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| Copyright MARVEL COMICS |
When The Mighty World Of Marvel #1 made its debut on September 30th 1972 (cover-dated the following week), it had newsprint paper covers the same as the interior pages. 67 issues later the covers went glossy (and the interior printing often went a bit murky), but for 66 glorious numbers, MWOM was a class act among British comics of the time. Going from memory, #54 was the last to contain 40 pages (with no interior colour, unlike the earliest issues), and the comic consisted of only 32 pages until #67, when the page count was upped to 36 (and the price to 6p).
Here then, for those who were there at the time, are all 66 pre-glossy covered issues for you to salivate over and remember your childhood and teenage years. Hard to believe it all started 51 years ago as it seems to my mind to be nowhere near as long as that - more like 51 weeks, truth be told. I love looking at these covers, but much as I enjoy doing so, I can't help but think "There goes my boyhood!" as I drink in their captivating colours and dynamic displays of action and adventure. Is it the same for you? Then share your reminiscences with your fellow Crivvies!
And below, the first three glossy covered issues of MWOM - a new era.
As you know, Kid, I didn't discover Marvel until POTA #5 in November '74 but I'm fascinated by these old MWOM covers. In my opinion they were greatly improved when the covers stopped being divided in two and the Hulk became the sole cover star.
ReplyDeleteI've got nothing against 'split' covers per se, CJ, it all depends on how well they're drawn. Some of the split covers in this post look quite interesting to me. Although, as far as MWOM goes, I'd have kept three different strips in the comic and alternated them as the featured cover 'stars' from week to week.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your efforts on these and other such posts. Those early Jim Starlin efforts were interesting. I hit MWOM at the sweet spot of 10 years old, completely ignorant of Fantastic etc that came before.
ReplyDeleteAnd I appreciate you taking the time to inform me of your appreciation, S. Oddly, I don't think that Starlin has ever mentioned the MWOM covers he produced when later recounting his earlier career. Wonder if he just forgot about them?
ReplyDeleteGreat to see all these again in one place. I still have my original copies of 1 to 30 and a few of the others shown here I particularly remember the excitment of seeing those Hulk, Avenges and FF covers (47-50) Great times .
ReplyDeleteI remember that Thing/Hulk punch-up as if it were only yesterday, McS. I'd first read at least part of it before when it was reprinted in Smash! a few years earlier, but the pages had been resized. The MWOM presentation was better, and George Roussos's inks (under the name of Bell) never looked better over Jack Kirby's pencils. Usually I wasn't a fan of his inking on Kirby, but here it seemed to work. Like you say, great times.
ReplyDeleteRemember many of these and realize that DD is probably Starlin. It was like a Time Machine because DD was an established title and reading these early stories let me read stories not reprinted until many decades later.
ReplyDeleteIt's a shame that DD only lasted 13 issues for his first run in MWOM, PS. Starlin certainly drew the first few covers for his UK appearance. I think some DD tales were reprinted in a US Marvel mag during the '70s, but forget the title.
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