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Comic Promos, Mighty Marvel Checklists

THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 39

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SATURDAY 22nd APRiL 1989

Ponquadragor returns on Anthony Williams and Dave Harwood’s cover! If you never collected The Real Ghostbusters this will be lost on you, and let’s face it if you never collected it you were already missing out big time.

In a turn up for the books it’s Transformers and Visionaries that brings us a light-hearted cover this week, courtesy of Jeff Anderson. Inside, the UK strip was now black and white. This saved money obviously, and having two shorter Transformers stories instead of one long one gave the comic the ability to run reprints that wouldn’t take up the whole comic. Together, these enabled Marvel UK to reduce the budget in a harsh comics environment. The story still wasn’t written for the new five-page format yet, but between this and the US strip we got a double dose of Dreadwind and Darkwing to soften the blow, the UK strip a prequel to the American one running at the same time, which was a neat idea.

Did I mind the black and white? Not at all. On the contrary, reading Fleetway’s comics I was used to the same length of strips and a mixture of colour and monochrome. Plus, once they started to be drawn for this new format the details really began to shine in the art! Across the way in the New York firehouse Peter and Egon found themselves in another dimension fighting side-by-side with our returning villain in a story which feels epic, even if it is only six pages long. It ends with a funny visual gag of the defeated demon on a trike being chased by Ponquadragor, the story then spilling over into Spengler’s Spirit Guide and the prose story, making it a rather special issue.

It’s presented on the checklist in a way that very much makes fun of the overly complicated names in fantasy novels and films of the day.

Hasbro had released a G.I. Joe action figure kids could only get by mail order after collecting tokens from the packaging of other figures. Nothing but a mishmash of parts from previously released toys, the Supertrooper never made it into the US comic but Marvel UK brought him to life in Action Force Monthly. I wonder if his story was a series of rehashed plot lines too? The excellent Death’s Head #6 was still on sale and the latest monthly Thundercats took the top spot yet again, with one of the new stories written by friend of the blog John Freeman, no less.

Both Action Force and Thundercats presenting “classic” tales should’ve been a sign of things to come for readers of the two main comics, both of which would “re-present” classic stories before the year was out. While Transformers had a long history to pull from, it was particularly galling to suddenly “have another chance to read” content in the much younger Real Ghostbusters. However, it was a sign of the times across the whole industry.

Now officially past the halfway point, there’ll be another checklist next week, and the week after, all the way until the festive season. See you in seven.

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TRANSFORMERS 215 (Instagram)

DEATH’S HEAD 6

WEEK 38 < > WEEK 40

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THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 38

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SATURDAY 15th APRiL 1989

The Real Ghostbusters didn’t have the most exciting of covers this week despite having Anthony Williams’ talent behind it. Over on Transformers and Visionaries meanwhile, for a few weeks the covers would remind readers they now had two stories for the Cybertronians inside.

John Stokes returned for #214’s cover and while the Mecannibals were a fun villain the hyping of a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it fight between Megatron and a Decepticon not mentioned until now is a choice. The American story wins out this week thanks to shady subterfuge from Dreadwind and Darkwing and the funny way they bicker while in their combined form. As a teen it was extra exciting because I’d previously played with the toys of these characters at my friend’s house.

In New York, hair cuttings on a barber’s floor came back to life and, hilariously, Slimer got a job as a ghostwriter! Brilliant. The Real Ghostbusters’ creative team had the best imaginations. Also, after previous issues had contradicted the cartoon, an answer to a letter references the episode that explained the change to their uniforms compared to the movie’s, so someone was paying attention after all. Okay, it’s checklist time.

Yes, Marvel UK, you could say more for Death’s Head. This is a bit too close to that dreaded and overused “Nuff said” phrase they seemed to trot out ad nauseam in their editorials around this time. It was a great issue and this really doesn’t sell it, although it must’ve been difficult only having one paragraph for each of five comics. Alongside the continuing presence of Action Force Monthly #11 is Doctor Who Magazine, which finally seems to be a regular addition to the list.

It’s taken long enough, although I suppose you could argue this is a comics checklist and DWM is a magazine, so that could be why it wasn’t featured for the first several months. Coincidentally enough, I’ve been watching Doctor Who from the very beginning (the very beginning from 1963) for a couple of years and I’ve just watched Silver Nemesis for the first time about a month ago. It was a good ‘un so I can understand why it proved so popular.

I never did collect the Collected Comics series for my two main Marvel comics, although it was one of the Transformers specials that got me into it in the first place. As a kid, once I was reading the weeklies I didn’t see the point in collecting stories I’d already read. As an adult though, I appreciated getting the chance to enjoy classic tales all in one go and catching up on certain story arcs at regular intervals in my Transformers real time read through.

Finally, that Spring Specials advert certainly showed the variety in Marvel’s range, didn’t it? I’m surprised they put them all together on one page rather than separating them into genres or age groups. As it stands, I’ve no recollection of Snorks or Wimple Village, however I do remember Care Bears being on TV Sunday mornings, I’ve reviewed the Visionaries already and I owned that Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends poster mag. Hmm, now that I see this I do remember buying the ‘Collected Stories’ (as they were called) for Thoma, so that’s made a liar out of me!

That’s us for another week and we’re now officially halfway through the lifespan of The Mighty Marvel Checklist. See you in seven.

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TRANSFORMERS 214 (Instagram)

DEATH’S HEAD 6

ViSiONARiES SPRiNG SPECiAL

WEEK 37 < > WEEK 39

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THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 32

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SATURDAY 4th MARCH 1989

This week we’ve got two covers that really made me feel like a big kid again. My two favourite characters on Anthony Williams and Bambos Georgiou’s The Real Ghostbusters image and fond memories of the fantastic story inside Transformers and Action Force are portrayed by Andrew Wildman.

In The Underbase Saga the Autobots finally entered the Decepticon civil war and the casualty list was vast! Towards the end of this week’s chunk of story Starscream absorbed the Underbase, the millennia-spanning knowledge base drifting through space and everything was building to all hell breaking loose. On the editorial there was another appearance of the teaser for The Sleeze Brothers, still three months out from their comic arriving, although they did pop up in Doctor Who Magazine this month, not that this is mentioned anywhere.

Across the way, in a strange Spengler’s Spirit Guide the Ghostbusting jargon stuck to that used in the film rather than the cartoon, perhaps giving it away that writer Dan Abnett maybe didn’t watch the series. It was still very funny though, as always. There was also an interesting story that explained how ghost energies actually hold up old haunted houses, as the team find out when one collapses after a bust! How about the rest of the Marvel UK range?

The only other new addition this week is Thundercats #94 and after the descriptions on some recent checklists made it sound like they’d gone back on their promise of a “new, younger look” (which they’d hyped previously), here it’s clear that wasn’t the case. Hand puppets, posters and jokes pages? How the mighty had fallen, and yet another new look? I thought cats liked routines and detested change.

No new adverts this week again. In fact, it’ll be a couple of weeks before we get some more but we’ll more than make up for it when we get there! In the meantime, can I just say I’m thrilled with how popular this series has proven. Across socials it’s been great fun conversing with people about their memories of the specific issues highlighted every week and their memories of their childhood trips to the shops, of reading their comics with family and friends, and more besides. So come and join in the checklists conversation here or on:

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TRANSFORMERS 208 (Instagram)

DRAGON’S CLAWS 9

WEEK 31 < > WEEK 33

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THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 31

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SATURDAY 25th FEBRUARY 1989

It’s Predacons versus Pretenders on Lee Sullivan’s Transformers and Action Force cover, while Anthony Williams and Bambos Georgiou’s cover for The Real Ghostbusters was one of a handful of British covers that got used by NOW Comics’ monthly in America.

The Transformers story was full of of icy alliances, double-dealing and back-stabbing amongst the Decepticons, and it was fantastic! It also ends with the reveal of The Underbase, a collection of vast knowledge that previously lay dormant inside Cybertron and was now roaming the stars… and Starscream wanted it! You can check it out at the link below. Then in Action Force that 80s staple the evil twin popped up. Although, there were two Destros so is “evil twin” the correct phrase?

In The Real Ghostbusters one of the strips is only one page in length, which sounds like it shouldn’t work. However, while the main strip every week was usually five pages, the rest could be of any length. This was the idea of launch editor Richard Starkings and when the creative team stepped up and produced the goods it led to Marvel UK’s brilliant one-page strip adverts which you’ll see throughout this Checklist series (I’ve already shown you some).

No new comics ads this week but at least we have our checklist back after a week’s hiatus. To the uninitiated, having one of the smallest Transformers toys and one of the largest as leaders of two opposing forces might sound silly but the comic really made it work. One of the artist credits for The Real Ghostbusters caught my eye here after I was just introduced to their work on the cover of Aliens #21 eight days ago on the blog.

Dragon’s Claws and Action Force Monthly are the same as two weeks ago (although the latter removes the reprint reference) and The Marvel Bumper Comic makes its first appearance since #3 in week 12 (and an advert in week 19). You’d think it would’ve been on the checklist regularly given the variety of content that could’ve appealed to a wide audience. That feels like a huge missed opportunity for Marvel UK to promote it, and given the fact so many listings have been repeated they could’ve used it instead.

Every time I see the Bumper Comic’s rather random-sounding contents I’m intrigued to find out how it reads. Thanks to this checklist series I’ve decided the comic will be coming to the blog in its own real time read through, although a quick search on eBay shows it could be a while before that collection will be complete and ready for review. For now, I’ll sign off and see you back here next Wednesday.

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TRANSFORMERS 207 (Instagram)

DRAGON’S CLAWS 9

WEEK 30 < > WEEK 32

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THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 21

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SATURDAY 17th DECEMBER 1988

As I mentioned last time there wasn’t an actual checklist in The Real Ghostbusters and The Transformers and Action Force this week, but we’ll try to make up for that with two things.

The first of those is this Martin Griffiths cover to the former which I remember made me laugh when I picked it up from the shop as a kid. With stock images of Winston, Egon and Peter there’s not much here by Martin. It’s a bit pants but that feels deliberate and the gall of having this as the cover to their top-selling comic is what made it really funny to me. On the other hand, The Transformers has something all the more dramatic.

Anthony Williams’ and Stephen Baskerville’s cover refers to an incident in the continuing story set millions of years ago, so regular readers wouldn’t have been too perturbed by this image. It’s still eye-catching but then again Stephen’s inks always were. But the most exciting thing in this comic today is the Next Issue promo. Don’t get me wrong, this is a great issue, but with me covering the Transformers festive issues and annuals every year on the blog I was extra excited to see the promo for what was my first Christmas issue.

Here’s that special advert I promised you last week. It’s yet another of those one-page strip stories and eagle-eyed readers will notice it says “fortnightly” when the comic was weekly by now. I’ll admit, I’ve had to cheat this week. There was no checklist and no comics ads I hadn’t showed you already so I trawled my collection to find this in the pages of an earlier comic from before the checklists began. It also turned up in the first annual which I just so happen to have written about already this Christmas, where you can check it out as an individual strip with its credits intact.

The first time I saw it was in #3 of the Ghostbusters’ comic when it was drawn by a comics fan who had been the recipient of a “Surprise, Surprise” by Cilla Black and Bob Carolgees. (Ask your parents if you don’t know.) Using the commercial from the film with the characters from the cartoon was a clever way of summing the comic’s humour up and remains memorable for fans to this day. Certainly this fan anyway.

That’s us for this checklist-lite edition but join me again in seven days for the Christmas Eve special! Expect details on all the seasonal editions of your favourite comics, a couple of snowy covers and a ridiculous annuals competition page!

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TRANSFORMERS 197 (Instagram)

THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS RETROSPECTiVE

THE TRANSFORMERS AT CHRISTMAS

WEEK 20 < > WEEK 22

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