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Post by tingramretro on Jun 28, 2019 2:09:40 GMT -5
Actually, Marvel UK started using glossy paper for the reprint weeklies in late 1981, starting with Spider-Man TV Comic. On the covers, you mean? Not the interior pages surely? In the late '70s, Star Wars Weekly and Super-Spider-Man definitely had glossy covers, but newsprint interiors. Even as late as 1985 (which was roughly when I stopped buying it) Return of the Jedi Weekly still had glossy covers and newsprint interiors. The weird zip-tone shading was a Marvel UK innovation, and Dr strange was the regular back-up feature in the Avengers weekly for quite a while. If memory serves it used to be described in Marvel UK mags as "tones". In Star Wars Weekly it was credited to Howard Bender. Covers and centre pages. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 28, 2019 3:10:04 GMT -5
1976 saw the debut of Captain Britain Weekly, the Captain Britain strip being original content:  As the cover shows, the FF and Nick Fury were the back-up strips. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 1, 2019 4:48:06 GMT -5
Perhaps wishing to compete with the various UK war titles published by the likes of IPC, Marvel UK published Fury, which reprinted Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos and Captain Savage and his Leatherneck Raiders. It lasted 25 issues.   |
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Post by tingramretro on Jul 1, 2019 7:29:10 GMT -5
Perhaps wishing to compete with the various UK war titles published by the likes of IPC, Marvel UK published Fury, which reprinted Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos and Captain Savage and his Leatherneck Raiders. It lasted 25 issues. And the single best thing about it were the covers, the first by Dave Gibbons, and all the rest by Carlos Ezquerra. Aside from that, it was a rare misstep by Marvel UK, attempting to lure in the readers of the traditional war comics such as Victor, Warlord and Battle without really understanding what made them popular. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 1, 2019 8:44:29 GMT -5
That last sentence is interesting. Do you have any insight? (I ask as, other than a few random copies of those titles purchase in second-hand bookstores, I am not that familiar with their history/ideology).
I have been reading "Charley's War" recently, Forbidden Planet has had each volume for a fiver.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 1, 2019 11:52:39 GMT -5
Well, war comics in general are about both capturing the daring of "real heroes" as well as the drama and action of combat. I've only sampled a few of the UK war comics, though I've read a bit of Charley's War. It's a little different than the average war comic, just as Sgt Rock and Enemy Ace were different from the average Atlas or Charlton war comic. There is more of a humanist element to it, while war comics were usually filled to the brim with square-jawed heroes, fighting against all odds to save a comrade, stop a tank, blow up a bridge or some such. What little I have seen of British war comics seemed to emphasize the grand crusade against the Nazis, as pure evil, and the heroic nature of the average "Tommy." That's not too different than American war comics.
Sgt Fury was more of the Marvel superhero model, transferred to a wartime setting, swiping elements from popular 1960s war films (especially the Alistair McLean stuff). It got a bit more thoughtful when Gary Friedrich was writing and John Severin joined Dick Ayers on the art.
25 issues isn't bad, considering how much of Sgt Fury consisted of reprints. They went through months of reprinting old stories, before delivering new ones.
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Post by chaykinstevens on Jul 1, 2019 15:16:43 GMT -5
And the single best thing about it were the covers, the first by Dave Gibbons, and all the rest by Carlos Ezquerra. GCD credits Fury #2's cover to Eric Bradbury. |
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Jul 1, 2019 16:41:20 GMT -5
I have been reading "Charley's War" recently, Forbidden Planet has had each volume for a fiver. I've said it many times before in the forum, and I'll doubtless say it many times more, but Charley's War is the best war comic ever written. Ever. Americans, with their Sgt. Fury and Sgt. Rock have no idea... Charley's War is simply remarkable. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 1, 2019 16:57:00 GMT -5
Charley's War is indeed awesome. I am on the second volume.
Johnny Red is also one I like.
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Jul 1, 2019 17:26:28 GMT -5
Charley's War is indeed awesome. I am on the second volume. Johnny Red is also one I like. I liked Johnny Red fine as a kid, but I don't particularly feel it holds up all that well to adult eyes. Though it's still fun and the aircraft and dog fights are spectacular. Charley's War, on the other hand, seems better reading it as an adult than it did as a kid. Honestly, I think a lot of what Pat Mills was doing with the series went over my head as a child. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 1, 2019 18:15:52 GMT -5
Wow, that's exactly what I was going to post (or words to that effect).
I read some Johnny Red as a kid. It was fun. As an adult, it doesn't appeal to me in quite the same way, although I like the art, and Red feels very "real" to me.
Charley's War has themes now that resonate with me. I only read a handful of tales, probably out of order, as a kid, but reading the volumes now gives me a new appreciation. I also like Pat Mills' commentaries on the strips.
I think they've colourised them and re-released them. Not for me!
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 1, 2019 22:20:41 GMT -5
Enemy Ace had some pretty profound statements about the nature of war, though the Code prevented them from really showing it like it was. The EC Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat, which are pre-Code, had some of the best of that era, with real stories of real soldiers. Same for Archie Goodwin's Blazing Combat. Again, no Code, so more realistic and humanistic.
Charlton's The Lonely War of Willy Schultz, from Fightin' Army was a damned good one. Schultz is a German American who is framed for a crime, is court martialed and escapes into the North African desert, eventually forced to hide out with a German Panzer unit. He has to try to stay alive and not kill his own side. Will Franz had some really mature scripts and Sam Glanzman brought the visual magic. Glanzman's own semi-auto-biographical stories, The USS Stevens tales, are some of the best, honest pieces in American comics and his A Sailor's Story captures what it was like to serve on a destroyer, in the Pacific, for the key years of that segment.
Don Lomax's Vietnam Journal is probably the best account, in comics, of Vietnam. It's raw and real, unrestricted (unlike Marvel's The Nam) from a vet.
Also a must-read is Tardi's It Was War in the Trenches, and Hugo Pratt and Hector Ouesterheld's Ernie Pike.
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Post by tingramretro on Jul 2, 2019 2:22:42 GMT -5
And the single best thing about it were the covers, the first by Dave Gibbons, and all the rest by Carlos Ezquerra. GCD credits Fury #2's cover to Eric Bradbury. Really? I've never heard that before. Doesn't look like his usual stuff. I'll have to do some checking. |
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Post by tingramretro on Jul 2, 2019 2:23:54 GMT -5
Charley's War is indeed awesome. I am on the second volume. Johnny Red is also one I like. I liked Johnny Red fine as a kid, but I don't particularly feel it holds up all that well to adult eyes. Though it's still fun and the aircraft and dog fights are spectacular. Charley's War, on the other hand, seems better reading it as an adult than it did as a kid. Honestly, I think a lot of what Pat Mills was doing with the series went over my head as a child. I think it probably went over most of our heads back then. It is an incredible piece of work, very powerful. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 2, 2019 3:50:27 GMT -5
Rampage debuted in 1977, reprinting The Defenders and Nova:  This was the 34th and final issue: 
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