystery.

I shall have to investigate this further, via the magic of the internet.

...

...

I have now checked via the magic of the internet and it has afforded me no answers to my question whatsoever.

Super Spider-Man and the Super-Heroes #205, the longest hundred yards

No such problems in this instance. If memory serves me correctly, this week's cut-outs are of Spider-Man and the Green Goblin who we can put in front of the rooftop backdrop we cut out from the back cover of last week's comic.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're right about the Red Skull, Steve, which puts you one up on Nick Fury who thought it was all a communist plot. With powers of deduction like that, have you ever considered running a high tech international counter-espionage agency?

Even to a kid at the time, the red scare reference in the seemed a bit anachronistic... but then, the whole storyline had a noticeable subtext, with Cap B complaining about economic difficulties in the UK while Cap A went on about being a man of action with no time for rules and regulations. They were a sort of Farage and Trump of the 70s.
Worst team-up ever.

-sean

Anonymous said...

PS Doh! Apologies, Steve - bad edit in that previous comment. Ignore that "in the" from the third line.
-sean

Anonymous said...

While it would have been cool to see Sean Connery beat Bing Crosby in golf, it would have been much cooler just to see him beat him.

M.P.

Anonymous said...

I managed to miss this week's Captain Britain, and took months before I learned how he defeated Mastermind, and more importantly, how the FF and Doctor Doom defeated the Overmind. Both were mildly disappointing, if truth be known.

DW

Anonymous said...

"..the gardens of Britain.." ? Steve, don't forget your massive international following - perhaps many (or most) of the votes came from beyond the shores of this sceptered isle, this seat of Mars, this other Eden etc, etc. But the results demonstrate yet again the flaws in the "first past the post" model of democracy - the majority chose either Stonehenge or Avebury but the minority who chose neither won with barely more than a third of the votes spookily echoing the last UK General Election. The result should have been, of course, a coalition between Stonehenge and Avebury :D But I agree with Sean about the Cap A/Cap B team-up - that entire Red Skull/Fourth Reich storyline was so tedious anyway and it lasted for ages. And Steve, the glossy covers and John Buscema start with #24 but all the colour pages were dropped at the same time - were glossy covers and John Buscema (who didn't stay for long) better than colour pages ?? And didn't Bing Crosby drop dead while playing golf later in '77 just days after recording that festive duet with David Bowie.

Anonymous said...

So it was Bowie that finished him off...

M.P.

Steve W. said...

Colin, I can only apologise to my international readership for ignoring their gardens.

I must confess I preferred the black and white pages, John Buscema and glossy covers to the colour pages because the colours were always a bit too bright for my liking.

M.P, I was assuming it was losing to Sean Connery at golf that finished Bing Crosby off. Goldfinger lost at golf to Sean Connery and, within ninety minutes, he was dead, sucked out of a plane. Bing Crosby lost at golf to Sean Connery and, within months, he was dead. I think we can all draw the lesson from this that you should never play Sean Connery at golf.

Anonymous said...

Apparently Sean Connery was the first member of Trump's Scottish golf club.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/15/golf-donald-trump-presidential-elections-golfer
Maybe he could play a round or two with the Donald...

-sean

TC said...

The Donald probably won't have time to play a lot of golf with Connery or with anyone else. Unlike Obama, Trump has had a job before. So, unlike Obama, he understands the concept of getting off of the golf course and going to the office once in a while.