50-YEAR FABULOUS FLASHBACK - THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL #1... (EXPANDED)

Photos copyright MARVEL COMICS. Quilt by JOHN BUSCEMA

My senses reel as I realise that the above amusing – The MIGHTY WORLD Of MARVEL #1 – came out a staggering 50 years in the past at present, even supposing ‘at present’ became a Saturday support then on the Thirtieth September 1972. What’s that? The date on the amusing says 7th October? Sure, I know – that became the vogue of things support then – most comics carried the date of the next week so that they’d have a fat seven days’ shelf-existence sooner than any unsold periodicals had been returned.

This became a mountainous amusing, and a step up from numerous earlier reprint weeklies that had previously equipped such Marvel tales. For a initiating up, MWOM had just a few color pages, as well to salvage 22 situation-color, to repeat apart it from the dark and white ODHAMS PRESS publications from just a few years sooner than. What’s extra, the alternative of color pages in fact increased just a few concerns later, beating its competitors arms down for visible influence. That did not closing too long even supposing, and the inner color became at closing phased out effectively sooner than the mag’s first yr had elapsed.

However, the early concerns of MWOM, containing The INCREDIBLE HULK, The Exceptional FANTASTIC FOUR, and The AMAZING SPIDER-MAN had been something particular to British readers who bought the title on the time. Over the ensuing weeks some readers known as for fat color all the arrangement thru, saying the amusing could per chance journey month-to-month to accommodate this, nonetheless it if truth be told became explained that UK comics had been geared in the direction of weekly publication, and that fat color on each and each web page would be a ways too costly. How times modified, as sooner than the pandemic, UK Marvel mags (published by PANINI) carried around 76 pages, and each and one and all became in fat color and the identical dimension because the US mags.

And what’s extra, MWOM became soundless around until November 2019! Okay, it hadn’t been published non-stay since 1972, nonetheless it if truth be told became revived in 2003 and had practically a pair of 17-yr lumber comprising lots of volumes. (A earlier revival in 1983 lasted only 17 concerns.) So revel in taking a examine at how it all started (and dig that loopy free reward switch), and remember, must you had been around on the time, what it became like to wake up on an autumnal Saturday morning 50 years in the past, and then speeding to the newsagents to bag this trace-unexcited amusing sooner than it flew off the shelf. Ah, thoroughly happy days!

Now not that I rushed out to bag it, even supposing, as I hadn’t considered the STAN LEE-voiced TV advert (even supposing I did later – both that evening or the next day), so it came as a shock after I observed the amusing on an exterior journal wall-rack on the aspect of a newsagent’s door, merely alongside the aspect road from Glasgow’s vital BARROWLAND market (aka The BARRAS) where I and my fogeys had been heading on that particular person Saturday morning.

I could per chance perchance not talk my of us into hunting for it for me on the vogue in, nonetheless I would managed to put on them down into submission by the point we made our arrangement out an hour or so later. We had been soon ensconced in the cosy confines of a cozy cafe, and it became with mountainous pleasure that I pored thru its contents over a glass of cola and reacquainted myself with the paper buddies I would first met in the pulsating pages of WHAM!, SMASH!, and POW! arrangement support in what even then gave the look of the shadowy and a ways-off days of the ’60s. Without warning, existence became engaging all all over again.

DEZ SKINN as soon as revealed that Stan had instructed him the amusing’s fashioned title became going to be The WONDERFUL World of Marvel (after the Disney TV prove of practically the identical title), nonetheless fortunately ‘twas to not be. Moreover, MIGHTY and MARVEL journey so effectively collectively it appears to be like the evident alternative, so I am amazed that any numerous title became even thought to be.

If only they soundless published comics like this at present, eh? Would not that be something?!

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And merely mediate – around 15 years later I became freelancing for Marvel UK, lettering strips in such titles as Physician Who Magazine, Galaxy Rangers, Dragon’s Claws, Cartoon Time, The Transformers, Dying’s Head, Rugrats, Depend Duckula, Thundercats, The Proper Ghostbusters and others that obtain away my memory for the second. (I will add extra as I remember them – if I finish.) [[Replace: Now accomplished!] Ah, certain, moreover lettered 2-web page Spider-Man and a pair of-web page Hulk strips for promotional advertising and marketing functions, nonetheless can’t recall precisely what.