Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
***
Thrilling things await us in this week's look at the output of Britain's excitingest comics imprint, exactly fifty years ago.
But what of the music charts?
It turned out Ken Boothe was in a generous mood, as he hit the top spot on the UK singles listings, thanks to his reggae track Everything I Own. And possibly, after the success of this single, he could afford to own quite a lot.
Also able to own a lot were, possibly, the Bay City Rollers who retained their perch atop the associated album chart, with their latest LP Rollin' which we must all have had on repeat play on our turntables.
With one mighty lunge, Dracula's free of his coffin, and a brand new book hits a newsagents near you!
And it's just in time for Halloween!
In our second tale, a man called Jack Russell celebrates his 18th birthday by learning of his family curse. And I think we all know what that curse is but not why his parents were daft enough to call him Jack Russell.
While, in our third and final tale, Robert Walton IV leads an Arctic expedition to retrieve Frankenstein's Monster. While he's at it, he tells the cabin boy how that monster was created.
And that's not all, because I do believe this issue also contains a free poster recycled from the front of the US Dracula Lives #1.
But what's this? We don't just get the launch of one comic this week? We get two? Never before has Marvel UK demonstrated the level of ambition it is now!
And what a way to demonstrate that ambition, by creating a book dedicated to the greatest film the world has ever seen!
We don't just get a classic Bob Larkin cover. We also get an adaptation of the movie that started it all. Drawn by George Tuska, no less. In this exciting issue, three astronauts crash into a mystery planet - only to discover it's ruled by apes.
And humans are hunted as prey!
But there's even more. We also encounter a five-page article dedicated to the makeup process used in the film, and a fabby poster recycled from the first issue of the American Planet of the Apes mag! There's even a message from Stan Lee!
Truly, entertainment doesn't get more apetastic than this!
The comic may be called The Avengers but it's obvious who the editor thinks the star of the show is, as Iron Fist meets a man with nunchucks!
Even more excitingly, that cover announces that Ant-Man is back!
And it's because I demanded it!
Frankly, I don't remember demanding it but I'm sure the editor knows best what's good for me.
I do suspect this means we're getting the tale in which the Pyms' chauffeur turns out to be the Whirlwind and shrinks Goliath to insect size before trapping him in a deadly ants' nest, without his ant-controlling hat!
As for Iron Fist's tale, he's still invading Harold Meachum's office and must deal with the towering menace of the man they call Triple-Iron.
And deal with him, he does - with the help of a baffling ninja who keeps randomly appearing.
But just what kind of a state will Harold Meachum be in by the time the fist man gets to him?
And we close the issue with the second part of the re-telling of Dr Stranges' origin.
Now there's trouble because the Hulk's up against a seemingly endless parade of Leader-created replicas of his deadliest foes.
And we close the issue with the second part of the re-telling of Dr Stranges' origin.
Now there's trouble because the Hulk's up against a seemingly endless parade of Leader-created replicas of his deadliest foes.
Can Jim Wilson successfully overcome an entire military base in his quest to foil the Leader's plans?
And can he overcome his total inability to understand how the base's wiring system works?
Daredevil, meanwhile, is still combating the threat of the Tri-Man.
And I do believe it's time for some downtime, as the Fantastic Four rest and recuperate, following their grapples with Galactus.
And I do believe it's time for some downtime, as the Fantastic Four rest and recuperate, following their grapples with Galactus.
I suspect this means Johnny Storm's heading off to ESU to begin his studies.
And that means he's going to have an encounter with a mysterious youth called Wyatt Wingfoot...
From the looks of it, Silvermane learns it's not always a good idea to keep taking the tablets, as he seeks the key to eternal youth.
When it comes to Iron Man, I think he's having his first-ever encounter with the Black Knight.
But there are bigger problems afoot because, in Tony Stark's unexplained absence, Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan are starting to suspect our hero's killed their boss!
Thor, meanwhile, has problems of his own when a robot called Replicus, built on behalf of gangster Slugger Sykes, goes on the rampage across New York.
But is that robot all it seems?
And just what are the true motives of the mad scientist who created it?
Posts
49 comments:
Steve, we've come full circle after ten years! You launched the MARVEL UK 40 YEARS AGO post back in 2014 covering the week that POTA #1 and Dracula Lives #1 came out and then eventually 40 YEARS AGO was re-branded as MARVEL UK 50 YEARS AGO so we've arrived back at the same week ten years later. Happy 10th anniversary to this weekly review of Marvel UK from days of yore.
My first ever Marvel comic was Planet Of The Apes #5 and I still regret missing the first four issues :(
What a fantastic Pablo Marcos cover for Dracula Lives #1.
Well Hello There!!! This is Charlie from Chicago but chilling in Boston for an upcoming wedding this weekend! Black Tie is now the thing with young people. They think it’s cool to dress up once like adults used to!. Hell, the shoe stores are even selling wing tips again!
COLIN- It never occurred to me that SDC would have silver, gold, diamond anniversaries! But you clued me in and I just read December 31, 2010. What a lively read!
STEVE - I never realized you were all about THE DEFENDERS! And did you ever get THOR ESSENTIAS #1? And did you score DD ESSENTIALS #4 even though you thought volumes 1-3 were not very good?
DW - yea it was Charlie wondering if Ray Gun Halloween costumes are a thing in Oz or England like here in the US?
You know, i literally only watched about 2 hours of the Olympics this summer of which, due to sheer dumb luck, 30 minutes of it was spent watching Ray Gun do her thing. It’s worth a look!
BTW are you folks in Oz following SPURS now that their coach Posteglou is essentially from there?
Dracula, Frankenstein and a Werewolf all in one mag? That would have been my favorite comic when I was 12 (and lived in the UK).
I wonder if Marvel’s US b/w magazine division wouldn’t have been better off putting all there Monster Heavy Hitters in one mag. One good Monster Comic instead of four mediocre ones. But having a hit magazine wasn’t really the point, as I understand it — flooding the market in order to crowd the Warren and Skywald titles off the newsstands was the goal.
Am I correct in remembering that the UK DRACULA LIVES didn’t stay an All Monsters mag for long? Didn’t it become DRACULA LIVES AND PLANET OF THE APES at some point?
b.t.
Charlie, while the media have adopted Ange and Spurs as the second coming, I continue to despise the club and fans and pretty much anyone that mentions them 😉 I’m quite proactive that way.
DW ⚒️
bt, Dracula Lives lasted until #87 in June 1976 when it merged with Planet Of The Apes to become...er, Planet Of The Apes & Dracula Lives which survived for another eight months until February 1977.
Thanks Colin, I knew it was something like that.
b.t.
Both of the new titles had good debut covers but that Planet of the Apes. Over is one of my all time favourites. I think the UK version came out slightly redder than the US original which worked perfectly with the story (which was mostly set in the arid forbidden zone).
DW
Planet of the Apes cover… FFS
b.t.-
I'm with you there. When I was a kid I was all about monsters.
Still am! Anything with Dracula or Frankenstein...
I've even read the books. But I never got into the Planet of the Apes craze, maybe because I thought I was already living on it....
b.t., you remember the Simpsons? "Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want to Get Off"?
Troy McClure at his finest.
M.P.
This Beauty & the Beast cover looks like Planet of the Apes:
https://in.pinterest.com/pin/beauty-and-the-beast-vintage-1960s-ladybird-book-etsy-in-2024--815573814666646827/
Phillip
Colin, the depressing thing is that, looking at that post from ten years ago, it feels like, "Didn't I only write that a few months ago?" The way that time accelerates as you get older is terrifying.
Charlie, I've still not got round to getting those Essentials. It's starting to look like I never will.
DW - I am a bit odd and love watching Man U and Sp@rs suffer because of the schaden-freude it produces! Never has so much saliva been spilled over two teams on the UK’s Talk Sport discussing “what’s wrong.” Though, Chelsea has accumulated a bucket of raging spit balls too which is entertaining as well.
MP - I am going to make an assumption that they have public libraries in the Dakotas? If so, you might be very interested in a novel called “THE HISTORIAN “by an author named Kostova. A super cool DRACULA thriller. A thick book so it loves you long time!
In fact, I may just read it again for the Halloween season! But the book is NOT blood and gore at all, instead it is very very sophisticated.
CH
Good lad, DW. Despising Spurs is the great unifier.
-sean
Steve, Ken Boothe is relatively well off by Jamaican standards these days - he had a long career as a singer - but my understanding is he didn't make any money at all out of 'Everything I Own'.
Mainly because the record label went bust shortly after it hit number one.
Trojan were the main UK label releasing Jamaican music at the time, but even though they did well and had quite a few hits - and those 'Tighten Up' albums they put out were huge - they had financial problems by '74. Probably as a result of expanding too quickly, and being unable to deal with the general post-energy crisis slump in record sales.
-sean
I know I've mentioned this here before, but it is a curious thing how the culture at large seems to have forgotten that reggae was really popular in the UK - and Ireland (where Boothe also got to number one) - in the early 70s.
The amount of times I've read that it was Bob Marley & the Wailers' Island releases that introduced reggae to audiences here...
-sean
Do UK readers remember Boy George's version of Everything I Own which reached No.1 in 1987?
Steve, I don't think the Bay City Rollers made much money as their manager stole it all or something.
Lots of cool tunes on the Billboard Hot 100 this week 50 years ago from Dionne Warwick and the Spinners, Stevie Wonder, Carole King, BTO, Bad Co. — and lookit that, “Tin Man” by America at #11, so THAT’S why I thought of it when Redartz asked about songs that evoke Autumn earlier this week. Duh!
I have to say, Carole King’s “Jazzman” also screams “Autumn” to me.
b.t.
SEAN- the truth of it isnthat Reggae was and isna very very niche genre here. Indoubt if even in southern florida with allnthe latin and Caribbean immigrants it had a meaningful following.
That Marley was a prophet of sorts and had a couple commercial hits here is long forgotten. Yea there was a movie…
Sean, also, Desmond Dekker got to Number One, with Israelites, in the UK in 1968. I suspect that people want to big up Bob Marley and, therefore, tend to overstate his role in the popularising of reggae outside the West Indies.
Colin, I too remember that Boy George cover.
Charlie’s best guess, independent of the incoherent text of mine above, is that Bob Marley, once his music was tweaked in England for commercial success, achieved some commercial popularity, finally, in the US. Because the US is a bigger market, and next door to the Jamaicans, Marley became the reggae benchmark by which all other reggae artists end up being judged including the UK?
In all my 63 years I’ve known exactly one person who had a reggae disk outside of Marley’s ubiquitous Greatest Hits disk Legend from 1984 which put Bob on the map for the average Joe… probably Peter Tosh.
Sort of like Bob Dylan… lots of press and a benchmark… but few people listen.
We're forgotten reggae's greatest ever group - UB40!
...I'll get my coat.
Phillip
On a more serious note, seeing as Dracula Lives weekly comic debut's commenced, it's topical that, tonight, Oliver Reed's doing a Hammer retrospective on Dracula, on Cellar Club!
Phillip
Were the Drac retrospective's clips picked to highlight known actors? Caroline Monro herself; Lalla Ward from Dr.Who; Dennis Waterman, whose posh voice didn't convince. It even looked like Benny Hill played either Drac's major domo, or his chauffeur/carriage man! The show's spell's broken when you're constantly thinking, "Now where've I seen that actor before?" Well - it passed the time, anyway!
Phillip
Phillip, Oliver Reed died in 1999 so that must be quite an old retrospective.
I suppose UB40, Boy George's Everything I Own and Blondie's The Tide Is High counts as faux reggae - you could even say it was cultural appropriation.
I meant here specifically, Charlie.
Fwiw though, my understanding is that in the US Jamaican immigrants tended to go further north than Florida, and one of the more interesting aspects about the beginnings of hip-hop is that quite a few of the original DJs in New York in the 70s - like Kool Herc - were Jamaican. Its not hard to see the influence of reggae/dub sound systems on how that developed.
But it's not something that gets a lot of attention.
-sean
Jamaican artists had big hits in Britain going back to Millie Smalls, Steve (although the music wasn't called reggae at that point).
Funnily enough, it was Chris Blackwell of Island that put out her 'My Boy Lollipop' - a number two hit in '64 - who also signed marketed Marley and the Wailers. Blackwell was quite shrewd, and although he started out bringing over records from Jamaica to sell he saw fairly quickly that albums for the emerging rock market were the key to longevity in the music biz.
So Island switched to hairy white acts like Traffic, Fairport Convention, Free and all that. But he had his eye out for a reggae artist he could market in the same way. I think that's why Marley is seen as something new in the mid 70s, because he was a 'serious artist' making albums - which appeals to music journos - whereas Prince Buster, Desmond Dekker, Ken Boothe et al were seen as frivolous pop acts, a bit of a novelty.
Plus Marley and the Wailers - like a lot of the emerging artists in the mid 70s roots era - were Rastas and associated with 'rebel music'. Which is became a big part of the music's image.
-sean
*Which became a big part...
Duh. Also, apologies if I went on a bit there.
-sean
That is a terrible Dracula Lives cover. You'd think Marvel UK could have put in a bit more effort for the first issue. How come POTA #1 gets a snazzy painting, and Drac just gets some sh!tty five-minute quickie by Pablo Marcos or whoever?
-sean
I love that Dracula Lives cover. So there.
Speaking of music...
I had an MRI today. Any of you guys been in the tube?
It's no kinda fun, and M.P. is a claustrophobic cat. I had a panic attack in one of those things once. They hadda yank me out!
But they give you headphones, and you get to chose a musical genre you prefer to listen to as you struggle against the primal instinct of resisting being entombed alive.
I chose 70's easy listening. (I could have chosen "90's grunge. but that might have been the wrong vibe) I needed to get relaxed.
17 minutes in the tube. The play list, to wit:
Billy Joel, Piano Man
10cc, I'm not in Love
Player, Baby Come Back (the full version, apparently)
Manfred Mann, Blinded by the Light (the single version)
Christopher Cross, Sailing (I thought that was from the '80s)
When the Little River Band doing Reminiscing came on, I was out of it. I was barely aware of them hauling my ass out.
I could still be there, eyes rolled back in my head, maybe listening to Seals and Crofts.
M.P.
Never had an MRI scan, MP, but I got a letter yesterday "inviting" me to come for a COVID vaccine injection next Sunday (Nov 3rd) at 15: 08 so I'm quite thrilled about that (SARCASM ALERT).
Back to the Dracula Lives cover - it's a literal interpretation of the title as Drac is shown to be alive in dramatic fashion.
But can Dracula be "alive" if he's a vampire? Perhaps Dracula Undead would be a more appropriate title?
British Summer Time ends at 2am tomorrow so UK readers don't forget to put your clocks back one hour.
I didn't know you guys had that too.
M.P.
Colin - Last night's Hammer retrospective was from 1990 (?), I think. Ollie Reed died in Malta, after filming Gladiator, I seem to remember.
M.P. - My brother had a scan, during a free medical, whilst working in India, years ago (we're twins, so relevant to me too, perhaps.) But it was done with handheld scanners, rather than in an MRI tube. Being in a mummy's casket must be what that feels like!
As regards BST, it's "Spring forward, Fall back!" That mnemonic doesn't really work if you say: "Spring forward, autumn back!"
Phillip
You have British Summer Time in the US, M.P....?
-sean
What, you don't even know anyone who has has either of the albums recorded by Jah Serge at Studio One, Charlie?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT291XjFvJQ
-sean
Phillip, Oliver Reed actually died before he'd completed all his scenes for Gladiator. I recall hearing at the time how they'd had to change some scenes late in the film because of his sudden death and according to Wikipedia a bit of digital trickery along with outtake footage of Ollie had to be used. And of course Oliver Reed starred in Hammer's The Curse Of The Werewolf so it was appropriate for him to present a Hammer retrospective!
My father always liked Oliver Reed and they died just four months apart (Ollie on May 2, 1999 and my dad on September 2, 1999).
MP - Charlie was proclaimed the “chllest dude ever” to get an MRI in LaGrange Memorial Hospital. Full body in the tube. They gave me earplugs and I fell asleep in spite of the initial barrage of flashing lights and the incessant thunk thunk thunk of the MRI like a Browning 50 cal MG being fired in irregular bursts in front of my face. I assume you fired them when you were in?
I did ask for some off beat elevator type music and recall, like you, this is not a place to be listening to Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell or such!!!
But they did tell me many people freak out in the tube.
Charlie likes to explore book stores in towns he is visiting. So in Boston he is visiting Brattles Books. They have in the entrance the most bizarre set of shelves full of erotica paper backs from the 50s and 60s. I was tempted to get one that had the cover blurb “Her fiance went to jail! She became every man’s tramp!” But the plot sounded unrealistic.
In jail, her fiance's more likely to be every man's tramp!
Phillip
Wasn't that Dracula Lives cover the first ever Pablo Marcos UK-exclusive cover?
Don't know, Colin. But unfortunately it wasn't the last.
-sean
Today (Oct 27th) is 50 years since "The Trap", the classic third episode of the POTA TV series, was broadcast on ITV.
As all fans of the TV series will know, Urko and Burke fall into an old subway system and must work together to return to the surface!
Sean, the cover of the US Tomb Of Dracula #1 was perfectly adequate to be used again as the cover of Dracula Lives #1 but clearly something different was required for the launch of the UK Drac weekly!
Did any UK readers hear the interview with Kemi Badenoch on Radio 4 yesterday? I listened to the longer version on BBC Sounds but it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. Amazingly she got through the entire interview without saying "woke" even once.
Colin - I didn't hear that interview. However, an article I did read described how, after a woman at a conference slapped Kemi Badenoch, she gave chase, & grabbed the woman by her hair! Brawling in public, like a thug - perhaps Badenoch does have what it takes to be Tory leader, after all.
Phillip
Phillip, in the interview Kemi said she loved Margaret Thatcher not merely admired her but I'm pretty sure Maggie wouldn't approve of that kind of behaviour! Kemi is weird anyway - a black woman who rails against progressive ideas??
Colin - No politician is sincere - it's attention-seeking, pure & simple. Make some outrageous comment (e.g. maternity pay's too high), the media then discusses you, and invites you for further interviews, the next day. Badenoch doesn't believe the guff she spouts - it's just her "stich" to gain power. She's too young to even remember Margaret Thatcher. How can you "love" someone you've seen only brief clips of, on old 80s tv shows? It's all just nonsense. Lots of others do the same thing. Katie Hopkins made outrageous statements to gain attention, but the media lost interest. If the BBC stopped reacting to Badenoch's gimmick statements, she'd have to think of something else to get publicity.
Phillip
Katie Hopkins went a bit too far for the media really, Phillip. They prefer to have a bit of deniability - Nigel Farage rather than, say, "Tommy Robinson".
Although obviously the most efficient way to get the media against you is to just to have sensible views, like Corbyn.
-sean
Post a Comment