STEVE THE MIGHTY STEPS DOWN...

I see that STEVE MacMANUS, one of the better editors at IPC's YOUTH GROUP until the infamous ROBERT MAXWELL bought it over, stepped down last year from his position as Managing Editor at EGMONT, after a career spanning thirty-seven or so years in publishing.  (Yes, it's old news, but I've only just heard.  I wonder if he got my last Christmas card?)

Steve was the fellow who gave me my big break at a comic mart in the MOIR HALL at the MITCHELL THEATRE in Glasgow on October 20th, 1984.  (So blame him.)  I well remember my subsequent trips down to London to the IPC offices at KING'S REACH TOWER in Stamford Street, and sitting chatting to Steve one sunny lunchtime in the garden of a cheery wee pub just up the road from IRWIN HOUSE, where the Youth Group had been relocated to in preparation for the sale to Maxwell.  If I remember correctly, art assistant KEVIN BRIGHTON was also there.

I may have told this tale before, but Steve, Kevin, and myself were standing looking out of a window on the 26th floor of KRT one afternoon (previous to the one above) in 1986, when I asked him what 2000 A.D. might be called in the year 2000.  He did a good job of hiding his boredom at hearing a question he'd no doubt been asked hundreds of times before and said something like: "Well, that's fourteen years away, Gordon - we don't have to worry about it 'til then."  And, truth to tell, it seemed an eternity away at the time.

It's a scary thought to realise that 2000 is now twelve years ago, and that moment on the 26th floor of King's Reach Tower is a whopping twenty-six years in the past.  (Almost half my life away.)  I just can't get my head 'round it - it seems like only a week or two back.

Copyright REBELLION

Strangely enough, CRISIS, a 2000 A.D. spin-off, was printed in my home town in '88, and I remember Steve coming up to watch the first issues roll off the presses, and graciously allowing me to accompany him to share in the occasion.  This may have been the final time I saw Steve in person, as I stopped going down to London in December of '87, but I still spoke to him on the 'phone from time to time for a few years after that.  (Come to think of it, I saw him at a Glasgow comic mart in the early '90s.)

So, if it hadn't been for ol' Stevie Mac, I might never have had a career in comics for as long as I did.  (Fifteen years.)  Just think - he has to live with the guilt of inflicting me on the comics' world.

Here's to Steve, and let's hope he goes on to even greater things from here on in.

******

Click here for my reminiscences of those early days.   

PARALLEL LIVES...

Copyright MARVEL COMICS

I sometimes feel that I've lived at least two different lives - and it's all down to reprints of certain MARVEL COMICS making an impression on me at various stages when I was growing up.  There are myriad examples I could mention, but I'll restrict myself mainly to one for the moment, that being the back-up tale in the nearly four decades-old issue of the U.K.'s very own best-selling SPIDER-MAN COMICS WEEKLY #7.

As related in an earlier post, I bought a copy of FANTASTIC #7 back in March 1967, probably around mid-week.  I never forgot the comic and the stories therein, and whenever I look at the comic nowadays, I'm back in the house I lived in at the time and still going to primary school just down the road from me.  Time travel, pure and simple.

Fast-forward to another house, almost six years later to the very day.  (Fantastic was cover-dated ahead to April 1st, but as I said, I got my copy halfway through the last week in March, more or less.)  SMCW was dated ahead to March 31st, but - for some strange reason - never appeared in my local newsagent 'til the Wednesday after the Saturday it was due.  That was when I bought it, on the Wednesday.  Funny how some things stick in one's mind.

Just like Fantastic #7, it also contained The MIGHTY THOR tale, "The THUNDER GOD And The THUG!"  (Unlike Fantastic, it printed the full story, not just the first half.)  I was only fourteen at the time SMCW #7 came out, so six years was almost half my life away.  It was certainly more than half my remembered life, so proportionately it seemed far longer than the same period would seem to me today.  (Six years nowadays seems like a fortnight back then.)

SMCW trimmed the panels of the stories they featured, and because of that and the two-tone grey on some pages, plus the red spot-colour on others, the strips had an individual aspect that distinguished them from earlier incarnations.  That's probably why, today, I can look at the Thor adventure in Fantastic and immediately recall that particular time back in 1967, and look at the same story in SMCW and be reminded of that halcyon period back in 1973.

Each printing has its own distinct identity, enabling me to associate it with two separate times in my life.  That would explain why, depending on what presentation of the tale I'm looking at, it sometimes feel as if I've lived two different, but parallel lives around it, daft as it may sound.

As I said earlier, there are other Marvel stories that have the same effect on me.  The FANTASTIC FOUR tale, "KURRGO, MASTER Of PLANET X!" also has two sets of memories associated with it.  When I look at the reprints of the story in WHAM! from 1967, all sorts of images pertaining to the time swirl through my head, and when I look at its later printing in The MIGHTY WORLD Of MARVEL from 1972/'73, a whole set of different images and recollections spring forth.  Same story, two sets of memories, two different eras.  It snaps my cap.

Now, will somebody please tell me what the hell I'm talking about.