IMAGINE SIX NEW PANINI/MARVEL MAGS - WHAT WOULD YOU INCLUDE?

Okay, peeps, here's a question for you.  PANINI are doing a great job with their range of MARVEL COLLECTORS' EDITIONS as far as style and format go - but what would be your ideal line-up for six new magazines, including strips from the Silver and Bronze Age?  You can pretend the current ones don't exist and include character from them, if you wish.  Don't be shy now - let's have your suggestions!  

AGAIN - THE LEGEND TESTERS...

Copyright REBELLION

It's a brilliant concept when you think about it - being able to go back in time and ascertain, one way or another, the veracity of the events of legend.  Imagine being able to travel back to Biblical times and see for yourself whether well-known religious accounts actually happened or not.  Or materialise the day before yesterday's Lotto draw and mark the winning numbers on your entry form.  Now you're talking!  (Though if you could afford a time machine you obviously wouldn't be short of a bob or two to start with.)

Anyway, back to reality (more or less).  Let's now revisit the 1960s to read again an adventure of The LEGEND TESTERS from the SMASH! Annual for 1968.  It's as close to time travel as we're likely to get - in more ways than one!

   

The MIGHTY WORLD Of MARVEL - STILL AROUND AFTER FORTY-TWO YEARS...

All images copyright MARVEL COMICS

Amidst all the changes that life inevitably brings, such as favourite shops disappearing, old schools and churches being demolished, once familiar haunts changing beyond recognition, and, of course, friends and family falling victims to time, it's nice to have one seemingly-eternal constant to remind you of the past and how things once used to be.

Such a 'constant' in my life is The MIGHTY WORLD Of MARVEL, which I was buying in 1972 and am still buying in 2015 - over 42 years later.  Of course, I'm stretching things by calling it constant, as there've been periods over those years when it's been absent from the newsagents' shelves, but the thing that matters is that it's here now, like an old soldier that just refuses to die, or fade away.

I bought the latest issue yesterday (Saturday, the day I used to buy it many moons back, although then it was a weekly as opposed to a monthly periodical), and it's extremely comforting to me in my dotage to see that familiar name and masthead adorning a comic mag which I'm still reading and collecting today just as I did back when I was a mere teenager.

To me, the best thing in the comic is DAREDEVIL; I don't often read the other two strips, but DD is worth the price of the comic by itself, especially as it's contained within covers bearing the name of MWOM.  I'd love MARVEL to do a special issue, containing strips featuring the weekly title's original line-up of The HULK, SPIDER-MAN and The FANTASTIC FOUR, just to fully capture the mood of the mag from the early 1970s.  They could still have Daredevil in it as well, of course, as he joined the line-up with issue #20 back in early '73.

So many things have vanished from my life - just as, I'm sure, they have from yours - so it's good to be able to rekindle warm memories of yesteryear by immersing myself in a Marvellous Marvel Mag that was around when I was still a schoolkid - especially as the school itself now no longer exists.

So, if you're in the same boat as myself, why not pick up a copy of the latest MWOM from your local WHS today?  And even if you're a fresh, new, young thing who's never heard of the mag before, why not give it a try?  Take it from me - the chances are you'll love it!

"Make Mine (The Mighty World of) Marvel!"