SATURDAY 18th MARCH 1989
A funny cover by Brian Williamson and Bambos Georgiou to mark the Easter school holidays for readers of The Real Ghostbusters, while those buying Transformers and Action Force were probably gasping in horror rather than giggling, thanks to Andrew Wildman’s shocking image.
The free gift was a Slimer-shaped jelly, a special sweet treat for that particular Saturday morning. I loved those things! I’d keep the plastic moulds to fill with my favourite drinks and stick in the freezer on warm summer days. Just me? Inside, a story about haunted shopping trollies explains a lot about those at my local supermarket, and Bad News was a very funny tale of a TV-addict ghost watching his own bust live on the gogglebox.
Cover artist Andrew is also a news story on the editorial page inside Transformers with the news of the birth of his third child, which was a lovely little moment in the comic. In the main strip, Starscream looks much more like last issue’s cover and it’s a cracking read, one of the very best of the American stories. It also sees the beginning of the fascinating dynamic between Optimus Prime and Scorponok that’d continue to play out until for next two years until they become firm friends(!) and it came to a tragic end.
The checklist is a good one this week.
How strange that the previous issue of Thundercats’ was the one to bring a brand new look to the comic instead of waiting until the first monthly issue to do so. It now contained two strips, the first was all about one of the most annoying cartoon characters ever while the other was a reprint. I don’t think it lasted too long after this if my memory of these checklists serves me right. Dragon’s Claws #10 missed out on top billing again but the ‘Don’t Miss’ title this week is rather special for us because it’s actually been covered on the blog before.
Doctor Who Magazine #147 not only contained that very funny comic strip of the Seventh Doctor’s run-in with The Sleeze Brothers, it also contained a full guide to season 25 of the classic show which began with a certain story called Remembrance of the Daleks. This just so happened to be the very first Doctor Who story I ever watched, so it was a nice surprise to read about it when I’d bought the issue solely for the brothers’ section of the blog.
So, I said previously we’d make up for the lack of comics adverts these past few weeks…
We’ve no less than three this week, beginning with the big news that The Marvel Bumper Comic was going weekly with #14, the same issue number as The Real Ghostbusters’ first weekly the year before. This wasn’t the only thing the two comics had in common either if you look at the free gifts coming up. A new weekly schedule usually meant a degree of success so it’s a surprise to know the comic would end up cancelled before the end of the year.
That’s a hell of a packed line-up too, so we know each strip had to be very short but it still intrigues me. Another star of the Bumper Comic at a later stage would be William Tell, who we saw previously when his non-existent fortnightly comic was advertised across Marvel UK’s range. Here, those first strips were collected together into a graphic novel so at least they could get them out there. Not that anyone in the UK was aware of the show yet.
Finally for this week, a brand new humour comic was revealed!
Oh dear. Not only has the printing gone horribly wrong for the advert’s debut but there’s no indication of what It’s Wicked! would actually be. The inclusion of Slimer (whose popularity Marvel UK was rinsing as much as they could) told us it would be a funny comic, but the line of text at the bottom read like it was telling us something completely different. It’d essentially be a ghosts-and-monsters-themed take on Beano and The Dandy but it didn’t last long, just 17 issues in the end. With this advert as the pre-release hype I can see why kids didn’t exactly rush out to buy it.
If you thought that was a bad advert, wait until you see one (of two) to come next week. It changes one line of text from a year-old advert to publicise a supposedly new Spring Special, but it’s really just a carbon copy of a previous comic with a different issue number. Not the company’s finest hour. I’ll catch you back here in seven.
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