SATURDAY 30th SEPTEMBER 1989
Today 37 years ago Brian Williamson and Dave Harwood teamed up again for The Real Ghostbusters and another cover promoting a gift with a somewhat generic image. Although, I did like the way the logo sticker was incorporated. Meanwhile, Andrew Wildman returns to Transformers and Action Force with a thrilling cover for a thrilling strip.
It wouldn’t be long until The Real Ghostbusters began importing American strips as their back up. The first would be the Ghostbusters II adaptation and in the meantime the comic seemed to be treading water, already relying on reprints just a year-and-a-half into its run. As a kid I hung on in there but I’ll admit I was close to cancelling my order at this stage if the reprints didn’t disappear. This week it was another from the first annual. Did they think less readers would catch on if it came from the book? Even the new story wasn’t groundbreaking, with ghostly doubles of the team being something the comic had already done more than once (as had the cartoon).
Decepticon Pretender Beast Carnivac continued to be an intriguing character. He was a Decepticon trying his best to do the right thing but his programming was so ingrained that he’d often do the right thing through some very dark means. Here he learned about guilt the hard way after deserting some human soldiers to save his own (metallic) hide. Lee Sullivan’s strip art really was second-to-none here. At the link below check out the final panel of the story in which Octopunch has Carnivac captured. This was top tier Transformers!
Elsewhere on this week’s checklist, “brain-washed refugees” actually referred to the Christian followers of an evangelical-type leader as they landed on foreign shores in The Punisher. I doubt many such-minded people today would see the irony. The fourth issue of The Sleeze Brothers’ six-issue run was one of my favourites. I missed out on it decades ago and only put that right in 2024 so the checklist didn’t really do its hype man job for me. That was my own fault, although the description here does sound a bit too run-of-the-mill for that comic. Read its entry above and then pop over to its full review at the link below to see just how different it really was!
One advert this week and it’s for another magazine rather than Marvel UK’s bread and butter. I’ll admit I’ve never been a huge Star Trek fan. I did enjoy a few of the movies as a teenager when they were on the telly but once they were over I kind of just moved on. A friend of mine has recently been trying to get me to watch Picard, despite the fact I never watched The Next Generation (although it always looked the most appealing of all the series). At the moment I’m on an umpteenth rewatch of Babylon 5 so Jean-Luc will have to wait for now.
We’re back to a little advert wasteland next week but the new look checklist will be in colour. Um, will that be enough to entice you back? I’ll guess I’ll find out in seven.
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