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| Copyright MARVEL COMICS |
A year after the first Superheroes Annual, Marvel UK introduced a monthly mag called MARVEL SUPERHEROES (not to be confused with the 1975/'76 weekly, The SUPER-HEROES, which lasted for 50 issues), but I don't think it was a tie-in to the Annual. At least not until 1980, when the third Annual in the series (for 1981) was retitled Marvel Superheroes and bore the same masthead as the monthly periodical. As far as I know, there were only three 'Superhero' Annuals, though the middle one suffered from poor quality reproduction of the interior strips. The full-colour pages looked as though they'd been scanned from printed comics, but so too did the spot-colour pages, which was surprising as they'd never been printed in that format anywhere else before.
Also, one of stories in the first Annual had two pages out of sequence, but the fault belonged Stateside as that's how the strip was published in its original appearance in The MIGHTY THOR #231. (They should never have abolished these little corner-page numbers.) Marvel UK revived the name for a few Annuals (I think there were some Specials too) in the late '80s, early '90s, but this time Super Hero was two words (after being hyphenated in the 1987 Omnibus Annual) so I'm not including them here as they're not connected to the original series. Anyway, for all you nostalgists out there, I thought I'd show you the covers to this three-Annual run (the spines all say 'Superheroes Annual'), so here they are for your personal perusal.
The Iron Man and Cap figures on that last cover look a bit weird, like someone has traced them from a couple of Gene Colan pages.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of covers, Kid, I had a great time yesterday morning- I got my comic boxes out and spent a few hours just looking at covers, and it was just as entertaining as reading them. The cover captions and speech balloons are just great, and really show how little fun is suggested by modern covers, which seem to mostly be po-faced, arty and bear no relation to the stories.
80s Superman covers are some of my favourites (Adventures of Superman 463 especially), and Spider-Man covers are almost always interesting.
Yeah, most modern covers are just boring pin-ups with no word balloons, DS. Nowadays, publishers seem to think that word balloons make them look juvenile, but hey - it's a comic - let it be what it is.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I like the facsimile editions and True Believers comics - they look just like a comic is supposed to (when they don't replace the original logos with new ones).
I didn't know there was a 'Marvel Superheroes' annual. The last annuals I bought were dated 1979 - Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk.
ReplyDeleteAnd to think that there are some people who say this blog has no educational value, CJ; you're living proof that it informs as well as entertains. (What's that? It's not entertaining in the slightest? Well, one out of two ain't bad.)
ReplyDeleteI had the top one and the bottom one! Alas, they both perished in a fire.
ReplyDeleteIf I remember rightly, the bottom one with the green cover had the first few issues of The X-Men by Lee and Kirby. It was the very first time I'd seen them.
It reprinted the reprint of X-Men #1 from Amazing Adventures (Vol 3) #1 & 2 (it was divided into two parts), but had a page excised to make room for a new splash for the second half. It also had a Ms. Marvel strip and also an Avengers one. If you felt like replacing it, ebay's probably the place to get it.
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