Comics in the Wild: #20221024

Comics in the Wild is just like our hyper-popular Comics on TV feature, but without the TV part!

Hatch, Match & Dispatch – July 2020

It's that time again, "Rusty Staples" readers! It's the last Monday of the month, and that means we get to look ahead to see which British comics are celebrating (or commiserating) a major anniversary in the coming month. This time around the list includes a couple of Judge Dredd titles, a couple of Conans, some …

Altered Images: Albert Fitzwilliam Digby

Oddities #20200110

I don't know whether the Sunday papers still produce magazines (I'm not entirely sure that the Sunday papers still produce Sunday papers), but Eagle-eyed readers of the Telegraph Sunday Magazine, number 49, dated August 21 1977, will have spotted that that cover of that issue bears a remarkable resemblance to the cover of the first …

Star Wars in 2000AD, part 1

Solar Salutations, fellow humans! It's time once again to splice the hatches and batten down the mainbrace and settle in for a long meander down retrospect river, because Unky Rusty has wrangled his trained pedantosaur out of its pen (actually, it's more of a paddock than a pen) and taken it foraging for juicy and …

Noncomics: KP Outer Spacers Free Space Posters

In the late 1970s, uncoincidentally around the time Star Wars was released and gave science fiction a massive boost in popularity, KP Snacks released Outer Spacers. Subtitled "Crispy Corn Snacks for Cosmonauts" these were cheap but tasty fried snacks -- sort of a sci-fi version of the more famous Monster Munch -- available in a …

Master of Menace!

Free with issue #7 of the relaunched Eagle (8th May, 1982, right), this oddly washed-out poster of Dan Dare's arch-nemesis The Mekon. Subsequent issues provided colour "Cut-Out-And-Collect-And-Ruin-Your-Comic" pictures of Dan Dare and supporting characters to fill the gaps. Usually Fleetway/IPC comics of the era had free gifts with the first three issues, and then the …

Journey Planet #23: Dan Dare

Issue #23 of the free on-line fanzine takes a look at Britain's legendary science fiction hero Dan Dare, with Michael Carroll co-editing! It's a massive issue that looks at the Colonel in print and everywhere! Featuring words from James Bacon, Richard Bruton, Jim Burns, Chris Garcia, James Shields, Bryan Talbot and many, many more! Download …

The Parent of Modern Comics?

Some will disagree (and they have every right to do so, even if they’re wrong) but it seems to me that the first mass-market comic that really understood its readers without patronising them was Eagle. First published in on April 14, 1950, at a price of three pence (equivalent to about US$192.72 in modern money, …