On this day back in 1989 the latest issue of Eagle, edited by blog favourite Barrie Tomlinson, hit shelves across the UK. 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 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 to justify me collecting it. As I mentioned in the review of Wildcat #12 I’ll be covering the remaining adventures of those characters at some point but first I wanted to finish the real time read through, which I’ll be doing six days from now.

The Wildcat Holiday Special had been released a month after the merge, 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. Anyone who had moved over to Eagle (or who had collected both comics) would have loved this promo then, 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.