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| Images copyright MARVEL COMICS |
April 13th, 1983 - that's when The MIGHTY THOR #1 (British edition) hit the shelves of newsagents across the country. A week later, The ORIGINAL X-MEN #1 sat side-by-side with issue #2 of the thunder god's comic, giving all us Merry Marvellites two new mags to add to our collections on a weekly basis. We'll get to Thor in a future post, but even though it means I'm slightly out of sequence (and there's a reason for that, which will become apparent at a later date), let's focus for the moment on the X-Men.
The cover banner was a bit of a cheat as not every page was in full-colour; some were, but the rest had only spot-colour, and letters and competition pages were mostly in black and white with spot-colour logos and blurbs. However, what with glossy covers and colour pages, British Marvel was beginning to recapture a touch of the style possessed by their mags in the early 1970s, before they'd gone down the route of re-sized, black and white comic papers that resembled the output of their IPC and D.C. THOMSON rivals.
The stories were re-presentations of the reprints from the U.S. title, AMAZING ADVENTURES (Vol 3), from 1979. The tales were abridged by one page then divided in two, with a new splash page created for the second half of each story. The U.S. mag lasted 14 issues, the British one survived for 17, before then being merged with its companion weekly, Thor. Amazing Adventures featured six new covers by JOHN BYRNE, BOB BUDIANSKY and AL MILGROM, but the U.K. comic ignored them, initially, for ones by Brit artist JOHN RIDGEWAY, and later by GIL KANE, from when the original U.S. X-Men mag had reprinted the tales in the early '70s.
I'd bought the first three issues while living in one house, and #4 came out almost a week after moving to a new one. However, the tenancy on our old home had a few weeks still to run, so we'd left a few items of furniture to collect at our leisure. On the day I bought #5, I stopped in at my old abode en route to my new one and sat on a wicker chair in my old room, drinking in the familiar view beyond the window, as the sun began its sad slow descent towards the horizon and one era of my life drew to a close forever.
However, you know what they say about forever, and just over four years later, we returned to our former abode, where I've lived ever since. It's strange to look at these X-Men comics today (and the Thor ones) and realise I associate the first few with my current bedroom, and the others with the bedroom of my 'new' house, even though they've now spent far more time here than there.
Anyway, that's quite enough of my personal reminiscences - I'm sure you'll all have your own recollections of when you first experienced these comics from over 30 years ago, so why not tell us about them in the comments section? We'll be waiting. And don't forget to be here for Part Two - coming soon.
NEXT: "A Stranger In Town".
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(Sharp-eyed readers will notice that there's a week's gap in the dates between issue #2 & 3, so the third ish must have been delayed for some reason - or just had the wrong date.)
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