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 …

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 …

Rusty’s Reviews Round-Up

Angry news first: WordPress -- the content management system on which this blog runs -- has decided to force me to use its absolutely horrible, baffling and extremely user-hostile new editor, which I utterly hate and despise and hate again. And what's more, I also hate that I don't have the option to switch back …

Star Wars Day!

For the past few years the fourth day of May has been pushed as "Star Wars Day" because "May the 4th" sounds like "May the Force" (this is something that young Rusty spotted back in 1978, but tragically failed to trademark), even though it means everyone is quietly ignoring the fact that none of 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 …

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 …

Rusty Staples: Year One

Hello there (or indeed anywhere) Rusty Staples fans! Can you believe that it's been a whole year already since this blog was launched? Amazing! And what a year's it's been: absolutely packed from beginning to end with days, weeks and even months -- who says I don't give you value for money? It all began …

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 …

Star Wars in 2000AD, part 2

Due to the huge moderate success of the first part of this series -- in which I explored the appearances of Star Wars-related material in the legendary British science fiction anthology comic 2000AD -- I decided that I would, after all, finish compiling my carefully-researched and luckily-stumbled-upon material into a second, and probably final, part. …

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 …