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 …

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 …

Pocket-Money Comics: Captain America

Captain America Publisher: Marvel UK Issues: 59 First issue: 25 February 1981 Last issue: 7 April 1982 Absorbed: Marvel Action, Marvel Super Adventure By February 1981, Marvel UK had been running for nine years and had published over thirty different titles, to varying degrees of success (for example, the 1975 weekly edition of The Savage …