Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
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There is, truly, no honour more coveted in the British music industry than that of having the Christmas Number One. This year (2022), that honour's landed, for the fifth time, at the door of LadBaby but, fifty years ago, it was Little Jimmy Osmond who pulled off the feat, thanks to his track Long-Haired Lover from Liverpool.
Over on the album chart, top slot was held by Various Artists' 20 All-Time Greats of the '50s.
I do believe this is the first story in which the scientist transforms into his alter-ego during times of stress.
I also believe it's the first tale in which the Hulk's portrayed as being stupid.
Elsewhere, in a swamp near you, Spider-Man's still battling the Lizard in the pair's first-ever encounter.
And, as the cover makes clear, the Fantastic Four don't have to contend with one foe but two, as the Sub-Mariner and Dr Doom unite to become the deadliest duo of them all.
At least, until Subby turns against his more malevolent partner.
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41 comments:
Imagine the introduction!
“Hi! I’m the deadly, unbeatable Doctor Doom.”
“Nice to meet you! I’m the super-powered Sub Mariner!”
Imagine the introduction!
“Hi! I’m the deadly, unbeatable Doctor Doom.”
“Nice to meet you! I’m the super-powered Sub Mariner!”
Exposition heavy, for new readers' benefit!
Phillip
ASM #6 is being reprinted here ahead of ASM #5, presumably because Doom was in ASM #5.
Dangermash
Correct. The next week blurb at the end of Spidey mentions Doctor Doom. Presumably they wanted to feature FF #s 5 and 6 before introducing Doom into Spidey. This issue also moves the Hulk into the Tales to Astonish phase and so Steve Ditko will now dominate MWOM until Spidey departs for his own comics weekly (illustrating both Hulk and Spider-man stories).
Obviously Ditko inked Hulk#2 and illustrated #6, however these half-issue Tales to Astonish really hit the spot and set the template for years of Hulk stories. They remain my favourite run of Hulk (admittedly, I never read beyond the herb Trimpe era). MWOM was really good for the next few months and its a shame I was too young to appreciate these at the time.
DW
Checking out the top 50 singles, that week, there's a shocking 5 entries by various Osmonds. I get the appeal of the All-American looking Donny, but how did Little Jimmy grab the no.1 spot? It's a shit song, and he wasn't exactly charismatic or typically 'cute' (I believe he speaks very highly of me, however ;-). That said, my (then seven year old) sister was a big Little Jimmy fan and even joined the Osmond's fan club. She was quite disappointed that it mainly focused on Donny, who was, no-doubt, the favourite of teen-agers. Certainly no puppy love...
DW
DW, 'Long Haired Lover From Liverpool' may be a "shit song" but it's still far better than the godawful tripe from Ladbaby which is currently at #1 (even though it's for charity which excuses everything and Mr & Mrs Ladbaby refuse to say how much of the song's proceeds actually go to charity).
Colin
I'd not hear of Ladbaby and a quick listen to Food Aid confused me. This lot have really had 5 consecutive Christmas no.1s?
Wow.
DW
We are still deep in the festive season (but don't tell my local Tesco which thinks Christmas ended on December 23rd) so have you ever wondered about the origins of the Christmas tree? Many years ago I read a book about festive traditions which included the following two legends about the Christmas tree:
1) The German Protestant reformer Martin Luther was walking home one Christmas Eve under a brilliant starry sky and he decided to celebrate the birth of Our Lord by...er, chopping down a small fir tree which he placed in his house and decorated with candles to emulate the starry heavens where God lives.
2) Long ago when Germany was still pagan a Christian missionary chopped down a sacred oak tree on Christmas Eve. The oak had been the site for human sacrifices and as it fell a small fir tree appeared in its' place and became the symbol of the new Christian faith in Germany.
Phillip, I hadn't heard 'Green Groweth The Holly' before but I've just listened to it on YouTube.
I've just discovered two Christmas episodes of 'On The Buses' from 1970 and '71 on YouTube.
Charlie may have just learned Little Jimmy O was for real! My brother and I would argue on Saturday mornings whether to watch the Jackson 5 cartoon or the Osmond Family cartoon because they appeared at the same time on TV. Our dad determined we had to alternate Saturdays. (Wisdom of Solomon on display!!!).
But we both thought Little Jimmy was an invented character lol.
DW, Jimmy Osmond getting to #1 at Christmas isn't so surprising when you realize that the previous year it was Benny Hill. For a little while there before Slade's 'Merry Christmas Everybody' made Christmas songs fashionable again in '73 (see the last comment thread) the festive top spot mainly seems to have been taken by novelty tunes.
When did the The Christmas Number One become a big deal anyway? I don't really recall it being much of a thing back in the day. Maybe it was talked up a bit more in the 90s, but the real hype about it came in the 21st century with those X Factor winners.
Ultimately Simon Cowell is to blame for Ladbaby.
-sean
Steve, I don't know what was going on in late '72 but I have to say even by the standard of the time the singles and album charts you linked too for this week really are full of awful records.
Bowie's 'Space Oddity' album is alright in places - well, you can spend a while pondering the lyrics of 'Cygnet Committee', man - but the only really good record there is Hawkwind's 'Doremi Fasol Latido' lp, their first with Lemmy on bass. Perfect for the bong smoking teenage Michael Moorcock fan inside anyone...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-ASz7Vf5Ug
-sean
I guess Space Oddity sales were mainly Christmas presents for the discerning Bowie fans who already had Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust. There's a disproportional number of collections on the album chart, again for the obvious reason.
I realise there are many popular songs that were never recorded for my taste, this Little Jimmy single is barely in tune. This single was number one for five week and sold almost a million copies. When he was older I thought he sang ok (remember Penny Lane in the Fame tv series?) but I think this is awful. Funnily enough the b side is Mother of Mine. Another classic 70s track.
DW
*but*
Colin, "Green Groweth the Holly" was sung by the choir, at my high school, so I remember it well. I could have tempted Charlie into listening to it, by mentioning that the second link name checks Paul McCartney on the album it's taken from!
The target audience for Jimmy Osmond was housewives/mothers, with their maternal instincts, already dipping their hands into their purses, around Christmas.
Phillip
DW, yeah, obviously in December you get a lot of people buying records who normally don't, which explains the number of compilations and oddities in the charts. I guess its possible the Military Band of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guard could have had a hit at another point in the year... but not two at the same time! (I suspect their 'Little Drummer Boy' must be even worse than Bowie's with Bing Crosby, but I can't face checking)
Even so, there are still the more regular kind of non-seasonal hits you'd expect in '72 - T Rex, Elton John etc - and they seem worse than usual.
-sean
I've recently started to really appreciate Bowies "Space Oddity" LP some great wee tunes in there and lyrically t certainly pushed a few boundaries in places. I love "Memory of a free festival" and "An occasional dream" .
I just took a quick look at ASM #5-6 to see whether someone with a discerning eye would be able to spot they were out of order. I'm assuming the final panel of ASM #6 promising the return of the Vulture (first returning villain) in the next issue would have been left out of MWOM.
And I found that, yes, it should be possible to spot the two were out of order. In ASM #5, Peter notices how pretty Betty Brant is (in Stan's words) and in ASM #6 he's about to ask her out before being interrupted by JJJ. These tiny little steps in character development make the whole of ASM 1 to about 33 one big long serial, not like a load of Star Trek episodes than can be played back in any order.
The Sun Machine is coming down and we're gonna have a party, Paul.
'Space Oddity' is a fascinating time capsule - a sort of window into what was going on outside the mainstream in 1969 - and the most interesting of the early Bowie records reactivated by the success of Ziggy Stardust.
-sean
Sean, I remember the Christmas No.1 being a big thing in the '80s so it didn't start with Simon Cowell. I recall Madonna's 'Open Your Heart' being a supposed dead cert for the Christmas #1 in 1986 but it only made #4.
And The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards reached #1 earlier in 1972 with 'Amazing Grace' which stayed at #1 for 5 weeks and was one of the Top 20 best-selling singles of the 1970s.
The final UK singles chart of 2022 has been revealed and Ladbaby has plummeted from #1 to #85 which must be the biggest drop from the top in chart history! Last Christmas by Wham! is back at #1 and there are new entries for Cliff Richard's Mistletoe & Wine at #71, Christmas (Don't Let The Bells End) by The Darkness at #93 and Greg Lake's I Believe In Father Christmas at #95. And good news for Charlie as Andy Williams reaches #10 with It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year.
Nowadays I'm only interested in the singles chart at Christmastime so that's it for 2022!
A bit of an acknowledgment for UK comics as Dave Sutherland, the Beano artist on strips like Bash Street Kids etc gas been given an OBE. Not sure what use that actually is to Dave but it could be a comic book first
I had no idea the Osmonds had success in the U.K.
Yikes.
When I was a little kid we had the Donny and Marie Show. My older sister told me back then that the Osmond family belonged to a Satan-worshipping cult. I don't know if she was lying to me intentionally (she is a pathological liar) or she actually believed Mormons worshipped the Devil.
Either way, as a result I watched that show with dread and horror.
But then, a lot of variety shows from the late '70's inspired dread and horror. The Sonny and Cher show was a nightmarish journey into lunacy.
M.P.
Paul, comic creators getting a gong from the monarch must be a Scottish thing.
As far as I'm aware the only others who have one are Grant Morrison and Mark Millar, both Members of the Order of the British Empire (how edgy).
-sean
Sean, thanks for that info. I wasn't aware that Morrison and Millar had received "gongs, makes my own knighthood seem pointless 😀
Brian May of Queen has received a knighthood in the New Year's honours list.
The late Pope Benedict XVI was six months older than my father and they were born in the same year (1927) but my dad died in 1999 though, to be fair, Benedict probably didn't smoke 20 a day for most of his life and he also had God looking out for him which is a distinct advantage in the longevity stakes.
MP, the Osmonds had huge success in the UK:
Donny had three #1 hits (Puppy Love, Young Love and The Twelfth Of Never)
Jimmy Osmond had one #1 (Long-Haired Lover From Liverpool)
The Osmonds as a group had one #1 (Love Me For A Reason)
Marie reached #2 with Paper Roses
Donny & Marie had several Top 10 hits
Did any UK readers catch The Fast Show Christmas Special (first broadcast in 1996)? It's still available to watch on BBC iplayer for the next three weeks if you're interested.
Colin - Yes, I watched The Fast Show, & the X-Mas Gone Fishing ( Norway episode).
Phillip
COLIN - Thanks for the Xmas updates this past month! Looking forward to December 2023 already!
It's funny you mention Andy Williams. Though I did not hear many of the older favs on the radio this year, I did hear some old timeys that I had perhaps never heard before. One was an Andy Williams (I forget which song) and the other was JUDY GARLAND from the 1940s!
MP - Did you ever watch the Osmond cartoon (or the J-5) or where you just ogling Marie Osmond in the flesh?
IT's funny what a hit tune could do for you back 50 years ago - OSMONDS, TONY ORLANDO AND DAWN, SONNY AND CHER, CAPTAIN AND TANILLE - all had TV shows base presumably to profit off their fleeting fame due to their hit song?
Any other?
I do remember the various magazines at the checkout at the supermarket offering up deep and profound insight into the OSMOND'S MORMON culture in the early 1970s. But hey - I figured anyone who could come up with a song like CRAZY HORSES couldn't be all bad?
Charlie, I think New Kids on the Block and MC Hammer (Hammerman) had cartoon shows. In the UK the Bay City Rollers had 2 TV shows and Marc Bolan (T-Rex) had a show . Oh and a small provisional pub band called the Beatles had a cartoon show 🤣
Funny (?) The Stones never capitalized on cartoons, movies… though they had the documentary (?) about the murder at Altamint which made Mick look rather irrelevant though he did shed a tear!
Ah, the Osmonds. My little sister was big on them back then; right down to the Donny poster on her wall. Personally didn't follow their music much, although I did really like Donny & Marie's cover of "I'm Leaving it All Up to You". Incidentally, anyone else notice that most artists one dislikes usually had a song or two that you enjoyed; and your favorite arists almost always had a tune or two you couldn't stand? Just goes to show, it's never all or nothing. Life is a wash of gray tones. Ok, there's my philosophical contribution this New Year's Eve.
Speaking of which, best wishes to Steve, and to all the SDC community, for the New Year!
Same to you, Red, and Steve, thanks for another great year.
You're right, Red, we all have our "guilty pleasures", songs, movies, or comic books that everybody else detests, but for some reason beyond logic we like.
I like the movie The Keep, but apparently, I'm the only human being on Earth who does.
I also happen to like (some) disco music, but that may be because it was all over the place when I was a kid and it got drilled into my head.
Does liking (some) disco mean I'm a bad person? It probably does, but there's no helping it now. God have mercy on me.
M.P.
The Osmonds, disco... it could be worse, M.P. - at least you're not getting up at six in the morning to watch West Ham.
Welcome to the sunlit uplands of 2023 everyone.
Aithbhliain faoi mhaise daoibh.
-sean
HELP. The Sunday York times crossword, 31 across, “the seminal 1980 hit by Joy Division “. 19 letters!!!
And HNY!!!
Charlie - RFO, FFO
Charlie,Love will tear us apart. A classic song
Thanks, Red and MP, and a happy New Year to you and to everyone who frequents this blog.
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