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| Art by JOHN BUSCEMA. Image copyright MARVEL COMICS |
The first 'official' British MARVEL comic - affectionately referred to as MWOM. This was the comic that all true Marvel fans on this side of the pond had been waiting for, whether they realized it or not! A whopping 40 pages for a mere 5p, a mixture of b&w, spot and full colour, the early issues had a distinct charm that was later lost when the title received a glossy cover and jettisoned the interior colour.
However, there's good news - MWOM is still available in Britain today! With 72 full colour pages, cardboard cover, and published monthly - for only a paltry £3.50. Rush out and buy a copy now!
I never get tired of seeing MWOM issue 1 it always takes me right back to the time I picked this up after seeing it in R S McColls in Rutherglen main street at lunch time and then the mad rush to get it after school ( I got the last copy they had but the free transfer was "missing" - but my Dad picked me up a copy as well with the free transfer later that week). Folk that weren't around back them won't understand how important this comic was to comic book fans. Big sigh!
ReplyDeleteYeah, it really was a belter. I bought my first copy of #1 in a newsagents along from the Barras on Saturday, 30th September, 1972, and bought a second copy (along with FF #126) on Friday, 6th, October in a shop in Hamilton when I was in with my dad. Next year, a stall in the Barras had loads of remaindered copies on sale, so I bought two or three of them over the course of a couple of weeks or so.
ReplyDeleteMy MWOM 1 was a fair few years later and was THE holy grail of my collection. Well, until the next holy grail came along.
ReplyDeleteOops! I meant to say that it was the Marvel Annual 1973 that I later got from a stall in the Barras - silly me. Glad to hear that you managed to get a copy of MWOM #1, Chris. You still got it?
ReplyDeleteYep - still in the vault. Years later I was talking to the man that ran Vault Auctions who said that he'd picked up the original cover art for a low price as the seller had marketed it as a poster.
ReplyDeleteI didn't even know Marvel comics existed till I bought (or rather, my mother bought) Planet Of The Apes No.5 on Saturday November 16th 1974 - that's where it all began for me. But I didn't know MWOM had colour pages - so Captain Britain wasn't so innovative after all.
ReplyDeleteI bought some books from Vault Auctions, Chris, but they were all scribbled on, something not mentioned in the description. I'm not overly impressed with them.
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I suppose that CB was innovative (for a British Marvel comic) in that it had colour pages in sequence, throughout two of the three stories, CJ. MWOM had a few random colour pages(5 in #1, rising to 8 in #5), but they didn't last long.