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| Copyright MARVEL COMICS |
If pressed, I'd say that my favourite comic of the '70s was The Mighty World Of Marvel. Great name, great content, great presentation (in the main), and it stayed pretty much that way for the first 30 issues or so. In early 1979 it was relaunched as Marvel Comic, and the interiors looked like any other UK comic for boys, visually losing the Marvel magic which had once been so distinctive.
Having shown issue #330 recently (when it changed its name and direction), I decided to show you the very last issue of MWOM before its transformation, but I no longer actually owned it. Never mind, that's what eBay's for, so I bought a copy and it arrived today. Therefore here's a few pages just to give you a taste of what the comic was like before it changed and then vanished forever.
Having said that, it wasn't gone for long really, as it reappeared just over three years later in May of '83 (dated June) as a monthly, though unfortunately it only survived for 17 issues. Jumping ahead almost 20 years, Panini brought it back as a US-sized, full-colour monthly, and it had a good long run until only a couple or so years back. Who knows, with a bit of luck maybe it'll pop up again one day. Here's hoping.
6 comments:
At least MWOM ended with a great cover!
I'm not too keen on The Hulk's face though, CJ. It's a bit flat looking.
MWOM weekly had really become a shadow of its former self I had lost interest in the comic well before this time only buying it ( and Spider-Man,) out have habit or some silly sense of comic book loyalty. I liked the first NWOM UK Marvel monthly title and Marvel Superheroes. Marvel Comic was a strange idea and a backward move to the UK traditional comics format which was "old hat" even then, so why Dez decided to move to an old format was a strange one ( possibly thinking of 2000ADs success) I think MWOM may have been my fav UK 1970s title as well despite that rapid fall in production .
I think Dez might have talked Stan round by saying that the 'new' format would give the readers twice the content for the same money, McS, so how could they fail? Well, they did, going by their relatively short runs before morphing into something else. I doubt that 2000 A.D. would've had much influence on Marvel Comic as 2000 A.D. was looking more 'American' in style (artwork and layout-wise), whereas Marvel UK was harking back to the 'Power Comic' days. Dez would certainly have liked to emulate 2000 A.D.'s success though.
Marvel Comic became a real dog’s dinner with “emergency” content after a few issues and then merging with Spider-Man comic only to come back with the old numbering.
I just wish it had mixed the content up a bit more down the years as well as let the Fantastic Four have an equal share of the cover, alternating with other cover stars.
One of the first mistakes that MWOM made after about 30-odd issues (33 maybe?) was to make The Hulk the main star and give him two strips per issue. That's probably why the FF didn't then feature as much on the covers, apart from tiny panels. They should've kept Daredevil (though he was eventually restored to the comic after a while) and, as you say, alternated who was the main star of the cover every week.
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