Comic Introductions, Transformers: Generation 2

TRANSFORMERS GENERATiON 2: iN REAL TiME

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Even back in the 1990s, when the computer-generated intro sequence to Transformers: Generation 2 first aired I remember thinking it looked very primitive, especially when compared to the graphics being produced by the new wave of CD-based videogame machines. Having collected Transformers toys for a few years until the original comic’s cancellation in the UK in January 1992, this did not inspire me to restart that obsession.

Transformers: Generation 2 was Hasbro’s attempt to relaunch the successful toy line for a new generation of children but it always felt half-assed to me. (So why am I covering the comic on the blog? I’ll get to that.) The cartoon wasn’t even a new series. Instead, it was a rerun of 52 of the original series’ episodes with that CGI introduction (taken from advertising) and some incredibly intrusive computer graphics overlayed on top of the episodes themselves.

The word ‘lazy’ springs to mind. The toys themselves didn’t fare much better to young teenager eyes. The G2 line ran from 1992 to 1994 and, apart from a few impressive new models such as Megatron who now transformed into a tank, most of the initial releases were reruns of previous toys with garish new colour schemes. Oh, and I mean garish! It was very 90s.

Optimus Prime’s ‘new’ toy played a bit fast and loose with the term ‘Robots in Disguise’

Some received new spring-loaded weapons and missile launchers etc., but for the most part even this eager Transformers fan, who would’ve happily continued collecting the original toys, thought some of them looked like cheap knock-offs rather than the official range. The original toys had declined in popularity but they’d had a great run which should be celebrated, and of course the franchise continues very successfully to this day.

Images from Transformers France

With the vast array of different types of Transformers (even ones that couldn’t transform) towards the end I can commend Hasbro for wanting to go back to basics but for me this was the wrong way to go about it. The franchise recovered of course but Generation 2 didn’t excite me as a child and apparently I wasn’t alone. Also, just as a side note, Optimus Prime’s ‘new’ toy in particular played a bit fast and loose with the term “Robots in Disguise”, which was still on the box despite his trailer’s design. Less of a disguise and more of an announcement I’d say.

The colour schemes no longer matched the cartoon they’d repackaged with that CGI, and some of the characters in it weren’t available in any G2 toy form, making it all seem like it wasn’t very well thought out. In the end the toy line was discontinued when the first Transformers: Beast Wars toys began hitting shelves, which went off in a completely different and much more successful direction. 

[The Transformers: Generation 2 comic’s] reputation proceeds it and I’ve seen some of the hard-edged artwork which looks just incredible

So if I’m so unimpressed, why on Earth am I dedicating room to this strange little spin-off on the blog? Well, in September 1994 a new comic arrived on the shelves from OiNK‘s second publisher, Fleetway Publications. I was initially thrilled to see a brand new Transformers comic, even if it was monthly instead of weekly and didn’t seem to have a lot of content by comparison. Still, the first issue drew me in with its cover and the foldout poster inside which the editorial used to describe the comic as a ‘Transformer’ too, which I still think was fun.

Images from Transformers Toys

I didn’t buy any more issues at the time and it only lasted for five months in the end, but what I didn’t know about at the time was the Marvel US monthly (which Fleetway started serialising in #3), written as ever by the original comic’s Simon Furman. I’ve never read the series but its reputation proceeds it and I’ve seen some of the hard-edged artwork which looks just incredible, reminding me of some of Kevin O’Neill’s early 2000AD work. That alone made me want to collect it in recent years.

It was marketed at the time as a more mature comic, less for the kids buying the new (well, new-ish) toys and more for those that had been reading the previous Transformers a few years before. No longer restricted by Hasbro in how he could portray characters, nor having to write in certain toys as a way of marketing new releases, Simon was given free rein to tell the story he wanted.

Because the UK title is so hard to come by for a decent price I’m going to cover the original American one first (a first for the blog), then at a future date we’ll see what Fleetway did with the license. Unfortunately, even the US comic only lasted for 12 months but that’s not an indictment of its quality. After all, just a few years before it the original G1 (as it was called from this point on) comic was cancelled when it was still selling about 100,000 copies per month!

That would be a massive hit today or for a new, original comic at the time, but at its peak Transformers had sold 250,000 a month so all Marvel saw was the decrease, sadly. Even with Transformers: Generation 2 technically being a new title it wasn’t going to reach those previous lofty heights for a licensed comic and, despite sales figures of around 100,000 per issue again, the rug was pulled. However, I’m really looking forward to seeing what all the positive fuss over that year is all about. Technically, there are more than 12 issues too because there were another four monthly chapters to the story before #1!

That’s right, it all kicked off as a crossover event in the pages of G.I. Joe in #139-#142, so I’m going to be including those issues on a month-by-month basis too in real time. As a fan of those characters (thanks to them being a back up strip in Marvel UK’s Transformers G1) I’m even more excited about the prospect of this read through than I already was. In fact, the issue before that again leads into the crossover, so altogether there are going to be 17 monthly comic reviews covering the entirety of Transformers: Generation 2.

It all begins with G.I. Joe #138 on the 31st anniversary of its release State-side on Sunday 26th May 2024. The Transformers have a bright future ahead on the blog and this is only the beginning of it!

GO TO G.i. JOE 138

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Creating Comics, Merchandise, Ring Raiders

RiNG RAiDERS LiCENSEE STYLE GUiDE: PART FiVE

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Here we are at the end of this monthly series already. It’s been really interesting looking at this Ring Raiders Style Guide sent out to all potential licensees by the copyright holders Those Characters From Cleveland (TCFC) back in 1989. Judging from the feedback I’ve been getting on socials it seems like you lot agree. The final 12 pages are all here and as you can see from the photo above they make for a meatier read this time around.

There are three sections to round off the folder and we start with ‘Copy and Type Application’, which amounts to two whole pages about fonts. Yes, really. It’s something I never really considered but now that I see all of these examples I can remember each and every one of them on the packaging (which you’ll see further below) and on the toy advertisements in the comic produced by the editorial team.

The page of suggested taglines sound like they’ve been written by committee. A committee who has no idea about aircraft. They’re cringe-worthy and thankfully weren’t used on the toys themselves or in the comic. You can also see all potential designs were subject to TCFC’s approval, however the comic’s editor Barrie Tomlinson said the people behind Ring Raiders were more open than most to what licensees could bring to the franchise, and they were very happy with what Barrie and his team were producing.

‘Logos and Legal’ is the next part of the binder and they’re a weird combination, like they’ve only been shoved into the same section because they start with the same letter. It kicks off with a lot of detail about how to use trademarked names and exactly how every piece of merchandise should be labelled appropriately. If you’ve ever wondered what the difference is between the ™ and the ® symbols you’ll find that answer here too.

Even textile manufacturers get their own paragraph detailing how their products should be labelled. This was most likely the same information found in similar style guides for all of TCFC’s (and other’s) ranges but it’s still an interesting read. You’d see these little footnotes in all of our licenced comics too and I always thought it was up to the publisher how they were worded, especially for their own trademarks, but it looks like that wasn’t the case and it was the licence-holder’s wording. Although, to be fair, it’s a pretty standard format.

I simply loved the full colour Ring Raiders logo

Want to know the difference between a trademark and a copyright? Or why the year mentioned can sometimes change and sometimes remain the same? It’s all there for you. As most of my comics reading post-OiNK as a kid was based around licenced titles the nerd in me found this of particular interest. Then we move on to the second part of this alliterative section and the variations on the franchise’s logo that were permissible to use.

I thought the ‘Ring Raiders’ main title was a brilliant design and the accompanying logo the perfect embodiment of the toys. I simply loved the full colour Ring Raiders logo. I still feel the same, they’re just great designs! Below you’ll see the one-colour (that is, black and white) version of the logo, the same one in various sizes taking up a full page for some reason. You’ll see a handwritten note by Barrie too, highlighting how they’d use this particular version.

On the next page is a selection of variants for both the Ring Raiders and the Skull Squadron (quaintly described as “Good Guy / Bad Guy Logos”). The top two were used as the individual logos for each side on toy packaging and across any and all merchandise. The next row down are the in-universe logos used by the characters themselves on their planes, bases and uniforms.

The smaller, circular logos had specific uses in the toy range. The first two on each row were used on the tiny plastic rings we’d slip on our fingers, the planes attached via a thin, posable plastic rod. The star and skull circles were on the front of the rings while the ones with the lettering encircled the ball-shaped attachment on the top. The final one is exactly what it says, a miscellaneous combination of both to be used as they saw fit.

Anyone who collected these very collectible toys at the time should prepare to have their memory cells jolted as we move on to ‘Hang Tag and Packaging‘, namely the packaging used for the Matchbox toys themselves. First there’s more criteria, although these are more like suggestions and designers are encouraged to explore what might suit their product the best. These apply to all packaging, whether that’s by Matchbox or anyone else, right down to the sky background. There’s also mention of bold visuals such as colour bands trailing after the planes and you can see examples in the previous section’s merchandise concept drawings.

These card displays with the planes tucked away inside moulded clear plastic take me right back. From discovering my first two-plane starter set to excitedly collecting all the packs I could in every toy shop I visited, as well as receiving gifts during the festive season or from visiting family members from Scotland. I have a particularly fond memory of coming home from school to find my sister was visiting and I hadn’t been told, so it was a surprise. After a while she told me she’d brought me something and it was a huge eight-plane set featuring all the Wing Commanders.

I think back and my parents must’ve had to coordinate with my siblings and family friends because I never received any sets I already had (although there was some overlap in the range like those Wing Commanders planes, each of which would also be in their Wing sets). I’ve no idea how they managed that without me knowing. Anyway, yes, these photos are bringing all the smiles right now.

The rear of the packaging reveals more sets and a huge array of extras. As you know the franchise never took off, but over the course of a year (actually, mainly over the course of one summer and Christmas) I was able to collect everything here (plus most of the additional plane sets not shown here) except the gigantic Air Carrier Justice and the black version of the Battle Blaster. Ah, good times.

In case you’re wondering what we could redeem those barcode points for the answer is simple: nothing. It was possibly something for consideration at some future point but nothing ever came of them within the time the line lasted. According to online sources there were second and third series of planes, although I only ever remember seeing a second series the next summer which just made me more frustrated that the comic hadn’t lasted, because I thought the release of more toys meant they’d been a success.

Of course, with hindsight I know the second series would’ve already been in production before things fell apart. But I never did buy any more after that initial year and then in my later teens mine were handed down to a young nephew and subsequently destroyed through his playing. I kept the yellow and red X-29 as it was my first, and my favourite, but even this was given away to a girl in my late teens. (Hey, I was young and she’d taken a shine to it.)

Ring Raiders had that “gotta collect ‘em all” quality

After the hangtag (an example of what a product could hang from in a store) things are rounded off with a large scale image of that beautiful, full-colour logo. It’s the same page that’s been slipped inside the front of the folder which I’ve shown in a few photographs, but I’m including a proper scan of it to end on as requested by blog reader Terry in their comment under part three of this series. You’re right Terry, it is sweet!

With that the folder is finally closed and placed back on the shelf alongside what was, and still is, my favourite non-OiNK childhood comic. The toy line may have only lasted about a year and I was quick to move on to my next obsession, I’m sure, but what an obsession these were. I come away from this series of posts with one key takeaway; the Ring Raiders were robbed of being a hit franchise.

Before Pokémon, the Ring Raiders had that “gotta collect ‘em all” quality. They were great toys, the comic had great characters and action, there was variety and adventure and a ton of fun in all aspects of the franchise and it had more potential than most others in my opinion. They have a special place in my heart all these years later and, dare I say it, I don’t think I’m finished with them yet.

Once again, thanks to former IPC/Fleetway editor/writer Barrie Tomlinson and his writer son James for kindly sending me this folder in the first place.

BACK TO PART FOUR

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Comic Reviews, Death's Head

DEATH’S HEAD #7: EXPLOSiVE SLAPSTiCK

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With an increase of 5p on the cover price, Death’s Head #7 hit stores today back in 1989 with this Bryan Hitch and Mark Farmer cover, while inside I’m excited to see inking duties on Bryan’s pencils are actually by Jeff Anderson, whose work I loved so much in Marvel UK’s top-selling Transformers and this combination is just superb throughout. The comic is also still offering subscriptions for 12 months so clearly there was no sign yet that even those earliest of subscribers wouldn’t be getting all of their issues delivered. (Only three more to go after this one.)

A new colourist has joined the fray, namely Stuart Place who also coloured for the company’s The Real Ghostbusters, Action Force (G.I. Joe) and Transformers, most notably the fan-favourite Dinobot Hunt story in the early days of the comic. Steve White has also taken over as editor after Richard Starkings resigned. Poor Steve, we’ve already seen his name on the blog when he edited Visionaries but it didn’t last long because the subject matter flopped, he took over Havoc just before it got unceremoniously canned and the same is about to happen here. None were his fault obviously, and he is a simply incredible artist! Check out his Instagram and make sure you see his gorgeous colouring on Xenozoic Tales in Dark Horse’s Jurassic Park!

Shot by Both Sides (as ever written by Simon Furman with Annie Halfacree lettering) is a brilliant strip, one of my favourites of the run so far. The comedy comes thick and fast in the early pages. A robotic tour guide is telling passengers on a bus what they can see to their right and left when a crashing ship narrowly averts disaster but rips off the roof of the vehicle in the process. In response, the robot simply moves on with, “Um, well… above you, you can see…”.

It’s at this point we see the panel above and the ship in question is Death’s Head‘s, who seems to be having problems with the autopilot. I remember a friend of mine in school who was a particularly big fan and he’d often quote the “No, yes?” line when asked a question. The plot this time combines two previous cliffhangers from #4 and #6 and sees bounty hunter Big Shot and explosives expert Short Fuse both attempting to take out the Freelance Peace-Keeping Agent for their bosses.

These bosses are the previously featured Undertaker and new gangster Dead Cert, a cigar-chomping man with a horse’s head who unironically runs the city’s illegal sports gambling rings, including horse racing. In the first scene (the crashing ship one) we find out Big Shot had fired a high-powered missile at Death’s Head ship which had initiated the crash. But Short Fuse had also planted an explosion in the cargo hold. When it went off it lightened the craft enough for it to be successfully pulled up before it crashed into that bus.

Death’s Head puts both down to “cowboy builders” and doesn’t realise he was actually under attack. This forms the backbone of this month’s tale. Big Shot’s aim is to kill our anti-hero and double-cross Undertaker by taking over Death’s Head’s business, while Short Fuse just wants to do a good job for the person/horse who hired him. However, they keep attempting to take out their target at the same time. While completely unaware of each other, each attempt is undone by the other’s, cancelling each other out in an increasingly funny series of events.

There’s a main bad guy mixed in here that acts as Death’s Head’s target for a job he and Spratt (good to see him back in the strip) have been hired to carry out. Called Photofit, he has a hi-tech suit which enables him to mimic anyone he comes in contact with. Think the T-1000 from Terminator 2, albeit a few years before that film was released. While the chase makes for an entertaining plot it’s really just a vehicle for the assassination attempts.

Eventually our lead clicks that something is going on as you can see below. I love the panel when he realises, his expression and the rain bouncing off his metallic face is all just perfectly realised. In the middle panel you can see how Short Fuse’s mistimed bomb blows Death’s Head backwards and away from Big Shot firing his bazooka-like weapon. He’d been in his sights but the explosion pushed the target out of the way and you can see the bazooka shell zooming harmlessly past.

Somehow this doesn’t get stale either, mainly thanks to the imagination on show in how these attempts fail and Death’s Head’s reactions. All the while the Photofit story continues and he disguises himself as a contestant on a game show where the prize is a trip out of the country, all paid for and through legitimate channels, the ultimate getaway right in plain sight.

Spratt accidentally ends up on the show itself and faces off against the disguised Photofit while Death’s Head tries to search the rest of the building for someone who could be anyone. All the while he’s getting attacked by unknown enemies. Unknown until Big Shot finally decides to change that. Sick of having his chances squandered he blasts Death’s Head through a wall, then stands over him, gun pointed at his head, ready to take the final shot… when another explosion knocks him off his feet and into waiting fists.

I had to laugh at that first panel! Well, our main character isn’t a bounty hunter after all, yes? Short Fuse is getting frustrated too. For once it was Big Shot who got in his way, so he resorts to desperate measures but his own incompetence results in nothing more than an explosion in mid-air that shoves the fighting duo through a wall and into the television studio. 

Just before this, Photofit makes himself known to Spratt because our unwitting contestant is actually winning the game. A gun held in the small of his back, he’s saved by the sudden arrival of our fighting duo and Photofit realises he’s defeated and must escape. He sees the perfect disguise right in front of him. Or it would be, if that disguise didn’t immediately place him in the sights of an assassin.

So the magnetic bomb obviously doesn’t stick to the very human imposter and in a shocking move it not only blows him up but Short Fuse as well! Okay, yes, he’s been trying to blow up Death’s Head but the very violent slapstick comedy he’s brought to the issue has been hilarious and I’m genuinely sorry to see him killed off. Despite being a hired killer there was something loveable about the little man. However, even in death he manages to thwart Big Shot one final time and save the mechanoid they’d both been hired to kill. 

As the story ends Spratt and Death’s Head converse over how it was strange that things kept exploding around them, reminding the readers that the duo never even knew of Short Fuse’s existence, never mind his influence on events (and their lives). They don’t seem to care why those explosions kept happening and instead only hope there’s enough left of their target so that they can prove they’ve earned their money!

It’s a suitably funny conclusion for these two, playing down the events and simply moving on. In their position it’s probably the healthiest way to be but that’s not the point. The point is that they’re very funny together and obviously the perfect match, something even Death’s Head seems to have finally acknowledged. These two are so well written, their actions and dialogue so natural that you have to step back to remember how far-fetched the whole scenario of the comic is.

I’ve really enjoyed Simon’s writing in Transformers and Dragon’s Claws but there’s something about this particular comic that stands out. It feels like it’s more of a personal project for Simon, it’s so one-of-a-kind and has such a unique sense of humour I get the feeling the writing is closer to Simon’s own personality than anything else I’ve read. We’ll see that insight hopefully develop even more over the remaining months, the next instalment in five weeks on Monday 3rd June 2024.

iSSUE SiX < > iSSUE EiGHT

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Creating OiNK

YOU CAN QUOTE ME… WELL, THEM!

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A few years back I wrote an article about OiNK for a fan-produced magazine called Comic Scene. It’s a magazine that has been cancelled, returned in a different format and cancelled again more times than Uncle Pigg has had hot swill. The article was for their ambitious but ultimately factual-error-filled (and also cancelled) partwork series History of Comics. To accompany it I also wrote about my top six issues of OiNK and was able to get some fantastic quotes from some of the comic’s team to use as a box out.

For whatever reason neither of these were used. I thought not including the quotes from these incredibly talented cartoonists (who had all happily got back to me with their thoughts) was particularly surprising. Well, to mark the 1986 release date of OiNK’s preview issue (and the first OiNK review on the blog) here are the quotes I was able to muster in time for the article’s original deadline but which never saw print for whatever reason. They’re a nice little insight into the making of OiNK and I’d like to thank everyone for contributing at the time.

STEVE McGARRY

“It was more than an honour to be asked to contribute to those first few issues of OiNK, it was a damned inconvenience.”

DAVID LEACH

“Working on OiNK was a fantastic experience, it featured my first professional cartoon character and it marked the start of my professional career as a freelance cartoonist.

“I got to meet life-long friends and it got my foot in the door. As such it holds a soft spot in my dangerously enlarged, erratically beating heart. OiNK was the start of my professional career as a cartoonist. I had seen a preview copy of the comic and just knew I had to be in it. I contacted Bob Paynter, Group Editor of Humour Comics at IPC at the time and he offered to send my work sample to OiNK if I did a job for Whizzer and Chips. I ended up drawing a four issue pull-out strip called Phil Fitt and Brad Habit, which got published and in return my sample strip for Psycho Gran got sent off to OiNK and that was that!”

JEREMY BANX

“Working on OiNK was hard work and great fun. I’d never expected to work in comics so it was a strange adventure for me. I learnt a huge amount and it certainly changed the general direction of my travel.”

LEW STRINGER

“OiNK came along at just the right time for those of us who were still new to the comics business. We were full of ideas and still young enough to be able to relate with what the readership wanted. It gave us the perfect opportunities to develop our craft and come up with strips that wouldn’t fit in with the more pedestrian formularised comics. It was such a fun time to work in comics. We all had a great time and I think that shows in how fondly OiNK is still remembered all these years later.”

DAVEY JONES

“Thinking of OiNK, I reckon the main thing I remember is how open they were to stuff which wasn’t necessarily in the traditional British comic format. They liked the more familiar style of Buster/Whizzer and Chips style strips as well of course, but were also happy to look at stuff that was a bit different. I really liked the things that Jeremy Banx was doing with Burp the alien, which were sometimes these short, funny science fiction stories, and I hadn’t really seen anything quite like it in comics. So you felt like you didn’t need to follow any particular formula when submitting scripts, just think of daft stuff that they might find funny.

“The other thing that occurs to me is how encouraging [co-editor] Mark Rodgers was. I’d send him the scripts first, and quite often he’d turn them down, but he went to some trouble to explain where I was going wrong (the stories were too complicated, or I was trying to fit too much in etc.) which I appreciated a lot, because he could have just stamped the word REJECTED on them.”

KEV F SUTHERLAND

“In 1986 I was desperately trying to break into comics so I was sending something, at least every week, to both 2000AD and OiNK. OiNK would reply saying my stuff was too superheroey or dramatic and that I ought to send it to 2000AD, and 2000AD would reply saying my stuff was too funny or cartoony and I should send it to OiNK. It took a year until, finally, it was OiNK that broke under the pressure and let me in with, I think, a Rotten Rhymes script which they let me draw.

“I then got increasing amounts into the comic, especially my Meanwhile… strips which ran to a page each, reaching a climax with #68, a third of which was written and drawn by me (including The Plop Factory, a parody of Stock Aitken & Waterman in the style of an EC Comics horror story). That was the final issue of OiNK, and I was back where I started, desperate to break into comics.”

GRAHAM EXTON

“By an eerie coincidence, all of us who contributed material for Rrrassp! comic (as OiNK was first called) wrote strips featuring pigs. So Bob Paynter suggested making pigs the main theme. I’m not sure if it was my idea, but Mark and I both liked the Tharg and Stan Lee characters who communicated on the 2000AD and Marvel letters pages, hence Uncle Pigg. I think the Plops were my idea, but given the theme of pigs they were pretty well inevitable. They were based on Leo Baxendale‘s squelchies who were Grimly Fiendish‘s minions years before Despicable Me.

“Mark and I met with Tony [Husband, co-editor] in his home and I was struck by his lovely paintings and impressive collection of Peter Hammill LPs. I have not met Patrick [Gallagher, co-editor] in person though we are Facebook buddies. I was impressed with his ability to mimic other artists’ styles. Mark and I did a few fumetti [photo stories] when he and wife Helen came to visit me in South Andros, Bahamas. We roped in our neighbours too.

“The funniest strips I was involved with were the two Herbert Bowes ones. He had a lot of things up his nose. Jeremy Banks’ art made them super funny. The third one involved the Starship Enterprise (up his nose), but I couldn’t make it work, so never finished it. My all-vegetable theatre strip (with fab Ian Knox art) festered in my brain for many years before emerging, butterfly-like, as Tatertown, a strip I give away on Facebook. I did it mostly to learn how to use Photoshop, but it now has a life of its own.”

DAVY FRANCIS

“I loved working for OiNK. As well as scripted stories, I was allowed to use my own jokes, so I would send off scripts – thumbnails, really – and if I got a yea, then I’d draw it and send it off. I was doing Ciderman at the same time, and working in the Housing Executive full time, so it was a very busy time. However, I loved it. One mystery remains: what happened to the German version of OiNK? It ran for 3 issues, but I’ve never seen a copy.”

PATRICK GALLAGHER

“From my earliest recollections of OiNK, going way back to its development stage when Tony, Mark and I had never produced a comic before, or suffered the logistical nightmare such a dream job brings, it all felt excitingly experimental and risqué. Those feelings became the form and the norm that remained right up until the final issue, which I think gave OiNK a certain sense of unpredictability and edge throughout its life, with room for error and genius in varying measures.

“Yes, some things worked better than others; OiNK was never perfect but what carried it through was its ‘voice’, which never faltered. That was the combined comedic soul of Tony, Mark and me. That is what I am most proud of and what our brilliant contributors latched onto to make OiNK something special.”

These were from a few years ago, before this version of the blog was even launched and since then more of OiNK’s creative team have reached out to me for the blog and other reasons, hence the non-appearance of some key names above. It actually gives me an idea for the future but I won’t say anything yet in case I jinx anything. Thanks again to everyone above and to everyone who has been such a great source of information, OiNK and otherwise!

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Comic Promos, Jurassic Park

PALEONTOLOGiCAL PROMO: JURASSiC PARK ADVERT

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When I read Dark Horse International’s UK Jurassic Park comic I wondered what marketing it may have received in their other titles. Throughout the reviews you’ll see adverts for the likes of Total Carnage, Manga Mania and what could probably be described as their flagship comic, Aliens. It’s on the back page of an issue of that film spin-off that I spotted a full-page advertisement for the new movie tie-in comic.

As I announced last Christmas, Aliens will be coming to the blog this year in a real-time read through of Dark Horse’s time with the licence (UPDATE: Now live). Whenever I buy classic comics from eBay I don’t read them until I’m scheduled to do so for the blog, but I do flick through them, solely checking the page numbers to ensure there’s nothing missing. As I picked up #13 (on sale 24th June 1993) to begin flicking from the back cover to the front, counting down the page numbers as I went, this jumped out at me.

As you can see, I wasn’t the only person something was jumping out on. Using the cover from #1 (by Gil Kane and George Perez), this is promoting the initial run of the adaptation of the film, before the American comic began publishing the first official continuation of the story. At this point in the US bets were hedged before telling readers it was an ongoing comic, so naturally over here they’d do the same. Released every three weeks to start with, it all began on 8th July before the movie had even been released here.

The advert mentions how the art of the strip was based on stills from the movie, which is a strange boast to make. It makes it sound like it could be nothing more than traced-like images, but of course in the end it was a genuinely good comics adaptation which successfully tinkered with the script and the running order of the scenes so it’d work better on the page. Well, for the most part anyway, until they got to the final chapter. You can read the reviews to see what happened there.

The Jurassic Park comic would prove popular enough to survive many cancellations at Dark Horse

Strangely, it’s advertised as a 32-page comic when it actually had 36, but then again Dark Horse didn’t seem to count their covers in the total. Then in a later issue of Aliens (#17) I discovered the exact same advert again minus the green text along the bottom. However, the promotion of a competition with “50 (count them) 50 fantastic prizes” only applied to #1 and not the competitions in the issues on sale at that later time. What does correlate properly are the Dark Horse Checklists.

In each of the early editions of Jurassic Park the checklist showed the upcoming comics that would be on sale over the next month, so they contained details of the next issue. This means we never got to see the checklist released for the premiere issue to see what it had to say, but #13 of Aliens does, just a couple of pages before that advert.

By the time Jurassic Park moved to a monthly ongoing format with brand new stories set after the movie the checklists were dropped from it. There just wasn’t room anymore, however they still appeared in the larger Aliens. Below is the one which promoted the beginning of the first official sequel to the movie, although it unfortunately doesn’t mention the completely awesome Age of Reptiles back up strip.

The question marks might look like they’re keeping the free gift a mystery for some reason, but it’s actually just placeholder text that they’ve forgotten to delete before going to press because #6 didn’t come with a free gift. A few sloppy errors aside it’s interesting to see how one of my favourite childhood comics was marketed to potential readers.

After the movie proved to be such a phenomenal success I thought they’d have advertised the comic more, that they’d have at least produced a new advert to promote the new stories instead of recycling the one they’d already used before the film’s release. Oh well, hindsight is a wonderful gift. The Jurassic Park comic would prove popular enough to survive many cancellations at Dark Horse, only succumbing to the folding of the company itself towards the end of 1994. You can read reviews of them all on the blog right now.

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Classic Comics in Real Time