The TOAD CAME HOME (AGAIN)...

Thought all my fellow Crivs might like to see this great Mr. TOAD porcelain figurine by WADE, which I acquired through eBay recently for a (surprisingly) few paltry quid.  It's based on a drawing by E.H. SHEPARD and captures it perfectly.  I thought it would be around two and a half inches high, like the other Wade figurines I have in my collection, but it's actually closer to twice that height.  Wotta bargain!

The IRON MAN From EAGLE...

Copyright relevant owner

Due to overwhelming demand (nope, not a peep from anyone), I've decided to show you The IRON MAN strip from the very same issue of EAGLE as in the previous post.  This looks as if it might've been originally published in colour somewhere else before its b&w appearance in Eagle, but if so, I don't have a Scooby where.  If you know, inform the rest of us and lift the heavy, burdensome veil of ignorance from our puzzled, furrowed brows.  Nice art, eh?  Why not extol its virtues in the comments section?

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Come to think of it, The Iron Man first appeared in BOYS' WORLD before it was merged with Eagle, so perhaps this strip is a reprint from that short-lived title. Illustrators on the strip were GERRY EMBLETON (brother of RON), and also MARTIN SALVADOR, who I'm guessing drew these two pages as they don't look like Gerry's style.  Again, anyone know?  

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.)

CLASSIC COMICS OF YESTERYEAR: YOGI & HIS TOY #1 - COMPLETE ISSUE...

Characters copyright HANNA-BARBERA

Well, okay, it's arguable whether this particular periodical can be legitimately considered a 'classic', but that's how I regard it as I bought it when it first went on sale in February of 1972.  I was 13 years old and clearly too old for the comic, which was aimed at much younger readers, but I was always a sucker for anything to do with YOGI BEAR.  It seems to me that I inhabited the house I then lived in for quite some time after this title came out, so I'm surprised to discover that I moved to another residence in another neighbourhood a mere four months later.  Funny how the mind plays tricks, eh?

Anyway, if you had this comic back in 1972, then now you have it again - and if you didn't, then you do now.  Everybody's a winner - unless you're not a Yogi Bear fan that is.  That's unthinkable of course.

(Incidentally, I haven't cleaned up the pages too much, which still show some of the marks of time.  I've only whitened up the margins and gutters just a tad.)