With the end of our annual, national fire festival we are catapulted, thanks to a shrinking retail sector, straight into Christmas. But today, I'm going to look back at British and US comics from Novembers past.
In 1974, Planet of the Apes was something of a phenomenon. I would see all the movies, beginning with Battle, at the pictures in the mid- 70s. However, the tv series, which I gather was similar to most US sci-fi shows ( such as Logan's Run) was never shown in my area.
The POTA strips themselves were never the main draw in the weekly anyway. After the film adaptations there were a number of Head-Shoppe Kozmic Marvel outings: the Psychedrome stories or the piratical Future History Chronicles with a parody of Captain Nemo. Of course there were the silly Apeslayer strips where Killraven's Martians were redrawn as gorillas.
My preference was for the back ups, especially Ka-Zar, where Barry Smith fused with Kirby with Aubrey Beardsley. Also, Gil Kane's red-blooded Burroughsian take on Gullivar Jones. In the late 70s, I read the original novel and found it impenetrable.
POTA also carried Kane's Adam Warlock and Marvel's sci-fi adaptations such as The Day of the Triffids or the Slow Glass stories. Later there were the literary pretensions of Don McGregor's Black Panther and Thomas/Colan spaceborn infiltrator turned peacenik, Captain Marvel.
You got an entire, unabridged instalment of Mar-Vell's adventures with the Metazoid or Quasimodo the Living Computer in The Titans. Weekly comics reader definitely got more bang for their buck as the first landscape comic featured unfamiliar material like the Sekowsky Inhumans stories and early SHIELD strips. It was heavily promoted on tv in 1975 with a visit from Stan the Man and Herb Trimpe. However, thanks to spotty distribution and the sudden end of the Kirby strips, I only followed the comic in a desultory way until the Thomas/Roth X-Men replaced the Inhumans in issue 13.
The rate at which Titans reprinted material led to its merger with the landscape Super Spider-Man just over a year later.
One of the selling points for both comics were the centre spread posters: the most celebrated and unique perhaps being Frank Hampson's "London Invaded" where the Dan Dare artist depicted Spider-Man.
Five years after the failure of the Savage Sword weekly, the Thomas/Colan Conan the Barbarian strip was reprinted in Valour alongside Thor, Dr. Strange and Kirby's Devil Dinosaur.
The mix of strips indicates an awareness of the Sword and Sorcery paperback boom that seemed to have peaked in 1980- a year or two before Dungeons and Dragons really made inroads into our pop culture. I certainly remember being excited about Conan: The Road of Kings; Raven, Swordmistress of Chaos ( oh dear!) and Moorcock's Sojan the Swordsman. The Cimmerian had been relatively successful with UK reprints of the spicy b/w Marvel stories.
The most memorable stories in Valour, however, were a couple of Wally Wood strips from Marvel's late -60s anthology Tower of Shadows. One featured an engaging, Tolkienesque trio: Vandal the Barbarian; Pit Tippit, an elf and Trolkin, the cursed dwarf. I would really like to see Essential editions of Marvel's answer to House of Mystery; it's material with which I'm largely unfamiliar.
Future Tense was a short-lived ragbag of strips like Micronauts, Starlord, Warlock (for the second time!) and the one-shot Seeker 3000. The addition of Marvel's Star Trek material prolonged its lifespan until the inevitable merger with Valour.
A year later, I was a university student and buying independent comics - and the highbrow Comics Journal- in the seedy, glamorous Virgin Megastore.
Kirby's Captain Victory was a semi-sequel to New Gods from Pacific Comics. It began with an interstellar pest control squad's military incursion on Earth. The Galactic Rangers came to deal with an Insecton infestation. Another iteration of the Bugs of New Genesis, these creatures could leave the Earth a husk, much like Galactus threatened.
Later storylines hinted Captain Victory was the son of Orion and grandson of Darkseid. They also introduced bizarre characters like the Goozlebobber and Paranex, the Fighting Fetus. I bought three or four issues only; Kirby had been replaced - temporarily- in my affections by Giordano's DC.
I was pretty much over barbarians by the late autumn of 1981 when Mike Grell reworked his Warlord concept in a science-fiction setting. Starslayer featured a time-displaced Celt in a quest across the solar system- perhaps for the rest of Red Sonja's costume. I never read any more issues although I gather the hero acquired more clothes. I don't think it would be terribly practical in outer space to drape your boys with just a pennant of metal discs.
The back-up strip is worth noting. It introduced the pulp hero, Rocketeer, who would go on to star in his own movie. Coincidentally, the 40s serial King of the Rocket Men had been broadcast in the mornings during the Christmas holidays in December 1981 by the BBC.
Coming up: Egmont's Super Heroes and Dr. Who Weekly.
All images are presumed copyright of their respective owners
That's the first time I've seen that Hampson Spider-Man poster but I remember the stick it got later, in the letters page.
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