Hatch, Match & Dispatch – October 2021

Blimey AND crikey! It's all happening this month over at Rusty Manor where we're looking back at the British comics anniversaries for October 2021 -- could this be our BUSIEST MONTH EVER? Maybe! I don't know! I can't be bothered to check!

Hatch, Match & Dispatch – Feb 2021

Our regular look at the British comics that are marking an important anniversary in the coming month...

Rusty’s Reviews Round-Up

To save you literally whiles of searching through this blog, here are all of Rusty's reviews in one place! Updated: 3 July 2021 Comics: The Bank Street Book of Science Fiction -- 7 Feb 2020 Batman Monthly -- 26 Jun 2020 Battle Picture Weekly -- 2 Jun 2019 Bea -- 15 Aug 2017 Boy's Cinema …

Enfari’s Syndrome: Captain Britain

In 1976 an Irish kid living in the suburbs of Dublin was taking a bit of risk buying a comic called Captain Britain. Especially a kid like me: I was very small for my age, couldn't fight, and lacked the physical prowess to out-run a tree... and I possessed a self-defeating tendency to smart-mouth the …

Dateline: 26 Feb 1977

If you're a fan of British comics it possibly hasn't escaped your notice that 2000AD was launched this week(ish) in the year 1977. Forty-three years ago, that was: some of the photons that left our sun on the day the comic was launched have potentially now travelled all the way to the binary star system …

Hatch, Match & Dispatch – January 2020

We're into 2020 now, which means that 1940 was a round number of years ago. This in turn means that this year we'll be acknowledging the anniversaries of the deaths of a lot of British comics thanks to the paper shortages of World War II. None for January, thankfully, but they're coming (spoiler: one of …

Marvel UK 70s & 80s Leftovers Timeline

A few weeks ago we looked at the Mighty World of Marvel and Spider-Man Comics Weekly family trees, so here's a timeline of the remaining Marvel UK comics of the 70s and 80s. Why only the 70s & 80s? Why, that's simple! Beyond the 80s it's a scary nightmarish quagmire, that's why. Marvel UK was …

Branding: Spider-Man Comics Weekly

In the first part of this highly-acclaimed-by-me series, we looked at how the Doctor Who Weekly comic evolved into the Doctor Who Magazine magazine. This time, it's the turn of another staple of the Marvel UK publishing group, Spider-Man Comics Weekly. A spin-off from The Mighty World of Marvel -- launched four months earlier -- Spider-Man …

The MWOM & SMCW Timeline

"The what timeline?" I imagine that I hear you ask. Wonder no more, chum: those four-letter words that look a bit like they might be the names of Welsh TV stations are the commonly-used shortcuts for The Mighty World of Marvel and Spider-Man Comics Weekly, the first two titles released by the British wing of …