Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
***
Nothing that catches the eye of this blog occurred in the worlds of current affairs and entertainment, this week in 1982. I shall, therefore, plunge straight into my look at what Marvel UK was flinging at us in those seven days.
But, inside, I know our hero's conducting his legendary battle with the Juggernaut, after the unstoppable villain's abduction of Madame Web.
That's bad news for him. But the good news for us is we can win a clock-radio-cassette recorder!
And, now, the Fantastic Four have been dragged into it!
That's because Bruce teams up with Reed Richards and Professor X to battle Galactus. In that struggle, the trio lose their powers but the Thing's strength is so enhanced that he becomes as big a threat as the original Hulk was.
It would also appear Iron Man's in space. How he got there, I'm not sure. I suspect he's still having his first encounter with Roxxon's Sunturion and his space station of doom.
Hello All!
ReplyDeleteOff target sorry, but feel like im maybe getting a line of bull…
Went to the Bureau de Change in France today with many GB pounds to convert to Euros. The lady told me the 10-pound notes i was exchanging were old and had been replaced and this she had to discount their value.
When did the UK swap out the Pounds? My general recall is that they had a young queen and a shiny silver badge like maybe a few centimeters high and wide.
Steve, on September 30th (as I'm sure you know) it will be the 50th anniversary of Marvel UK and the launch of Mighty World Of Marvel #1. This would be a great opportunity for you to start "Marvel UK 50 Years Ago This Week" as the current "40 Years Ago" did not cover the first two years of Marvel UK and only began by reviewing the week in October 1974 when Planet Of The Apes #1 and Dracula Lives #1 were launched. And you've said that you intend to ditch the "40 Years Ago" slot anyway due to Marvel UK's slide into mediocrity. Just a thought.
ReplyDeleteCharlie, the Queen is 96 but on the current banknotes she looks about 40. I know you're not supposed to mention a lady's age but I really think somebody should update her portrait!
ReplyDeleteWhoever wins the Tory leadership will be younger than all of us who read Steve Does Comics. Liz Truss was born in 1975 and Rishi Sunak in 1980 so we'll have a PM who wasn't born when Marvel UK was launched in 1972 or when I bought my first Marvel comic in November 1974.
ReplyDeleteCharlie - A few years ago, tenners were changed from paper notes to plastic (or something). To reduce forgeries (or something). Also, holograms were added. Some time later, at a petrol station, I tried to pay for some petrol with a couple of tenners, whereupon the Indian shop-assistant announced in a very loud voice, to the rest of the queue, that my note wasn't legal tender. Embarrassing!
ReplyDeleteKD - logsticks (?) - strips of toast you dunk in your egg - are called "soldiers", in the UK.
Colin - Dave S is lucky enough to be more youthful than the rest of us - so Dave might be younger than some of the contenders!
Charlie - In Paris, there's that famous bookshop, "Shakespeare & Co" (?), which features on 'Highlander' the series. Worth a visit, perhaps?
Phillip
Liz Truss went to school in Leeds, Colin - just think, if Yorkies like Steve and Phillip had a bit more get up and go, they too could have been tory cabinet ministers by now, and currently be competing to follow Boris Johnson into Downing Street.
ReplyDeleteCharlie, the paper £10 notes went out of circulation in 2018, but I'm pretty sure you can still swap 'em for new ones. Probably not in France though, not easily as an individual anyway... sounds like the bureau de change will do that themselves with your tenners, and are effectively charging you a fee for that.
Hard to believe there isn't a way round it somehow...
-sean
Colin
ReplyDeleteIt will be a shame to stop the 40 years ago feature, for the monthlies, just as they are getting interesting (given we have Daredevils and the MWOM monthly in the near future). I'd (respectively) suggest moving the weekly feature to 50 years and keeping the 40 years feature solely for monthly. And include Warrior. Sorry Steve, easy to say when your workload is just the odd comment ;-)
I wonder if Liz Truss's folks will be proud if she becomes PM?
I'm now off to check my old UK currency, which could easily be twenty years old...
DW
DW, on Radio 4 yesterday Liz Truss said "my parents were both left-wing" and then corrected it to "ARE left-wing" so they must be a bit conflicted. According to Wikipedia Truss's father refused to campaign for her when she first stood as an MP in the 2010 election. And her mother, a CND supporter, took the young Liz to demonstrations at Greenham Common never imagining that her daughter would grow up to be another Maggie Thatcher!
ReplyDeletePhil, did you insist that your tenners ARE legal tender? What happened next? I heard that some Muslims were objecting to the new plastic notes because pig fat is used in their manufacture!
Sean, Liz Truss spent part of her childhood in Paisley so Paul McScotty can be inspired by her too.
Colin
ReplyDeleteYes, they must be conflicted at the very least.
DW
SHAKSPEARES BOOKSTORE IN PARIS! OH man was there a line Outside that place. Me and me love we’re baffled! Because, it looked… Well… Kind of like a bookstore. And even in France with its profound literary tradition one sees fewer bookstores, the daily newspapers are thin and disappearing, etc .
ReplyDeleteBut we could not figure why people were queued up to get into a bookstore. And because there was a restaurant or food looking thing next to it we assumed it was a restaurant with books that you could read while you’re eating or something to that nature. But yes there was definitely a line out there to get into that bookstore.
ReplyDeleteWhat is interesting, and France, is there seems to be a love for Donald Duck, uncle Scrooge, and that family of characters. We’ve been into four comic book stores [two in Paris, and 2 in Dijon) And each has several shelves dedicated to the “ducks!”
ReplyDeleteTwo weeks ago Redartz and I (+ Mike and Doug from BitBA) went to the Chicago comicin. There, Red got a beutiful original (Free!) from Don Rosa as he sat and spoke with Don about his admiration for his Duck work. Don said Europe shows him far more love than the USA and indeed he’ll be in Toulouse for their comicshoe this autumn!
ReplyDeleteTwo weeks ago Redartz and I (+ Mike and Doug from BitBA) went to the Chicago comicin. There, Red got a beutiful original (Free!) from Don Rosa as he sat and spoke with Don about his admiration for his Duck work. Don said Europe shows him far more love than the USA and indeed he’ll be in Toulouse for their comicshoe this autumn!
ReplyDeleteColin, That was a surprise heaing Liz Truss went to school for a few years in Paisley but I'm sure the town will get over this set back as it has also been home to many great people including Gerry Rafferty, Paolo Nutini , David Tennant myself ( only actually born there)and my lovely partner .
ReplyDeleteI went to pay a tip a few years ago in a coffee shop with 3 £1 coins only to be nicely told they were no longer legal tender and had been replaced by new £ coins , embarrassing as that was all the cash I had on me. A UK bank will still exchange to old £10 notes for new ones regardkess of the Bank ie Bank of England, Bank of Scotland, Royal Bank of Scotland, Ulster .
Colin - Someone else behind me in the petrol station queue chipped in that I could take my old tenner to the bank, and get it changed. I can't remember what happened next. Maybe I paid by card. Anyway, after that, I stopped using that petrol station!
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of petrol stations, yesterday my car's fuel gauge was at 1 bar out of 10, so I went to a different petrol station, about half a mile away. I normally put £20 worth in, but - to save money - I now just put £10 in - and try to walk for food shopping instead, except when the car's absolutely necessary.
Anyway, after putting £10 worth of petrol in, my car's fuel gauge went up from 1 bar to 3 bars out of 10 - but as I pulled out of the petrol station, it went down to only 2 bars! That means £10 bought me only just over 1 tenth of a tank of petrol - appalling!
My car smells of fuel, though, after the engine's been running for a while - so maybe fuel's leaking somewhere. Also, after the heatwave, my electronic key fob isn't working. Plus, I think there's a problem with the tracking, as the steering wheel's pulling down to the left, slightly. The upshot is, I've booked my 17 year old car in to the garage, for next Thursday!
Charlie - Maybe you could visit the chapel of St.Denis, and see the tombs of the ancient kings of France, instead (although that probably has even bigger queues!)
Phillip
Phil, you have my sympathies. I've stopped buying Fortean Times, SFX and other magazines for the time being to save money. Whenever I went into Tesco I always headed for the books & magazines section first but now I avoid that section altogether so I won't be tempted to buy anything. I suppose Fortean Times will stop advertising the Boris toilet brush now that he's standing down - that toilet brush was advertised in FT every month for three years so it must have been a nice little money-spinner for the firm that made it!
ReplyDeleteBut some things are going DOWN in price - yesterday Tesco's own-brand pack of chicken pieces was selling at £1.79 down from £1.99 and a pack of Nightingale Farms baby plum tomatoes ("Exclusively At Tesco") was reduced by 10p. I haven't noticed anything else falling in price though - quite the opposite!
Did anyone else think that Boris boasting about his "colossal mandate" sounded a bit Carry On?
ReplyDeleteOooh, Matron - have you seen the PM's mandate, it's COLOSSAL. (Similar to Alan B'Stard bragging about having the "biggest majority in the House of Commons").
I'll get me coat.
Thanks, Colin. I've just returned from shopping. In my late mother's bedroom, my brother & myself found my dad's old colour-slides from the 70s & 80s (hundreds of them). I've been going through the colour-slides - a real nostalgic treasure trove! I looked for colour slides of particular interest to friends of the family, etc, before they, too, pass on. I thought I'd convert the colour slides to prints, for ease of postage. First, I went to Max Spielmann (always expensive); then price-checked, by going to Boots. Funny incident - the shop-assistant on Boots' photography counter (well, it's the prescriptions counter, too, now!) didn't know what the hell I was on about, when I said "colour-slides", and described them - and she must have been late 30s. I asked if there was an older member of staff, with whom I could speak. They suggested I try Max Spielmann. When I said I'd already been there, they said to try online! That's modern customer service! Just 2 colour slides at Max Spielmann - £4 ! Cheaper to scan or photograph them at home, methinks, and try to e-mail them, perhaps!
ReplyDeletePhillip
PHILLIP! Charlie has lost interest in graves of old kings LOL! We did visit the Parthenon to see tombs of Josephine Baker and Jean Moulin who seem
ReplyDeletelike real heroes of humanity. So much to see in Paris… Rodin’s sculpture garden, Monet’s 30’ long paintings at the Orangie, etc and etc. bewildering! Comic shops are mere diversion after lunch.
Charlie - Decades ago, I worked with someone named Jane Windmill (Moulin, n'est pas?) - although I bet she doesn't get a famous tomb! In France, I've never been to Paris - only Calais, & La Rochelle.
ReplyDeletePhillip
Ulster bank notes Paul? $&@# me, trying to spend north Irish £s in most of England is really hard. They're suspicious enough of Scottish notes - if it doesn't have the queen's head on it, they don't like it - but Ulster or Northern Bank? Forget it.
ReplyDelete"Nah mate, not the same - you have to change Irish pounds" (it didn't seem to make much difference when the republic switched to the Euro).
Having to argue that the north of Ireland is British is soooo embarrassing...
-sean
*Oops, giving my age away there, with "Northern Bank".
ReplyDeleteI can't see spending Danske tenners would be any easier. At all.
-sean
I 've only had one £10 Ulster note given in change, I never noticed and spent it in amother shop just outside Glasgow and they accepted it although they did double take. Spending Scottish pounds in parts of northern England ( not the cities) is fun they I ow they have to accept it but don't want t to their wee faces are a treat.
DeleteI don't think I've ever seen an Ulster bank note. I've occasionally encountered a Scottish coin, I think. It's strange how few of them find their way into northern England.
ReplyDeleteColin and DW, I'll definitely be ending coverage of the 40-year-old Marvel UK weeklies, once we reach the company's 50th anniversary, and then switch to doing the ones from 50 years ago. I've yet to decide upon the fate of the monthlies.
So please remind Charlie… the UK did not produce comics like i see in france e.g., Corto Maltese, Blueberry, Lucky Luke not to mention thousands of one-shot (in perhaps several volumes) in the big hard cover format like DC Thomson annuals? Did the UK have an indigenous comic scene with super heroes or war or adventure or whatever outside of the DC Thomson-like companies? The reason i ask is that ive the impression the Annual books i have at home like Victor, Valiant, Hotspur, Rovers,!etc. were strictly kids fare (not to say Marvel and DC weren’t)
ReplyDeleteYou wouldn't think it was strange if you'd ever tried to spend any in England, Steve.
ReplyDeletePaul, that is not actually the case that shops have to accept your money, not in law anyway.
Scottish notes aren't legal tender in England, or for that matter English ones in Scotland. In fact, Scottish notes aren't even legal tender in Scotland! Only coins apparently -
www.bankofengland.co.uk/knowledgebank/what-is-legal-tender
Very sensible, I don't really trust paper money either.
With your heads screwed on like that, I'm amazed you lot didn't vote for independence.
-sean
*To be clear, that was a reply to your comment on the absence of Irish and Scottish £s at the start there, Steve.
ReplyDelete-sean
Charlie - the hardback annuals were for Christmas.
ReplyDelete- 'Battle Action'- a UK war comic that got slammed for showing readers how to make - I
forget - either gunpowder, or a hand grenade/bomb, or something. The Mary
Whitehouse brigade didn't like that. Who's the target audience? You decide!
- Belgian Lucky Luke
Phillip
Kids stuff, Charley.
ReplyDeleteIf you're interested - I'm sure I've suggested this before, but anyway - the second part of the BBC series Comics Brittania covers the period from the suppression of American horror comics early in the 50s to decline at the end of the 70s -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcGdnPIvOkM
Everything you need to know about Dan Dare, Captain Hurricane, Roy of the Rovers, the Slaves of War Orphan Farm and all the rest.
Its a bit sad at the end actually, where the guy from IPC says there was a point in 1973 when there were 10 million comics a week sold in the UK. "Its all gone now".
-sean
*Correction: Charlie
ReplyDeleteDuh. I must have been thinking of Charley's War, covered in that programme.
Incidentally, not to be a downer or anything, but -
www.comicsbeat.com/judge-dredd-anderson-and-batman-writer-alan-grant-has-died/
-sean
I've got a penny (dated 2012) from the Bailiwick Of Jersey which I received among my change in Tesco a few years ago. Along with a halfpenny dated 1967 it's the only coin I own now that I've gone cashless.
ReplyDeleteNotes and coins are so 20th Century!
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ReplyDeleteOn the subject of French kings - Louis XIV was King of France for 72 years which makes him the longest-reigning monarch in history but Lizzie Windsor wants that record for herself so she'll hang on like grim death for another two years at least.
ReplyDeleteDon't you guys have any fondness for, ah, "Lizzie Windsor"?
ReplyDelete...Granted, her offspring have been pretty dubious.
But compared to the Plantagenets the Windsors have been like an episode of Father Knows Best.
In another century they would have been the model of restraint.
Then again, in the Middle Ages who knows what they would have got up to. Probably all kindsa weirdness.
M.P.
Phillip-
ReplyDelete"Logticks of toast" is a reference to A Clockwork Orange, one of my favorite all-time films, oh my brother.
Even though it was a jack show, seeing that cheesy photo of the early Spidey brought a smile to my face. Oh, the power of nostalgia.
-Killdumpster
SEAN! Yes! You Are spot on comme d’habitude! CHARLEY,S WAR. Do works like this continue to be produced by the UK? Or was it a one-off masterpiece? France seems to keep
ReplyDeletepumping them out in hardback, the US as graphic novels. Clearly Charlie needs to pop over and do a visual inspection of the UK comics scene starting in DUNDEE, natch! All right now… who’s got a spare bed for yours truly? Charlie is house trained… And maybe Charlie can look up his Scottish kin too! Is Brock a common name?
Comaprisons being limited…
ReplyDeleteGERMAN small stores and restaurants often won’t take a credit card (as of 2019) at least in smaller towns.
FRANCE seems fine cashless. But i do notice older folks (which mow means late 70s, 80s year old) still fiddle with their “francs”’to pay.
Oddly at the French comic bookstore they have been happy to take the coins. Very happy. [Charlie has several pounds of coins from his travels over the last 30 years.] They say the younger kids, who come in to buy manga Not marvel comics, are often being with coins probably as a function of getting an allowance and as such they keep running out of coins to make change.
MANGA??? W.t.h…. Luke Cage or go home kid!!!
TAPESTRY- Would tapestries from the middle ages fall under a very broad category of comic? As me love and I wandered through the French national Museum of the middle ages, we came upon their most prized collection “the lady and her unicorn “
ReplyDeleteIt is a collection of six tapestries, measuring approximately 15’ x 15’ each. One would need to Google it as it defies explanation here.
they said these 6 pieces could be the most prized, caliable, supreme works of art from the middle ages.
The lady does seem to enjoy the company of her unicorn especially in the one entitled “touch.”
KD - I've never watched all of A Clockwork Orange, so missed that reference! But, what are strips of toast for dunking in egg called in America, if not "soldiers" ?
ReplyDeleteCharlie - allowance = "pocket money" in UK.
Charlie - "SUITS YOU, SIR!!!"
Phillip
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletePhil, I've never seen 'A Clockwork Orange' at all but I've heard it's very violent.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about soldiers but I think fish fingers are called fish sticks in the US.
Charlie, I googled 'The Lady And The Unicorn' and I've seen those tapestries before in various books over the years. The lion and the unicorn also appear on the Royal Coat of Arms in Britain. I recall reading that only a virgin lady could tame a unicorn.
ReplyDeleteCharlie, unicorns have re-entered the culture in the UK because people who believe that Brexit is a good idea are said to believe in unicorns frollicking in sunlit uplands.
ReplyDeleteColin - From what little I remember of A Clockwork Orange, Malcolm McDowell's performance as cult leader Bret Stiles, in 'The Mentalist', was far superior!
ReplyDeletePhillip
Colin, A Clockwork Orange is a movie that is not easy to watch.
ReplyDeleteOnce you've seen it, however, you're not likely to forget it.
I recommend it, with a cautionary note. Not a movie to relax to after a long day.
In fact, if you do see it you might wanna clear your schedule a bit and have some booze handy, or weed, if that's your deal. Possibly both.
Yer gonna wanna have a little mental cushion there, I think.
M.P.
I've just been looking at the Guardian/Observer online and there's a new political cartoon featuring Liz Truss as a medieval lady with a unicorn!
ReplyDeleteA Clockwork Orange is a movie that is not easy to watch.
ReplyDelete