Saturday 31 January 2015

February 1st, 1975 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

In one of those weird twists of fate, on the First of February 1975, January by Pilot hit the Number One slot on the UK singles chart. Truly the gods were mocking us with such a mind-warping time paradox.

But how were the heroes of Marvel UK coping with such trauma in this week of forty years ago?

Spider-Man Comics Weekly #103

I believe this is the start of the Schemer storyline, which was one of my favourite tales from this era of the strip.

I suspect the Kingpin didn't enjoy it quite so much.
Marvel UK Avengers #72, Dr Strange and Clea

I remember the cover but not the story.

Jason and Alexander getting a bit vandaltastic there...
Marvel UK Dracula Lives #15

You have to hand it to Dracula. He might be evil but he's always very nicely-spoken. I like to think Aunt May would approve of him.
Mighty World of Marvel #122, the Hulk

I think this is the conclusion to the tale in which the Leader's trying to replace the American government with humanoid replicas.

More importantly, it looks like this is where we get Dr Doom stealing the Silver Surfer's powers, which has to be one of the greatest stories in the history of all humanity.

3 comments:

Kid said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kid said...

Still got my original copy of that MWOM ish (and the others featuring that FF story) from all those years ago. By that time, the grey tones in the mag were under better control and not the murky blacks they'd previously been. I now have the original U.S. FF mags of that 4 part tale, and it's definitely Lee & Kirby at their very best. (They don't have a hat like yours 'though, so you beat them on that score.)

Anonymous said...

Yes, that issue of Spider-Man was the start of The Kingpin vs. The Schemer and it's also one of my favourite Spidey stories but more importantly for me SMCW No.103 was my first ever issue of Spider-Man and therefore my first "proper" Marvel comic with yer actual Marvel characters as opposed to POTA which I'd been reading for ten weeks previously (although POTA did include Ka-Zar who was a Marvel character). So now I was a real Marvelite getting two Marvel comics a week, woo hoo !!