If you were the sap who bought a franchise selling igloos in the Sahara, then this week of forty years ago was the luckiest break of your life.
Why?
Because, on February 18th 1979, the Sahara Desert experienced snow for a full 30 minutes. There are no reports as to whether anyone had a snowball fight or whether the gritters had been out.
But it just goes to show how even the most reliable of places, people and things can surprise you.
And you know what else surprised us that week?
Marvel UK.
You know how?
By not existing.
Well, that's not strictly speaking true. It still existed. It just had no presence in our shops because - thanks to industrial action - that week, for the first time since the autumn of 1972, there were no Marvel UK mags published.
How did we cope?
How did we survive?
I'm not sure we did.
My memory certainly didn't, because I've no recall at all of this event. Possibly, my lack of appetite for the post-Revolution weeklies meant the dearth of Marvel action had no impact on my delicate psyche.
And it's not like we had much new happening elsewhere to excite us. Blondie were/was still Number One on both the UK singles and album charts and Superman was still dominating the world's box offices.
Even if we had had something new at the cinema to watch, we'd have had a tough time getting there because, in a blatant act of solidarity with the Sahara, Britain was in the grip of its third coldest winter of the 20th Century, with temperatures dropping so low the mercury fled our thermometers and went on holiday in the Bahamas, and snow piled up as high as our heads.
I should, of course, at this point, annoy all young readers by rambling on about how the schools stayed open through all of it, not like nowadays with all the namby-pamby teachers taking the day off the moment a flake of snow hits the ground but the truth is our namby-pamby schools closed too, mostly because school boilers back then were guaranteed to fail the moment the temperature fell below 30 degrees C.
That's how great the 1970s were. Nowadays, they wouldn't have a clue how to make technology like that.
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29 comments:
I wonder how baby me survived this week? Was it an industry wide strike or just Marvel. Quick Google doesn't say except I note The Times was in the middle of not being published for a year.
At this point I was getting The Dandy on a Monday, and Star Wars weekly on a Wednesday. How did I cope coming home from school to a comicless home. I mean I probably read a book or something instead, but no Korky the Cat, Desperate Dan or Star Wars? The real Winter of discontent.
Up the workers, comrade Steve! Down with the relaunched weeklies.
I notice that Tharg managed to get a full complement of progs into the shops in February '79 - www.stevedoescomics.blogspot.com/2017/03/rip-bernie-wrightson-plus-2000-ad-in.html - so its not like there weren't any good comics to read.
-sean
Sadly,Aggy, I can shed no light on the circumstances or conditions of the strike action which derailed Marvel UK. I have no doubt we all took refuge in TV. BBC Two that night was showing international table tennis and a documentary about Milton Keynes, so we can't claim we were starved of entertainment.
Sean, I think we can only assume that Tharg used his Outer Space powers to circumvent the industrial action, possibly using a sweatshop on Saturn to produce the comic.
I don't specifically remember this week, though in my young mind this whole traumatic month stretched for the entire 70s. I'm pretty sure the experience of these few weeks coloured my memory of trying to collect Marvel UK weeklies for the entire decade.
I have to wonder how much it helped sour my view of the relaunched post-revolution comics. Though I doubt an absence of industrial action would have made me love them.
Are you suggesting that Tharg may have been a scab, Steve?
That seems highly unlikely, as IPC/Fleetway were very unionised - unlike DC Thompson, where union membership was a sacking offence - particularly in the Youth division. Around 1980 management actually wanted to close 2000AD down even though it was one of their more profitable publications because it had the most militant workers - www.thrillpoweroverload.blogspot.com/2006/08/getting-good-groove-going.html
-sean
I think the joy of three days off school, that even us softy southerners got, compensated for the dearth in reading material. I recall the hi-tech method my primary school used to convey the message that the school was closed, namely a junior teacher standing at the font gate. The official reason was that the boilers had run out of fuel. Given that the roads had only been closed a few days, one must admire their early adoption of a just-in-time delivery system. I used the strike/revolution as a handy jumping off point. Marvel UK's loss being Marvel US's gain, as the colour comics seemed a lot more plentiful around that time.
DW
The inequity of life... You guys could not get reprints of Marvel comics and we in the USA could not get any Dandy, Beano, etc. at all.... ever! It just isn't fair.
Given there are no pictures to look at, in alphabetical order, or with green-costumes, may I supply some?
Can I ask you UK gents to look at the link below in which they discuss a 1946 comic by Simon and Kirby on the history of Guy Fawkes?
If you read the comic, page 2 and the last page, there are these "modern day images of Brits celebrating Guy Fawkes day!" They are horrific! Is it still like that today: burning people in effigy? My gosh it seems you lot are just full of blood lust!!!
Set me straight!
https://pappysgoldenage.blogspot.com/2019/02/number-2301-gunpowder-plot.html
Yes it is like that today Charlie.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gallery/2018/nov/05/lewes-bonfire-night-parade-in-pictures
https://metro.co.uk/2017/11/04/brits-burn-giant-effigies-of-harvey-weinstein-and-donald-trump-on-bonfire-night-7054054/
They really go for it in Lewes.
-sean
If this blog continues into Marvel UK's 80s output, we may find ourselves wishing for more weeks like this. The Care Bears and Worzel Gummidge anyone?
Charlie, the person being burnt in effigy is traditionally Guy Fawkes but as Sean mentioned, nowadays other people get burnt in effigy too.
I don't remember this Marvel-free week either but I have an excuse. I lived in a village which was snowed-in for several weeks so getting to the local town to buy comics was a bit difficult. Luckily my mother kept a hoard of tinned food and instant mashed potato for just such an occasion :)
Tim, by the time I reach the late 1980s (assuming I do), I think I'm going to have gone mad trying to keep up with the increasingly random myriad of titles Marvel had launched.
Sean, I would never suggest anything negative about Tharg, in case he comes after me with his death ray.
DW, we always found out by listening to Radio Sheffield, in the morning and hoping our school would be on the list of closed schools they read out.
Charlie, not only does that happen but, when I was a kid, children would make an effigy, which they were going to burn, and then parade it through the streets, asking people to give them money, with the words, "Penny for the Guy." Sadly, like carol singing, that tradition seems to have died out now.
Colin, I don't think I ever had instant mashed potato until I was an adult. It is a miraculous and wondrous thing.
Steve, "Penny for the Guy" dying out is obviously because of the EU tyrants in Brussels. Its political correctness gone mad.
After 29th March, kids will be able to beg in independent streets again. And we can have 240 of those pennies to the pound.
-sean
UK guys... love the discussion on how you ate during snowmeggadon 40 years ago!
Perhaps you can make a running list of food stuffs to survive Brexitmeggadon?
If I hear one more story about looming food shortages in the UK I am going to seriously consider organizing a red cross ship for our friends across the pond!
But seriously, trade in the instant mash for some solid brown-rice pasta! And go get some Nut Juice like Soy or Almond. (I never liked the term "nut milk" for some reason! W.t.h...) It lasts a loooong time and doesn't taste like merde like the ultra-high-temperature pasteurized milk!
Sean - thanks for the link! THe Guardian one didn't work.. perhaps copyright issues outside the UK... but the other one sure did!
Good Lord! What's with the burning crosses and the Native American garb! Your parade would be all the news if it was here! Loved the burning Trump effigies! (My fav Trump float was for Fasching in Germany (Koln?) last year where he was taking it from behind, I think from Putin, LOL. Man did that one rock!
Thought you might have enjoyed the one with the Trump and Rocket Man effigies Charlie (;
I expect the Zulus in black face would make the news in the US too (that was in the Guardian piece; they have a US edition - maybe try and search it for "Lewes").
-sean
Okay, guys-
We all know that virtually all of you either loathe the Donald, or at least find him imbecilicly amusing.
I can dig that. I don't believe half the gibberish he blows out either.
The other half is spot on, though. I can honestly say that I personally am doing better now than in the last ten years.
If our (virtually) two party system could, or would, be more like the socio/economic/political system that you folks have in the UK, I'd be all for it.
Though in afterthought, we scwabble inside the parties just as much as your various parties argue against each other.
Oh, my brothers, the wonderful world of politics.
I am now drunk enough to attempt some Shadow comics, featuring artwork from "you-know-who"
Thanks, Charlie.
As long as we are talking about comics, instant mashed potatoes, and snow...
How is Guy Fawkes seen by you guys today? I mean do you think of him as a "rat bastard traitor" or "a great guy just misunderstood" or...?
I have no opinion of him. And no one over here has tried to blow up the Congress that I know of.
(Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it has been attempted but the FBI and CIA just can't tell us about it because it is super secret and that's why they get billions of dollars "off the books" b/c of all those things they've done to save us but can't tell us about. Because if they did tell us then we'd know they don't necessarily have a lot of wins... LOL.)
You're forgetting Osama bin Laden Charlie - he had a go at blowing up the White House and the Pentagon at the same time. Ok, he didn't succeed, but neither did Guy Fawkes. Do you think of Osama as a great guy just misunderstood?
Too soon?
You also have folk heroes like John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald.
The Russians are really good at that kind of thing. I have a lot of time for a people that can get rid of two entire systems of government - absolute monarchy and Stalinism - in less than a century.
-sean
And then you wind up with a Kleptocracy, supported by a military dictatorship, which in turn interfered in an American election to elect their patsy, an aging, unstable sociopath as president of the United States. My dislike of Russians is maybe equalled only by my dislike of most white southerners. I'm prejudiced in this regard. But I was a soldier in West Germany in the final years of the Cold War. And I'm a northerner.
M.P.
Charlie, I think most people just see Guy Fawkes as someone you set fire to on Bonfire Night. They don't really think about who he was or have any opinion on what he tried to do. For most people, he might as well be a fictional character.
Well I am thinking of our own citizens... I guess we have Benedict Donald, lol!
Charlie, I agree with Steve. I'm completely indifferent to Guy Fawkes, regarding him as neither hero nor villain. Back in the '70s when we kids were collecting junk for our local bonfire Guy Fawkes Night was just a fun night we looked forward to. Guy/Guido Fawkes was a Catholic and in previous centuries Guy Fawkes Night aroused a lot of anti-Catholic sentiment but that had totally disappeared by the 1970s.
Nowadays on Guy Fawkes Night I go out into my back garden to watch the local fireworks till I get bored.
Also, November 5th was the date of my mother's death in 2009 so every Guy Fawkes Night I watch the fireworks and remember my mother too.
Colin, that would give Nov 5th a personal resonance (my missus died some years ago at the end of October, so Halloween has that kind of effect on me).
Thats right about Guy Fawkes being catholic, and Nov 5th celebrations are not unlike the night before the "Glorious Twelfth" of July in the north of Ireland - which also goes back to the seventeenth century - when bonfires commemorate the victory of William of Orange.
The sentiment hasn't completely disappeared in England though. I believe in Lewes they still regularly burn the pope as well as Guy Fawkes.
M.P., I don't really want to derail Steve's comments section more than I already have - I'll leave that to Charlie - but I do think its a bit unfair to blame the Russians for your president when you voted for him. Not you personally obviously, but Americans.
No offence intended, as its the same here. Apparently Russians on twitter are to blame for brexit.
-sean
I'm sorry to hear about your wife, Sean.
It's possible that Brexit might lead to the re-unification of Ireland but if I lived in the Irish Republic I wouldn't want all those bitter Unionist bigots in my country.
On the plus side though Colin, as you live in the UK Irish unification would mean they wouldn't be in in your country anymore :)
-sean
I voted for Trump. While I'm not a "conservative" per say (my punk-rock roots would lable me as a passive anarchist. Lol!) I'm not a blind follower that agrees with everything he says or does.
We knew he was a loose cannon, and thought he'd shake things up. Boy, on that count he delivers!
On the plus side, our economy is up, and there a plethora of jobs for people looking for work. A far cry from when I was beating the streets 8 years ago.
American politics have never been so entertaining.
I truly believe that if America is doing good, the rest of the free world will follow. Any festering of foreign government boils started long before 2 years ago. Maybe now they just coming to a head.
Man. It'd be more fun to debate the tactical advantages of Stiltman, Porcupine & Beetle armor! Lol!!
He is a plague and pestilence in the eyes of man and God alike.
M.P.
Well, he definitely makes a lot of people itchy.
I can remember when Reagan called the Soviet Union an "evil empire," and American liberals denounced him as a warmonger and a scare monger. Now, those same people are looking for Russian spies behind every bush.
I didn't vote for Trump, I voted against the Hildebeast. I considered Trump to be the lesser evil. Unlike Democrats, who saw Obama as a messiah and Hillary as a saint. I did think that a successful business person might be better than a drunken hag whose only credentials were internal reproductive organs that may have still worked 40 years ago.
I still don't see Trump as a messiah, although I've been pleasantly surprised that he has kept most of his campaign promises. My attitude toward him is like Lincoln's toward General U. S. Grant.
Grant was a slob and a drunkard. In peacetime, he might have gotten court martialed for conduct unbecoming an officer. If Lincoln had followed peacetime protocol and sacked Grant, the CSA might have won the Civil War, and the Democrats would still own their slaves today. But Lincoln realized that etiquette and propriety are not high priorities in wartime. When some blue noses petitioned him to fire Grant, Lincoln said, "I can't spare this man. He fights."
Re the incident of snow in the Sahara, I'm reminded of an interview with a professional psychic in 1976. They asked him if Jimmy Carter would win the presidential election. He laughed, "Carter will be president when it snows in Florida!" Carter won the election, and, in the winter of 1976-77, there were some minor snow flurries in Florida. A stopped clock is right twice a day.
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