Rusty Staples – Mike Writes About Comics!
Everything you ever needed to know about comics (limited to the stuff that I know and am willing to tell you)!
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 … Continue reading Branding: Spider-Man Comics Weekly
"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 … Continue reading The MWOM & SMCW Timeline
Hello, girls and boys! Are you sitting comfortably? Well, stop fidgeting, then. And stop picking at that or it'll never heal. I swear, if you don't all settle down right now I'm going to turn this internet around and we'll all go home! Is that what you want? Is it? No? I didn't think so. … Continue reading The Playhour Timeline
Comic Cuts was, for a time, synonymous with comics in general. Indeed, no one is likely to be hanged for suggesting that it's the source of the word "comic" when applied to the medium that today we call comic-books and comic-strips: Comic Cuts was originally a compilation of amusing cartoons taken from other publications... that … Continue reading Comic Cuts, 29 November 1919
A follow-up to The Avengers Battle the Earth Wrecker, which was the first novel based on a Marvel comic, Captain America: The Great Gold Steal was published by Bantam Books in July 1968. Clunky title aside, it's actually a rather good adventure. It's better written than the Avengers novel, but the plot's a little more … Continue reading Captain America: The Great Gold Steal
If you were a Star Wars fan back in the 1970s there was no end of tie-in merchandise available. Toys, t-shirts, lampshades, pyjamas, comics, books, rhino saddles, all sorts of branded stuff was yours for the buying as long as you had the money, but that certainly wasn't true for all big movies. I was … Continue reading Superman: The Movie promo card
The British Science Fiction anthology comic 2000AD has, as of this week, reached issue 2104, which means it has overtaken War Picture Library (Amalgamated Press / Fleetway / IPC, from 1 Sep 1958 to 3 Dec 1984) in the number-of-issues stakes and thus moved into tenth place in the longevity charts. (I've decided to keep … Continue reading The British Comics Top-10 Longevity Chart!
