I don't understand what you are saying here. Sorry this is somewhat vague to me.

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:

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.


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.


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.

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.

I presume a lot of members here are outside the UK. You may only have a cursory knowledge of Marvel UK, its output, etc. So I thought I'd post a topic about it (which I will add to, sporadically). I hope my topic search skills are good, I haven't found a topic about this. What will follow is a very potted history.

Marvel UK began in 1972, reprinting US issues for a UK audience. The first Marvel UK title was Mighty World of Marvel, providing black and white reprints of the Hulk, Spider-Man, and the Fantastic Four:







Prior to 1972, a publisher known as Odhams Press had put out some titles. One was Smash!. Look at the colouring here (17th issue, 1966):






Pow! was another one, debuting in 1967, reprinting Spidey and Nick Fury:






And Fantastic #1, also debuting in 1967:






Oh, and Terrific, debuting in 1967:






Odhams Press did also do DC reprints. Want to (sort of) see Bats/Robin on the same cover as the Hulk? Here ya go:






We got some interesting colouring here in the UK:







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 bought a bundle of these from a comic shop recently (the last for a while, they cost quite a bit!). Being A4 in size, they are obviously bigger than the US comics published at the time. However, we didn't have the colour (or, it was sporadic, with only certain pages being coloured). Certainly, seeing a pink Hulk or red FF costumes is quite a novelty. And it does feel special having so many strips in one comic, serialised though they are.

Did anyone read any of these either at the time or years later?

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?

Not sure about forgotten as such, but when did The Leader last appear?

I always felt he could have been more than a Hulk foe. There didn't seem to be as much "cross-pollination" with the Leader. I'd have loved to have seen him take on Spidey, the FF, Iron Man, Thor, Silver Surfer, etc. He seemed to save his grudges for the Hulk, though.

I possibly last saw him in a Wolverine comic many moons ago. I know I could Wikipedia this, but who's to say characters' Wiki bios are updated regularly?