Back in 1989 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the moon landing, Polystyle Publications gave us a comic themed around science fact and fiction. Its name was Zero-G.
Of course Polystyle were famous for publishing TV Comic, Pippin and Countdown / TV Action but Zero-G may be new to you. It'd be understandable if you missed it as there was only this one issue published as a Holiday Special. After the summer of 1989 it vanished from the shelves as though it had never existed.
The contents of this 48 page special contained a mixture of factual articles on space exploration and a good selection of complete adventure strips. However, the strips were all reprints from the 1971 comic Countdown.
Although most of Countdown's strips had been based on TV shows it also sometimes featured all-new complete sci-fi stories with no connection to any television series. It was these strips which were collected into the Zero-G Holiday Special. Great material too, with artwork by Brian Lewis and Martin Asbury.
There was also a four page text story Dangerous Friend reprinted from the Countdown Annual 1972 that had been laid out differently. This Martin Asbury illustrated tale featured the cast of the Countdown ship, the originated strip from the comic of that name.
Talking of layouts, the strip Murder on Ice bizarrely broke its continuity halfway through to feature a few joke cartoons, which seemed a bit foolish and unnecessary.
Was Zero-G intended to spin off into a regular comic? Possibly not, as there wouldn't be enough non-TV reprint left to fill the pages of an ongoing title, unless Polystyle would be willing to finance new material. That seemed unlikely, given that the Holiday Special was obviously done on a limited budget. Even the rocket icon on the cover had been lifted from the old Countdown logo. Times must have been hard not to afford a one inch drawing of a new rocket.
So the Zero-G Holiday Special was a here today, gone tomorrow publication, passing like a comety candle in the wind burning up on re-entry lost in splashdown, add your own metaphorical analogy thing. Like Polystyle's parrot it had ceased to be.
Thứ Ba, 31 tháng 3, 2015
Drac's back! Classic SCREAM! strips reprinted
Ireland based publisher Hibernia Comics have produced another winner in the form of an 86 page collection of a classic strip from Scream! weekly. The Dracula File contains the complete run of the fondly remembered story from the 1980s written by Gerry Finley Day and Simon Furman and illustrated by Eric Bradbury and Geoff Senior.
Scream! was a horror comic for boys published by IPC but sadly cut short after 15 issues by a strike. Even though it was only around for a fleeting time the comic has its fans who remember it well. The Dracula File, featuring Dracula in present day England, was one of the best strips in the comic, notably for the atmospheric artwork by the late great Eric Bradbury. Egmont now own the rights to the strip but have allowed Hibernia to publish the comic by special arrangement.
The Dracula File collects all of the episodes plus material from the Scream Holiday Special and bonus features. It's available to buy now directly from the publisher. Check out their other books too. I highly recommend all of them:
http://www.comicsy.co.uk/hibernia
Scream! was a horror comic for boys published by IPC but sadly cut short after 15 issues by a strike. Even though it was only around for a fleeting time the comic has its fans who remember it well. The Dracula File, featuring Dracula in present day England, was one of the best strips in the comic, notably for the atmospheric artwork by the late great Eric Bradbury. Egmont now own the rights to the strip but have allowed Hibernia to publish the comic by special arrangement.
The Dracula File collects all of the episodes plus material from the Scream Holiday Special and bonus features. It's available to buy now directly from the publisher. Check out their other books too. I highly recommend all of them:
http://www.comicsy.co.uk/hibernia
Thứ Hai, 30 tháng 3, 2015
More ads from 1970
I've shown lots of ads from comics here before and now here's another bunch you may remember. (Hopefully they'll also prove interesting for those of you born after 1970.)
I've never minded adverts appearing in comics. As a kid they kept us informed of stuff we might like, and looking back on them now they serve a useful purpose in putting the comics in the cultural context of the times. Such as the ad for instamatic cameras...
Due to stricter rules about advertising in children's comics today, a lot of these items wouldn't stand a chance of appearing now. Sugary breakfast cereal and chocolate would be out for a start.
Jam and fireworks? Nope. Not a chance.
I'd bet there'd even be some objection from some people today if comics advertised voodoo shoes too. What? Voodoo shoes? Yep....
One type of advert I was glad to see the back of were the ones encouraging kids to have a military career. I'm sure that may ruffle some feathers of some readers but I never thought they were appropriate for kids comics, and the 'Hunter-Killer' one shown here was particularly distasteful in my opinion.
Anyway, let's take a look at the rest of the ads. All of them appeared in Lion weekly in 1970...
I've never minded adverts appearing in comics. As a kid they kept us informed of stuff we might like, and looking back on them now they serve a useful purpose in putting the comics in the cultural context of the times. Such as the ad for instamatic cameras...
Due to stricter rules about advertising in children's comics today, a lot of these items wouldn't stand a chance of appearing now. Sugary breakfast cereal and chocolate would be out for a start.
Jam and fireworks? Nope. Not a chance.
I'd bet there'd even be some objection from some people today if comics advertised voodoo shoes too. What? Voodoo shoes? Yep....
One type of advert I was glad to see the back of were the ones encouraging kids to have a military career. I'm sure that may ruffle some feathers of some readers but I never thought they were appropriate for kids comics, and the 'Hunter-Killer' one shown here was particularly distasteful in my opinion.
Anyway, let's take a look at the rest of the ads. All of them appeared in Lion weekly in 1970...
Comic Oddities: The Monkees Crazy Cartoon Book (1967)
Back in 1967, when there was a Daily Mirror Books department producing various paperbacks for Andy Capp, The Perishers, and so on, they capitalized on the Monkeemania fad by publishing this item. The Monkees Crazy Cartoon Book was a standard pocket-size paperback full of humour comic strips featuring (you guessed it) The Monkees pop group.
The book was actually a British edition of an American one published a year earlier. (The US version didn't have the 'Crazy Cartoon Book' added to the title.) It was written by Howard Liss and illustrated by Gene Fawcette. The contents were a mixture of four longish adventures and three short (3 page) strips, plus four pages of portrait photos of Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork. Presumably the book was one of the first items of Monkee memorabilia created as Mike is only referred to as 'Wool Hat' in the strips, which was his name in the pilot episode.
As you can see from the random examples I'm showing here, the approach the comic strips took was to try and mimic some of the surreal comedy of The Monkees TV show. It could prove to be a bit silly in places.
Anyway, it's an unusual item that may have passed you by so I thought I'd show a few pages from it here. I've had the book since 1967 so my apologies for it being a little dog eared and tanned around the edges now.
The book was actually a British edition of an American one published a year earlier. (The US version didn't have the 'Crazy Cartoon Book' added to the title.) It was written by Howard Liss and illustrated by Gene Fawcette. The contents were a mixture of four longish adventures and three short (3 page) strips, plus four pages of portrait photos of Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork. Presumably the book was one of the first items of Monkee memorabilia created as Mike is only referred to as 'Wool Hat' in the strips, which was his name in the pilot episode.
As you can see from the random examples I'm showing here, the approach the comic strips took was to try and mimic some of the surreal comedy of The Monkees TV show. It could prove to be a bit silly in places.
Anyway, it's an unusual item that may have passed you by so I thought I'd show a few pages from it here. I've had the book since 1967 so my apologies for it being a little dog eared and tanned around the edges now.
Thứ Bảy, 28 tháng 3, 2015
Lady Penelope No.42 (1966)
Lady Penelope was a pretty cool character for a puppet, and her comic equally so. Take a look at the cover to Lady Penelope No.42 above, dated November 5th 1966. Its companion comic TV21 often played around with its own logo but never to this extent. A gigantic Lady P logo dominates the cover, even dispensing with the comic's full title that week. (The words 'Lady Penelope' usually ran alongside the logo in the left hand corner.) I don't recall any other comic being as experimental with its cover as this in the 1960s. Also, when you consider that this comic was the size of a tabloid newspaper you can imagine how eye catching it must have been.
For its target audience of young girls, Lady Penelope must have seemed like the most modern and 'with it' comic they'd ever seen. Its contents were pretty groovy too. On pages 2 and 3, was a strip featuring The Monkees drawn by Tom Kerr. The artist's work was as superb as ever but what's interesting here is that he added little items to the strip in the way that Bill Elder had with Mad a decade earlier. Note for example the UFO in panel three, and the man hanging from the panel border in panel seven.
Lost In Space was a popular TV show at the time about the Robinson family trapped on a distant planet. Lady Penelope had a Space Family Robinson strip but this had no relation to the TV series. It was instead based on the American Gold Key comics, but with brand new stories for the UK drawn by John Burns.
The Lady Penelope strip itself ran across the centrespread in the sort of glorious full colour only achievable by the expensive photogravure printing of the time. Artwork by Frank Langford.
The comic certainly employed some top class talent. Ron Embleton delivered fine work as the illustrator of The Man from UNCLE...
There were also a few humour strips in the comic. The excellent Bill Titcombe drawing Bewitched...
The Beverly Hillbillies. (I'm unsure of the artist. Paul Trevillion perhaps?)
Perils of Parker, drawn by Peter Ford...
There was also a prose serial, All the King's Men, featuring an ancestor of Penelope. Art by John Canning...
On the back page, Marina from Stingray had her own series. Nicely illustrated by Rab Hamilton...
The rest of the 20 page comic was taken up with reader participation features and suchlike. I thought you might like to see a couple of adverts from this issue too, which reflect the times. First is an ad for a Sugar Puffs promotion where girls could buy 'Julie... the fashion doll with everything' for 21/- (One pound and 5p). Turns out that 'everything' included stockings and suspenders for the doll. Guaranteed to turn the head of any Action Man.
The other full page ad was for a variety of Century 21 toys. No doubt worth quite a bit on the collector's market today.
As you can see, Lady Penelope was quite an impressive comic with some great artwork. Too bad that most of us lads back then were too embarrassed to be seen with a girls comic! If you want to read about its history, check out the brilliant Technodelic website here:
http://www.technodelic.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Upload03/LadyPenelope02.htm
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