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| Copyright relevant owner |
The POW! ANNUAL for 1971 (on sale in August or September of 1970) is certainly a curious item in comparison to its predecessors. Published by ODHAMS PRESS, as were the previous three Annuals for '68, '69 & '70, it bore absolutely no relation to them in terms of strip content or style. True, the logo remained the same, but anyone buying the book having purchased earlier ones (or even the comic, which expired in '68) would surely have wondered what was going on.
What mystifies me is that the WHAM! ANNUAL for 1971 was exactly the same as in previous years and also published by Odhams - even though its former stablemate, SMASH!, was now an IPC comic, whose Annual reflected the contents of its weekly (revamped) counterpart. I can only suppose that, as the weekly incarnations of Wham! and Pow! no longer existed, Odhams were permitted to produce one more Annual of each, although the subsequent books for 1972, plus the combined '73 & '74 releases, were all IPC publications.
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| Art by Miguel Quesada |
As far as I'm able to determine, the 1971 Pow! Annual contains all-new strips - at least, I've never heard or seen of any of the characters before (or since, come to that) - and therefore represents good value for money, as previous Annuals had a fair amount of reprint material, making them cheaper to produce. It's interesting to ponder whether the weekly title would've survived with regular strips of the same characters as the Annual, but I guess if SPIDER-MAN couldn't save it, then it's unlikely that unknown British substitutes would've fared any better.
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| Art by Victor Ibanez |
Anyway, I thought you might enjoy seeing a gallery of some pages from over 40 years ago, when children regularly thrilled to the yearly hardback versions of their favourite comics. Will such a time ever come again? What do you think?
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Incidentally, the artists' names were sourced from the British Comics Database, after I had identified ROMERO by myself. The BCD confirmed it for me though.
23 comments:
Hi Kid,
Some nice artwork on these strips. Do you know who drew any of them?
Unfortunately, no, Nick. They look like European artists, and some of the styles seem familiar, but I don't know their names. British comics used quite a few foreign artists back in the day.
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Nick, upon taking a closer look, I think The Esper Commandos is drawn by Enrique Badia Romero, who drew the Modesty Blaise newspaper strip for years.
Romero's style looked familiar. I think he did some art for Marvel's black and white line in the 1970's.
He also drew for IPC's Battle Action Force in the '80s, Nick. I once had to alter his art at a moment's notice before it went off to be printed. It wasn't the finest job I've ever done.
Could one of the reasons for the all new content be that Wham used the Pow characters in that 1971 annual (as these titles merged under Odhams rule) and Smash used some of the others so they had nothing or a very limited list of strips left that they could use? and they thought they could sell the strips in Europe (or even UK) if they were successful - possibly even that they had been working on these strip to replace the Marvel strips once the lost permission to use them? -I see Jose Ortez art is in this book he is a fantastic artist - a strange one all the same (been looking for a reasonably priced edition of this annual for a few years)McS
oddly, I was just looking through this annual, last night. I still have the same copy that my mum bought for me all those years ago. it has a wonderful, personal sentimental value to me. & Norstad was a trip!
My 1971 Wham! Annual isn't at hand for me to check, McScotty, but I don't think it contained any Pow! strips - the Smash! Annual for 1971 certainly didn't. Perhaps they had an inventory of try-out strips for various proposed publications that never got off the ground, but the fact that they were mainly all 'superhero' strips of some kind tends to suggest they were for a single publication. It's a bit of a mystery. I think you're probably right 'though, about them being lined up to replace the Marvel strips at some stage.
I see a few copies of the 1971 Pow! Annual are currently available via Amazon - but they're over £100 each. Someone's obviously chancing their arm, as they're not considered to be worth that much. (It's usually Americans who put them out at crazy prices.) You should be able to get a fairly decent copy for around a tenner, even less if you're lucky.
I never owned it back in 1971, Joe - yet it somehow conjures up images of the age (and of the house I lived in at the time) as if I did. Strange that, eh?
That Norstad thing's great - any chance of scanning the whole story?
I've tucked the Annual away again, THB, but I'll get around to it when I get a spare moment.
I'd heard about all these new Pow superheroes but this is the first time I have actually been able to read the stories. Excellent post, thanks and I too would love to see more if you dig it out again.
I found this blog called SuperItch today that has scans of 3 strips from this annual (sorry Norstad is not one of them) but gives you Electro, Marksman and Magno in addition it has some comments from a certain "Kid Robson" so its win win
http://superitch.com/?p=43145
It'll happen, JP - keep your eyes peeled. In the meantime, use the link supplied by McScotty to see three of the stories.
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I'll have to jump over and re-read what I wrote, McScotty - I'm a huge fan of mine. (As everybody knows.)
Thanks for tipping us off about Superitch, McScotty!
Tsk tsk! Superitch has been in my blog list on the right-hand side of the page for years, JP. Take 100 lines - "I must pay more attention in class."
I agree with the request that you scan these pages of the adventure "Nostard of theDeep", Kidd, adventure that was drawn by a civilian mine, Leopoldo Ortiz, Cartagena,Murcia (Spain). I'd like to be able to translate the entire history to the Spanish, and I'vebeen able to do so only with three pages.
Here I'll give you a link so you can see the file I try to finish:
http://tebeosycomics.blogspot.com.es/2014/06/norstad-de-las-profundidades-norstad-of.html
DD (only one week)
http://we.tl/he8ddsWHVn
If I can do so without damaging the book, Jose, I'll try and do it in the next day or so.
Thanks
No bother, Jose. Trust you saw the post.
Still got this one and always loved the art work.
Yup, it's an interesting Annual, sure enough.
Hello again, Kid. I want to ask you if you have any information about the author "Víctor Ibáñez", his nationality, date of birth, something ...? I can not find out anything about this author, I do not know if he is Argentine or Spanish. Do you know anything that can serve to place your figure in the frame of the Cartoon? ... Greetings.
Jose, he was known as Victor (also Vicente) Ibanez Sanchis, and was born in Valencia in 1938. He started his career as an apprentice at Editoria Valenciana in 1954. In the '60s, he drew for Pow! and also D.C. Thomson's The Victor. There is a Marvel artist of the same name who may be related, although I think his full name is Victor Ibanez Ramirez, so maybe not. However, it might be worth contacting him to see if he can supply further info. His website is: www.victoribanez.blogspot.com - hope that's of some help.
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