TALES OF ASGARD - AS YOU'VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE (MAYBE)...

Images copyright relevant owners & MARVEL COMICS

The once high-flying EAGLE was in trouble by 1968 and had been for a while.  It was merged with LION in 1969, but before that happened, the comic adopted the approach of its POWER COMICS stablemates and adopted a MARVEL strip in the hope it might help change its fortunes.  Eagle had originally been published by HULTON PRESS, but was now part of the ODHAMS PRESS stable, so such an approach wasn't as strange as it might seem.

Adopted and adapted, as the strip was resized into two pages, more in keeping with the larger, panel-heavier format of British comics.  I have to say that the two-tone finish looks good on JACK KIRBY's art, only having been seen this way before in single panels on the black and white contents pages inside the front covers of MARVEL COLLECTORS' ITEM CLASSICS.

I also have to say that some aspects of the resizing are deficient, as the gutters are a bit too narrow between a few panels and there's absolutely no excuse for it.  This is quite a common fault in UK comics, and with just a little bit of extra care and attention, these pages could've (and should've) looked as if they were originally produced in this format.  When I resized pages for the IPC comic libraries, I always made sure that the size of the gutters was consistent. 

Incidentally, the IRON MAN above is not Marvel's Iron Man (obviously), but an altogether different character.  Want to see his strip?  Then let me know, frantic ones, as you're the real editors of this blog.  (That's a blatant lie of course, but it sounded good when STAN LEE said it, so I thought I'd give it a go.)