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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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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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SATURDAY 1st JULY 1989

I just love Jeff Anderson’s cover to Transformers and Action Force #225. Shockwave was the most sinister of Decepticons and always looked terrifying on covers. By contrast, John Marshall and Dave Harwood’s piece for The Real Ghostbusters is as daft as ever. 

Inside Transformers, the reprints continued with more Death’s Head tales and the editorial finally came clean about the (gorgeously drawn) black and white pages. That Shockwave strip is actually a rather lighthearted affair, with the young and impudent Hot Rod’s anarchic style in battle raising a few genuine laughs. Aspects of Evil continued to be all the proof needed that the new story format could work a treat. Oh, and it’s all backed up with an Action Force story drawn by Todd (Spawn) McFarlane.

The main strip in The Real Ghostbusters proved extra funny to me this week thanks to who drew it. A story about haunted cars that transform into cuddly bears that come alive? The comedy from this spoof of Marvel UK’s other main comic is heightened thanks to incredible Transformers artist Andrew Wildman being the one to bring it all to life! This reminds me of John Geering drawing spoofs of Whizzer and Chips for OiNK! Two top issues as always. It’s just as well, because according to the checklist they’re the only new ones this week.

The Sleeze Brothers deserves all the glory of the Don’t Miss… spot every single week for the next six months as far as I’m concerned. I don’t remember knowing as a kid that it was a limited series and I’m not sure if that would’ve made me more eager to collect the set, or put off by the fact it wouldn’t run for long. In the end it wouldn’t matter, my attention span went on to the next thing by August 1989.

The advert this week is our first black and white entry. With so much to pack into each week of the new-look Transformers, a small half-page is all Action Force Monthly gets to promote itself. Although truth be told it does a damn fine job. As I said last time there’s more packed into this tiny little advert than most of the full-page ads recently combined! Images from various issues by various artists give us a flavour of what to expect inside. The only thing missing really is Snake Eyes!

It’s the summer, and just like real life things do seem to slow down at Marvel UK HQ over the next while, with the new Sleeze Brothers comic doing a fair amount of the heavy lifting for the checklists. But I do have very fond memories of Transformers and Action Force around this time. Despite how it seems to be generally perceived online, the reality was that it was going from strength-to-strength for me. From this point right here up to the end with #332 is probably my favourite time in the comic’s run, so it’s great fun to revisit it again through these posts.

Watch out for news about Transformers on the OiNK Blog towards the end of the summer, too. That’s all I’ll say for now. Oooh, I’m such a tease!

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SATURDAY 17th JUNE 1989

There’s something strange (in the neighbourhood?) going on with the speech balloons on Brian Williamson’s and Dave Harwood’s The Real Ghostbusters cover, while the triumphant return of Geoff Senior to the front page of Transformers and Action Force heralded an exciting beginning inside.

A couple of weeks ago messed up speech was also main gag of the prose story and cover for The Real Ghostbusters, however this time it does so in a different way. Instead of nonsense, Egon’s and Winston’s speech patterns were swapped in a funny tale written by one of the comic’s best writers, Dan Abnett. Speaking of writers, Jane Fabian is a wonderful addition if her Super Bowl strip is anything to go by.

In Transformers, that fantastic cover heralds the start of UK stories written and drawn specifically for the new 5-page black and white format, and it shows! Aspects of Evil told five individual stories with a linking theme of the most evil characters in Transformers lore, beginning with one of the better developed Decepticons, Scorponok. It’s a packed little tale and Jeff Anderson really shows us what can be achieved without colour, upping the ante with his superb inking.

Why did our two top-selling comics get such a raw deal on the checklist?

On a quick separate note, this issue of Transformers and Action Force also contains the first advert for Hasbro’s new Pretender Classics range. The Pretenders had an outer shell (usually human-like or some horrible monster) with the Transformer inside. The Classics were all large humans wearing intricate sci-fi military gear but inside were characters such as Bumblebee, Grimlock, Jazz and Starscream. Their release really excited me as a child because I’d missed out on those toys as I became a fan after they’d originally been discontinued. So why did I never asked Santa for any?!

Back to the checklist and Thundercats steals the top position as it always does, albeit this time it’s taken until its second week on sale thanks to the Doctor. So the only new information here is for our two weeklies, everything else has already been covered. Although, it does beg the question of why our two top-selling comics got such a raw deal on the checklist. They may have always been first and second on the list but the ‘Don’t Miss’ spot seems to be given almost solely to the monthlies.

Transformers has only had that honour three times in nearly a year and the Ghostbusters once, with even its milestone 50th issue passed over while others such as Thundercats hogged the limelight, sometimes two weeks in a row with the same issue. Other comics such as the Marvel Bumper Comic disappeared completely from the checklist after only a few entries. As a promotional tool it’s a great idea but sometimes I do question its contents.

At least next week there’s a brand new, sleazy (or is that “Sleezy”) comic that readers definitely wouldn’t want to miss! See you then.

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SATURDAY 10th JUNE 1989

That stipple effect on Brian Williamson’s and Dave Hardwood’s cover for The Real Ghostbusters really was ubiquitous with Marvel UK at the time, wasn’t it? While on Transformers and Action Force, Simon Coleby joined the team with his first cover and he impressed from the start!

That skateboard story emblazoned on the cover of The Real Ghostbusters would end up becoming very familiar to readers. Not only would it pop up again in a Collected Comics special, but also twice more in the regular comic before the end of its run. This issue also contained the announcement of the sequel movie. This was the first mention of Ghostbusters II despite its release being just a few months later. The comic would go all-in with promotions, competitions and even serialised the adaptation as its first imported back up strip.

The exciting news in Transformers was that from next week the UK stories would finally be written for the new 5-page black and white format. Survivors came to an entertaining and somewhat intriguing ending this issue, setting up a superb character arc for Decepticon Pretender Beast, Carnivac. Having allied himself with Autobots, he witnessed his friend Catilla’s murder and left the team, swearing vengeance against the Decepticons but going out on his own, not wishing to endanger his new sort-of-allies. A superb character and some great stories to come. On the letters page a fan complained that Combat Colin wasn’t in one issue, so Dreadwind promised it wouldn’t happen again… “until next time”!

Well there you have it, the milestone issue of Doctor Who Magazine did get top billing after all. I still think he should’ve been given the honour last week when it was just released, but I suppose the crossover between the Time Lord and Death’s Head was equally as exciting an event and an executive decision was made. What’s shocking about this week’s checklist is that a new issue of Thundercats wasn’t given the ‘Don’t Miss’ slot. That’s a first for this series!

Last week, Popeye showed up to promote his own monthly comic and unlike the checklist entries it wasn’t much of an event for me personally because I was never a fan of the cartoon. However, I was very much a fan of the cartoon characters starring in their own Marvel UK summer special this week! I’m not sure why one of them is dressed as a magician to promote it, though. Probably something to do with a strip inside but it’s a strange choice without context.

I have happy memories of renting Tom & Jerry videos from my local shop as a child, often containing well over an hour of hilarious cartoons. The store only had a few of their tapes so I became very familiar with them. As did my parents! I have a distinct memory of laughing really hard (and my parents enjoying watching me) at the episode where Tom was a classical pianist and Jerry was asleep inside the piano, and once woken by Tom’s playing his revenge was taken in the usual, highly original variety of ways.

However, I never bought any of their comics. I remember seeing them advertised but still images were never going to be as funny as the high octane insanity of the cartoons as far as I was concerned. Did I miss out? If you picked this up (or any other Tom & Jerry comics) let me know, I’m intrigued as to how they could possibly translate successfully to the page. After this special Clearmark obtained the comics licence in the UK and the next year released a monthly Tom & Jerry comic which lasted only seven issues.

Next week Geoff Senior finally returns to cover duties to launch Aspects of Evil in Transformers, so you won’t want to miss that in just seven days.

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SATURDAY 3rd JUNE 1989

I instantly remembered this issue’s story when I read Egon’s silliness on Anthony William’s and Dave Harewood’s cover to The Real Ghostbusters, and what Jeff Anderson’s cover to Transformers and Action Force promised and the reality inside were quite different things.

Reprints were everywhere at the time and Transformers would eventually explain to its readers it was to allow the US strips to get ahead again and the three-story/black and white format was to combat rising costs. I wish they’d explained straight away though, it could’ve stopped some from leaving and missing out on some truly amazing UK and US stories over the next 111 issues. As a teen I’d never read Wanted Galvatron Dead or Alive so I was a happy little reader getting to enjoy new-for-me Death’s Head!

Anthony Williams was one of the very best artists on The Real Ghostbusters. As entertaining as the cover is, it doesn’t do him justice compared to some of the strips he illustrated. Dan Abnett’s prose story represented by that cover is completely daft, but then again what should we expect from the person who wrote every single one of those hilarious Spengler’s Spirit Guides? Name-Gremlin was just an excuse for lots of silly sounding names. This isn’t a complaint. Far from it. It’s brilliant and even surpasses Dan’s usual quotient of laughs.

Another strange choice for top billing on the checklist this week. While a new issue of Death’s Head was always going to be celebrated, having a milestone 150th issue of one of your biggest titles released this week and it not getting the ‘Don’t Miss’ spot seems strange, especially as how new issues of Doctor Who Magazine frequently got that honour. At the time of writing this post the mag is currently at #630, so marking the 150th of this monthly is making me feel really rather ancient.

The Seventh Doctor guest stars in Death’s Head of course, so perhaps we can forgive Marvel UK this once for its choices, as long as the big issue of DWM gets the same treatment next week, I say. This particular story was another wonderful addition to the Freelance Peacekeeping Agent’s résumé with some genuine laugh-out-loud moments, especially with his own time machine. Although, the ending is a dubious one. It goes against the Doctor’s character in a pretty essential way, almost ruining the whole issue for me. You can read my full review at the link further below.

This week’s advert isn’t for a new comic but rather a series of new books.

I have a distinct memory of obtaining the money for one of these books but only vague ones about the contents. I remember being in a local bar having lunch with family. I would’ve been around 11-years-old and I was given money to play a fruit machine but I had to do so with an adult (technically it was gambling), so a family member played it with me. I won some money, argued over having to give half of it to the person that supervised me and then went to a nearby shop and bought the book with the shark on the cover. (Regular blog readers will know I’ve always had a soft spot for anything with comical sharks.)

While researching for this post some Ghostbusters fan sites have these books listed as collections of strips from the comic. I was sure the book was a prose story with rather large writing and big illustrations which took up most of each page, and I seem to remember it didn’t take me long to read it. Thankfully I eventually found some eBay listings for the other books in the series and my ageing memory was proven right (so you Ghostbusters Wiki pages need to update yourselves). For a moment I thought I’d gotten it mixed up with one of my many, many other Real Ghostbusters books. (I had so many!) Ah, the joys of getting old. Thanks Ghostbusters and Doctor Who!

I’m off to console myself about my advancing years, I’ll see you all back here in seven days when we’ll see if the checklist can make things up to the Time Lord and the latest contemporary ad is (like last week) for a comic based on a classic cartoon, but this time one I actually liked. See you then.

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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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SATURDAY 8th APRiL 1989

It was an exciting week as a Transformers reader this week in 1989, which John Stokes’ cover sums up perfectly. Meanwhile, the perfect pairing of Andy Lanning and Dave Harwood worked their funny magic with The Real Ghostbusters.

My friends who were long-time Transformers readers weren’t too enamoured with the new three-story format in the newly-retitled Transformers and Visionaries. We now had a pair of five-or-six-page Transformers stories (and the same size of back up) every week but they preferred the previous 11-page strip and found it hard to adjust. I was used to Fleetway’s action comics though, so this felt like an upgrade over the previous format, even if it took a while before the UK strips were written for the new format.

Visionaries was yet another reprint of the origin tale (to give the American G.I. Joe comic time to get ahead again) but that didn’t dampen things for me as a teen. Although, now I think a reprint of an early G.I. Joe from years before may have been better, as many readers would’ve read this back up strip just the previous Christmas! As a whole it all felt fresh, new and exciting though, and would lead to what would eventually become my favourite period of time with the comic. It also kicked things off with the superbly titled, “Guess Who the Mecannibals Are Having for Dinner?” Great fun.

Obviously, this issue was going to take the top spot on the checklist. It was a mammoth change to such a long-running comic. Yes, it was to save money down the road amid rising production costs. By changing to this format they could churn out the British strips in black and white and run some reprints while still having new strips for the readers, but young me wasn’t aware of all of that and it deserved this fanfare regardless.

Alongside The Real Ghostbusters are the same editions of Marvel UK’s monthly Action Force and Thundercats as last week but we did have some brand spanking new comics adverts. Cartoon Time was essentially the Flinstones and Friends comic from earlier checklists in all but name. That had made it to 24 issues before cancellation and was basically rebranded as Cartoon Time, each issue’s main title relating to a different Hanna Barbera character with the “Cartoon Time” banner off to the side or top.

It certainly proved popular, running for 40 fortnightly issues before turning monthly. This would normally signal the beginning of the end for a comic but Cartoon Time continued for another 38 monthly issues after that, so fair play. Our other advert is for a Doctor Who graphic novel collecting a strip from the pages of Doctor Who Magazine, starring Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor and Frobisher, his penguin companion. No, really.

In reality (well, you know what I mean) Frobisher could take on any form but for some reason preferred to be a talking penguin, and he and the Doctor found themselves on a Death Ship falling off the edge of the universe. The 80s TV show couldn’t have brought this to the screen! It sounds wonderfully inventive and I’m aware it stands in high regard with fans even today.

There are new issues of some top Marvel UK monthlies in next week’s checklist and a whole host of Spring Specials in the ads to jog your memories. See you then!

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SATURDAY 1st APRiL 1989

This week’s Marvel UK cover for The Real Ghostbusters by Brian Williamson and Dave Harwood was overshadowed by the strap line for me. Also, at the time I didn’t realise this week’s Transformers and Action Force cover was something of a big deal.

That’s because it was drawn by John Stokes (Doctor Who, Star Wars, The Invisibles), making his first return to the weekly in three years. The story was great, focusing on the mental toll of being the human part of a Head Master, while the big changes coming next week were hyped with a full-page Next Issue promo. However, it contained no text or details, just three comics panels. The editorial made a big deal about Visionaries returning without mentioning it’d be a reprint. How very on brand after last week’s checklist post (link below).

So yes, that Atari ST competition in The Real Ghostbusters really takes me back. I always loved the look of that machine and was in awe of how a friend used his to produce incredible music, albeit a few years after this, so I never entered at the time. Strip-wise, after contradicting the cartoon last week the comic now contradicts itself by featuring Father Time, forgetting he’d already appeared in a completely different guise in an earlier issue. It was still fun though, as always. On to the checklist.

Death’s Head remains because let’s face it we all should’ve bought every single issue, it was that good and deserved more success. There are also a few details for you there about the sheer amount of stories The Real Ghostbusters comic could include in its 24 pages every week, while Transformers’ checklist entry does little to sell its fantastic, human story beyond a basic action piece. But hey, they had to get the kids interested so we won’t hold that against them.

Action Force Monthly was Marvel UK’s attempt to repackage their content back to the States (as ‘G.I. Joe The European Missions‘), so they had a forgivable excuse for including some reprints. Some of the regular features from the ol’ weekly a couple of years previous were also making their way back into the comic, giving it a feeling of being in rude health. Such a shame in five short months it would just… stop! But those UK stories were superb, the few that I’ve read anyway.

A short one this week but the adverts return in seven days, featuring a dog, a cat and a penguin! You’ll see what that’s all about in week 37 of The Mighty Marvel Checklist.

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SATURDAY 4th FEBRUARY 1989

Now that the three months-long month of January is finally over we head back to 1989 and welcome the latest issues of The Real Ghostbusters and Transformers and Action Force with covers by Brian Williamson and Tim Perkins, and Jeff Anderson and Dave Harwood respectively.

The New York team’s Skeleton in the Closet story takes us to a dark and foreboding take on the land of Narnia with some funny references back to the source material for its fans and there’s a particularly fun Winston’s Diary (well, they all were) this week too. Amongst all the comedy there’s also an advert for Thundercats toothbrushes that (with hindsight) were so basic they weren’t going to be much use against the sugar content of 80s sweets.

In Transformers the penultimate chapter of Time Wars ends with what should’ve been a fantastic reveal for its cliffhanger but it’s given away by that cover instead. It’s still a nice mirror image of the moment when Hot Rod tried to come to the aid of Optimus Prime in the animated movie (to dire results), and Lee Sullivan’s incredible strip artwork contains many panels that became iconic, often reprinted as highlights of the comic’s whole run. The Next Issue panel is also replaced with a full page image of next week’s cover. When you see it in seven days you’ll understand. (Or check it out at the link further below.)

With the same issues of Action Force Monthly and Thundercats as last time and brand new editions of Death’s Head and Dragon’s Claws, it’s the exact opposite of our previous checklist. Death’s Head gets the prime real estate and deserves it but for a reason not mentioned here; it’s one of the funniest issues of the run right from the off. You can check out some of its hilarious highlights via the link at the bottom of this post.

For me personally, the epic finale of sister title Dragon’s Claws is even more deserving of the ‘Don’t Miss…’ treatment. “The finale? But surely there’s one more issue to go, Phil.” That’s right, but writer Simon Furman left that final issue for the conclusion of the main character’s family arc instead, so this month it’s all about the action and it’s a belter. It’s a step up on all of the previous issues and in this excellent series that’s really saying something.

No new comics adverts this week, folks. Next week there’ll be one which confused me at the time, and which had me scouring the TV Times maniacally. I’ll tell all in seven days.

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