June 30th 1982 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

***

This week in 1982, history was made, as Northern Ireland defeated hosts Spain 1–0 in the World Cup. Could the plucky province go on to win the whole tournament and shock the sporting world to its very foundations?

No, it couldn't. Like England, it went on to exit in the quarter-final stage but would be able to do so with head held high.

Someone else who was holding his head high was Captain Sensible who, that week, found himself at Number One on the UK singles chart, with his unlikely cover of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Happy Talk.

Rather more sober fare ruled the UK album chart, with Roxy Music's Avalon retaining the top spot it had seized the week before.

This week's issue asks the vital question, "What would have happened if Spider-Man's clone had lived?"

Except it did.

And had a zillion-issue story arc dedicated to it.

How could the Watcher not know this?

Clearly, he needs to spend less time interfering and more time watching.

Not that I care. I'm too busy planning on how I'm going to use the 10 football alarm clocks this issue's giving me a chance to win.

No sooner has the Hulk returned to Earth, after defeating the Galaxy Master, than he finds himself having to fight the awesome power of the Sandman.

Not that that takes much doing. Sandy's clearly outmatched by the Hulkster.

But that doesn't matter to the villain. He can still use the brute as a diversion while he tries to steal some military hardware from Thunderbolt Ross and friends.

Once more, Iron Man has a back-up strip in this comic.

Once more, I don't know what happens in it.

As has happened before, a cover for Hanna Barbera's Scooby-Doo and His T.V. Friends has proven to be impossible to track down.

This time, it's issue #19.

And that means we can only guess at what magic and mayhem break out within its cheery pages.

Speak Your Brain! Part XXXI. Do you use cash? And what's the strangest thing you've ever swallowed?

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

***

Image by Tumisu
from Pixabay

Glastonbury's ended and Wimbledon's begun, as the summer moves from one great British tradition to another.

But is that the topic of the day?

I cannot say. For, the choice is not mine. It is yours.

We have, after all, hit another Tuesday in the second half of a month, and that means it's time to re-unleash the beast that is Speak Your Brain, the feature in which only you The Reader can decide what we discuss.

That might be art, films, flans, plans, books, bagels, cooks, nooks, crooks, ducks, drakes, pixies, rocks, music, mucous, fairy tales, fairy lights, Fairy Liquid, fairy cakes, Eccles cakes, myth, moths, maths, magic, tragedy, comedy, dromedaries, murder, larders, Ladas, mystery, mayhem, molluscs, Moorcock, May Day, mangoes, bongoes, drongoes, bingo, Ringo, Pingu, Ringu, Christmas Day, New Year's Day, Doris Day, Marvin Gaye, the Equinox, parallelograms, rhomboids, androids, asteroids, pomegranates, sofas, eggs, pegs, legs, dregs, sodas, sausages, eggs, whisky, broth, Bath, baths, Garth Marenghi, Garth Brooks, Garth Crooks, Bruno Brookes, Bruno Mars, Mars Bars, wine bars, flip-flops, flim-flam, flapjacks, backpacks, see-saws, jigsaws, dominoes, draft excluders, dunderheads, deadheads, webheads, flowerpots, flour pots, bread bins, bin bags, body bags, body horror, shoddy horror, doggy bags, bean bags, coal sacks, cola, cocoa, pancakes, pizzas, baking soda, sci-fi, Wi-Fi, Hi-Fi, sewage, saunas, suet, Silurians, Sontarans, Sea Devils, sins, suns, sans, sense, sludge, slumps, sunshine, slime, soup or sandcastles.

Then again, it might not be.

Dinosaur movies!

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

***

Dinosaurs. Extinct ones have names like Tyrannosaurus, Velociraptor and Gigantosaurus. Modern ones have names like booby, gooney, tit, bustard and penguin.

I can't help feeling the dead ones got the better end of that deal.

But why am I talking about this?

And why?

It's because as I sit here, typing this deathless prose, The Lost World is on my television. Not one of the fancy modern films of that name but the real one. The 1960s one. The one that was made by Irwin (Lost in Space) Allen.

And what a nightmare experience it is, as Professor Challenger and his team encounter harmless lizard after harmless lizard and try to pretend they're scared of them while unseen stage-hands push them off cliffs.

But not every dinosaur movie's been as convincing as that.

In fact, every dinosaur movie has been more convincing than that. In truth, the only less convincing depiction of dinosaurs I've ever seen has been 1974's Doctor Who serial Invasion of the Dinosaurs in which our heroes must battle a horde of glove puppets, marionettes and collapsing papier-mache, as they threaten to take over London.

And all this terror's demanded of me one thing.

Which is that I ask you what are your favourite dinosaur movies?

Perhaps you love 1914's cartoon Gertie the Dinosaur which I believe to feature the first-ever dinosaur depicted on celluloid. Perhaps you love the original King Kong which does, after all, feature prehistoric beasties. Perhaps it's The Land that Time Forgot that floats your boat. Or even Journey to the Centre of the Earth. 

For me, I wish I could claim it's a close contest but, despite my love for The Valley of Gwangi and One Million Years BC, I have to go for Jurassic Park, that tale of what happens when you let the wrong Attenborough brother get involved with wildlife.

You, however, may have other opinions. And they're opinions you're free to express in the comments section below.

June 23rd 1982 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

***

This week in 1982 delivered good news to those who like peace, because it saw the end of the Falklands War, as British forces retook the rather delightfully named South Sandwich Islands.

But things were also looking good for the woman the world knew only as Charlene because, that week, her hit I've Never Been to Me smashed its way to the very peak of the UK singles chart.

In the forty years since, has she finally achieved her ambition and been to herself?

Sadly, I cannot say. I've tried to offer her assistance by seeing if you can find a route to yourself via Google Maps but, sadly, it seems you can't.

Over on the UK album chart, a very different kind of destination was proving popular, as Roxy Music hit the top spot, with their LP named in honour of the isle of Avalon.

Google Maps has also failed to provide me with directions as to how get to Avalon.

So much for technology.

Electro's back!

And he's more electrical than ever!

Fortunately, our wondrous webhead has the sense to don a rubber costume when facing him, thus rendering the villain's powers useless.

We also get the chance to win 30 Marvel annuals and we can discover whether our drawing's inside this issue.

But why would it be inside this issue? I'm pretty sure that's not where I left it.

Information about this one's hard to unearth but I'm going to guess Hulkie's still on a far-away world and still battling the meganormous gob that is the Galaxy Master.

Iron Man's also in action but I don't know just what action.

And, as with Spidey's comic, we can win 30 Marvel annuals and discover whether our drawing's inside.

Once more Onbarder, AKA Mark, has come to the rescue, and he's supplied me with the cover to Scooby-Doo and his TV Friends #18.

Also thanks to him, I know that, in this issue, Captain Caveman finds himself in a tale called The Shipping Magnet, written by no less an entity than Jack Kirby biographer Mark Evanier.

Elsewhere, there's news from Scooby-Doo's Ghostly Club House.

And there's a tale called The Moon Fleet which seems to have nothing to do with John Meade Falkner, and everything to do with aliens kidnapping Scooby.

For those who want to find something to do with their hands, we also get a page that tells us how to make a Hair Bear Gripper Wallet.

Speak Your Brain! Part XXX. Pop, Eggs and Garth Marenghi.

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

***

Image by Tumisu
from Pixabay

Once more, a Tuesday has flung itself upon us.

And so has the second half of a month.

As all scientists know, when combined, those two elements can only create the return of the feature the whole world has learnt to fear.

It's the one in which the first person to comment gets to decide what the rest of us get to discuss.

But what might it be? Might it be art, films, flans, plans, books, bagels, cooks, nooks, crooks, pixies, rocks, music, mucous, fairy tales, fairy lights, Fairy Liquid, fairy cakes, Eccles cakes, myth, moths, maths, magic, tragedy, comedy, dromedaries, murder, larders, Ladas, mystery, mayhem, molluscs, Moorcock, May Day, mangoes, bongoes, drongoes, bingo, Ringo, Pingu, Ringu, Christmas Day, New Year's Day, Doris Day, Marvin Gaye, the Equinox, parallelograms, pomegranates, sofas, eggs, pegs, legs, dregs, sodas, sausages, eggs, whisky, broth, Bath, baths, Garth Marenghi, Garth Brooks, Garth Crooks, Bruno Brookes, Bruno Mars, Mars Bars, wine bars, flip-flops, flim-flam, flapjacks, backpacks, see-saws, jigsaws, dominoes, draft excluders, dunderheads, flowerpots, flour pots, bread bins, bin bags, body bags, body horror, shoddy horror, doggy bags, bean bags, coal sacks, cola, cocoa, pancakes, pizzas, baking soda, sci-fi, Wi-Fi, Hi-Fi, sewage, saunas, suet, Silurians, Sontarans, Sea Devils, sins, suns, sans, sense, sludge, slumps, sunshine, slime, soup or sandcastles?

It might possibly be.

But, then again, it might impossibly be...

2000 AD - May 1984.

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

***

I've lost count of the number of times I've had to flee down a tunnel, pursued by a giant boulder. No wonder, then, that I can only view Indiana Jones as a kindred spirit.

And I was probably doing it more than ever in May 1984, as his latest film The Temple of Doom hit the world's cinemas.

Sadly, nothing else released that May catches my eye but I do see the month also unleashed a film called Sixteen Candles which I can only assume to be a big-budget remake of Four Candles.

No doubt, generating far more heat and light than even sixteen candles ever could, the month also witnessed an explosion at the Soviets' Severomorsk Naval Base, which destroyed two-thirds of the missiles stored for the nation's Northern Fleet. Western military experts described it as the worst naval disaster the Soviets had suffered since World War 2.

Rather more harmlessly, May also saw the introduction of Australia's one-dollar coin.

Back in the Old World, Liverpool beat Roma 5-2 on penalties to become European champions for the fourth time in seven years

When it came to the UK singles chart, just two songs held sway that month. The first was Duran Duran's The Reflex which topped the chart for May's first three weeks before being dethroned by Wham!'s Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.

Meanwhile, the British album chart was topped by just 2 LP's. The first was Various Artists' Now That's What I Call Music 2, while the second was Bob Marley's Legend.

Speaking of music, nightmare horror broke out across the continent when Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley won the Eurovision Song Contest for Sweden. Amazingly, the track went on to become a top ten hit in five different countries.

But what of the galaxy's greatest comic?

As so often, it was serving up a diet of Strontium Dog, Rogue Trooper, Judge Dredd, Tharg's Future-Shocks, Sláine and D.R. & Quinch.

However, there were innovations, with Prog 370 presenting a tale called The Art of Advertising, while Progs 368-369 unveiled a strip that bore the enigmatic name of Maze Dumoir.

June 16th 1982 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

***

It was all excitement on this night in 1982 because BBC One was showing England vs France in the early stages of that year's World Cup in Spain. And, if I remember correctly, England set a new record by scoring the then-fastest-ever goal in a World Cup game.

Off the top of my head, I don't recall the exact amount of time it took for Bryan Robson to score but I think it was somewhere in the region of just thirty seconds into the game. England went on to win that match 3-1, leaving no one in any doubt they were bound to win the whole tournament.

Except they didn't.

It's the team-up that had to happen, as the web-spinner and the claw-waver combine to tackle modern-day Roman soldiers working for the mysterious Professor Power.

I do believe this one's reprinted from the pages of Marvel Team-Up #117.

Not only that but we get a poster featuring the two heroes and we find out if our drawing is inside.

I am fairly certain my drawing isn't inside. However, I do, at least, have the chance to win a Spidey lunch box, and that should be compensation enough for any man.

Can it be? Can Star The Empire Strikes Back Monthly have hit its final issue?

Yes, it can be.

But not to fear. It's merely the last issue before the mag reverts to its previous title of Star Wars.

However, something strange is afoot, as, even though this is a monthly mag, this is the second issue published this month.

As well as a look behind the Star Wars scenes, Rom is in this issue.

And, if the cover's to be believed, a hot, blazing death awaits Leia.

Blimey.

Sadly, I can unearth no information about this week's issue of The Incredible Hulk - not even a cover.

However, given that he was battling the Earth-shattering might of Umbu last week, I shall assume that, this week, he's on a strange planet and facing the mouthtacular menace of the Galaxy Master, scourge of a zillion worlds.

Once again, Onboarder, AKA Mark, has come to the rescue and supplied me with a cover for Scooby-Doo and His TV Friends.

Not only that but he's made the entire issue available online where it can be found by clicking on this link here.

In it, Yogi Bear encounters The Lonely Ranger, we get the Big Top Flop, Scooby-Doo's Dictionary, a guide to making a paper fish swim, Scrappy's Tales, and a chance to win a Kodak camera.

And there's a guide to bending water with your comb!

The Marvel Lucky Bag - June 1982.

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

***

What on Earth were they putting in Hollywood's water in June of 1982? It's not unreasonable to expect a thirty-day period to produce the release of one memorable movie but, that month, it must have been hard to know which auditorium to choose upon entering your local cinema. It was, it turns out, the month that saw the unleashing of Poltergeist, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Firefox, Blade Runner and The Thing.

It also saw the release of Grease 2 and Hanky Panky but they were, possibly, not quite as memorable, even though I remember one of them.

I'm sure I'd remember Hanky Panky too, if I'd ever seen it but I haven't seen it and I suspect I never will.

Well, this is an interesting one. It would appear to be a retelling of the Fantastic Four's first encounter with Rama-Tut - but told through the eyes of Doctor Strange.

It would also seem to feature him being deserted by Clea.

Dramatic stuff indeed.

Norrin Radd's first series failed to catch light. Will his second fare any better?

The good news is the FF help him break through Galactus' Space Barrier, ending his exile on Earth and opening up a whole universe of possibilities for story-telling.

The bad news is that, at the end of the issue, our hero's trapped on Earth again, thus closing the route to a whole universe of story-telling possibilities.

This month's issue asks, "What If the Dazzler Had Become the Herald of Galactus?" and, "What If Iron Man Had Been Trapped In King Arthur's Time?"

I suspect the answer to the second question is his armour would have run out of power and that would have been the end of him.

It's the treasury edition we've all been praying for, as GI Joe gets his own giant-sized special.

I don't have a clue what happens in it but I'm sure it's full of action, man.

Another new comic hits the spinner racks, as Team America gets its very own book, the first issue of which reveals the team's thrilling origin.

Are these the people who turned up in that issue of Captain America, a few months back? The one in which they all found themselves in a town filled with the Mad Thinker's robots?

Now things get serious, as the Grandmaster takes the Earth's heroes to an orbiting arena for a cosmic contest to decide the fate of the Collector.

I'm not sure anyone really cares about the fate of the Collector. So, I'm sure the fate of the human race is at stake, as well.

What's this? GI Joe doesn't just get a Treasury Edition, this month. He also gets the launch of his own monthly title? One with exactly the same cover as the other book?

From what I can ascertain, Cobra's captured a prominent nuclear physicist - and Joe and friends have to go and liberate her.

Forty years ago today - June 1982.

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

***

Let us see what 1982 can fling at us...

My recollections of this are a bit fuzzy.

As far as I can recall, Conan bonks some kind of forest witch and then discovers he now has to beat up a load of woodland animals, in order to rescue her from someone or something.

When Tony Stark discovers one of his employees has amnesia, he arranges for him to visit a psychiatrist.

Only for it to turn out the employee is really Diablo!

And, now, thanks to the shrink having restored his memories, he's soon back to his old ways of causing trouble and mayhem for all and sundry.

Needless to say, it's Iron Man's job to stop him.

And, needless to say, he does.

For some reason, Black Tom sends his bezzie mate Juggernaut to abduct Madame Web.

This leads to Spider-Man getting involved.

But how can even the web-slinger stop such a brute?

The answer is he can't.

And now the question is how can the blindfolded clairvoyant survive the battle?

With the demise of Bullseye, the Boomerang decides he's just the man to replace him as the Kingpin's on-call assassin.

So, Kingie sends him after Spider-Man to prove his worth.

But little does the aerodynamic antagonist know the crime boss has sent him there in the expectation the wall-crawler will flatten him.

It's the return of Rogue who's still in full-on super-villain mode when Carol Danvers and various X-Men sneak into the Pentagon to delete its files about the team.

Needless to say, the lot of them are only there for just five minutes before a mammoth fight breaks out.

It's another one whose details are fuzzy in my mind.

I think Cap encounters a childhood friend who enlists his aid to rescue a friend who's been kidnapped by bad guys.

This seems to lead to a killer cyborg trying to destroy Cap.

I suspect the cyborg may have the mind of Cap's friend's friend but don't quote me on that.

It's a clash of philosophies when Daredevil, the Punisher and a young boy all individually set off to stop a drug dealer who's responsible for the death of a schoolgirl.

Despite the impression the cover may give, no men without fear were killed during the making of this comic.

It's an odd one when Thor inadvertently releases an unusual set of Asgardians from an ancient Viking artefact and then tries to get them to integrate with a society they're clearly unsuitable for integrating with.

Galactus returns to Earth to sort out his rebellious herald Terrax but it's too long since the planet-gobbler last ate and, when the Avengers show up to fight him, the weakened giant hovers on the brink of death itself.

Now what do our heroes do? Do they leave him to die?

Or do they save him, knowing that will cause the deaths of endless worlds?

There's trouble in Canada when the Wendigo once more rears his ugly head.

The good news is Sasquatch is on hand to fight him.

And so is the Hulk!

But the even better news is the Hulk now has Bruce Banner's mind!

But is that really the good news it seems to be?

The Avengers are still trying to thwart Moondragon's bid to mind-control an entire planet.

But can even they and the power of Drax stop her?

June 9th 1982 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

***

Sometimes, no matter where he goes, a cowboy can't help bumping into dinosaurs.

And this night in 1982 was one of them!

You guessed it. On that very evening, BBC One was showing Ray Harryhausen's Dynamation classic The Valley of Gwangi in which members of a Wild West circus capture a tyrannosaurus and put it on show, only for it to escape and run rampant in the streets of Mexico. Obviously, it's basically a rip-off of King Kong but it has a dinosaur in it - and dinosaurs are better than gorillas. So, how could anyone not love it?

Almost as lovable as dinosaurs is the British 20 pence piece which was first introduced in this week of that year. It has straightish edges, instead of a smooth curve, and there's something about such a feature that always feels special.

Also feeling special, that week, was Adam Ant whose Goody Two Shoes claimed the top spot on the British singles chart, at the expense of Madness' House of Fun.

However, that band was proving insurmountable at the pinnacle of the UK album chart, thanks to Complete Madness successfully holding off the attack of 3 Sides Live by Genesis.

Did it really only have three sides? Was the fourth side just blank?

Regardless, for any who may have been affected by the issues raised in today's post, that week's British singles chart may be found here.

While the corresponding album chart lurks right here.

On that singles chart, the tracks I approved of were:

House of Fun - Madness,

Torch - Soft Cell,

The Look of Love - ABC,

Only You - Yazoo,

Island of Lost Souls - Blondie,

The Telephone Always Rings - the Fun Boy Three,

After the Gold Rush {1982} - Prelude,

Pinky Blue - Altered Images

and

Ebony and Ivory - Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder.

It's interesting to note that there were two versions of Iko Iko in the top 40. By what strange twist of fate did that happen?

And it's terrifying to note that the chart contained the nightmare horror that was I've Never Been to Me by Charlene.

I do believe this is the one in which Kraven comes out of retirement, in an attempt to prove his worth by defeating Spider-Man.

As always, he fails. This time, even with the help of both his girlfriend and hallucinogenic drugs.

We also get a free poster showing Spidey battling him.

We also get the chance to enter an electronic competition.

Although, frankly, I don't have a clue just what an electronic competition might be.

It's another of my Hulk faves, as the green goliath takes on the power of Umbu, with a modicum of help from Ka-Zar and Zabu.

Iron Man's in this comic too but I don't know what he's up to.

But none of that matters. What really matters is that this book too gives us a chance to enter an electronic competition -  and everybody wins a prize worth £3.

Everybody?

But this is 1982. £3 in 1982 is the equivalent of £20 billion in 2022 money!

Scooby-Doo's latest issue smashes its way into a newsagent's near you.

And it does so by showing us how to make our own letterhead, using just a spoon and a candle.

Not only that but we also get a free Scooby puppet.

And there's a Flintstones poster.

You can accuse Scooby of many things but you can't accuse him of short-changing us.

The Marvel Lucky Bag - June 1972.

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

***

If one ventured into the cinema in June 1972, one might encounter a whole bunch of movies.

But perhaps the most noteworthy were the timeless classics the world knows as Beware! The Blob, Frenzy and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.

I must confess I've never seen the first two of those three, while the third is probably my least favourite Apes movie.

Still, at least I had the music scene to console me, and the start of June saw the summit of the UK singles chart being dominated by T Rex's Metal Guru.

However, that quickly made way for Don McLean's beautiful tribute to a well-known painter Vincent.

Even more however, there can be no beauty without the beast, and the musical beast that was Slade then kicked into gear, with their Take Me Bak 'Ome dethroning Don and seeing out the month at Number One, thus leaving no one in any doubt the Wolverhampton rockers had taken over as Britain's biggest group.

Speaking of big groups; over on the British album chart, the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street kicked off that June at Number One.

But it soon had to accept being deposed by Various Artists' 20 Dynamic Hits. Sadly, the latter is a record whose track listing I know nothing of. 

I do believe this is that strange issue which is mostly drawn by John Buscema but has several Neal Adams pages inserted into it, as Lord Kevin travels to the Everglades to try and find Ted Sallis but, instead, finds only the Man-Thing, agents of AIM and a distinctly messy ink job on the Adams pages.

The free world celebrates, as Combat Kelly gets his own comic!

I can't claim to be able to shed much light on this issue's contents but I do know they're titled Stop the Luftwaffe... Win the War!

It's a bit of a shock to me to discover Fear is still going. I'd assumed it had bitten the bullet long ago.

But here it is and bringing us the following tales: It Crawls By Night, Never Trust a Martian!, I Can't Escape from the Creeping Things! and The Face! All of which are reprints from the 1960s.

Combat Kelly's not the only Marvel character with reason to celebrate, this month. 

That's because Luke Cage gets his own comic, as well. Not only that, he makes his first-ever appearance and gets an origin.

That origin, of course, involves him having to serve time for a crime he didn't commit, volunteering for a medical experiment and gaining steel-hard skin, super-strength, a love of silk shirts and a whole new career as a super-hero for hire.

Roy Thomas (inevitably) stuns us all by bringing back the original Hulk, otherwise known as Xemnu, to bemuse and befuddle the Defenders, with his plan to use a kids' TV show to enslave mankind.

The Rawhide Kid hits his 100th issue and does so with a brand new tale called Gunfight At Fury Falls and a reprinted one called El Sombro. The latter features the work of both John Buscema and Joe Maneely, while the first is written and drawn by Larry Lieber.

Subby's still blundering around with amnesia.

Or is he?

Hold onto your hats because this is the tale in which his memory finally returns! Mostly thanks to his first-ever meeting with his niece Namorita, and a repeat encounter with the villain Byrrah who pulls a dastardly trick by pretending to have been captured by a talking crab that wants to rule the world!