SATURDAY 25th MARCH 1989

Kicking things off for Marvel UK’s two best-selling comics are covers from Brian Williamson and Bambos Georgiou for The Real Ghostbusters and Andrew Wildman for Transformers and Action Force, the latter of which reminds me of a school trip to London in P7.

While there we had to visit Hamley’s toy store, naturally. I bought Ecto-2 while my friend Roger bought Decepticon Pretender Beast, Carnivac. For the remainder of the trip Roger kept it sealed in its box, fearful of losing anything if he opened it before we got home. I didn’t have the patience for that so I took my Ecto-2 helicopter out of its box for a closer inspection… and promptly lost the missile launcher!

Anyway, Carnivac would become a favourite character of mine later in the comic’s run when he’d team up with the Autobot survivors of the recent Time Wars and Underbase Saga storylines. Back to this week and the Ghostbusters comic has a strip inside it that fans would find somewhat confusing. On the checklist it simply states they’re at a haunted film set but that’s only half the story.

They’re actually filming the live-action movie, with them in the starring roles. That’s weird enough, but in the cartoon they’d already visited the set of the film in which the original actors were playing the roles. It was a fan favourite episode (it even contained movie footage) so, combine this with Week 32’s Spengler’s Spirit Guide and it’s clear the comic’s team weren’t researching the show their work was based on.

Despite being an excellent issue and a sequel of sorts to a strip in Doctor Who Magazine, the first appearance of Death’s Head’s fifth issue wasn’t important enough to knock the first monthly Thundercats issue off the top spot. Thundercats seems to be getting the ‘Don’t Miss’ spot more than any other comic. They were really trying to push it, weren’t they? What else were they pushing at us this week, adverts-wise? Two Spring Specials, that’s what.

First up is Droids. This wasn’t an extra edition of a regular comic, rather a one-off special importing an American strip to the UK for the first time. Droids was a cartoon Star Wars spin-off released in the States as a companion series to Ewoks, the latter of which I remember my friends watching. Toys, comics and various other merchandise were all created for what would surely be a sure-fire hit, but in the end Droids only lasted one season of 13 episodes and a special, the comic also cancelled after eight bi-monthly issues so it never got beyond this edition and some Marvel Bumper Comic appearances this side of the Atlantic.

At least Droids brought us a strip we hadn’t seen yet, our next Spring Special was another matter entirely. I remember stumbling upon this edition of the Visionaries comic by accident, buying it immediately and loving it. I’d missed out on the monthly but had devoured the annual the previous Christmas. Little did I know this Spring Special was pretty much just the fifth and final issue of the comic repackaged with minimal changes.

Even the advert was recycled from the one used to promote the first issue the previous year. Released at the same time Visionaries returned to Transformers as the back up strip (a third printing of the origin story within 12 months), this was probably why the special was released. A quick copy and paste of a whole issue and any new readers would hopefully start picking up Transformers as a result. You can check out just how similar it was to the last issue in its review, link below.

After what seemed like a bumper year for Marvel UK in 1988, a year in which we got constant news of new comics and which saw me spending a lot of my parents’ money on them, not many survived and 1989 was turning out to be a year of reprints and big changes to some of their biggest titles. More on that soon!

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TRANSFORMERS 211 (Instagram)

DEATH’S HEAD 5

ViSiONARiES SPRiNG SPECiAL

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SATURDAY 18th MARCH 1989

A funny cover by Brian Williamson and Bambos Georgiou to mark the Easter school holidays for readers of The Real Ghostbusters, while those buying Transformers and Action Force were probably gasping in horror rather than giggling, thanks to Andrew Wildman’s shocking image.

The free gift was a Slimer-shaped jelly, a special sweet treat for that particular Saturday morning. I loved those things! I’d keep the plastic moulds to fill with my favourite drinks and stick in the freezer on warm summer days. Just me? Inside, a story about haunted shopping trollies explains a lot about those at my local supermarket, and Bad News was a very funny tale of a TV-addict ghost watching his own bust live on the gogglebox.

Cover artist Andrew is also a news story on the editorial page inside Transformers with the news of the birth of his third child, which was a lovely little moment in the comic. In the main strip, Starscream looks much more like last issue’s cover and it’s a cracking read, one of the very best of the American stories. It also sees the beginning of the fascinating dynamic between Optimus Prime and Scorponok that’d continue to play out until for next two years until they become firm friends(!) and it came to a tragic end.

The checklist is a good one this week.

How strange that the previous issue of Thundercats’ was the one to bring a brand new look to the comic instead of waiting until the first monthly issue to do so. It now contained two strips, the first was all about one of the most annoying cartoon characters ever while the other was a reprint. I don’t think it lasted too long after this if my memory of these checklists serves me right. Dragon’s Claws #10 missed out on top billing again but the ‘Don’t Miss’ title this week is rather special for us because it’s actually been covered on the blog before.

Doctor Who Magazine #147 not only contained that very funny comic strip of the Seventh Doctor’s run-in with The Sleeze Brothers, it also contained a full guide to season 25 of the classic show which began with a certain story called Remembrance of the Daleks. This just so happened to be the very first Doctor Who story I ever watched, so it was a nice surprise to read about it when I’d bought the issue solely for the brothers’ section of the blog.

So, I said previously we’d make up for the lack of comics adverts these past few weeks…

We’ve no less than three this week, beginning with the big news that The Marvel Bumper Comic was going weekly with #14, the same issue number as The Real Ghostbusters’ first weekly the year before. This wasn’t the only thing the two comics had in common either if you look at the free gifts coming up. A new weekly schedule usually meant a degree of success so it’s a surprise to know the comic would end up cancelled before the end of the year.

That’s a hell of a packed line-up too, so we know each strip had to be very short but it still intrigues me. Another star of the Bumper Comic at a later stage would be William Tell, who we saw previously when his non-existent fortnightly comic was advertised across Marvel UK’s range. Here, those first strips were collected together into a graphic novel so at least they could get them out there. Not that anyone in the UK was aware of the show yet.

Finally for this week, a brand new humour comic was revealed!

Oh dear. Not only has the printing gone horribly wrong for the advert’s debut but there’s no indication of what It’s Wicked! would actually be. The inclusion of Slimer (whose popularity Marvel UK was rinsing as much as they could) told us it would be a funny comic, but the line of text at the bottom read like it was telling us something completely different. It’d essentially be a ghosts-and-monsters-themed take on Beano and The Dandy but it didn’t last long, just 17 issues in the end. With this advert as the pre-release hype I can see why kids didn’t exactly rush out to buy it.

If you thought that was a bad advert, wait until you see one (of two) to come next week. It changes one line of text from a year-old advert to publicise a supposedly new Spring Special, but it’s really just a carbon copy of a previous comic with a different issue number. Not the company’s finest hour. I’ll catch you back here in seven.

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TRANSFORMERS 210 (Instagram)

DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE 147

DRAGON’S CLAWS 10

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