Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
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I think every single one of us was overwhelmed with excitement in August 1987.
How could we not be? It was the month in which Apple introduced Hypercard which, as we all know, was a precursor to the World Wide Web, meaning we were drawing ever-closer to the creation of Steve Does Comics!
Clearly not feeling the excitement was Rudolf Hess who was found dead in his Spandau Prison cell, at the age of 93. He was believed to have committed suicide by hanging and had been the last remaining prisoner there.
But, of course, the big news for all lovers of fine cinema was that it was a month which saw the unleashing of the big-screen version of Masters of the Universe, starring Dolph Lundgren as the man who has the power!
When it came to music, August entered our lives with Los Lobos at Number One on the UK singles chart, thanks to their cover of La Bamba. That was then dislodged by Michael Jackson and Siedah Garrett's I Just Can't Stop Loving You which then had to subside before the absolute behemoth that was Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up.
As for 2000 AD, historic events were afoot there too because, as far as I can make out, Prog 537 was officially released under the aegis of Fleetway Publications, after years of the title being credited to IPC, and I'm sure that will have made a huge difference to the contents. For instance, we now got Strontium Dog, D. R. & Quinch's Agony Page, Tales from Mega-City One, Judge Dredd, The Mean Team, Tharg's Future-Shocks and Nemesis.
Prog 535 saw the launch of Zenith, in an episode called Prologue: Ground Zero, as can be seen on the cover.
And Prog 537 saw the birth of a series called Universal Soldier, thanks to Alan McKenzie and Will Simpson.
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16 comments:
Steve, as I understand it, Fleetway - the Amalgamated Press prior to 1959 - was one of the companies merged into the IPC group in '63. The name came back into use in '87 when IPC sold its comic line to, er... Robert Maxwell.
-sean
Rudolf Hess - quite the enigma… or was he just yet another fascist moron?
Regardless, Charlie was in West Berlin in 1986 visiting a fellow helicopter pilot who took me on a ride around West Berlin in a UH-1 to include Spandau prison. Technically we were not allowed to take any pictures of it because under the status of forces agreement West Berlin or the Western allies were required to upkeep the prison, but we weren’t. It was overgrown, somewhat dilapidated looking, which makes sense given There was only one prisoner there.
Hitler’s bunker was still there too, in a big empty lot, fenced off.
Ahh, those were the days!
I didn’t see any of those movies in the cinema, but I rented THE MONSTER SQUAD once on video. I thought it was just ‘Okay’.
b.t.
Hey! Are any of you planning to be raptured this Tuesday, September 23? Charlie can’t be raptured because he’s Catholic, according to American evangelicals. For a small fee, if any of you plan on being raptured and you have pets, Charlie is willing to look after them, since animals cannot be rapture either!
Steve has my email, but hurry up since it’s not that far off in the future.
No Rapture for Catholics, eh Charlie? Sounds like poor oul' JD Vance picked the wrong time to convert...
Pretty sure I won't be carried up on Tuesday. But with quite a few Evangelicals gone, I look forward to Irish reunification becoming easier by Wednesday...
-sean
Never mind the Rapture - the autumnal equinox definitely occurs today at 19:19 BST
I didn’t see any of those films at the time but I watched Hamburger Hill, No Way Out and possibly Stakeout on VHS a few years later. Can’t remember anything about them, though my wife recently watched No Way Out and said it was pretty good, mainly because of Hackman.
Monster Squad garnered a big cult following, didn’t it? I didn’t see it. The Universal classic monsters never did much for me really.
So we’re entering the Zenith era! It was mildly amusing and refreshing at first.The Lovecraft swipes didn’t land for me initially, as I didn’t start reading HP until the following year. But the Diet-Coke-Alan-Moore-ness of it did: Yeowell’s art was even a bit like Alan Davis at this stage.
The Higgins ‘democracy’ cover is easily the best. Dillon doing the bare minimum as usual, and that (Liam Sharp?) bug one is a bit fanzine-ish.
Matthew, the 'Diet-Coke-Alan-Moore-ness' of Zenith didn't work for me at all, even from the outset.
In fairness to Grant Morrison MBE, I expect he was working under editorial direction, and you could see why someone given the chance to write an ongoing series for (I think?) the first time would go ahead and do what they were told. Not sure what his excuse for later work would be though...
Anyway, maybe it's worth mentioning that Brendan McCarthy has suggested Zenith was actually a rip of his and Pete Milligan's Paradax.
On the face of it - even ignoring the obvious pastiche Moore quality - that would seem to be a bit of an odd accusation, given that McCarthy actually designed Zenith and the main supporting characters (it's not unlike Moebius backing Alejandro Jodorowsky's claim that The Fifth Element plagiarized the Incal).
But he does have a bit of a point, as where the series deviates from the Captain Brexit/Marvelman template you can see some similarities.
All the same, despite my disdain for Zenith I reckon the best cover is the McCarthy one for prog 536. It was probably thrown together fairly quickly using a couple of character design sketches, but it is quite stylish.
-sean
Prog 536 features a Future Shock written by Neil Gaiman (drawn by Massimo Belardinelli), 'I'm a Believer'. He has another one in prog 538 - there you go, Steve, a heads up for your post next month - and then thats it for the Gaiman droid in the Galaxy's Greatest Comic.
In total, he did four Future Shocks -
https://medium.com/meanwhile/neil-gaimans-first-published-comics-in-2000-ad-50eae2134858
-sean
Anyone here been raptured. Or at
Least in the UK? You folks are 6 hours ahead so….
I was quite pleased it's sunny here today, but I wouldn't call that 'rapture'. I guess not.
It's still only early afternoon so plenty of time yet for the Rapture. Hallelujah! Glory be!
I thought I was being raptured there but it was indigestion whew!
I can announce I've just been raptured. It was a strange experience that involved me encountering a blonde woman who kept going on about a man from Mars eating cars. Then she said he's now eating bars. Then she said, "Be Pure." I made my excuses and left.
Did she also say anything about Fab 5 Freddie telling her everyone's fly, Steve?
-sean
I didn't hang around long enough to find out, Sean. The moment she uttered the word, "sacroiliac," I made my mind up to flee, in case I accidentally broadened my vocabulary.
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