In-Shallow Profile: Marvel Super Specials

The Marvel Super Specials series was a collection of one-shot comics published from September 1977 to November 1986, most of them featuring adaptations of then-current movies. I have no doubts that the series was inspired by the tremendous success of Marvel's Star Wars specials: their six-issue comic-book adaptation of the movie was repackaged as a …

Comics That Never Were #3

Welcome, readers, to the long-unawaited third episode in our sporadic and unreliable series in which your Uncle Rusty takes a look at comics that didn't actually exist in this universe but should have... In the 1970s (a sort of prototype version of the 1980s, but with wider ties, longer hair, and orange and brown wallpaper) …

Oddities: Goody Goody comic

Long before The Young Ones deigned to (dis)grace the TV airwaves, and longer before I'd even heard of Monty Python's Flying Circus, my comedy heroes were Bill Oddie, Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor, AKA The Goodies. They were silly, inventive, childish, slightly subversive, much more accessible to younger people like myself, and above all they …

Hatch, Match & Dispatch – Oct 2020

Welcome to the new-look edition Hatch, Match and Dispatch, readers! It's mostly just the comics' details and cover image this time -- and far, far less of the usual rambling trivia from me. The excision of said rambling trivia saves me time writing it, and saves you time reading it: we're all winners! (See also …

Advanced Comic Storage

For many years I've been storing my US-sized comics in standard comic boxes... ... and while they are pretty handy for keeping the comics together -- and safe -- it can be a bit awkward when I need to dig out a particular issue. Because of the cruel nature of this dimension in which I …

Comics on TV: The Deceived

The Deceived is a four-part contemporary thriller created and written by Lisa McGee (of Derry Girls fame) and Tobias Beer. It's recently finished airing on Virgin Media One here in Ireland, and for me, personally, it was an absolute triumph. Not because of the story or the acting or the scenery or whatever, although there …

Happy 30th Birthday, Judge Dredd Megazine!

(Bear with me, folks... this one is going to ramble a bit. For a change.) Long before Judge Dredd The Megazine was launched in 1990, the words "Judge Dredd comic for older readers" were being whispered in the hallowed halls of comicdom. Although only around since 2000AD's second issue in 1977, Dredd had proved to …

Euphobia

Comics come and go, as we all know. No publication lasts forever, except maybe The Beano which is still going strong after eighty-two years (with over 4000 issues published) -- long may it continue. But I'm sure that just about all comic-book fans know the sting of discovering that one of their favourites has been …

Noncomics: Superman – Last Son of Krypton

In the 1970s and early 1980s streaming a movie was called "reading the novelisation" (except in America, where they instead had novelizations, with a zed, which they pronounce as "zee"). Every major movie -- and an awful lot of minor ones -- was given a second life in the form of a prose adaptation. And …

Hatch, Match & Dispatch – September 2020

Welcome to the twelfth monthly Hatch, Match & Dispatch feature here on Rusty Staples! It's a hefty one this time, chums, and took me a rather long time to compile (I'd like to thank the decision-makers at WordPress for forcing me to use their new editor and thus making the process even longer). Standard disclaimer: …