SATURDAY 10th JUNE 1989
That stipple effect on Brian Williamson’s and Dave Hardwood’s cover for The Real Ghostbusters really was ubiquitous with Marvel UK at the time, wasn’t it? While on Transformers and Action Force, Simon Coleby joined the team with his first cover and he impressed from the start!
That skateboard story emblazoned on the cover of The Real Ghostbusters would end up becoming very familiar to readers. Not only would it pop up again in a Collected Comics special, but also twice more in the regular comic before the end of its run. This issue also contained the announcement of the sequel movie. This was the first mention of Ghostbusters II despite its release being just a few months later. The comic would go all-in with promotions, competitions and even serialised the adaptation as its first imported back up strip.
The exciting news in Transformers was that from next week the UK stories would finally be written for the new 5-page black and white format. Survivors came to an entertaining and somewhat intriguing ending this issue, setting up a superb character arc for Decepticon Pretender Beast, Carnivac. Having allied himself with Autobots, he witnessed his friend Catilla’s murder and left the team, swearing vengeance against the Decepticons but going out on his own, not wishing to endanger his new sort-of-allies. A superb character and some great stories to come. On the letters page a fan complained that Combat Colin wasn’t in one issue, so Dreadwind promised it wouldn’t happen again… “until next time”!
Well there you have it, the milestone issue of Doctor Who Magazine did get top billing after all. I still think he should’ve been given the honour last week when it was just released, but I suppose the crossover between the Time Lord and Death’s Head was equally as exciting an event and an executive decision was made. What’s shocking about this week’s checklist is that a new issue of Thundercats wasn’t given the ‘Don’t Miss’ slot. That’s a first for this series!
Last week, Popeye showed up to promote his own monthly comic and unlike the checklist entries it wasn’t much of an event for me personally because I was never a fan of the cartoon. However, I was very much a fan of the cartoon characters starring in their own Marvel UK summer special this week! I’m not sure why one of them is dressed as a magician to promote it, though. Probably something to do with a strip inside but it’s a strange choice without context.
I have happy memories of renting Tom & Jerry videos from my local shop as a child, often containing well over an hour of hilarious cartoons. The store only had a few of their tapes so I became very familiar with them. As did my parents! I have a distinct memory of laughing really hard (and my parents enjoying watching me) at the episode where Tom was a classical pianist and Jerry was asleep inside the piano, and once woken by Tom’s playing his revenge was taken in the usual, highly original variety of ways.
However, I never bought any of their comics. I remember seeing them advertised but still images were never going to be as funny as the high octane insanity of the cartoons as far as I was concerned. Did I miss out? If you picked this up (or any other Tom & Jerry comics) let me know, I’m intrigued as to how they could possibly translate successfully to the page. After this special Clearmark obtained the comics licence in the UK and the next year released a monthly Tom & Jerry comic which lasted only seven issues.
Next week Geoff Senior finally returns to cover duties to launch Aspects of Evil in Transformers, so you won’t want to miss that in just seven days.
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