Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
People may often tell you not to count your chickens but, in July 1985, if there was one person in the UK who knew how to count chickens - or anything else, for that matter - it was 13-year-old Ruth Lawrence who, that month, achieved a First in Mathematics at Oxford, thus becoming the youngest Briton to ever earn a first-class degree - and the youngest known graduate of that University.
Also achieving big things was the world of popular music which, on July 13th, staged twin Live Aid concerts in London and Philadelphia. Events which, thanks to their star-packed status, raised over £50 million for famine relief in Ethiopia.
On the other side of the world, the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior was bombed and sunk in Auckland Harbour by French DGSE agents.
And what of the pop charts in the time of Live Aid? Just what were they up to?
When it came to the UK Hit Parade, the month began with Sister Sledge's Frankie on top, before that was dislodged by Eurythmics' There Must Be an Angel (Playing with My Heart) which then had to make way for Madonna's first UK Number One Into the Groove.
On its associated album listings, most of July saw Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA ruling the roost before, at the month's very end, Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms reclaimed the top spot it had held previously.
Starburst greets us with a face we’ll never forget - especially if we live in Chicago.
It’s true. The nation’s favourite sci-fi mag talks to director Anabel Jankel about none other than Max Headroom himself!
As well as all the usual features, we also encounter an interview with screenwriter Richard Carpenter who talks about the Robin of Sherwood TV series - which I’m going to assume he’s involved in writing, or it would be fairly pointless for the magazine to interview him about it.
We're getting plenty of interview action this month, with both Patrick Troughton and Mark Strickson sharing their thoughts on their work on the show.
And there's a full-blooded review of both Revelation of the Daleks and Timelash.
In the publication's regular comic strip, meanwhile, the Doctor and Frobisher find themselves trapped in a diabolical funhouse!
My memories of this issue's main tale are fuzzy, but I do know it involves Mastermind reappearing to help get Braddock Manor back in tip-top shape - and to mentor Captain Britain.
From what I recall, I do believe that Mastermind is the Captain's very own AI.
That's followed by Mike Collins' City Snapshot: Episode 3.
Which is followed by Night Raven entering an adventure in which he encounters the Ace of Ravens.
Then there's Abslom Daak in Kill Wagon which I misread as Kill Your Wagon, when compiling this post, and assumed it was an angry sequel to Paint Your Wagon.
And we finish off the issue with an 8-page Space Thieves tale from Dave Harper and Barry Kitson.
What's this?
Can it be?
That Marvel UK's longest-running monthly title has come to a crashing end, at a time when the battling barbarian's profile in this land has never been higher?
It can indeed.
Which is all the stranger, as the US version of the mag will continue to go from strength-to-strength for another decade before entering Valhalla - or wherever it is that Cimmerians go when they kick the bucket.
Regardless, our hero bows out in style by giving us a Thomas/Buscema yarn in which the bruiser strengthens the Bamula tribe by helping them conquer other tribes.
Then, we get 28 pages of Red Sonja action in While Lovers Embrace - Demons Feed, as reprinted from 1983’s Red Sonja #1.
Then we get King Conan in Red Moon of Zembabwei!
Then there's a 6-page Marvel Showcase tale from Simon Jacob. One called There’s a Demon in Wardour St.
Which is followed by Conan encountering The Bride of the Vampire!
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6 comments:
Hmmm. I thought that Eurythmics single was 1986! It is one of my favourite pop songs, so you'd have thought I'd have remembered that right.
I wasn't really a fan of the whole Madonna wave of hype through summer 1985. I did like 'Into The Groove' but not enormously [though I have come to enjoy it a lot more since], and the rest of the singles off that album always sounded a bit tinny.
The Shep Pettibone mix of 'Into The Groove' from the 1987 remix album 'You Can Dance' is really great, but when Madonna brought out her greatest hits package in 1990 the version of 'Into The Groove' on there was an edit of Shep's remix.
And as the Greatset Hits became the go-to source for Madonna airplay from then on, the original 7" single almost disappeared off the face of the Earth.
It was frustrating. Like a sort of Star Wars Special Editions moment.
I had that Starburst. I'm guessing it's discussing the 'Max Headroom' TV movie. The drama rather than the music videos show. I remember seeing it and thinking it was pretty good. It felt like the first post-'Blade Runner' bit of SF to approach that level of visual sophistication. Obviously I hadn't seen 'Brazil' yet.
I used to like the show because it used to have a pretty wide range of music videos featured. I saw Cabaret Voltaire's 'Sensoria' video on there for the first time.
I had that Captain Britain. No memory of it. I'll have the story from it reprinted in an omnibus on the shelf behind me, but can I be bothered checking it out? No.
A nice Bill Sienkiewicz cover for the last Conan.
'There's A Demon In Wardour St' sounds interesting.
I used to work in Wardour Street. Oddly enough, in the same building my Dad worked in 20 years earlier. There were no demons in it, but I did bump into Leslie Phillips in the foyer once. And Mark Lamarr's production company were on the floor above.
Believe it or not, I also graduated with a first in maths forty years ago this month. Cambridge for me though. And I suspect I had a better time there than Ruth Lawrence did at Oxford.
Its Lughnasadh next week, Steve, so as a man of broad cultural horizons I'm sure you're aware today was Domhnach Crom Dubh - all the best, and hope you had a good one - which seems somehow like an appropriate time to read about the end of Savage Sword of Conan.
The Schwarzenegger flicks notwithstanding, its demise was probably inevitable if you think about the changing publishing landscape of the time. When SSoC started up, if you were say 13 or 14 in the UK during the last years of the 70s and still into comics, what was there to read really? Back when Warrior was still a few years off, 40p for a mag that featured stuff like the Buscema/Alcala 'People of the Black Circle' and Barry Smith/Tim Conrad's 'Worms of the Earth' was a must buy.
In the mid-80s though, with a rejuvenated comic biz booming and an increasing number of specialist shops... Marvel sword & sorcery reprints weren't such a great draw.
In fact that was true for the Marvel UK monthlies generally, which - after a busy few years that gave you plenty to write about in this feature - seem to have died off by this point. With SSoC gone, that just leaves Captain Brexit and a couple of tv/film mags.
And I think Marvel sold off Starburst by the end of '85, so I do wonder where this feature is headed...
-sean
IIRC, in the U.S., our first look at Max Headroom was in a series of commercials for New Coke. A year or two later, there was a short-lived TV series on ABC, which was adapted from the UK TV-movie. I remember liking the first episode and thinking the subsequent shows were fairly routine so I stopped watching around the third or fourth week. I don’t think we ever had an equivalent to the UK TV series where Max presented music videos.
b.t.
Conversely, we didn’t get the TV series here in the UK! We got the pilot and then went straight into the music videos show, which was a bit of a lurch.
I don’t think I even knew about the TV series til much much later, maybe the late 90s?
I was still clinging on to Captain Britain monthly which had nice Davis art but the stories were insubstantial compared to the previous couple of years. I got home from my Saturday job at Sainsbury in time to see Queen, Bowie and the Who on the TV broadcast of Live Aid. I recall a temporary loss of signal during the Who set, which wiki confirms I didn’t imagine. The groups I followed at the time (The Smiths, The Housemartins, Depeche Mode and the like) weren’t in danger of being invited to perform, and so I think I saw the best of the London concert. A Shep Pettibone remix seemed almost compulsory on any 12” single at the time. Again wiki confirms I didn’t make this up. Also, he’s American. Who knew? I assumed he was a big fan of mid 70’s Blue Peter.
DW
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