Monday, 22 August 2016

PART TWELVE OF GERRY ANDERSON'S TV CENTURY 21 COVER GALLERY...

Copyright relevant owner

It's been a while, but here at last are another ten covers of the best-selling kids comic of the 20th century - TV CENTURY 21.  (Yeah, work that one out!)  The DALEKS had departed in #104 and ALAN FENNELL was no longer the comic's editor, but, for the moment, TV21 was still a force to be reckoned with on the newsagent's shelves in its third year of publication.

Did you buy TV21 back in the day?  Did you stick with it from beginning to end?  If not, when did you start to lose interest in the comic, and when did it begin to show signs of decline in your opinion?  Share your thoughts, theories and feelings in our cataclysmic comments section after you've perused all ten of these palpitating pictures on display before you.









10 comments:

  1. Is that Unity City model from any of the Anderson series because looks as though it might be a stock shot of an architectural model.

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  2. I got it from just before Thunderbirds joined to some point after Captain Scarlet joined. The loss of the newspaper format meant that TV21 (Having lost the 'Century' when it gained Scarlet) no longer stood out as much on the newsagents counter. Also, for the same price you could buy the Valiant AND the Beano!

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  3. I'd say it was Unity City in all likelihood, DSE, as most Gerry Anderson-related photos used on the cover were shot on the studio sets.

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    I suppose the earlier Anderson programmes perhaps being regarded as 'yesterday's news' by the time Captain Scarlet arrived, AK, meant that the comic no longer seemed as 'vibrant' as it once had. If the TV shows had still been 'big', readers probably wouldn't have minded paying extra for TV21, rather than settling for less expensive comics.

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  4. I was beginning to think that you'd only bought the first 110 issues, Kidda! Anyway, good to see some more! Please keep 'em coming!
    Yeah, I know, I know, I was beginning to give up on it around this time ( we both know why! ). But I now feel guilty and wish that I'd stuck with it! Kids, eh? - They're so fickle!

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  5. I'm grief stricken about Colonel Zodiac - which is odd as he won't die for another 51 years. He probably isn't even born yet.

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  6. I wish I'd kept everything I ever had, JP, but I'd probably need 3 houses to store it all in if I had.

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    He's A PUPPET, CJ. (Bangs Steve's fibre-glass head on the table.)

    I wonder if they tried Steve's death as a headline again because it worked on issue #1's cover?

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  7. Thank goodness we didn't have TV Century 21 in the US. If I had seen the headline about Steve Zodiac when I was seven, I would have been traumatized.

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  8. Funny thing is, TC, although I knew that Steve Zodiac was a puppet, when TV21 #1 carried the (earlier) headline of his demise, I asked my brother if he was really dead. My 6 year-old brain seemed capable of carrying two opposing trains of thought at the same time without realizing the contradiction. I must have been a particularly dense kid.

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  9. Is it possible you were asking whether the voice actor who played the character was dead? Or that you wondered if the character had been killed off on the show, and if the series would be cancelled (or would continue without him)?

    I suppose when a continuing character in a series is killed off-Gwen Stacy, Colonel Henry Blake (M*A*S*H), Lt. Tasha Yar (Star Trek: The Next Generation)-the event is "real" to the audience in the sense that the character will no longer appear in the series.

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  10. It wasn't that, TC. I knew the character was a puppet because I could see the strings, but seeing the newspaper-type headline 'Steve Zodiac Dead' presented as if the character had been alive just sort of scrambled my radar in some way and made me accept it as fact. Or so it now seems, looking back on it so many years later. Weird, eh?

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