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THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 58

2 September 2026 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

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

THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 57

26 August 2026 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

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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WEEK 56 < > WEEK 58

THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 56

19 August 2026 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

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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WEEK 55 < > WEEK 57

THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 55

12 August 2026 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

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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WEEK 54 < > WEEK 56

THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 54

5 August 2026 Phil Boyce 2 Comments

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

THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 53

29 July 2026 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

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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WEEK 52 < > WEEK 54

THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 52

22 July 2026 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

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

THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 49

1 July 2026 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

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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WEEK 48 < > WEEK 50

THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 47

17 June 2026 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

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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WEEK 46 < > WEEK 48