Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
***
The solar system was suddenly looking a whole lot more lop-sided, tonight in 1982.
That's because it was the night on which all nine recognised planets found themselves aligned on the same side of the sun.
How could the galaxy survive such imbalance?
And just what did Counter-Earth make of it all?
Noticeably unperturbed by this cosmic action was the UK singles chart which showed no change at the top. Which meant Tight Fit's version of The Lion Sleeps Tonight was still sitting pretty at Number One.
And the UK LP chart was similarly unmoved, with Barbra Streisand's Love Songs retaining its iron grip on the summit.
Elsewhere on that week's singles chart, these are the songs I was approving of:
Town Called Malice/Precious - The Jam
Say Hello, Wave Goodbye - Soft Cell
Golden Brown - The Stranglers
Head Over Heels - Abba
Layla - Derek and The Dominoes
The Model/Computer Love - Kraftwerk
Tainted Love - Soft Cell
and
The Land of Make Believe - Bucks Fizz.
For any who wish to pursue the matter further, that week's singles chart can be found here.
While the associated album chart may be unearthed here.
To find out what Scooby-Doo's up to.
And it would appear he's meeting Yogi Bear, though I'm not totally sure just what's going on on that cover.
Regardless, we also get the chance to win 10 Play School annuals.
Just as long as they don't have any photos of, nightmare terror doll from Hell, Hamble in them.
Mostly because it makes no sense.
It's Spider-Man and King Kull.
I've not even read it and I know it's not going to work.
And it appears Dr Strange is mixed up in it, as well.
Just to keep us extra happy, we also get a free poster of Spider-Man vs the Mud Thing which I believe is the monster created when Sandman and Hydro-Man got accidentally combined.
Is Adonis the one who gets himself an unstoppable robot body?
The one that Cap very quickly stops?
Meanwhile, in his strip, Iron Man's having to deal with a fire at an offshore oil rig.
And, of Thor's activities, I can say nothing.
And it's brought to us by Don McGregor and Dino Castrillo.
But, brace yourself. The big shock is that Dazzling Don's co-credited as penciller!
I don't know. Jim Shooter, Steve Englehart, Don McGregor. Are there any Marvel writers who haven't turned their hands to pencilling, at some point?
However, that's not even the most shocking news to impart about this publication, as I do believe this is the last-ever issue of this particular book.
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28 comments:
Excellent Steve!
I concur that the Scooby cover is unintelligible.
No-Prize if someone can explain?
OK Charlie here goes my attempt at a No Prize: OK this is certainly a bad Scooby Doo cover but in reality it seems to be a cut and paste cover with 90% of the cover taken from the US Marvel Yogi Bear comic issue 2 1977. Scooby and the carriage of the train are just added in as Scooby is the star of the comic. In the Yogi story he kids on that he is a large stuffed toy bear (hence the bow round his waist) so he can be bought by a trillionaire for his spoiled grandson and get access to food etc. In the story the spoiled brat throws Yogi out a window into a swimming pool and he then fishes him out with a stick (as shown on the cover he is wet with his bow round his waist)) he continues to abuse poor old Yogi dragging him around the ground etc and then finally tries to run him down with his wn private train (again on the cover) before Yogi gets him back etc....
I have to admit I am pretty please I stopped buying most UK Marvels at this time they look afwful.
McScotty! Your No Prize is on the way Pilgrim!
The Scooby Doo cover doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me either Steve - even with Paul's help - but then to be fair I don't think any of us would have been in the target audience for the comic.
The celluloid strip running down the left hand side is a nice touch though. Better than any design element Marvel UK came up with for their other mags.
That artist credit for Don McGregor seems a bit dubious.
Marvel.com lists Dino Castrillo as sole penciller on the US edition - Marvel Classic Comics #23 - and the GCD has Dauntless Don as 'designer' as well as writer, which apparently meant he provided rough layouts for the artist.
When Marvel artists had a go at writing we got Starlin's Warlock, Miller's Daredevil, and Simonson's Thor. The other way round produced notably boring Super-Villain Team-Up and Spidey issues from Shooter, and a third rate romance story by Englehart.
I think maybe theres a lesson in there somewhere about what writers bought to Marvel...
-sean
You weren't keen on Iron Maiden then, Steve? Fair enough, metal doesn't float my boat either.
Kraftwerk were brilliant, and three albums in the chart this week - plus their hit single being a re-release from '78 - suggests the rest of the world was finally catching up with them by early '82.
Also good this week, Bow Wow Wow. Although of course the 'See Jungle...' lp ripped of almost as many tunes as the average Led Zeppelin album, and then theres the cover art controversy and Malcolm McLaren's jolly wheeze to use a 14 year old girl in his (then) latest cultural provocation...
Still, they were better than Adam and the Ants.
-sean
I have a real problem with Scooby Doo. Should we really be promoting drug culture to our children?
Or the wearing of rubber masks while committing property fraud?
M.P.
BOMBSHELL NEWS: my local Tesco has stopped selling CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays!!!
Also in the Top Ten is 'Seven Tears' by the Goombay Dance Band on its' way to #1 in a fortnight - but why SEVEN tears rather than six, eight or any other number?
The Scooby-Doo cover baffled me too but Paul's explanation makes perfect sense!
At first I thought the little kid was the US version of Dennis The Menace!
SEAN - I also don't understand the infatuation with the 14 year old in Bow Wow Wow...
I don't know beans about Malcolm McClaren besides managing Adam and the Ants and then stealing the Ants and adding a 14 year old to create Bow Wow Wow. But the whole 14 year old girl thing makes me think he was a perv like Serge Gainsbourg. Or am I stretching things? But tricking a 15 year old France Gall into singing about "Les Sucettes" is pretty perv.
That said, I really dug his "Malcolm McClaren and the Supreme Team" Buffalo Girls work, with its numerous mentions of Chicago. But I also really dug Gainsbourg's "Requiem pour un Con."
And on that useless bunch of contemplation, I will return to watching tonight's Episode of "77 Sunset Strip" lol.
Cheers.
McScotty, thanks for the Scooby explanation. You definitely deserve a Steve Does Comics No-Prize. I have to say, that Yogi Bear story sounds more like a horror film than a children's story.
Sean, the music of Iron Maiden tends to just bounce off me. On the other hand, they did give us Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter which is one of the greatest song titles of all time.
Sean and Charlie, I must confess that the, "14 year old sex-goddess," thing is the reason I didn't include Bow Wow Wow on my approved list for this month. It's a good record but that element is distinctly dubious.
MP, in fairness, I get all my best plans from watching Scooby-Doo. That's why I'm now the sole occupant of a deserted amusement park that contains the lost treasure of Mad Haddock Jim, the scourge of the oceans.
Colin, I suspect they said 7 because it's the number that best fits the tune.
I also wondered if that was meant to be Dennis the Menace.
Steve-
Well played, sir.
M.P.
Funny you should mention ol' Serge, Charlie, as the sound of Bow Wow Wow was based on the Ingoma drumming that had been the source of early 70s hit 'Burundi Black' by Mike Steiphenson, the pseudonym of a French producer who had previously worked with France Gall.
Personally I was quite infatuated with Annabella Lwin at the time, but then I wasn't much older than her in '82 so that doesn't seem particularly out of order (I don't think).
In retrospect of course, the more you read about the group the dodgier the situation seems, even by the standards of the time. Supposedly the idea was to show up the music biz for exploiting teenage girls, which is all very well but it doesn't seem like a good way to do that is by er... exploiting a teenage girl.
Mind you, to be fair to Malcolm McLaren, Lwin herself seems to take a positive view.
https://ew.com/article/2010/04/08/bow-wow-wow-singer-lwin-remembers-malcolm-mclaren/
-sean
SEAN -
I assure you the connection between Gainsbourg and McClaren vice Bow Wow Wow vice the Burundi drum beat vice Steiphenson vice France Gall was a test!
You win the No Prize!
And if you believe that... LOL.
But if you dig songs with cool, unusual percussion (like Bow Wow Wow) I do recommend "Requiem pour un Con." Link below. Careful, I think you could get 2nd degree smoke from watching it! IT's a clip from a movie actually so Serge is "live."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgSWm9_BZjs&t=7s
Also Steve, if I may, I really dig you show things like Scooby Doo or DC or Love Stories... whatever.
Our hobby is HUGE. Also, we were all little kids once (Scooby Doo) or went to the doctors office and read one-off things (1960s DC) or visited a cousin (Treasure Chest, Archie) so it really brings back great memories!
And truly Marvel was sucking hind tit in the 60s compared to the others guys (DC, Harvey, Archie) in terms of sales. So it's great you are paying homage to the other guys.
Hello, I'm even trying to bid on that highly desirable Love Stories 121 you featured. But there's some jokers out there who keep running up the price!
Charlie, I remember the old days when we were kids and the doctor's office or the barber had comic books for kids to read. I remember there being Harvey Comics (the only time I read 'em, I think) but once in a while a Marvel comic would show up. I vaguely remember that old issue of Spider-man where the Hulk was chasing him around for some reason. I wanted to steal that one.
It eased the pain of getting another bad haircut a needle painfully stuck in your ass.
I had an aunt who, in '76, gave my mom her son's DC comics stash to give to me. Great lady! My cousin, that big ape-like goon, was never big on reading.
But thanks to Mark's feeble brain and lack of interest in anything other than food (and later booze, and still later, Jesus) I received a nice windfall that summer.
M.P.
I forgot "whores". Now I recall that it was booze, whores, and then Jesus.
In roughly that order.
God bless 'im.
M.P.
Wasn’t the real controversy that Bow Wow Wow’s first album cover featured the then 14 year old Annabella nude? But it was ok because it was an homage to Eduard Manet and not some old perv’s publicity stunt to drum up sales.
I found her quite intimidating on Top of the Pops, but she was a year older then me.
DW
DW That's certainly the controversy I remember surrounding Bow Wow Wow and Lwin as a (then) 14 year old being promoted as a sex object. I seem to recall the band weren't allowed to your if that was continued. It didn't work as the cover to the "I want Candy" single had her nude again. Typical MacLaren though with his show advertising.
Argh my auto check. That should have read " The band weren't allowed to tour ..." and "..his shock advertising" ( why does it auto check words like that🤔)
By the time of 'I Want Candy' Lwin was 16, Paul. So that was ok then.
After all, those guardians of the nation's morals the tabloid newspapers were printing pictures of Samantha Fox once she'd passed her sixteenth birthday, so who could possibly object?
I think by that point McLaren had moved on to the hip hop and 'world' music, and started to put together 'Duck Rock', so Bow Wow Wow had a new manager.
That doesn't excuse the Manet pastiche cover of course, which it seems was only part of some larger scheme McLaren had, based on a concept of 'teenage liberation' - apparently inspired by the scandal surrounding the schoolkids issue of Oz magazine in the early 70s - that sounds well dodgy.
-sean
Charlie, 'Le Pacha' is one of the better Gainsbourg film soundtracks - it sounds really 60s but at the same time somehow not dated, which is a neat trick.
Serge had his own 'God Save the Queen' moment at the end of the 70s when he had a French number one with a version of the 'La Marseillaise' recorded with the Revolutionaries in Jamaica, outraging assorted conservative loonies.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wILLGfIaJvk
-sean
Jeez I didn't know 2 years had passed since the first album to I want Candy, in my mind they were within the same year. It's been a long time since I've heard mention of Oz magazine.
You're not that far off Paul - 'I want Candy' did come later in '82, but Bow Wow Wow had been together for a while before the 'See Jungle...' album came out.
One of the more interesting ideas McLaren had to promote them was to link the Vivienne Westwood 'pirate' look with music piracy, so they originally put out stuff on cassette like 'C30, C60 C90' and 'Cassette Pet' which didn't get anywhere. With the latter it was probably because no-one knew whether it qualified as a single or an album (although I expect having lyrics like 'Sexy Eiffel Tower' sung by a teenage girl probably didn't help).
-sean
Len Wein is another writer who done some pencilling in his very early days.
Also, Marv Wolfman was credited as drawing a character in DC Who's Who, but as the character was a protoplasmic blob, it probably didn't need a great artist.
Mark Gruenwald drew a Hawkeye limited series and was actually a pretty good artist, but admitted he was too slow to draw a monthly title.
However, one writer who hasn't been mentioned yet is Roger Stern: John Buscema once drew a panel in an Avengers tale with the Masters of Evil but forgot to include Goliath. Roger Stern saw the page, drew in Goliath's legs in the background (as though he was at giant-size at the time) and Tom Palmer inked the page, including Rog's addition- How's THAT for trivia!
Very impressive Dave.
And while its hardly in the same league of awesome comic book knowledge, you could Alan Moore to the list. He started out drawing strips for Sounds, and said something similar to Gruenwald about turning to writing because he knew he wasn't fast enough... and he'd never have been able to compete with Bolland, Gibbons and that lot anyway.
-sean
You definitely deserve a Steve Does Comics No-Prize as well, Dave. :)
Thanks gents! Delighted to be awarded a No-Prize- I'll be watching for the No-Postman delivering it! I'm sure I've read an old House of Mystery comic that was drawn by Len Wein, but the vaults of my memory have no further details.
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