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| Images copyright MARVEL COMICS |
Okay, gather 'round, fellow fans. Here's another batch of covers and images from The THING Is BIG BEN, a U.K. MARVEL comic from 1984. This time we have a couple of full-colour DONALD DOGFLY strips to amuse and entertain you, drawn by cartoonist HUNT EMERSON, a well-known name in the field of British comics.
To be honest, I wouldn't exactly claim that the comic's covers were absolutely the finest example of layout and design I've ever seen - or even the most effective in terms of enticing potential reader interest (it only lasted 18 issues, remember), but at least you were left in no doubt as to who the star of the book was.
So, whaddya say? See you back here for part three? It's a date!
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7 comments:
I think the covers are better than the first couple of issues and Power Man/ Iron Fist fit in well as a back up strip with 2-in-1, given the Luke Cage/FF connection and all.
In any case, I'm getting some more parts of my old collection back here , so gotta keep coming back, haven't I?
This post hasn't proved to be of much interest to people, JP, so I may leave out some of the splash pages in future ones and just have the covers and Donald Dogfly strips. We'll see how it goes. Glad you like it anyway.
Kid, I hate to keep complaining about what I see as the terrible decline of the UK Marvel weeklies from early '79 onwards but it's interesting that the new-style weeklies were supposed to appeal more to the casual British reader and yet the new weeklies were less successful than the ones they replaced - MWOM had been going for over six years but its' replacement ,Marvel Comic, was ditched after just six months ! Were there any genuinely popular and successful Marvel UK weeklies from 1979 onwards - they all seemed to be like this Big Ben comic, they'd last for a few months and then be cancelled or merged. I'd abandoned Marvel UK in despair by about mid 1980 so I've only got blogs like yours to go on.
I think that later mags were always going to have a hard time being as successful as earlier ones, CJ, simply because the first wave of U.K. Marvel mags contained all the best stories, what with origins and introduction of villains, etc. The best U.K. Marvel mags in my opinion were MWOM, SMCW, The Super-Heroes, The Titans (for a while), The Complete FF, and Captain Britain. There seemed to be something genuinely special about the early editions of these titles that later and other ones lacked. I think sometimes it depends on what age you were when you first picked up many of those titles. I was probably too old for some of the later ones, which is perhaps why they didn't appeal to me so much.
Perhaps some people, like myself, are sometimes late going through their blogs. This year I've been so busy that I have to neglect the internet for a few days then catch up when I can. Hence all my LATE comments. So keep checking for late hits.
What, no POTA ? It was because of the POTA TV show that I first started buying Marvel comics - I saw POTA #5 on sale and assumed it was something to do with the TV show, of course there was no connection at all between them but I was instantly hooked by the comic which opened the door to the rest of Marvel. One thing that always puzzles me is why I never noticed any Marvel UK comics before then.
Your comments (and those of others too, of course), late or otherwise, are always very welcome, so keep them coming, JP.
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I liked POTA (and Dracula Lives and The Avengers) at the time, CJ, but I'm not convinced they stand up to scrutiny now. Not the stories, just the way they were butchered with the overuse of Zipatone (Letraset), which, because of poor printing, obscured a lot of the art.
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