On this day back in 1989 the latest issue of Eagle, edited by blog favourite Barrie Tomlinson, hit shelves across the UK with a Dan Dare cover by David Pugh appropriately enough. Actually, it was the 400th issue since Barrie had decided to resurrect the classic comic in March of 1982. Not that any fanfare was made of this. In fact it’s not mentioned at all, but then again it didn’t have issue numbers on its covers, each issue identified instead by its cover date (the Saturday following release). It had celebrated its 300th but for whatever reason it was no longer keeping track.
So why am I mentioning this issue? Well, as regular readers will know the fantastic Wildcat comic merged into Eagle in April 1989 (#368) and (similarly to when three of OiNK’s characters moved to Buster when it finished) there wasn’t enough of Wildcat in each issue for me personally to justify collecting it. As I mentioned in the review of Wildcat #12 I’ll be covering the remaining adventures of those characters at some point. I wanted to finish Wildcat’s real time read through first, which I’ll be doing six days from now.
The Wildcat Holiday Special had been released a month after the merge (see below), but the name ‘Eagle and Wildcat’ only stayed on the cover of the weekly for three months. However, Loner’s and Joe Alien’s stories continued, with Loner present all the way through until April the following year. (Loner’s original artist had been our Eagle cover artist David Pugh, by the way. In fact, he’d been created specifically for David.) Anyone who had moved over to Eagle (or who had collected both comics) would have loved this promo, even if “a reminder of how the whole adventure began” sounds suspiciously like reprint material.
I’ve been looking forward to finally getting a new issue of one of my most fondly remembered comics to read again and after months of waiting it’s less than a week away. So if like me you’ve been missing Turbo Jones, Kitten Magee, Loner, Joe Alien and the spooky goings on amongst the passengers of humanity’s last hope of survival, join me here on Thursday 17th November 2022 for an in-depth look at the very final Wildcat.
Before you go, as I continue to track down the merged issues I’ve discovered another promo, for the aforementioned Wildcat Holiday Special which was already reviewed on the blog back in April. Here it is in a full-page advert alongside Eagle‘s special and one for the Superchamps TV series.
OiNK Blog 