Category Archives: Mighty Marvel Checklists

THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 59

SATURDAY 9th SEPTEMBER 1989

John Marshall and Dave Harwood laughed it up with their cover to the latest issue of Marvel UK’s The Real Ghostbusters, and Geoff Senior’s stunning cover to Transformers and Action Force shocked us all! Two great comics on sale today back in 1989.

It seems there was some degree of miscommunication going on within the walls of Marvel UK as far as The Real Ghostbusters was concerned. Last week the checklist told us we should be happy with two reprint strips but everything inside was brand new. This week, we’re promised a tale called Curse That Pharaoh and as a nut for Ancient Egypt I was disappointed to see no such strip inside, despite Spengler’s Spirit Guide (which usually tied in with at least one of the stories) being a very funny guide to Egyptian burial tombs.

After last week’s blip, the British Transformers story was not only back on form, it was brilliant. An alien discovered Optimus Prime’s long-lost body, which had been jettisoned into space about 130 issues ago! This was the beginning of the UK’s preludes to what would become the epic Matrix Quest in the US strips. Writing for both sides of the Atlantic, Simon Furman was perfectly placed to give UK readers exclusive prequel stories, extra character development, foreshadowing for future events and more that would make our comic even more epic. A hugely atmospheric beginning too.

There were no new contemporary comic adverts this week again so you’ll have to make do with this checklist all on its own. The monthly Sleeze Brothers entry from last week is repeated but the rest are for weeklies so are all new. I can’t help feeling more could’ve been made of the Deathbringer description though. Then again, little did us kids know just how fantastic the following years of Transformers were going to be, and that it had all begun right before our eyes.

For The Punisher entry we must firstly remember this was 1989. It was a very different time, although with hindsight that’s still no excuse for the clichéd way in which South America is described. It’s not as bad as last week’s incredibly sexist Transformers story but still, put that and this checklist together and it doesn’t exactly scream of people who have seen much of the world outside of their male-dominated office in England. I guess that’s part and parcel of looking back on 80s comics though, in that we’re reminded of just how far we’ve come since.

It’s all change next week with a brand new look to the checklist that’ll eventually allow for more comics to take centre stage. Take a gander at the title graphic of every one of these posts for a clue (or to jog your memory) of what’s to come. Also next week, one of Marvel UK’s regulars reaches a landmark 10th anniversary! See you in seven.

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THE SLEEZE BROTHERS 3

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THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 58

SATURDAY 2nd SEPTEMBER 1989

There was no let-up from John Marshall and Dave Harwood’s lengthy series of covers for The Real Ghostbusters this week in 1989, while Geoff Senior’s superb drawing for Transformers and Action Force doesn’t make up for the mess within.

In the former, while Egon waxed lyrical about ghosts of long dead plants in his Spengler’s Spirit Guide, the checklist entry for The Real Ghostbusters promised readers “a chance to revisit” two strips. That was a dreaded phrase, one we all hated, as it singled reprints. Another chance to read? But we never threw out our issues so we could reread them anytime! As it turned out this was a rather big error on the part of the checklist because everything inside this issue was brand new. Whoopsie.

As a kid I always felt it cringeworthy that the one and only female Transformer had to suffer the indignity of having pink lipstick. Previous to this issue one reader had actually written in to complain about this and asked why there weren’t more women robots. The response? We had Arcee, that would do. This origin strip for poor Arcee is demeaning and incredibly patronising. An awful editorial to start the issue doesn’t help either and overall everything comes across as nothing more than sexist drivel. It’s a world away from modern Transformers comics I’m glad to say. Thankfully Action Force and a laugh-out-loud Combat Colin from Lew Stringer more than made up for these five pages of garbage.

Formatting and grammar mistakes aside, the checklist detailed winning comics to make up for the Marvel UK top-seller’s misstep. However, the ‘Don’t Miss…’ box had gone the way of the dodo for the remainder of the series, meaning the brand new issue of The Sleeze Brothers had to slum it with the rest of the comics. A shame, because every issue of that short series was an event when I read them for the first time a couple of years ago, so they each deserved all the hype the checklists could muster. I have to say though, I don’t envy the writer who had to summarise any of The Sleeze Brothers stories into one paragraph!

The sixth issue of The Punisher gets a rather grin-worthy summary of its own. Listing off such adult themes as just run-of-the-mill everyday occurrences definitely would’ve piqued interest in the younger readers. It certainly did for me but my reserve list was already full and there were just too many other comics to sample first issues of back in 1988 and 1989. It’s still possible The Punisher could make it to the blog to see what I missed out on, but then again I’ve also thought that for The Marvel Bumper Comic and Action Force and Spider-Man and Zoids and…

There’s a shocking cover for Transformers next week that really took me by surprise when I first saw it all those years ago. It accompanies the last checklist you’ll see in this format. Changes are afoot. See you in seven. 

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WEEK 57 < > WEEK 59

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THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 57

SATURDAY 26th AUGUST 1989

John Marshall and Dave Harwood (surprise, surprise) unwrapped another cover for The Real Ghostbusters, while this week’s Transformers and Action Force Jeff Anderson cover was one of those rare occasions when it didn’t relate to anything inside.

Instead, the focus was on the free gift, one of those temporary children’s tattoos where you’d place it on your arm, dampen it and then it should (operative word being “should”) peel off leaving the image on your skin. It was a neat idea but I can’t remember it working as well as the drawing! Storywise, the excitement at the inclusion of new toys of mine was dampened by some awful American colouring that rendered them unrecognisable. Ironically, the toys come across much better in the black and white UK strip which gave the Micromasters a proper backstory. They were created because of energy shortages. A neat idea.

The big news in the companion comic was the return of Zuul from the original Ghostbusters movie. Although, the creative team fudged their research and misnamed her Gozer. The story was a funny one though. Janine experienced everything from the famous Sigourney Weaver fridge scene, only for her to throw a wooden spoon which the hell hounds chased back inside the appliance while she gave Zuul/Gozer a kick up the bum and slammed the door on her. The grumpy online fanboys out there would probably say it belittled the film but it’s a funny comic and it’s a funny little strip so it’s a winner in my eyes.

Death’s Head was hanging on in there on the checklist, refusing to go quietly into the night with his final issue. With hindsight I have to say The Punisher could be a strange comic, what with its ‘For Mature Readers’ label on the cover while giving away badges and stickers. He nabbed another ‘Don’t Miss…’ after the yellow box disappeared for the previous couple of weeks. Any chance of our top-selling weeklies getting in on some of that action one of these days? Don’t bet on it, the box’s days were numbered.

There were no less than three new adverts for Marvel UK’s range this week. The Punisher’s previous half-page ad was basically expanded to full size with no further information. The Real Ghostbusters ad was also light on actual info, but then again did we really need anything other than to know it was available? The fans would’ve been all over it regardless. “What’s a TV Special?”, I don’t hear you cry. From what little I can recall they were back on TV screens, split into two parts every Saturday morning on ITV’s children’s magazine shows, so it was most likely to tie in with that instead of the usual changing of the seasons. Not that they needed an excuse.

Finally, the big news was the launch of Fantasy Zone, a magazine covering new fantasy and sci-fi movies, and the occasional TV show. It never took off and didn’t last long, although it did produce a couple of specials dedicated to new films such as Ghostbusters II. It was launched the same month as Visual Imagination’s similarly-titled TV Zone, “The Magazine for Cult Television”. I was a regular reader of TV Zone for several years with an order at my newsagent and it proved somewhat more successful, racking up 231 issues compared to Fantasy Zone’s measly little six.

Oh, I’ve come over all nostalgic for TV Zone now! I remember the main reason I bought it was for Babylon 5, although I was soon swept up in its Stargate SG-1 coverage (that’s how I discovered the show) and loved its occasional retrospectives of two favourites of mine, Knight Rider and War of the Worlds. Must. Stay. Away. From. EBay!

Right, I’m off to NOT look at a famous auction site and I’ll see you all back here in seven days for more checklist goodness.

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DEATH’S HEAD 10

WEEK 56 < > WEEK 58

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THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 56

SATURDAY 19th AUGUST 1989

Frankenstein’s Monster makes an appearance on John Marshall’s and Dave Harwood’s cover for The Real Ghostbusters, surely two months early for such a classic horror staple? Meanwhile, there’s something missing from the Lee Sullivan cover of the latest Transformers.

Where’s Action Force? Perhaps this was when their new (canned) fortnightly comic was due and they’d have stopped appearing, and it was too late to put them back in (it was cancelled)? Or it’s something to do with timings for the Transformers strips, since the editor would be planning several months ahead. Who knows. Instead, alongside a continuing reprint were two new Transformers stories starring Micromasters. In this issue the plot involved the Decepticons’ difficulties in building microscopic components so they were trying to steal the Autobots’ secrets. The advantages of their tiny forms were really played up to and as a result they were so cocky. No wonder I loved them. The UK strips gave them proper personalities too, unlike the US ones.

It was rare for any ghosts to return in The Real Ghostbusters. Almost all of its stories were self-contained but on occasion we’d get a nice surprise and see a fan favourite once more. This happened this week. A giant gorilla movie monster returned from a previous prose story for a comic strip sequel, albeit much smaller and now working in Holywood. No prizes for guessing which role he was best suited for. Given the cover star for this week’s prose story this meant we basically had another themed issue. That’s three in a row! Could the comic make a home run next week?

The Punisher is the only other new release and that final issue of the superb Death’s Head is hanging on in there. The main story in the former certainly sounds exciting and it was such a shame that my reservation list at the newsagent was already maxed out. I didn’t want to cancel any of them to add The Punisher, so I missed out. The ‘Nam began its run as back up strip too, a series that sounded fascinating (especially the real time factor of its storytelling, at least initially) but which has escaped me thus far.

We’ve two adverts this week taken from the middle pages of Transformers so they’re both in black and white. A few weeks late, The Punisher finally gets promoted beyond the checklist with the famous quote that adorned the cover of the only issue I owned. Always found that funny! The other advert sees the very welcome return of the strip ads, this time for The Sleeze Brothers, a comic which was teased before release for longer than any child’s attention span. I’ve seen this advert in full colour in Death’s Head #5 (check it out in the brothers’ introduction post) but this is the only way it would appear in either of the comics I’m pulling these checklists from.

At the time of writing this post I’ve just recently reviewed Some Like It Fresh, the one-shot special released in 1991, two years after their mini-series was first released. It was a blast to read a new story featuring the dire detectives, so this advert is well timed right now and has brought a great big stupid grin to my face. Although, it’s been printed in Transformers two months after their series began and the comic was less than 32 pages, so I’m not sure how this slipped through at this stage. Oh well, who cares? It’s still fun.

I hope you enjoyed it too because that’s the last strip advert we’ll see in this series. Boooo! Oh well, next week we’ve three new ads for your perusal so don’t be missing out on them, as well as the latest checklist of course. See you in seven.

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DEATH’S HEAD 10

WEEK 55 < > WEEK 57

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THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 55

SATURDAY 12th AUGUST 1989

You’ll have the beginning of a certain classic Surfaris song stuck in your head with that caption on John Marshall’s and Dave Harwood’s cover to The Real Ghostbusters. Meanwhile, a favourite storyline makes the cover of Transformers and Action Force again, courtesy of Lee Sullivan.

The ghost busting team seemed to be having a time of it in the summer of 1989. After their sojourn in England last week, now they were living it up in the sun of LA and once again the strips and prose stories were all linked by the theme. Even Ecto-1 could be seen with huge sand tyres thanks to the art of Anthony Larcombe inside. As usual when the comic ran a theme like this it wasn’t just the main stories either, features such as Spengler’s Spirit Guide, Dead True and humour strip Blimey It’s Slimer were all LA-centric, making it another special one.

The main event of my week back then was the second part of The Big Shutdown with the introduction of the new Big Bad, Thunderwing and the infectiously enthusiastic Nightbeat. It’d be a while before they’d appear in the US strips so we were being treated to a superb prelude and it really added a level of fear to the former before his main arc. Between the last issue and this one it’s been a particular delight rereading these, the first glimpses of what would eventually become the epic Matrix Quest and all of the storylines that came off the back of that, all the way to that fateful final #332 almost two-and-a-half years later. It was a truly phenomenal time to be a reader.

We make up for the lack of adverts with a bumper checklist. It didn’t take up any more space but it was chock full of Marvel UK goodness. The best story of the week barely got a mention in Transformers’ bit of the list and I always wondered if anyone who didn’t read The Real Ghostbusters actually believed the checklists when they described the stories this way (instead of realising they were comedy strips)? The final issue of Death’s Head kept that bit quiet, which is a shame since that would’ve made it an unmissable candidate for the ‘Don’t Miss…’ box. Not that there is one this week. Cheekily, and possibly to get people to buy it, the summary doesn’t mention which Iron Man he’s battling.

The Punisher’s new weekly saw the end of its first back up strip, the full movie adaptation of RoboCop done in only three issues. The next back up (The ‘Nam) would stay for the rest of its run, making it feel like ol’ Murphy was only there to help push the new comic out of the starting block. Finally, Doctor Who Magazine makes a welcome return to these posts and I’d love to read that feature about the early stunts, back when imaginations had to outdo the measly budget. Although, the competition prizes don’t seem as “fabulous” as they were made out to be. Two adverts next week, including (at long last) another in the form of a comic strip. Wonderful! See you in seven.

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DEATH’S HEAD 10

WEEK 54 < > WEEK 56

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THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 54

SATURDAY 5th AUGUST 1989

John Marshall’s and Dave Harwood’s front page to The Real Ghostbusters doesn’t stand a chance this week, not when it’s alongside Nightbeat as a private eye on Andrew Wildman’s Transformers and Action Force cover!

Last time I said if this was the cover this week I’d be so excited I might read the issue again, despite having done so countless times before. Well, I did! The Big Shutdown was a superb two-part story that saw Autobot Headmaster Nightbeat investigating a disappearance, and with its classic detective movie clichés it’s a brilliant tale (and Nightbeat a fantastic character!). Alongside the terrifying new Decepticon Thunderwing, this was the beginning of writer Simon Furman introducing important new characters from his American strips to UK readers first. Our exclusive stories foreshadowed the US ones, added depth to proceedings and gave us a rich, memorably epic feel to the whole final couple of years of the comic. A genius move and a brilliant story in its own right.

Talking of stories coming across the Atlantic, the Ghostbusters were in England on holiday so all of this week’s tales were set there. Even the Dead True feature about local urban myths focused on the Tower of London. While The Real Ghostbusters comic’s stories were rarely longer than four or five pages, they would often find other ways of making them special such as these themed issues, or linking them together with an overall arc. Not that anything was made of this special issue on the cover, strangely enough. At least the “jolly spiffing” nature of it is plugged as such on the checklist.

Again, the need to tell us the titles and credits of every story reduces the brilliant Transformers contents to quick sentences that wouldn’t really entice new readers. The second issue of The Sleeze Brothers still didn’t get to be the big comic, despite their premiere issue holding the record for the number of weeks in the top spot. Nope, once again The Punisher weekly gets that honour. It was being given a big push so we can’t really blame them for giving it to him again; if it had been a new monthly we’d have expected it.

This week’s advert is actually for one of our mainstays. Even after 230 issues there’s no harm in plugging Marvel UK’s top-selling comic of the 1980s. In fact, I’d say it was about time. Both it and The Real Ghostbusters were rarely advertised post-launch, the excellent strip adverts notwithstanding (which you can see in weeks four and 21, although that was part of a publisher-wide push). I suppose when they’re already a hit there’s not much need. However, as fun as it was seeing one favourite comic pop up in the other, the advert feels somewhat phoned-in.

Like most of the publisher’s adverts there’s very little in the way of information and it relies solely on a few choice images. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever, the main purpose was to alert the younger readers of its existence and give a general feel of what to expect. On that level it does the job, but even when I was 11-years-old I couldn’t help thinking the image of Optimus Prime just looked wrong. That big gap above him where a speech balloon must’ve been made an otherwise powerful ad feel a bit slapped together. It’s not like the comic was short of images of him that would’ve fitted properly!

No adverts next week. In fact, for the rest of the year we seem to get a few weeks of a drought at a time and then suddenly we’ll be inundated. On this occasion we’ve only to wait two weeks until we get some more memory-firing images. In the meantime, next week there’s a bumper checklist to look forward to with our regulars, a special issue of a semi-regular and the final ever issue of a fan favourite. You can check it out next Wednesday to see what they are.

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WEEK 53 < > WEEK 55

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THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 53

SATURDAY 29th JULY 1989

At the time of this post we’re one day away from the year anniversary of these posts and it’s a particularly brilliant checklist this week! First though, check out John Marshall and Dave Harwood’s cover for The Real Ghostbusters which reminded me of the lacklustre second movie, and Geoff Senior’s exciting Dinobot cover to Transformers and Action Force.

Not mentioned in the editorial of the former is a multi-issue competition to win a bunch of toys. Readers had to design a new monster for the team to fight. I designed a version of their HQ building that had been taken over by Gozer but I never sent it in. Guess what someone else across the water in England completely randomly also designed and ultimately won the competition with? Damn it. On the letters page a reader has gone to the trouble of writing in to ask why Winston had a moustache in the film but not the cartoon, only for Peter to reply explaining what razors are.

In Transformers, the UK black and white story was drawn by Simon Coleby and it suited his style perfectly! The lack of colour also brought a darker tone to some of the storytelling and settings. For example, this tale was set somewhere called Slaughter City, a place full of dead, partly decapitated Decepticons strung up everywhere as a warning. Glorious stuff that was exclusive to us this side of The Pond. Wonderful! There was also news of the next week’s story and I just might read that issue again next time, as it’s one of my absolute favourites!

The Sleeze Brothers got a funny description in this week’s checklist and it really was a belter of a story, but then again every single one of their issues was a classic. With just the one, long story their comic gets a lot more detail than Transformers or The Real Ghostbusters, because those two had so much content to list off. However, a new weekly comic was about to give the monthlies a run for their money in terms of story length.

I bought the first issue of The Punisher but can’t remember if I owned any more. Having such a huge comic as a weekly was awesome. Even though the following issues would be half the size they were still thicker than the usual Marvel UK weeklies. I remember putting the badge on my schoolbag and I loved the RoboCop movie adaptation back up which was fun to read. While I don’t usually like movie adaptations I’d only seen the film once and, due to its contents, it wasn’t something I was going to get a chance to watch again at home for a while!

No new adverts this week, not even for the release of a brand new comic. Frank Castle would have to wait a month to get a bit of solo promotion. Then again, the checklists did that for them, a handful of comics at a time. These lists told us a lot more than most of the adverts anyway. See you in seven.

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THE SLEEZE BROTHERS 2

WEEK 52 < > WEEK 54

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THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 52

SATURDAY 22nd JULY 1989

I hope you’re all feeling better than Ray does on John Marshall and Dave Hardwood’s The Real Ghostbusters cover. Although, unlike on this cover, weather of the opposite sort has a lot us feeling a bit bleh right now. More upbeat is Doubledealer on the cover to Transformers and Action Force by Jeff Anderson.

Inside the first of our two top Marvel UK comics this week the main strip was one of those tales where the ghost busting team didn’t bust the ghost, instead setting it free once they’d found out why it was haunting a particular place. In this case a private art gallery where the ghost’s signature had been removed by a fraudster from the paintings he’d created when alive. I liked this about the comic because having every story – no matter how varied – end with a blast from a proton gun could’ve gotten repetitive and boring.

The UK strip in Transformers this week was truly excellent! Doubledealer was a great laugh. He had no allegiance and instead played both sides in the war off against each other for profit. The strip was also chock full of Micromasters (the teeny tiny Transformers toys) that I was a huge fan of and one of my favourite toys of all, an Autobot Pretender Beast call Chainclaw, was the star. I told you last week I’d be raving about this comic more and more this year! Oh, and in Lew Stringer’s Combat Colin humour strip there’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him cameo from none other than OiNK’s Tom Thug! You can check that out elsewhere on the blog already.

The checklist was absent from The Real Ghostbusters this week, so it’s been taken from the middle pages of Transformers, hence why it’s in black and white.

For all of the excellence inside this week’s Transformers the checklist listed the wrong UK strip, instead detailing one from month’s ago! D’oh. Thundercats made a return to the top spot with what it calls a ”bumper strip issue” even though one of those was a reprint. Cliffhanging text stories when there’s a full month to wait between issues? Ouch. Then we get to Action Force Monthly and it was more important than the checklist made out.

It’s the same issue as we saw in the previous checklist, but in this week’s Transformers the editorial revealed the exciting news that with #17 the comic was to be renamed Action Force Fortnightly and would be presented in a new format. Did this mean it was no longer going to be exported to the States as G.I. Joe The European Missions and would return to a larger UK-only format? Who knows, because the issue in the checklist above would actually be the last, with no indication of such in the comic itself. Instead, readers would only realise when #16 never appeared.

The latest advert was for another Holiday Special, this time starring Fred et all in a comic dedicated to The Flintstones, clearly the most popular characters from Marvel’s fortnightly Cartoon Time. The advert took a leaf out of the previous Tom & Jerry one and used a random image from inside to make a strained attempt at a play on words to market the comic. 

Marvel UK’s comics adverts definitely fell into two distinct categories which I’d label the creative and the lazy. Thankfully, there are more of the former to come. Keep your eyes peeled for them on Wednesdays over the next few months, and I’ll see you next week.

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WEEK 51 < > WEEK 53

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THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 51

SATURDAY 15th JULY 1989

Geoff Senior’s Transformers and Action Force cover somewhat overshadows John Marshall’s and Dave Harwood’s one for The Real Ghostbusters. That’s obviously not a criticism of the latter. How can you compete with Geoff drawing Unicron?

With a reprint of a superb Death’s Head story I’d never read before and the return of the God of Chaos from Transformers: The Movie, young me was absolutely thrilled with this issue! This was when I really fell in love with the black and white art thanks to the opening splash page, which got across the size and power of Unicron much more effectively than most of the colour movie adaptation did. Drawn by Simon Coleby and Cam Smith (what a team!), check it out at the link at the bottom of this post.

The Real Ghostbusters’ front page to #58 would be reprinted as the cover for the final issue, #192. Its first outing was for a fun story inside which was basically a retread of (or should we say ”inspired by”) Eddie Murphy movie, The Golden Child. Thankfully, the story concentrated on monsters from Eastern Mythology rather than making a joke out of a people’s history. After last issue’s abomination that’s a blessed relief!

Action Force Monthly nabbed the top spot this week 37 years ago. With the gift of hindsight (as well as just living in the modern world) it seems the good guys may have been on the wrong side of things in their latest issue, and in Transformers their story wasn’t exactly hyped compared to the other strips, was it? At least there was an interesting-sounding Snake Eyes story to back things up.

The Sleeze Brothers took a week off from grabbing all the checklist glory and Death’s Head’s penultimate issue hung around a bit too, but still doesn’t make it to ‘unmissable’ level. With no new comics adverts and a rather basic update to the checklist you’d be mistaken for thinking it was a quiet week on UK comics shelves for Marvel UK, but that Transformers issue does a lot of heavy lifting. I may be biased but it really should’ve got the yellow box!

In fact, Transformers would go from strength-to-strength from here on (not that it wasn’t already superb, of course), so expect a lot of excited text from me over the remainder of the year. There’ll be more of that next week, in fact. See you then.

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DEATH’S HEAD 9

WEEK 50 < > WEEK 52

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THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 50

SATURDAY 8th JULY 1989

I can’t believe we’ve been reliving these checklists for 50 weeks already! What are we marking the occasion with? A Real Ghostbusters cover by Anthony Williams and Nick Abadzis, and for Transformers and Action Force it’s Jeff Anderson again.

It’s a week of two halves as far as our top two comics go. We’ll start off with the bad. The very bad. The strip called A Wok on the Wild Side in The Real Ghostbusters made me cringe even back then. It’s just an excuse to cram in as many Chinese and Buddhist clichés as possible as supposed jokes, and to add insult to injury the normally fantastic Dan Abnett continued these with awful spoof ghost names in Spengler’s Spirit Guide. As a child I thought they were inappropriate, as an adult they’re downright offensive and it leaves a huge red mark against one of my favourite childhood comic series.

Much better this week is the fact Bludgeon makes his debut in the UK Transformers strip. That’s him on the ground in front of Megatron on the cover. He was a Decepticon Pretender and an excellent character for the last couple of years of the comic’s life. He’d eventually rise through the ranks to become leader and even came back for Generation 2. It also doesn’t hurt that Lee Sullivan’s artwork inside is incredible, upping his line work game (not that we thought that was possible) for his black and white strip. An exciting time for a Transformers fan, that was for sure!

Even a new issue of Death’s Head can’t topple The Sleeze Brothers from their perch on the checklist for the third week in a row, a record so far in this series. Then again, by this stage Marvel UK would’ve known Death’s Head’s time was short and they had a brand new property to promote. This penultimate issue of Head’s series was the first one I wasn’t overly excited about beforehand as I’d never read any Fantastic Four comics. They’d just never appealed to me and so all the hype was lost on this reader. But as it turned out it was a brilliant introduction to the characters and their interactions with our sort-of-hero were hilarious. Check out the review with issue highlights at the link below.

Two adverts this week and it’s quite telling that Cartoon Time lists its stories in third place after competitions and puzzles. Even when I was younger and reading Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends (also from Marvel UK) the main draw was always the stories. Maybe I’m an outlier but hyped competitions have never enticed me to buy a comic or magazine. So it didn’t bode well for Cartoon Time for me as a young teen. Yes, I was older than the target audience but still, Thomas did it right!

It’s Wicked! was currently on #7 of its short run and Slimer’s presence still didn’t appeal enough for me to try it out. Perhaps that’s because he worked best as part of a team, as a mascot or sidekick. His small humour strips in The Real Ghostbusters were always fun and in the cartoon the Slimer-focused episodes were used as a great way to give us more insight into the world the ghosts inhabited. But he was proof you could have too much of a good thing. I never liked his own cartoon or comic; the joke ran thin very quickly and tainted an otherwise great character.

Yes, I know he was just one strip in It’s Wicked!, but the way he was used for promotions felt like overkill after his own comic and it merging into The Real Ghostbusters, and his appearances in The Marvel Bumper Comic. I can’t have been alone either because the comic only lasted 17 weeks before cancellation despite the cover star.

Over the summer months The Sleeze Brothers wouldn’t be the only new releases from Marvel UK in 1989. Watch out for adverts for a new mature weekly and a sci-fi magazine, plus the next strip advert and more. See you in seven.

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