Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
***
OK, Nostalgia, show us what you've got!
Having brought the Hulk to his new kingdom on an alien world, the High Evolutionary's disappointed to discover he's lumbered, instead, with Puny Banner who's going to be a fat load of use in the battle with the increasingly bestial New Men.
So, he does what anyone would in that situation and decides to super-evolve Banner into a creature from a thousand years in mankind's future!
That plan goes tits up. So, the Evolutionary decides, instead, to super-evolve himself.
He then uses his future powers to devolve his New Men back into animals, before becoming a being of pure thought, leaving the Hulk alone on an abandoned planet.
Meanwhile, the Fantastic Four have no need of all that fancy space travel because outer space has come to them, with the arrival of the Super Skrull.
Don't they defeat him by trapping him in a volcano, in order to cut off the magic beam that powers him?
For that matter, is the magic beam that powers him ever mentioned again?
Now there's trouble because Spidey's caught in a battle for mob supremacy between the Green Goblin and the Crime-Master!
Needless to say, neither of the heels achieves that supremacy because our hero gains supremacy over the pair of them.
Elsewhere, Loki and Odin conspire to end Thor's relationship with Jane Foster, by sending the Enchantress to seduce the thunder god. But, of course, the block-headed Executioner messes everything up and the scheme is foiled.
But who cares about that? All that matters is that, at last, we discover the secret of Wordophobia!
No, I don't have a clue what Wordophobia is or why I should wish to know its secret but whatever the truth of the matter is, it may be found within this very issue.
Isn't the Skrull power beam mentioned again in t early 30s of FF? How the Skrull home planet turned up z/e strength of t/ signal to help him escape the volcano?
ReplyDeleteAnd Wordphobia is some crap competition. How many words of three or more letters can you make from CHILDRENS FILM FOUNDATION? Not for me Clive. Even at 8 years old life felt too short to bother with that.
Children's Film Foundation? Thats real 'jumpers for goalposts' stuff, dangermash.
ReplyDeleteI haven't heard of it in years - probably not since the last time I went to the cinema on a Saturday morning in the 70s - but as soon as I read the phrase there, an image of pigeons in Trafalgar Square and the sound of bells popped into my head...
-sean
All that CFF brings to my mind is Screen Test, a kids' quiz program where they showed clips from films and asked questions. I'm sure they'd always show clips from a couple of CFF films.
ReplyDeleteI can't hear the words, "Children's Film Foundation," without seeing a youthful Dennis Waterman going down a steep hill in a go-kart. I'm sure that was the clip they always showed on both Chris Kelly's Clapperboard and Screen Test.
ReplyDeletePS. Dangermash, I think you might be right. I think that is how the Skrulls liberated the Super-Skrull from his volcano.
ReplyDeleteWordophobia is a strange name for a competition that encourages children to create words - surely Wordophilia makes more sense?!
ReplyDeleteThe presenter of 'Screen Test' was Michael Rodd (but you already knew that) and 'Tomorrow's World' too until he completely vanished from TV in the early '80s but a couple of years ago he was speaking on Radio 4 and his voice sounds exactly the same. Took me right back it did!
Did anyone catch the King's Scottish coronation on Wednesday? First-Minister Humza Yousaf wore a kilt for the occasion. Would Rishi Sunak display his Englishness by dressing up as a Morris dancer? I doubt it :D
ReplyDeleteToday is the 1st anniversary of Boris Johnson's resignation. Never mind June 23rd, today is our real independence day - independence from a lying, egotistical oaf.
ReplyDeleteI gave the Scottish Coronation a miss Colin. I was surprised to hear that interest in the Monarchy in Scotland was at an all time low. Thanks for the reminder about Michael Rodd, Screen Test and my favourite Clapperboard (Colin & others).
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI was a bit surprised by how low support for the monarchy appears to be in Scotland too, Paul. Its never seemed as widespread as in England, but still... You could see why the SNP weren't a republican party.
ReplyDeleteThe change is probably part of the general loosening of ties in the UK in recent years.
These days apparently even the Orkneys want to get away from the British monarchy, and go back to being Norwegian.
-sean
Maybe the Orkneys never read Captain Britain?
ReplyDeleteTell Charlie the Forgetful One why Marvel UK just didn’t publish equivalent of Marvel Super Heroes at 64 pages, monthly, vs. the weekly and chopping up the stories? Please.
ReplyDeleteAll to do with different cultures in our respective countries, Charlie/Joe. I appreciate I'm sounding like my nemesis Dez here, but in the UK, kids' comics are weekly, that's just how it works over here. If Marvel UK had started off with monthlies when the rest of the comic rack was full of weeklies, they'd have gotten zero traction. I know I'm conflating Marvel with kids' comics here but the kids' market was (at least back then) where Marvel picked up its readers.
ReplyDeleteI'd give exactly the same answer if you were asking why Marvel UK was monotone (except for maybe 4 pages of colour) when the US versions were colour everywhere. Or why at the very start of Marvel U.K. or the very start of the Dezz era we needed free gifts or puzzle pages. Horrible I know.
So I'd say it's a national cultural thing, Reminds me of a training course at work where someone asked why it was that the U.K. had four huge high street banks dominating the market whereas the US had hundreds of smaller localised banks. The trainer put it down to history and colonisation and the Wild West and things.
Awesome reply Dangermash! Culture at some level reflects how a group thinks or feels about things. If a culture wants b&w weeklies, well that’s what vendors will produce.
ReplyDeleteI suppose i could have inferred the color aspect from The DC Thomson annuals (Beano, Dandy, Dennis, et. al.) but me and my siblings never thought twice. And to some degree it seemed to “fit” e.g., with Dennis the Menace having the red and white striped shirt and the story in the annual being o/wise black and white. Similar with Korky being black and white.
That said you gents were buying the Marvels and DCs directly sent from the US as well, so it would seem you had the best of both worlds.
Though, Charlie the Forgetful One cant recall whether UK pence covers were printed here or there? And those early pence covers are commanding some big $ per Overstreet.
Now I’m curious if DC Thomson ever tried selling in the US?
Charlie, I think pence covers were printed in the US and then shipped to the UK. By the early '80s imported US comics featured the American price plus the UK and Canadian prices.
ReplyDeleteJust to add to Dangermash's culture comment - in America poorly-selling comics were cancelled but in Britain a failed comic was merged with a more successful one and certain strips from the failing comic migrated over to the new merged comic. Marvel UK continued this tradition so when the British weekly 'Savage Sword Of Conan' was deemed a failure after 18 issues it wasn't cancelled outright but instead it was merged with 'The Avengers' to create the new comic 'The Avengers & The Savage Sword Of Conan' beginning in July 1975. This was the first of many mergers at Marvel UK as failing comics were folded into more successful ones.
Dangermash, free gifts didn't just occur at the very start of Marvel UK and the very start of Dez Skinn's Marvel Revolution - they'd never gone away. In 1976 Captain Britain #1 included a crappy paper mask which I considered an insult to my intelligence and in 1977 The Complete Fantastic Four #1 included a tiny plastic plane which belonged in a Christmas cracker - needless to say both free "gifts" went straight in the bin.
ReplyDeleteAnd those crap free gifts were prominently featured on the comics' covers thus spoiling the covers.
ReplyDeleteEven more than the Orkneys, the Shetland islands' affinity is with Scandinavia. 'The Pirate', by Sir Walter Scott, considers this. Despite being forgotten today, 'The Pirate' was one of the C19th's most popular books (supposedly!)
ReplyDeleteAs regards comic free gifts, the only decent one I remember, was the 'Space Calculator' in Star-Lord Comic. By pulling the internal cardboard tab, up & down, it would display facts of interest, about the planets!
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P5GXOzFCNXg/VUlHgjx5zhI/AAAAAAAAUsI/uvOqpx88k0s/s1600/starlord_freegifts.jpg
Re: Last time's Wimbledon discussion - What I really hate's when the BBC directs the viewers, as to which players it expects them to support. In such cases (although I can't be arsed watching it), I'd be inclined to support the opposite player, just out of orneriness!
Phillip
Broadly, I agree with dangermash, although I'm fairly sure the kids market is where American comics picked up most of their readers in the newsstand era too, dangermash. I mean, super-hero comics weren't exactly War And Peace (;
ReplyDeleteI suppose the difference compared to Britain was that by the 70s you had more fans becoming professionals - Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, people like that - who started writing for a notional older reader, say 13, 14 rather than 8 or 9, which boosted the average reader age by a few years (although the comics that seemed to be aiming past that - the better work by writers like Steve Gerber and Don McGregor - generally didn't do too well, and it took the direct market to change that).
That happened a bit later in the UK, nearer the end of the decade, with 2000AD, and Marvel UK under - sorry dm - Dez Skinn.
Although arguably the breakthrough at Marvel was a bit before Dez, with the launch of the monthly SSOC, which I think was the first mainstream comic in the UK aimed at an older (ie teenage) reader.
-sean
I think I mentioned to you gents that I heard a talk by a comic artist / writer a few months back. He was french so it was cool hearing a different perspective.
ReplyDeleteHe did say one could write a doctoral thesis on the US comic market and the differences with the European comic market (for the purposes of this conversation, I consider the UK to be European, lol.)
In general, (and "very generally" he made sure to say) the US had an extremely high population of foreigners who were illiterate in English. Thus they identified with the "Superman," et al. "from another planet/country" or the orphaned Bruce Wayne succeeding against the system.
And, as Sean mentioned, the comics of the 30s - 70s were not exactly deep reads... lots of pictures which worked well if one was illiterate.
The only thing I like to remind the crowd of is that Captain Marvel /Fawcett ruled the roost, not DC/National, and certainly not Timely / Marvel.
Also, it is interesting that both France and UK (I have no idea about other European countries) did have different formats for comics from the US and each other.
ReplyDeleteSpeaks strongly to Dangermash's discussion of culture being the driving force.
Colin - The only freebie I ever saw in a comic (as I've mentioned before) was the lingerie inserts in the early 1970s.
ReplyDeleteApparently, so I've read, these comics were targeted for military bases towards the end of Vietnam (1972-ish?)
As to why I found them in Gary, IN I have no idea. The nearest base of significance was Great Lakes Naval Base where, to this day, all recruits were trained. But that was like 75 miles away from Gary?
Bit of trivia: The US trained its Naval pilots for carrier landings, during WW2, at Chicago. There was a flat-top stationed along the shore to practice take-offs/ landings. Supposedly the bottom of the lake near there is littered with like 150 - 200 planes from the war. Every now and then one gets pulled up for restoration.
British comics European? Controversial opinion there, Charlie!
ReplyDeleteThese days the British comic biz is pretty much just an adjunct to the US one, providing niche creatives that work a bit cheaper. As the late Kevin O'Neill used to say about the artists who crossed the Atlantic in the 80s, 'we were the new Filipinos'.
Historically, it had its own characteristics, as did the Francophone biz (I wouldn't identify theirs with Europe generally either). When I was a little scrote - back before the common market - British comics always used to have the prices for Australia, South Africa, Malaysia, and places like that on the cover, so they had a wider cultural hinterland than just the UK.
I always assumed the end of that was part of their decline. The comics I mean, not the Brits generally (although...)
Mind you, with the British now free of the Brussels jackboot, local comics will obviously rise again. And indeed things are already changing -
https://news.sky.com/story/uk-to-send-signed-beano-copies-to-australia-and-new-zealand-to-mark-start-of-post-brexit-trade-deals-12893435
The Australians get to wipe out whats left of British farming, and in return they can read the latest Dennis the Menace stories. Comic Biz 1, Farmers 0 - that seems like a worthwhile trade off to me!
-sean
Phillip, that's right about the Shetlands. What about Yorkshire? Are you feeling your Danish heritage at all these days?
ReplyDeleteMore importantly though, lets not forget that the west of Scotland was historically part of Ireland. They should rejoin, along with the six counties. As Sir Paul sang, 'Give the Mull of Kintyre back to the Irish/Don't make them have to take it away...'
-sean
Yes, Sean! "Do you wanna lek soccer?"
ReplyDeleteThe Yorkshire dialect word, "lek", came straight from the Vikings, and is still modern Danish for 'play'! Sir Paul's Irish roots came up on this week's 'Who Do you Think You Are?' (he's related to Emily Atack); but, in Ireland, his surname was originally "McArthy", which became corrupted to McCartney, somehow!
Phillip
Although thinking a bit more about British comics, Charlie, I believe it was more common for old skool arists to do work for other European markets (where the format was similar).
ReplyDeleteFor instance, the mighty Don Lawrence drew Storm for the Dutch comic Eppo. Apparently the Trigan Empire was huge in Holland, so they head hunted him. Just as he found out that the Look & Learn publishers had been making a load of money out of syndicating the series all over Europe without telling him. The comic biz, eh? Some things are the same across different territories.
-sean
54% of farmers voted for Brexit and 100% probably voted for BoJo in 2019 so I'm not shedding any tears for them.
ReplyDeleteSean, I didn't know the west of Scotland had been part of Ireland. I did know that the Hebrides were ruled by Norway until the 13th Century - and wasn't Dublin founded by the Vikings?
I was never a regular reader of Look & Learn except for the odd issue now and again. I particularly remember reading an issue in school when I was about 15 which featured an article on the Olympics in ancient Greece where the men-only athletes competed naked. This article was accompanied by an illustration which left nothing to the imagination and spared nobody's blushes in its' depiction of a scene from the ancient Olympics - and this was supposed to be a magazine for kids!
ReplyDeleteCharlie, Britain is a part of Europe and always will be whatever the stupid Brexit crowd think.
I wasn't aware that part of West Scotland was part of Ireland either. I did know the Scots tribe were originally from what is now Northern Ireland and part of Westren Scotland. Strathclyde, Scotland's once largest region used to stretch from West of Scotland to about 40 miles outside York.
ReplyDeleteIPC/Fleetway characters appeared regularly in European comics (I also think a few appeared in Latin American comucs) Janus Stark, Hotshot Hamish, Leopard of Lime Street , Leo Baxendales Eagle Eye junior spy and as Sean says Trigan Empire etc...
Weren’t there a brother and sister team (Billy and…?) dressed up in black as crime fighters fromDC Thomson? Cant recall their names… help?
ReplyDeleteCharlie, they were Billy the Cat and Katie and appeared in The Beano. I think they were cousins.
ReplyDeleteThank Steve! You are a real wizard of UK comic trivia!
ReplyDeleteI still review your venerable posting to Back in the Bronze Age! Printed it out!
Cheers, Charlie!