It was the year the world ended.
Admittedly, it didn't really but it threatened to - because that was the month when NORAD and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie detected a massive Soviet nuclear strike heading towards them.
Fortunately, it all turned out to be a false alarm and we all survived to panic another day.
Which was good news for Penelope Keith because that was also the month when the last episode of the first series of her sitcom To the Manor Born was watched by 23.95 million viewers, which was, at that time, the highest ever viewing-figure for a recorded TV show in the UK.
So, there you have it, a month that could give us global nuclear devastation and Penelope Keith. There's not many months could make that boast.
But what of the galaxy's greatest comic? Just what boasts could it be making that month?
I've no idea. As always, although I recognise some of them, the covers furnish me with few memory jogs as to the comics' contents.
It's good to see Black Hawk on a cover, even though he made so little impact on me that I still can't recall his adventures, despite having Googled panels from his strip.
The gigantic George sort of rings a bell.
Meanwhile, The Alien Who Came In From The Cold clearly did so in vain because I must confess that, like Vienna, he means nothing to me.
Probably the thing that means the most to me is the chance to win a Dinky Toys replica of the Starship Enterprise. It has to be said that, as a youth, I could never quite come to terms with the idea of there being a Dinky Toys version of the Enterprise. I was so used to the company producing Gerry Anderson toys that it seemed oddly heretical for them to be tackling Star Trek as well.
The Russians nearly retaliated to a US nuclear "attack" in !983 Steve, and thats just the incidents we know about - these things probably happened regularly back then, which is a comfort of sorts as we enter a new era of cold war, making nukes great again.
ReplyDeleteI see you're still complaining that the 2000AD covers don't reveal much about the contents, and yet when you get to prog 140 which announces the beginning of both the Stainless Steel Rat and the VCs - a bit of a future war chestnut, but featuring the zarjaz artwork of Garry Leach and Cam Kennedy - you don't even mention them.
You're consistency is admirable!
-sean
I blame Tharg for putting the Enterprise on the cover. He should have known it'd distract my attention away from the Stainless Steel Rat and the VCs.
ReplyDeleteHi Steve, Happy Holidays if I don't see you!
ReplyDeleteI know nothing about these comics b/c I have not read them. IF I had read them, it's unlikely I would remember much.
BUT - perhaps this article is interesting to you and your fan club? It's about "The Secret Identity of Marvel Comics' Editor."
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/12/the-secret-identity-of-marvel-comics-editor/547829/
Cheers!
Happy Holidays to you too, Charlie. And thanks for the link.
ReplyDeleteJust noticed the Star Lord Guide to The Galaxy on the bottom cover, surprised to see the character so long after the merger.
ReplyDeleteQuite right Steve, what kind of editor doesn't consider the requirements of bloggers thirty eight years down the line when putting together a cover? So much for the galaxy's greatest comic.
ReplyDeleteKonnichiwa Charlie-san - Making Marvel great again, eh? I'll believe it when I see it.
Timothy, it just goes to show you can't keep a good galactic superhero down.
Although having said that, he hasn't really been heard from since (unlike the Big E, who went on to a career at DC comics)
-sean
Sean - the article is interesting enough, sort of. I mean, it kind of wants to create a controversy where, I have to imagine, 99% of the folks don't find one. That Marvel's Big Kahuna had been using a Japanese nom de plume initially, and thus a real Japanese person didn't get to write comics, seems odd that it is a big controversy. But hey.. it's comics!
ReplyDeleteGeorge, you might recall, was a battle robot so large that he had five separate brains to control his various functions. Unfortunately, they somehow got out of sync with each other, turning George into a clumsy ungainly joke. The story resolves itself when the liquid-intelligence-in-a-jar ABC Warrior called The Mess has its jar smashed and seeps into George's innards, somehow managing to coordinate all the brains once more (and naturally saving the rest of the crew at the critical juncture).
ReplyDeleteCharlie, I just thought it was hilarious that high ups at a leading publisher like Marvel could be so inept as to get caught up in a ridiculous "controversy" like that to start with.
ReplyDeleteInstead of just saying "yeah, he used a pseudonym" - because, like, who cares? - supposedly professional people were going around claiming they'd met this obviously fictitious Japanese guy...
Still, thats comic book Babylon for you - I met the current editor of 2000AD a few years back, and he's not really from a planet orbiting Betelgeuse. Its a twitter-storm waiting to happen!
-sean
Thanks for the George info, B.
ReplyDeleteAs for the other issue, I find it very hard to believe that Tharg isn't an alien. I can only assume that a fantasist is passing himself of as the editor of 2000 AD. I'm sure the real Tharg will deal with him appropriately.
Sean - It took a while but I finally came to the conclusion that the nation's brain trust is not located at Marvel HQ, lol.
ReplyDeleteIt actually hit me one day, a year ago or so while reading this blog or BitBA blog, that to put a 20 year old like Conway in charge of your most precious properties "Amazing Spider Man" and "Fantastic Four" (unsupervised yet!) was pure lunacy / stupidity.
I almost think that a serious, bigger company might have been sued for breech of fiduciary responsibility by its shareholders.
I mean, is there a bigger more pointless moment, in all of comics history, than killing Gwen Stacy? What did it gain Marvel? I can't imagine the profits from Gwen-clone stories made it worth Marvel's financial while? ANd sales from ASM 121 probably didn't make $MM. I can't imagine the eventual union of Peter and Mary Jane raked in millions of $? And, they could have done that without killing Gwen. I mean Betty and Veronica co-exist quite nicely!
OK - I know Lee and Romita supposedly had a hand in it but I blame Conway b/c it is easier for me to think a 20 year old could be that naive than a couple of 50 year olds.
Reviving Bucky is near sacrilege too, but at least they raked in big $ probably, from that.