Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
***
Where would Oasis have been without it?
Without one of their biggest hits. That's where.
It's true. The month kicked off with the New Seekers' I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing hogging the top of the UK singles chart.
It's true. The month kicked off with the New Seekers' I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing hogging the top of the UK singles chart.
However, mighty as they were, even the New Seekers couldn't own the top spot forever and, as January came to an end, they had to make way for T. Rex's Telegram Sam.
Come to think of it, didn't Oasis once borrow the riff from Telegram Sam, as well?
Over on the British album chart, there was also good news for Marc Bolan's band, as the month began with their Electric Warrior LP ruling the roost.
Over on the British album chart, there was also good news for Marc Bolan's band, as the month began with their Electric Warrior LP ruling the roost.
Admittedly, a couple of weeks later, it lost that crown to George Harrison and Friends' Concert for Bangladesh, before once more reclaiming the throne, as January faded.
The world's mightiest super-team's handed its fifth annual.
Who wouldn't want to own this one, as Cap comes up against the latest of the Red Skull's interminable parade of buried robots?
Spider-Man's busy this month. Not only is he guesting in the Avengers' latest annual, he's also co-starring in Daredevil's.
Hooray! I had this one when I was a youth!
And I owned this one too!
Not to be left out when it comes to all this annual action, Chamber of Darkness gets its one and only special.
Thus it is we get It's Only Magic!, Mr. Craven Buys His Scream House!, Always Leave 'Em Laughing!, The Face of Fear! and The Day of the Red Death! as produced by the hearts and minds of Stan Lee, John Buscema, Dennis O'Neil, Tom Sutton, Gary Friedrich, Archie Goodwin, Syd Shores, Roy Thomas and Don Heck.
And does so with the help of Spider-Man.
Two tales are contained within, reprinted from Avengers #8 and #11.
In the first, Kang shows up and demands to be made ruler of Earth. The Avengers also show up but need the Wasp and Teen Brigade to delay him until they can put an end to his evil plans.
In the second, Kang creates a robotic Spider-Man and sends him back in time to battle the gang.
This time, it's the one that's made up of separate machines that combine to create a flying bomber with a big metal head sat on top of it.
We also get a Not Brand Echh tale called The Revengers Vs. Charlie America.
That can only mean the duo must put aside their conflicts, to unite against the insufferable menace of the Masked Marauder. Otherwise known as Foggy Nelson's landlord.
Which is a good thing, as it's a Hulk annual.
The Leader's dead and our hero's zapped into the future. There, he fights King Arrkam's forces before Arrkam convinces him to, instead, fight the Executioner.
But what's this? Back in our own time, thinking the Hulk dead, Rick Jones tells Glenn Talbot he was actually Bruce Banner?
Oh, Rick, you wally.
After all that drama, Marvel clearly feels we need something a little lighter, because we're then handed a Not Brand Echh reprint that goes by the name of The Ever-lovin' Thung vs. The Inedible Bulk!
As far as I can recall, Subby's gone in search of his dad but he's not the only one on such a mission.
For Llyra and Tiger Shark have now found the missing man and have abducted him.
As if that wasn't enough for The Avenging Son to deal with, he also has to contend with the Human Torch's interference.
Subby battles to save Lady Dorma from the Faceless Ones before returning to Atlantis to battle Warlord Krang who's, once again, seized the throne.
And I don't think anyone'll be amazed to discover it consists entirely of reprints.
All of which come from issues #1 and #2 of the regular monthly.
With all these $.25 comics hitting the stands presumably around October 1971 i cant really think they were intended as “annuals” or “king size” but were perhaps collateral work product created during the $.15 to $.25 to $.20 experiment of the past two months???
ReplyDeleteSteve thanks for posting these off beat issues! I now see where else i filled this month’s comic quota, having bought the Cap, Hulk, and Subby off the spinner!!
ReplyDeleteAnd let me tell you!!’ They were rollicking good reads for 10 year old Charlie!!! Cap especially! Though given they were reprints Cap bitts heads with the 4th or 5th Sleeper within a few months in his monthly mag!
Shades of Marvel UK!!!
I never understood the appeal of Oasis, Steve - if you're into the Beatles why not just listen to Beatles records instead, and go and see a better tribute band?
ReplyDeleteDid anyone outside the UK really pay much attention to Britpop and 'Cool Britannia' in the mid 90s? It all seemed like something Marx might have described as history repeating itself as farce (obviously as a dialectical materialist he would have been much more into northern bleep, hardcore and jungle).
Pleased for you that you had both Sub-Mariner comics, although personally I always thought Namor was a bit of a knob.
Mind you, to be fair, between continually having to reclaim the throne from Krang, Attuma or whoever and regularly attacking the surface dwellers, being the monarch of Atlantis does seem a bit tedious.
-sean
Dave doth solemnly proclaim his Cover of the Month to be Daredevil. He liketh the Chamber of Darkness cover too, but the DD one would be the one he'd most likely purchase if confronted with all of these on a spinner rack.
ReplyDeleteWas Namor ever called the king of Atlantis? Its the same with Dr Doom - even though Latveria was a kingdom, he always referred to as the lord or monarch of the place, never (that I can recall) 'king'.
ReplyDeleteIs that reluctance to use the word an American thing?
Not criticizing - hey, I'm a Republican (er, well, maybe not in the American sense, lol) - just curious.
-sean
Wasn’t that Harrison convert for Biafra???
ReplyDeleteSteve, I think Oasis pinched a rift from "Get it on" from T-Rex on their "cigarettes and alcohol" single - then again they used so many of these that I'm sure there were others.
ReplyDeleteCharlie: George Harrison etc did a concert for Bangladesh. You may have mixed up the name as Bangladesh was originals spelt as "Bangla Desh" (Two separate words)??. I don't think there was any concert for Biafra which seems strange unless I've just forgotten about it.
Sean. I think you right cool Britannia as far as I recall, wasn't used that much outside of the UK . I remember an article about it in the UK where Brute we r suck of the phrase as it was linked to everything that happened. Some nice music though. Agree Oasis were overrated swipe merchants.
Sorry that should have read "I read an article where it said people in the UK were sick of that phrase as it was..."🙁
ReplyDeleteAdmittedly I'm not especially knowledgeable on Beatles related matters Charlie, but I think the 'Concert for Bangladesh' was for Bangladesh.
ReplyDelete-sean
Sean, the appeal of Oasis was mostly lost on me, as was the appeal of most of the Britpop bands.
ReplyDeleteMcScotty, thanks for the Oasis/T. Rex riff theft clarification.
Dave, I'll pick The Avengers as my cover of the month. I like the sense of helpless entanglement and chaos it brings to the table.
Charlie, I can confirm it was definitely Bangladesh.
I had that CAPTAIN AMERICA SPECIAL, bought it hot off the spinner rack at Thrifty Drug Store lo, those many decades ago. January ‘72 was a full year and a half before buying comics became a Regular Thing for me. Comics were still strictly an occasional Impulse Buy.
ReplyDeleteI’m pretty sure that initial Red Skull Sleeper story was adapted to the cheapo Grantray Lawrence MARVEL SUPERHEROES cartoons in the mid-60s. As I was flipping thru this issue eleventy-zillion years ago, I kept coming across images that seemed familiar. Apparently getting stung by the Nostalgia Bug was enough to get me to part with my cash — some things never change, I guess.
b.t.
Ah, Steve, just to be clear - when I wrote "if you're into the Beatles..." above I didn't mean you personally, although I see now it can read that way; rather, it was a general notional you.
ReplyDeleteNo inference that you might find Oasis appealing was intended.
-sean
B.T. - Thrifty Drug Store? We had a Thrifty in our town too, of Crown Point, Indiana! Where'd you grow up? I got my Cap #2 at Ribordy Drug
ReplyDeleteStore in Merrillville, IN.
SEAN - One could use "one" (I guess that's 3rd person singular) instead of colloquially "you?" Just like in French and German... I hope you blokes don't use "y'all" like the hilly billys (swipe from Beano!) do here in the USA!!!
MCSCOTTY, SEAN, STEVE - Sorry! I got my civil war cum genocides mixed up! Biafra, Bangladesh... Now that I'm home I read up that John Lennon was on the roster for Bangladesh (he was living in NYC after all) per an agreement with Harrison IAW George's request that the Yoko not go on stage. Then just a day or two before the concert John bowed out under pressure from the Yoko.
BT - I think those awful, yet addicting, Marvel cartoons from 1966 used panels from the actual comics. This is congruent with the Sleeper story line which appeared on the spinners in September 1965 in Tales to Astonish 72 74 with ToA 74 serving as the cover to Cap Annual #2.
B.t.w. Those alternating Iron Man covers by Kirby or Colan are just killer!!!
The Captain America sleeper story was 'animated', complete with the Hawkeye, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch framing sequence. Before I seen any of these cartoons (on VHS in the 80s), I came across an early wind-up video toy (think a view master that played about 20 seconds of a cartoon when hand cranked) during a seaside holiday. I remember it because it featured scenes from this Captain America episode, sans sound or remotely attempting to tell the whole story. It was literally a fight scene. This was the kind of magical device (to a pre-teen) that only seemed to exists in British seaside novelty shops. Along with old comics that has no reason to be stocked. Having no knowledge of the Marvel Superhero cartoons, I assumed it toy manufacturer had 'animated' the original comic panels themselves.
ReplyDeleteI cant find such a devise via Google and so perhaps someone here may remember exactly what it was. I didn't buy it, as it seemed a lot of effort for a few seconds of animated Cap.
DW
DW
ReplyDeleteDoes the ebay link below help with your quest? Though I've neve seen it before it sure seems like what you described. If the link does not work, ebay "Viewmaster Captain America"
https://www.ebay.com/itm/224765117193?hash=item34550b8309:g:wmgAAOSwP3lhVM4b
There was a Fisher Price movie viewer toy that showed cartridges from the 1970s and a similar one called Movie Theatre from the 1980s that showed short animations, mostly Disney but they had a Spiderman and Star Wars cassete . Not sure if they are what your looking for. I'll try find a wee link later.
ReplyDeleteCharlie, I could use "one" to avoid confusion but over here its use as a pronoun is generally regarded as fairly bourgeois, and I fear it might compromise my anti-imperialist proletarian credibility among the northerners and Glaswegians round these parts.
ReplyDeleteDon't worry - you'll have another chance to get a Beatles-related civil war massacre right next month if Sir Paul McCartney comes up.
-sean
Thanks Charlie and Paul.
ReplyDeleteA refined search make me think it was a hand wound version of the Action Movie Theatre, which appears similar to the Fisher Price version but came with several Marvel cartridges. Having not thought about this for forty years I can happily now forget it again ;-)
DW
Cool Britannia, that far-off time when celebrities went to parties in Downing Street and everyone loved Tony Blair.
ReplyDeleteSEAN - I am thinking of starting a blog on civil-war related Beatles trivia. But really, if it does not involve a bit of genocide or the country is actually contiguous, not sure it'll garner much interest?
ReplyDeleteOne has to admit that the Sleeper concept was a great idea?
ReplyDeleteWonder if it was inspired by Japanese soldiers wandering out of the bush, 20+ years after WW2 ended?
Charlie's only quibble was why the complexity of 3 Sleepers having to link up? Why not just 3 totally self-sufficient Sleepers? That said, the suspense created by the revelation of each Sleeper made this kid's heart beat!
Glaswegian? Is that in reference to Glasgow Scotland residents?
ReplyDeleteMCSCOTTY - Congrats on the Scot winning the big darts competition yesterday! It was all over Talksport, so I assume it must have been a big deal?
I found the animated Cap/Sleeper cartoon on YouTube earlier today. As usual with those things, some of the shots actually kinda/sorta work, and most of them look terrible or just plain silly (Cap in profile, most of him held completely still while his ridiculously cartoony legs run way too fast, etc). Oh, and the voices are pretty bad too. Quicksilver sounds like the ‘Coach Reindeer’ in RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED ETC (‘We’re not gonna let Rudolph play in ANY Reindeer games!’ — that guy). So…woulda been better to leave it as a semi-pleasant memory. Oh well. I still like the comic.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, watching it did remind that the cartoon was the first place I ever laid eyes on Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. Never even heard of The Avengers before then. I thought Hawkeye’s costume looked especially cool.
Charlie— I’m from the Northridge / Granada Hills area of the San Fernando Valley. Thrifty and Sav-on were the two big drugstore chains in our necka the woods. Thrifty got swallowed up by CVS in the early 90s; Sav-On disappeared some time before that.
I didn’t realize Oasis were so un-hip nowadays. Can’t say I was a huge fan, but i did like ‘Wonderwall’. There were many other soft-rock bands from the same era that I found much blander and forgettable (Gin Blossoms, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Coldplay, Hootie and the Blowfish, etc)
b.t.
Nope! Thrifty was swallowed up by Rite-Aid.
ReplyDeleteb.t.
DW:
ReplyDeleteI remember a little cartridge viewer thingie that you cranked by hand. No batteries required, not even for the light — for illumination, you just aimed it at a light source (like the GAF Viewmaster). I think the cartridge I had was about twenty seconds of space battle footage from STAR WARS. Got it at a thrift store for a couple of bucks.
b.t.
Oasis unhip nowadays? Personally, I never liked them. Or Sir Tony.
ReplyDeleteI realize one is supposed to get a bit more conservative as one gets older, but with some people it was always obvious they'd take it too literally.
www.digitalspy.com/showbiz/a363982/noel-gallagher-britain-was-better-under-margaret-thatcher/
-sean
Sean, a few years ago Noel Gallagher called Ed Milliband a Marxist and he's also pro-Brexit and anti-immigration so I'm not surprised he's a fan of Maggie nowadays. The question is, was Noel Gallagher always a fraud and just pretending to be a socialist or did he move to the right as he got older and richer.
ReplyDeleteAnd I too thought Oasis were crap (and so did George Harrison by the way).
Much as I dislike Gallagher - anti-immigration Irish immigrants like him and that plonker Morrisey are letting the side down - I fail to see whats wrong with being pro-Brexit, Colin.
ReplyDeleteWithout Brexit the land border wouldn't have been moved into the sea - don't you want the UK to become contiguous?
-sean
Charlie really don't know nuthin about Oasis cribbing other groups' music.
ReplyDeleteHe do know that The New Seekers song was a huge hit here and their "I'd like to Teach the World to Sing" was originally an advert for Coca Cola.
Charlie even remembers having to sing that song in "singing class" in grade school as well as in front of the moms and dads for one of those "sing for the parents" school things.
You know, if only George would have allowed the Yoko on stage with John maybe something even bigger would have come of that Bangladesh album. I mean, John, George, and Ringo on stage again... surely Paul might have felt compelled to join up?
Sean, I must admit that Brexit has consolations - for a start, whining Brexit voters and the right-wing press can't blame this country's problems on the EU any more. When Brexit voters finally realise that the NHS is still collapsing even though we've left the EU, they'll have to start blaming their beloved Boris instead.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteThe Atlantic has a nice article on "Will Britain Survive." Maybe it'll go the way of Atlas Comics (either).
Though perhaps Spitfire, Union Jack, and Captain Britain can change the course?
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/01/will-britain-survive/621095/
I read that article Charlie. The bit that really made me laugh was near the end, about Brexit being unlikely to impact on the position of "Northern Ireland" in the UK because its largely been shielded from the effects.
ReplyDeleteThats completely wrong. Its the deal keeping the north in the European single market thats aligned them with the republic rather than Britain on the economic level, and created a border in the Irish Sea. Well done Boris (;
-sean