Working in a school is a "psychochronographical" experience: the pattern of the academic year naturally recalls the summers of my own schooldays. With another month nearly over, I wanted to look at the comics from July gone by, beginning with the era of Rubik's Cube.
In the summer of 1981, I had just left Hamilton Grammar School and I was buying comics by mail order, which meant they were three months in advance of the ones on the spinner racks in Lewis' department store in Glasgow or John Menzies. The X-Men's anniversary issue introduced a new backstory for Magneto. According to the lengthy exposition in the dialogue, he was now a concentration camp victim.
Originally, new member Silkie was supposed to join in this issue but never did. She did turn up eventually, however, as one of Cockrum's Futurians. The annual, meanwhile, felt like a Claremont try-out for the FF but was pleasingly pencilled by Brent Anderson.
Marvel alumnus George Perez was pencilling the Titans and the JLA, as well as producing covers. The brief stint of Roy Thomas on the Legion was almost over and the Huntress was still a back-up strip in WW.
My mum took my brother and I on holiday to Amsterdam. I'd visited it before, with my dad. I have absolutely no recollection of the hotel but I do remember visiting the Rijksmusuem to see the "Night Watch"; Marken and Vollendam. I also bought this book in the Bijenkorf ( the "beehive")
Carter's pastiches of Burroughs are paper-thin but I enjoyed the innocent sincerity of the pulpy stories.
As soon as we came home, I fell ill and actually became delirious for a time. The locum was called out and with barely-restrained excitement pronounced that I might have Legionnaires Disease. How ironic. Obviously, this wasn't the case since I wasn't hospitalised. When I had recovered, I made a trip to East Kilbride, where I bought this comic.
Classic Perez, mixing Gerry Conway's own villainous creations with Golden and Silver Agers. Not only did it include rare appearances for the original Hourman and Johnny Thunder but also a two-page portrait of the two heroic teams. (There's a similar spread in the Legion issue above).
The following year, I travelled with my mum and brother by coach for our first holiday in London. I was eager to see The Wrath of Khan, having read the novelisation en route. My mum wanted to see Evita in the West End. I didn't get it at all and was confused and bored by the whole thing. Funny, since I eventually became a professional actor a decade later. The shoe was on the other foot when I dragged my family from Forbidden Planet on Denmark Street ( this was six years or so before the Glasgow store opened) to Comic Showcase. This was what I bought:
The "Great Darkness" storyline was kicking off in LSH and Giffen was exploring their world in quirky detail. Wolfman and Perez, meanwhile, were pitting their melodramatic young heroes against modern-day religious cults:
Cannon and Ball's "Boys in Blue" was in cinemas; "Come on Eileen" was on the radio on heavy rotation. The mood of the city became threatening, however, after the shocking and reprehensible IRA bombings in Hyde Park and Regents Park on the Tuesday of that week. My final memory is of waiting to leave London in Euston Station and reading this paperback:
When I re-read this book a few years ago, the pseudo-Douglas Adams style irritated me. A compilation of 1972's The Curse of Peladon was being repeated on BBC1 up against Coronation Street that week. In those days, repeats like that were huge events. As a 19-year-old fan, I was sniffy about the effects!
I didn't go back to London until the early Nineties - and I haven't been back for about fourteen years!
I want to close with July 1983. I had finished the second year of my Arts degree at Strathclyde Uni.The Horror double bill was back on Saturday nights. My school friends and I were old enough to be served in the Strathaven Hotel and the Yeoman in East Kilbride village. Otherwise, I was spending the long summer vacation on days out to Troon, Prestwick and in Edinburgh where I bought these:
I feel John Byrne was at the peak of his powers that year and although his storylines were often as sadistic as Claremont's were (very) mildly kinky, they were always unpredictable.
I'll be back in Glasgow later this week and plan to pick up some of this July's comics.A post on those will follow in due course!
All images presumed copyright of their respective owners
It's strange to see some of these comics (a few of which I still have) and to 'hear' you describe them as if they belong in the distant past (which I suppose they do) because they still seem so recent to me - particularly the John Byrne FF ones. Yeah, we're talking 30 years ago, but it only seems like maybe 6 or 7 at most to me - and sometimes not even that long. Time, eh? A peculiar thing indeed.
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