Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
***
Hello? Is it me you're looking for?
No. It's Lionel Richie.
And I know that because this is April 1984 and sat resplendent at the top of the UK singles chart, as the month begins, is the singer of that very name with the song that starts with those very words, just as this post has begun with those very words.
However, "Hello," soon became, "Goodbye," for the former Commodores frontman, with his crown being snatched from him, in the month's second half, by Duran Duran and their upbeat but lyrically baffling The Reflex.
However, just as he'd had to make way on the singles chart, so too did he find himself subsiding here, as the top slot was soon retrieved from him by Now That's What I Call Music 2.
As the cover makes clear, Marvel UK's flagship title is still being dominated by the cheery chappies that are Cloak and Dagger.
In this thrilling issue, Conan finds himself enmeshed in an adventure that mankind knows only as Colossus of Argos.
I must declare that that is, perhaps, not the most menacing photo of the Master ever printed.
I detect a rare painted cover for the nation's leading sci-fi mag, which seems to relate to a brand new video game bearing the title Dragon's Lair.
As the cover makes clear, Marvel UK's flagship title is still being dominated by the cheery chappies that are Cloak and Dagger.
This month, they star in a tale called Dark is My Love, And Deadly but I struggle to recall just what happens in it.
I'm far more certain about the contents of Captain Britain's strip.
Excitement spills over because the moment we've all been waiting for has arrived. The one in which the unstoppable forces that are The Fury and Mad Jim Jaspers duke it out as only they can, with the fate of the universe in their malevolent hands.
On a much lower scale, Night Raven's reached the conclusion of his serial All the World's a Stage.
Pete Scott, meanwhile, takes a look at the history of violence in comics.
And we finish with a Marvel Showcase tale called Closer Encounter. I can impart no wisdom about the contents of this one but I do know it's brought to us by Steve Craddock and Dave Harwood.
Wait. What? They had Argos stores back in those days? I can only hope Conan has the sense to bring his own pen with him, as the ones Argos provide are always too small for convenience.
All I know about this mighty epic is it features a couple of villains called Don K'tar and H'ar Da'an who both lay dead before the tale is over.
Frankly, with names like that, they're probably better off deceased.
However, inside, we find previews of upcoming serials The Caves of Androzani and The Twin Dilemma which, I'm sure we all recall, featured the end of the Peter Davison era and the launch of the Colin Baker one. It seems to be popular consensus that one of those serials is substantially better than the other.
Elsewhere, it's exciting news for all lovers of the visual arts because we're granted an interview with the man who painted the covers for so many Target novelisations, none other than Chris Achilleos!
I detect a rare painted cover for the nation's leading sci-fi mag, which seems to relate to a brand new video game bearing the title Dragon's Lair.
The publication also investigates the gadgetry present in Never Say Never Again, casts an eye over how cinema's depicted the end of the world, scrutinises the making of the film Dreamscape and offers a retrospective of the giant ant classic Them!
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31 comments:
I didn't mind 'Hello' by Lionel Richie, and I didn't even mind the video. They both seemed so comfortably twee and pleasant that even virulent mockery doesn't do any real damage. I still quite like it. I don't put it on voluntarily to listen to, but I don't get angry when it comes on.
I didn't like Duran Duran at the time, but I really liked 'The Reflex' and I still do. I think it's a fantastic-sounding single. I have warmed to their 80s output considerably in the intervening years. I think the wave of 90s manufactured pop acts like Take fucking That and East 17 highlighted the fact that Duran Duran had been an actual pop band who wrote songs and played instruments, and I began to see them in a different light.
I had MWOM and Starburst. Starburst were always bigging up Don Bluth and his post-Disney animation features. He did eventually strike gold with 'An American Tail' I think, so good for him.
MWOM - just hanging on now, buying it for Captain Britain. It was a seriously good episode this month, Moore once again making what might have been a punch-up into a surreal, trippy nightmare, with more of that to come next month.
What an imaginative writer was - I think at this point I'd come to take that for granted and forgotten how many levels above your standard hacks he actually was. It made reading American comics difficult for me, however enthusiastic I was, as this was the level I was accustomed to.
Yes, that episode of Captain Brexit is a blinder, Matthew. The way Moore introduces the Fury which then hammers CB - switching from using a bit of purple prose on the first page to no captions or dialogue on the second - changes things up again with Jim Jaspers and some sparkling dialogue, "and then the trouble starts..." is really well done. Not to mention ending with another great cliffhanger.
Steve, always a pleasure to read your posts. But (yeah, sorry, there's always a 'but' isn't there?) I was a little disappointed you didn't fully explain the Starburst cover. Who is Chris Windsor - presumably not some British royal - and what is 'Big Meat Eater'?
-sean
Not having read any of these publications, I'll make a few musically referential comments instead...
Like Matthew, I really liked "The Reflex". It hadn't yet hit the American Top 40 (that week sitting at number 46) but would soon top the US chart. And I was a big DD fan already. so had probably picked up the album.
Overall it was a great time musically, the Billboard chart was full of goodness. The Thompson Twins were at number 3 with "Hold Me Now", and the top 10 also included Culture Club, Rockwell, The Pointer Sisters, Eurythmics and Tracey Ullman. Plus plenty more interesting listening further down the list. Made listening to Casey Kasem and AT40 a lot of fun!
I lost my fair share of quarters playing arcade videogames back in the 80s though I was never very good at them. But boy, I remember what a sensation DRAGON’S LAIR was at the time. Videogames still looked pretty crude back then — ZAXXON’s isometric perspective and BATTLEZONE’s vector graphics simulated spatial depth seemed relatively sophisticated compared to the ‘flat’ look of games like PAC-MAN or SPACE INVADERS. DRAGON’S LAIR seemed like a quantum leap — like an actual movie that you could play. It was impressive.
For a hot minute it seemed like laserdisc technology might be the future of videogames, but it didn’t happen. I don’t know if the LD technology was too prone to glitches or if people just got tired of seeing the same limited number of branching outcomes over and over or what, but the format didn’t catch on. I do remember when Bluth’s follow-up game SPACE ACE came out, they had sped up the game play to make it more challenging and my pals and I found it nearly impossible to play. By the time DRAGON’S LAIR 2 hit the arcades, the LD vigeogame fad was pretty much over.
b.t.
So I had a quick look online, and apparently 'Big Meat Eater' - "Are you on his shopping list?" - is a low budget flick from Canada. Here's the trailer -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3zCHZv3sa8
Eh. Looks a bit rubbish to me, but the wiki mentions a review claiming its better than the contemporary 'Eating Raoul'. Although that is according to a Canadian critic.
-sean
My brother bought 'Can't Slow Down' (he always bought more music than me.) As M.P. reminded us last time, the 'Hello' video is notable for evoking Alisha Masters' sculpting technique.
"The Reflex - flex, flex, flex, flex, flex!" One of those songs whose lyrics kids could annoy their parents by chanting, just as I'm sure kids do nowadays - and will do in the future!
b.t. - As regards primitive spatial depth, one UK home computer (the ZX-81) already had '3-D Monster Maze' - a primitive first person 3-D game involving being chased by a T-Rex!
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/83/3D-monster-maze-T-rex-2-steps-away.png
Also, Pac Man evolved beyond 2-D, as the Spectrum (the ZX-81's older brother) had a 3-D Pac Man type game, called 'Haunted Hedges' !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Bz73y-xgaE
If Dreamscape's the movie featuring the Snake Man, that film scared me witless as a kid! But well worth watching, back then.
Phillip
That’s the one Phillip. I liked it a lot back in the Long Ago but haven’t seen it in eons.
I do remember one line of dialogue — Kate Capshaw’s character explains to Dennis Quaid how the Dream Institute monitors their test subjects while they’re sleeping, keeping track of their breathing, their eye movements, the number of erections, etc. Quaid says to the Future Mrs. Spielberg : ‘ So basically, you’re telling me your job here is to count boners.’ Why THAT silly joke got lodged in my brain, I have no idea…
b.t.
I saw Dreamscape about 30 years ago, and I remember it being pretty fun. I keep meaning to rewatch it as it’s free on Amazon at the moment but I’m scared I’d be disappointed.
Laserdiscs were like a glimpse into what digital COULD do, but weren’t really fit for purpose for… anything.
They were used to store footage for early pre-Avid non-linear editing systems but were too expensive and clunky. And then they were used for on-set video capture back in the days of 35mm when you couldn’t play back what you’d just shot. Alien 3 used it the check back different VFX elements against each other as they were shooting them. Very expensive.
It’s like they were digital running before it could walk.
Before the advent of DVDs I actually got into laserdiscs for a few years because the picture and sound quality was so superior to VHS. They were so expensive that i limited my purchases to things I really wanted to have in a high-end format. No impulse buying! The COMPLETE TEX AVERY MGM CARTOONS set was the highlight of my collection. It was amazing.
But Good God, they were such a pain in the ass. You had to flip them over halfway through each movie just like LP records (and that’s if they ran under two hours — anything longer than that would have to go on a two-disc set), they weighed a ton, my LD player broke down frequently, etc. Once DVDs came along, I sold all my LDs (there was a place in Hollywood called Amoeba Records that was actually still buying used LDs, VHS and Beta tapes, but for next to nothing) recycled my player and never looked back.
b.t.
Amoeba Records is quite well known still exist, b.t. I don't know if they still buy laser discs, but I saw a promo vid of theirs about the vogue for old cassettes, so you can't discount the possibility.
Anyway, the best record released this month was Linton Kwesi Johnson's brilliant 'Making History' album -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=scBif3NgbNE
I had a look at the charts for mid-April to see what was popular, and was surprised to find out that the Malcolm X 'No Sell Out' single was actually a hit. Admittedly it was only at no 60, but still - well done the record buying public.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCWlGH-MeMU
The best of the bigger hits was 'Ain't Nobody'. Who doesn't like Chaka Khan, eh? Propaganda's 'Dr Mabuse' was hovering just above no 30, and Womack & Womack's 'Love Wars' was in there somewhere.
Otherwise... well, I am not on board with the Lionel Ritchie record - let alone the video - and we are in the era of Phil Collins being mega, and the Smiths ):
-sean
*well known AND still exists
-sean
I don’t recall many other LD videogames following DRAGON’S LAIR’s lead. There was one called CLIFF HANGER that repurposed existing footage from several LUPIN III movies. I think I played it once.
b.t.
Somewhere out there in the internet it talks of Marley opening for the Commodores in NYC and that possibly/probably leading to Lionel Ritchie breaking up with them (once he came down off the weed buzz of being in Marley’s dressing room). Guess Marley stole the show(s) unequivocally.
BBC Radio 4 has a weekly show called OPEN BOOK about all the happenings on the literary scene and a few years ago they asked bookshops for the strangest things asked by customers. This was my favourite...
WOMAN: Do you have a book called Lionel Richie And The Wardrobe?
SHOP ASSISTANT: Do you mean The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe?
WOMAN: No, I'm sure Lionel Richie is in it.
Like Matthew and Redartz I thought THE REFLEX was terrific - a masterpiece even.
Guess I’m the outlier then. I liked some of Duran Duran’s songs but their output had a vaguely sleazy vibe that I found kinda repellent. They brought to mind images of dim lighting, gold chain necklaces and mountains of cocaine. I did like ‘Rio’ and ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’ but didn’t care for ‘The Reflex’ at all. Not sure why.
Colin, that Lionel Richie bookshop anecdote is hilarious. Raises the question, why would anyone WANT to read a book about Lionel Richie and a wardrobe?
b.t.
Charlie enjoyed DDuran synth-pop greatly during the 80s. And, he still thinks “View to a kill “ is a great tune, and perhaps the only redeeming aspect of the movie itself, lol.
The challenge with their hits like “Hungry like the Wolf”, “Reflex”, etc. is that in a dance environment they break up the beat! I mean here you are dancing to hungry like the wolf and it’s interrupted by a girl panting and the beats slows down. Definite Buzzkill on the dance floor.
They could’ve taken a lesson from “men without hats “and their Dancehall tune “safety dance! “
And Charlie does agree with bt that their lyrics are best suited for boys with surging hormones.
I think it would actually be disappointing if a song called “Girls On Film” WASN’T kinda filthy ;)
That’s another DD song that I like more than “The Reflex”.
b.t.
Girls with flem? Don’t think I know that one from D2. CH47
Duran Duran remains a guilty pleasure for many of us. With me it's "New Moon on Monday".
...well, at least I feel some guilt, anyway.
On another note, that Lionel Ritchie video was unfortunate. Nobody needed a clay statue of his head.
M.P.
...and on yet another note, Steve, I noticed you showcased a cover from Master of Kung Fu up there.
A great series, but one I only became (somewhat) familiar with many years later.
The assassin Midnight would return!
From death, that is. Again, much later, and in a very unexpected place.
Without googling it, can anybody say where?
M.P.
MP, it was in The Avengers when Immortus or Kang or someone created a team of deceased super-villains for reasons I struggle to recall.
Late to the party but I agree this month's Captain Britain was superb. It's almost a shame that we're nearing the climax.
Save a Prayer remains my favourite DD song, which is quite melodic for what is essentially a song about a one night stand.
Wasn't the Kang legion of the dead story featured across the Giant Sized Avengers run? Good stories, terrible art, as I recall.
DW
Steve's and DW's memories of that Avengers story are correct. This was when Avengers featured in the U.K. Spider–Man comic and I was just starting to get into this new strip.
Legion Of The Unliving lineup: Mignight, Zemo, Frankenstein’s monster, Wonder Man, Original Human Torch, Flying Dutchman's Ghost? Did I miss anyone? At the time I was only vaguely familiar with the torch and the monster but I have more of a clue now.
It segues into long explanations of the Vision's origin and of the history of the kree, shrulls and cotai and finishes with Immortus officiating at Vision and Wanda's wedding, and that's where the quality of the artwork really drops.
DW, as well as Captain Brexit we actually got a new episode of the Moore/Davis Marvelman this month too - with a bit of back story for Gargunza - in Warrior #18. The first in a while, as #17 had featured the MM Family story drawn by John Ridgway in the lead slot, and there'd been no issues of the mag at all in January and February.
Possibly all was not ideal behind the scenes in Dezworld...
-sean
You're absolutely correct, Steve, and it was Kang. I forgot all about that one. I was thinking of something else. And Dangermash, The Legion of the Unliving definitely warrants a serious conversation.
But Midnight would appear yet again!
And once again, without googling it, where?
Remember, fellas, comics trivia is a gentleman's game, a matter of honor, no Wikipedia.
M.P.
Did he have something to do with the Silver Surfer, M.P.?
Sorry, I don't know what exactly, but I do recall seeing him somewhere in a spacey comic when I tried a few Marvels in the early 90s. So I assume it was something to do with all that Infinity Watch nonsense (fair play to Judo Jim Starlin earning a bit more money out of Marvel revisiting Warlock, Thanos, and all that, but I don't have to think it was any good).
-sean
I’m wild-guessing that Midnight might have made an appearance in Englehart and Rogers’ short run on SILVER SURFER in the 1980s? I didn’t actually read any of those but I’ve occasionally flipped through the Epic Collection at the LCS and I noticed Mantis showed up for an issue or two, so maybe Stainless Steve was feeling nostalgic for his glory days and shoe-horned M’Nai in too at some point?
b.t.
It’s been awhile since I’ve read those later installments of the Celestial Madonna Saga but did Kang choose those particular guys to be his Legion of the Unliving because he couldn’t use anyone who was actually still alive at the ‘present’ time because it would cause some kind of Time Paradox boo-boo or something?
b.t.
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