Week Ending

  It is still 1974, I am about a year away from my dad pulling his van up outside the local newsagent and sending his collection of near feral children in with 10p each and the almost unheard of instruction to "buy yourselves something", thus it will be a full 12-months before my life is changed forever by the purchase of my first Marvel UK weekly. I wonder which title I would have selected if this had been the week instead? I like to imagine it would have been MWOM #85 but a more realistic part of me suspects that the temptation of a full size Mars Bar would have won the younger and more fickle Tim over. Meanwhile, here in 2022 I have purchased myself a new laptop. This will hopefully lead to a more coherent blog experience and greatly reduce the strain on my old eyes from trying to communicate my mutterings via a phone app.   Mighty World of Marvel #85 Ron Wilson and Mike Esposito supply us with a captive and weirdly diminutive Hulk for this week's cover. Peculiar scale

Apologies for the slow down in posting. The problem with mid-life crisis' (crisises? crisisi?) is they tend to make you revive all the hobbies of your youth while granting you none of the time and energy you used to possess. At least Marvel UK were on the ball back in 1974, with some engaging covers to soothe our short attention spans. Mighty World of Marvel #84 This week's issue gives us a reworking of the original Herb Trimpe cover, some small changes to accommodate the UK title format and revised colouring that has an almost watercolour look to it. It appeals to both my eye and sense of nostalgia. The Incredible Hulk: Death Match! Reprinting The Incredible Hulk #125 MWOM #83 contrived to send Bruce Banner into space at the controls of an experimental rocket for reasons I have already forgotten. The narrative purpose was actually as an excuse to bring back The Absorbing Man from his interstellar banishment by Odin. As long-time blog readers will know,

I'm not going to pretend this is a strong week for Marvel UK weekly covers, but also let us not indulge the fantasy that I would not have picked up each of these issues had I the opportunity. Mighty World of Marvel #83 Mike Esposito and John Tartaglione offer up a cover that while at first I did not like, I was willing to forgive because of the inclusion of the Nicolas Cage cameo in the bottom right hand corner. Despite the crude appearance of the artwork, something about this cover has since won me over. The Incredible Hulk: ...And Now, The Absorbing Man! Reprinting The Incredible Hulk #125 Fresh from the disastrous attempted wedding of Bruce Banner and Betty Ross, The Incredible Runaway Bridegroom is rampaging as only he knows how. Eventually falling asleep and reverting to Banner, he awakes in time to hear a radio newsflash warning of a comet on course to collide with Earth. Displaying the same knack for setting up these stories as Stan, Roy Thomas has Ba

Of the nine stories included in this week's Marvel UK anthology format, I find it hard to believe these were the best cover options available. The glossiness of the covers were doing a lot of the heavy lifting this week when it came to taking sales from the homegrown UK comics. Mighty World of Marvel #82 The first of our not so great covers is at least based on the US original, though some odd choices seem to have been made for its trip across the pond. As well as playing with the colouring, to the overall detriment of the cover art, it would seem that British kids were as sensitive about religion as they were about international politics, resulting in the figure of the priest on the original Herb Trimpe cover being altered to look like a random guest who chose to turn up at a wedding in blue overalls.  The Incredible Hulk: Do You Take This Hulk! Reprinting The Incredible Hulk #124 Bruce Banner is now in control of his transformation into the Hulk and decide

What constitutes a 'good' week in Marvel UK on the blog is purely subjective. Despite the best efforts of the creative team behind these weeklies in 1974, if I'm having a bad day, I will probably be unfairly harsh on these innocent comics. However, the reverse is also true, I have had a cracking week and as a result have found myself far more open to the waves of nostalgic joy issuing from their newsprint pages as a result. Swings and roundabouts. Mighty World of Marvel #81 Is it just me, or is this Ed Hannigan/Pablo Marcos cover giving off a strong '100th' issue vibe? Nice to see the FF back on the cover, even if they had to experience a two week break in order to be deemed worthy of such an honour. It may not be the greatest offering from an artistic perspective, but tell me you wouldn't have snatched this straight off the newsagents shelves? The Incredible Hulk: The Rhino Says No! Reprinting The Incredible Hulk #124 Readers of a certai

Quite the mixed bag of covers this week a reprint of a reprint for SMCW, The Avengers get a UK exclusive effort that makes you wonder what was up with the original options, but it is MWOM that is the clear winner, the Hulk, the Leader and a Murder Module, who could ask for more? Mighty World of Marvel #80 While I am familiar with the Murder Module from later in the Hulk's run, I had no idea that it had made this earlier appearance. Herb Trimpe takes a fundamentally silly concept and makes it look pretty cool for this cover. The Incredible Hulk: No More The Monster! Reprinting The Incredible Hulk #123 After temporarily taking down the Hulk, Reed Richards working with notes from Bruce 89 gets out his newest mad scientist equipment to cure the Hulk of his Hulkiness. Which takes the dramatic route of vaporising him before reassembling his component atoms. You can start to see why Ben Grimm gets a little cynical whenever Reed comes up with his latest cure for the