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 …

Pocket-Money Comics: Star Wars Weekly

More Star Wars = Better. That was the simple formula by which we Star Wars fans lived back in the 1970s, hence our excitement when we learned that Marvel UK would be releasing a weekly Star Wars comic. But as it turned out, we didn't even have to wait until Star Wars Weekly had finished …

Pocket-Money Comics: Look-In

Look-In Publisher: ITP / IPC First issue: 9 Jan 1971 Last issue: 12 March 1994 Issues: 1210 In print for EXACTLY two decades, two years, two months and two days -- and another day, and another year -- Look-In was a hybrid of magazine and comic, quite unusual for its time, though not entirely unique. …

The Eagle Timeline

The Eagle Family Tree was one of the first major posts on this blog, back in May 2018, but it's always bothered me a little that I did it the lazy way, showing only the hierarchical relationships between the comics and not a proper time-line. Plus, unlike some of the later timelines on this blog …

In-Shallow Profile: Foom #8

My first proper taste of comic-book fandom -- other than the atrocious comics I drew for myself -- came from Marvel with the December 1974 issue of their in-house fanzine Foom. Foom is an acronym for "Friends of Ol' Marvel" because, well, of course it is. Stan Lee, right? It was a quarterly publication that …

Most Popular Posts of 2019!

I'm happy to announce that Rusty Staples' sophomore year ("sophomore" is American high-school slang for "second") was even more successful than its first, even despite the four-month drought in the summer when I was too busy to post anything (due to a heavy workload, a week's holiday in London, the World Science Fiction Convention in …

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 …