Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
***
A person of taste and judgement might be OK with finding a bunch of croutons in their soup.
But what about a bunch of Krotons?
That's right. This evening in 1981 was the night on which BBC Two repeated the 1960s Doctor Who story The Krotons as part of its Five Faces of Doctor Who season.
How we trembled, as the robotic villains tried to violently dispose of the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe. And how we, no doubt cheered, when they failed.
Over on the UK singles chart, things were far less life-or-death and the week saw the Police claim the top spot with their summery track Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic.
Meanwhile, on the British album chart, Queen's Greatest Hits reclaimed the Number One slot it had lost, the previous week, to Shakin' Stevens.
Exactly forty years later, that Queen album is still on the chart and residing at Number 23, with just 30 weeks to go before it clocks up its 1,000th week on the listing.
I'm not a huge Police fan but tracks that I approved of on that week's singles chart were:
Labelled with Love - Squeeze
Joan of Arc - Orchestral Manoeuvres in The Dark
Under Pressure - Queen and David Bowie
A Good Year for The Roses - Elvis Costello
Open Your Heart - The Human League
O Superman - Laurie Anderson
The Voice - Ultravox
Bedsitter - Soft Cell
I Go to Sleep - The Pretenders
Walkin' in the Sunshine - Bad Manners
The Lunatics (Have Taken Over the Asylum) - The Fun Boy Three
Cambodia - Kim Wilde
and
Tainted Love - Soft Cell.
Interesting to see 999's cover of Indian Reservation in the lower reaches of that chart.
For those who wish to investigate matters further, the UK singles chart for that week can be found right here.
And the corresponding album chart is located here.
Along the way, he also gets to tangle with the Grey Gargoyle and Jonas Harrow, as well as expose a crooked prison governor.
Readers will be pleased to know that two of the book's eight colour pages are used for a road safety advert.
And, of course, we get the latest exploits of Britain's newest super-hero Jett Lagg.
And so it is that we get the company's version of the Yuletide classic, as delivered by Doug Moench and Ken Landgraf, with seemingly everyone who's ever lived helping out on inks.
And that means he has to tackle The Nihilist Order and the Red Skull.
But, fortunately, he gets some just-in-the-nick-of-time help from the doomed Ameridroid.
Elsewhere, weakened by Loki, Thor must fight a bunch of rock trolls, with the fate of the universe at stake. Thankfully, he has his Belt of Strength at hand!
As for Daredevil's activities, I'm afraid I can shed no light upon the matter.
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33 comments:
Have you got something against road safety, Steve?
-sean
I'm sure it's all well and good in its place, Sean but not if it wastes valuable colour. That's why zebra crossings are black and white, to avoid wasting valuable colour that could be used on super-heroes.
If zebra crossings were in colour, they'd have had to make the Green Cross Code Man the Monochrome Cross Code Man.
And then where would Dave Prowse have been?
Of all the songs mentioned by Steve-O, Charlie only knows the Police, Queen=Bowie, and Soft Cell ones off the top of his head.
Charlie doesn't even know the Human League song and they are from Sheffield!
Charlie feels sad.
I hate to revert back to the last posting but please help Ole Charlie!
Reflecting on Kirby's 1970s DC, the latest issue of Back Issue #131 published by Two Morrows and edited (?) by Roy the Boy himself!
As I read it, I'm curios about the Demon because several pages are dedicated to it. But what is y'alls opinion of it?
I did read Kamandi back in the day, Dingbats (the sole issue, lol) a few Sandman issues, and enjoyed the reprints of Boy Commandoes (both).
But ole Charlie never really grooved to the other Kirby work. So... what's your thoughts???
Folks - this is important! I don't know where the hell MP has been lately, and I'm not sure MP knows where the hell MP's been lately, given the vastness of Dakota...
But did y'all know that South Dakota is the ONLY state in the Union where people own more cats than dogs?
MP - what is going on there?
Y'all get a case of Ted Nugent's Cat Scratch Fever?
Or, dare I suggest it... MP you haven't seen a bunch of folks walking around with flat caps and sporting Brit accents? That could explain the missing dog population?
Charlie -
https://marswillsendnomore.wordpress.com/2013/02/04/jack-kirbys-the-demon-first-issue/
-sean
To be honest Steve, I'm not really that bothered where Dave Prowse would have been.
-sean
Actually, come to think of it, a few of the road safety ads back in the day were Green Cross Code Man comic strips drawn by Dave Gibbons, and Ian Kennedy. Which would be a better use of colour than some reprinted dawn of the 80s Spidey pages.
Ok, I'll get my coat...
-sean
Steve, I've just been looking at that 1981 singles chart and I'm amazed you didn't mention 'Happy Birthday' by Altered Images or 'Just Can't Get Enough' by Depeche Mode - both are fantastic! And Dollar's 'Mirror Mirror (Mon Amour)' was there too - another fab tune :D
Happy Veterans Day Charlie!
It's nice to be missed! I hope you are well. I could give you the latest news from the Dakotas but I'm afraid it would be a shattering bore (apart from a heart-warming personal deer encounter and a couple local maniacs shooting up a parking lot. We get a nice mix here)
I've fallen into a bad pattern where, whenever Steve reviews interesting comics, it's usually on the nights when I am asleep tossing and turning with Lovecraftian nightmares.
It's snowing tonight.
This being the 11th, and being formerly a gas-pumper in the Iowa National Guard Air Cav, I'll raise a beer to you Charlie, and Army helicopter pilots everywhere.
(some of us prefer the ground, thank you very much.)
M.P.
Charlie:
I mostly liked THE DEMON, especially the earlier issues. I’d rate it somewhere above DINGBATS, SANDMAN , MANHUNTER and ATLAS, but below KAMANDI, all of the FOURTH WORLD books and THE LOSERS. About equal to OMAC. JUSTICE INC. and KUNG FU FIGHTER are strictly by-the-numbers Quota books.
b.t.
A truly wonderful selection of chart hits there. Thought the Bowie/Queen single was after this time , amazing how you forget . I still remember picking up the 12ich " O Superman " single from the Virgin superstore in Glasgow. I had no idea Marvel UK did a classics comic .
I liked Kirby's Demon comic, along with Kamandi and Jimmy Olsen imho it was his best work at DC.
"A truly wonderful selection of chart hits there"...
Paul, do you mean Steve's choices or the actual singles chart?
The best single is of course O Superman.
And taking a look at that album chart, I'm going to blow any cred I might have at Steve Does Comics and rate that Hawkwind album as the highlight.
Hey, I was a teenage Michael Moorcock fan.
-sean
Charlie, I've never read any of The Demon issues and cannot, I'm afraid, reliably express an opinion about them.
Colin, Dollar were always a bit too sugary for me, Depeche Mode never grabbed my attention and I can't forgive Happy Birthday for its terrible lyrics. I'm not generally fussy when it comes to words in songs but I do feel a band should put more effort into them than they did on that one.
Sean, I've only heard six of the albums on that chart. My ranking of them is as follows:
1. "East Side Story" - Squeeze
2. "Makin' Movies" - Dire Straits
3. "Rumours" - Fleetwood Mac
4. "Time" - ELO
5. "Almost Blue" - Elvis Costello and The Attractions
6. "Dire Straits" - Dire Straits
Colin, I meant Steve's selection although the rest of the singles charts themselves were pretty good
In the new Moon Knight movie, one of Moon Knight's personas/identities is a northerner:
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/marvel-moon-knight-she-hulk-165005571.html
Maybe South Dakota's dogs are in his custody.
Phillip
Sean - Thank you for that link. All I can say is "wow" to Kirby's splash page. What an explosion!!!
b.t. - Thanks for the ranking! Just curious where you would have put the Boy Commando and Black Magic reprints in that? Could the work 20 - 30 years earlier (from 1973) been better???
Steve - I respect a man who doesn't recall anything or know anything about a subject and admits it! You ready for politics? You got my vote!
In 1981 me was still listening a lot to radio.
Only had one of those albums: Tattoo You.
Within a year or two also Dare and Penthouse and Pavement. Just curious though... was Sheffield "flexing its muscles" given Human League and Heaven 17 were in the album and single charts? I mean, was there a sense like "Sheffield's got it!" kind of like Seattle 10 years later with the "grunge" sound?
I've just watched/listened to the Moon Knight trailer. The journalist writing for yahoo doesn't know much about accents.
Phillip
I agree, Phillip. I can't hear anything in that trailer that sounds even vaguely like a northern English accent.
Charlie, I don't remember what people were saying about the Sheffield music scene at the time.
Didn't know there was a Moon Knight movie, interesting
Steve, Charlie, From Scotland there certainly was a feeling at this time that Sheffield was where it was happening with Human League, ABC, Heaven 17, Def Leopard, Cabaret Voltaire etc. Into the 90s they also had Pulp etc etc. Great bands, great city as well
Paul - As regards Moon Knight, it may be a tv series - not a movie!
Phillip (in error - as usual!)
NEWSFLASH: 'Voyage' has officially become ABBA's 10th #1 album in the UK.
In other news - Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' and Wham!'s 'Last Christmas' have re-entered the singles chart...
...and so it begins.
Maybe 'Boris Johnson is a ******* ****' will be a hit again this Christmas, Colin.
Its already well on the way to becoming an evergreen seasonal favourite round my place.
-sean
Sean, it's already a festive classic beloved by all the family.
But, not content with stealing Labour's clothes, Boris has now stolen Greta Thunberg's clothes too and he's become the No.1 defender of the environment so perhaps everybody should start being nice about him :D
If your politicians are green like ours, I can only assume the both countries are now completely awash in bullsh%t!!!
Charlie, what about Joe Biden? He's OK isn't he?
Well, Biden has basically arranged for nuclear proliferation in the Pacific (through the nutters currently running Australia) as part of his new cold war Colin, which doesn't strike me as particularly ecologically minded, or in any way ok.
-sean
Never forget that a USA Democrat is well to the right of your center-rigjt parties lol.
Gents - it seems like winter has arrived. I am, as of today, wearing me Oor Willie slippers. Thet said, i am sitting on the couch though and not me bucket. Bad for the hemorrhoids!
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