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| Images copyright MARVEL COMICS |
Before the MARVEL MASTERWORKS and OMNIBUS volumes, there was - MARVEL COLLECTORS' ITEM CLASSICS! 68 pages of great superhero strips for only 1/6- (or 25c if you lived in the States), they were a handy way of catching up on the earliest adventures of SPIDER-MAN, The FANTASTIC FOUR, IRON MAN, Dr. STRANGE, ANT-MAN and The HULK. (Even The WATCHER was there to 'watch' over proceedings.)
The line-up varied over the first few issues, before settling down to a regular cast of heroes, and these issues are now highly collectable in their own right. I had quite a few of them in my youth and have very fond memories of them. Although I'd already read many of these sensational stories in British weekly periodicals WHAM!, SMASH!, POW!, FANTASTIC and TERRIFIC, this was the first time I'd seen them in full-colour, and I liked what I saw.
It was in the pages of MCIC that I learned that the baddie I knew as The APEMASTER was actually The RED GHOST, and that MADAME NATASIA's name was spelt NATASHA in her original American appearances. For a short time, in my ignorance, I considered the U.K. reprints to be 'the real thing' and the U.S. originals as mere counterfeits, but I soon wised up and learned to appreciate both incarnations of these strips.
Anyway, in celebration of these great comics of yesteryear, here's a cover gallery of the first dozen issues. If you remember them with the same fondness as I do, then feel free to share your reminiscences of these mags in the comments section. Don't be selfish by keeping all those warm memories to yourself.
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This ish is dated 1966, but I bought it brand-new off the spinner-rack in
1969. Thank goodness for delayed distribution of U.S. comics in Britain |
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| Looks like the U.K. price went up with this ish - still a bargain though |
