|
|
Post by tingramretro on Jun 26, 2019 9:45:30 GMT -5
I have been in London 5 times in my life and I have seen variations of these issues and it's bothers me to see them do some strange colorations and I have seen a 11x17 poster of the Fantastic (another variation of) Four back in 1994 walking around London and it was an odd thing to see. I'm surprised to see Marvel Comics did not complain about it.  I even visited a couple of stores and seeing weird coloring of both Marvel and DC Heroes looking so odd and one time I have seen Green Lantern wearing a Blue (Hal Jordan) Mask and that back in the early 90's. Anyway, in the UK ... they do a lot of weird things over there and I wished I had extra $$$ to buy some of the stuff over there and take home and share it with my friends at my local LCS. WE do a lot of weird things!? Seriously? You really do know how to win friends and influence people, don't you? |
|
|
|
Post by tingramretro on Jun 26, 2019 9:48:50 GMT -5
We had a British candy and papers (and I think tobacco) shop I could go to in town that carried Star Wars Weekly and Doctor Who Weekly/Monthly and some others. I know they had some war and football comics and various titles with a girl's name (Tracy, Penny, Mandy, June, Misty, Bunty... er, was Bunty actually anyone's name? And I thought there were some funny names in Holland... oh and here's another, Jinty... Jinty? What the...) Plus they had a lot of Beano and Dandy, Whizzer and Chips. I got multiple Star Wars and Doctor Whos (from #1 with the rub-on transfers) at one go and some various other Marvel things like a couple of Hulks, one of which had a part of the first Wolverine story in it (which i wish I had kept never imagining any of the reprints would ever have value, but that one does). I think I later saw Warrior. The last thing I bought there was a few The Super-Heroes Monthly that had old DC reprints in b&w with nice full colour painted covers...   I'll bet every kid that saw it would've been lured by that Spider-Matic Pow! gun... probably like the card paper gun that came with a Kiss LP my brother got in the '70s though.  Rebelion, the publishers of 2000 AD, recently acquired the rights to the IPC magazines characters and titles, including some of those you mention. There's a brand new Tammy & Jinty Special due out tomorrow! |
|
|
|
Post by tingramretro on Jun 26, 2019 9:50:08 GMT -5
Paging tingramretro . Paging tingramretro. Please come to the Marvel UK thread immediately. Thank you. Actually, member tingramretro covered a fair bit of this ground in his Any Marvel UK Fans Out There? thread...not that that matters, in terms of this thread having been created. But there is a wealth of information on the subject in that earlier thread. Sorry, my Retro Signal seems to be broken...  |
|
|
|
Post by tingramretro on Jun 26, 2019 9:56:50 GMT -5
I wasn't born when all of those were published, but I've certainly bought some of those titles at car boot sales and the like. I can add to this topic if anyone is interested (and I appreciate any clarifications/corrections). Obviously these titles were only available in the UK. I was born when these earliest reprints of Marvel first started to appear, but was too young to have been aware of them. I know that the Alan Class reprint compilation comics always seemed to reprint a fair bit of Silver and Atom Age Marvel when I was a lad in the late '70s and early '80s. I've no idea when they started doing that, but assume that it was around the early '70s (if not before). It should be noted though that the original U.S. superhero Marvel and DCs were also available over here, but they were harder to find than homegrown British comic publications. It's my understanding that between the '60s and '80s, a lot of American comics were brought over to the UK as ballast on cargo ships and were then sold cheaply in British newsagents. Supply was pretty spotty and you wouldn't find them in most UK newsagents (although it's become apparent from talking to tingramretro that the availability -- or lack thereof -- of U.S. comics in British newsagents was almost certainly dependent on geographical location). These old UK comics were not exactly A4. They were closer to the standard UK magazine size of 210mm x 280mm, whereas A4 is 210mm x 297mm. Did anyone read any of these either at the time or years later? Yeah, sure. I read a lot of Marvel UK superhero stuff in the late '70s and early '80s, along with the odd DC reprint. Those Marvel UK reprints were my first introduction to such flagship Marvel superheroes as Spider-Man, the Hulk, Iron Man etc. Actually, I still have a box full of late '70s Super Spider-Man comics (this was the series that began in traditional portrait format, but switched to a rather perculiar landscape format, reprinting two pages of U.S. comics side by side on each page). Like this...   Of course, it kinda goes without saying that my favourite Marvel UK title was Star Wars Weekly (and it's many variations... The Empire Strikes Back Monthly, Return of the Jedi Weekly etc). Those comics were my first introduction to Marvel's original Star Wars run, which is to this day my favourite comics run of all-time (along with the first 200 issues or so of Amazing Spider-Man). By the late '70s and '80s, there were sometimes UK exclusive stories published by Marvel UK, that didn't appear in the U.S. That was certainly the case for the British Star Wars comic, which published a number of stories that U.S. readers didn't get to read at the time. Of course, as you mention, the downside to Marvel UK's stuff was that it was all in black & white. I've spoken before in the forum about how, once I found a local newsagents selling proper, colour U.S. comics in 1983, there was no going back. There weren't any UK comics being printed in full colour at the time, so to find the likes of Spider-Man, Captain America, Superman, and Batman comics in colour, seemed like an incredible thing to me at the time. Do non-UK readers know about Marvel UK? I wonder, in this age of eBay, do any non-UK readers buy these? Would vintage black and white UK reprints even appeal to, say, US readers? I once chatted with a big Spider-Man fan on the old CBR forums who collected the UK reprints to supplement his U.S. Spidey collection. And I remember good ol' Chuck Rozanski from Mile High Comics saying in one of his newsletters once that they did a small, but steady trade in UK reprints of American Marvels and DCs for hardcore U.S. collectors. Alan Class began publishing his reprint titles in 1959, and continued to do so until 1989. In the sixties, he had licensing deals with several American publishers including Marvel and Charlton, but these apparently ceased in the early 70's; Class, however, simpy continued to re-reprint his earier reprints seemingly without authorisation. Nobody appears to have been too bothered by this.
Incidentally, there were certainly some British comics being publised in full colour in the sixties and seventies. The Tarzan reprints from Western Publishing spring to mind...
|
|
|
|
Post by tingramretro on Jun 26, 2019 9:59:53 GMT -5
Perhaps he means your insistence on calling french fries 'chips', and potato chips 'crisps'? I was wondering, when Marvel had the rights for Edgar Rice Burroughs, Hanna-Barbera, Dennis The Menace, The Smurfs and The A-Team, did any of those properties turn up in Marvel UK comics? I think you'll find or terms are the correct ones. The language is called "English", therefore the version of it spoken by the English in England is by definition the only correct version. |
|
|
|
Post by tingramretro on Jun 26, 2019 10:02:41 GMT -5
Cool. I was in fan clubs, but not that fan club. I wonder if Dennis is the same - or whether he's more PC now. A strip I read (late 80s) saw his dad hitting him with a slipper. I can't imagine that being published now. Regarding Hanna-Barbera, some strips appeared in The Marvel Bumper Comic, published from 1988-89 (31 issues). Here's one:  Marvel UK also published a short lived Flintstones title, and the more successful Scooby Doo and His TV Friends. |
|
|
|
Post by codystarbuck on Jun 26, 2019 10:33:13 GMT -5
Perhaps he means your insistence on calling french fries 'chips', and potato chips 'crisps'? I was wondering, when Marvel had the rights for Edgar Rice Burroughs, Hanna-Barbera, Dennis The Menace, The Smurfs and The A-Team, did any of those properties turn up in Marvel UK comics? I think you'll find or terms are the correct ones. The language is called "English", therefore the version of it spoken by the English in England is by definition the only correct version. You mean the one with all of the Latin, French and German words? Sheesh, who didn't conquer you guys?  |
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2019 10:39:24 GMT -5
I have been in London 5 times in my life and I have seen variations of these issues and it's bothers me to see them do some strange colorations and I have seen a 11x17 poster of the Fantastic (another variation of) Four back in 1994 walking around London and it was an odd thing to see. I'm surprised to see Marvel Comics did not complain about it. I even visited a couple of stores and seeing weird coloring of both Marvel and DC Heroes looking so odd and one time I have seen Green Lantern wearing a Blue (Hal Jordan) Mask and that back in the early 90's. Anyway, in the UK ... they do a lot of weird things over there and I wished I had extra $$$ to buy some of the stuff over there and take home and share it with my friends at my local LCS. WE do a lot of weird things!? Seriously? You really do know how to win friends and influence people, don't you? I don't understand what you are saying here. Sorry this is somewhat vague to me. |
|
|
|
Post by tingramretro on Jun 26, 2019 10:42:50 GMT -5
I think you'll find or terms are the correct ones. The language is called "English", therefore the version of it spoken by the English in England is by definition the only correct version. You mean the one with all of the Latin, French and German words? Sheesh, who didn't conquer you guys? Well, nobody has managed it in over a thousand years. We just appropriate the parts of other languages that seem to be worth having. It's a pragmatic approach, but it works. |
|
|
|
Post by tingramretro on Jun 26, 2019 10:44:52 GMT -5
WE do a lot of weird things!? Seriously? You really do know how to win friends and influence people, don't you? I don't understand what you are saying here. Sorry this is somewhat vague to me. I was sarcasticaly referring to the fact that your earlier post was, in fact, blithely insulting to my country and everyone in it. Is that clearer? |
|
|
|
Post by codystarbuck on Jun 26, 2019 10:59:56 GMT -5
You mean the one with all of the Latin, French and German words? Sheesh, who didn't conquer you guys? Well, nobody has managed it in over a thousand years. We just appropriate the parts of other languages that seem to be worth having. It's a pragmatic approach, but it works. Same attitude with countries, according to my Irish great-great grandfather.  You'd never see Murica doin' that...... 'cept Florida............ and Texas................ and Indian lands................... The Philippines....................... Puerto Rico.................... Guam..................... Hawaii..................... Samoa.................... You know, I'll just stop there.  |
|
|
|
Post by beccabear67 on Jun 26, 2019 12:01:51 GMT -5
Well, I'll let slide what people call their aardappels, especially those who admit learning to read from U.S. Spider-Man reprints. Hopefully we can all tell a cottage pie from a shepherd's pie, er I mean a Captain Marvel from a Marvelman, right?  Looks like that 'Marvel Bumper' comic also had Alf (not Garnett)... a strange mix...  |
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2019 12:05:27 GMT -5
Just relax, folks, and have a jacket potato (does that have an equivalent in the US?). Ah, yes, the short-lived Flintstones title. I did look for some covers, but Google images really doesn't like me. Marvel UK does "live on" in a sense, but I won't get ahead of myself. Panini Comics (Panini may well be best known for stickers) have the current licence to reprint Marvel titles. I would like to do a DC UK topic one day. DC didn't actually have a UK office (as far as I know), they simply licensed things out to various publishers like Egmont, Titan, etc. I feel they should have had an equivalent to Marvel UK. |
|
|
|
Post by tingramretro on Jun 26, 2019 12:09:52 GMT -5
Well, I'll let slide what people call their aardappels, especially those who admit learning to read from U.S. Spider-Man reprints. Hopefully we can all tell a cottage pie from a shepherd's pie, er I mean a Captain Marvel from a Marvelman, right? Looks like that 'Marvel Bumper' comic also had Alf (not Garnett)... a strange mix... Ah, but those old Marvel UK reprits had the American spellings corrected to the proper British versions! In fact, that was a big part of the job of the London editors (including Neil Tennant).
Curiously, a number of those London editors were women, but they had to adopt male pseudonyms for their work as it was believed that the target audience of little boys couldn't relate to a female editor; consequently, Peta Skingley became Peter L. Skingley, and Maureen Softley borrowed her son's name, Matt. |
|
|
|
Post by tingramretro on Jun 26, 2019 12:13:01 GMT -5
Just relax, folks, and have a jacket potato (does that have an equivalent in the US?). Ah, yes, the short-lived Flintstones title. I did look for some covers, but Google images really doesn't like me. Marvel UK does "live on" in a sense, but I won't get ahead of myself. Panini Comics (Panini may well be best known for stickers) have the current licence to reprint Marvel titles. I would like to do a DC UK topic one day. DC didn't actually have a UK office (as far as I know), they simply licensed things out to various publishers like Egmont, Titan, etc. I feel they should have had an equivalent to Marvel UK. I never understood why they didn't!
Oddly, one of the companies briefly licensed to publish DC reprints was Marvel UK, though they only managed to put out one DC Super Powers Annual and a couple of licensed cartoon tie-ins, all in 1985.
|
|
