The final issue of TV TORNADO

Comics based on TV shows were quite a thing in the mid-20th Century. From TV Comic and TV Fun to Look-In and Beeb, they met with varying degrees of success. in the 1960s City Magazines had joined the party with comics such as Yogi Bear's Own, Huckleberry Hound Weekly, and of course the hugely popular and best remembered TV Century 21. 

TV21 had a few companion comics that, apart from Lady Penelope weekly, didn't fare as well. Joe 90 Top Secret, Solo, ...and TV Tornado. The odd thing about TV Tornado was that some of its strips were not even based on TV shows, although it might have been great to have watched a Magnus Robot Fighter tv series in the 1960s.

I must confess I didn't think much to TV Tornado when I was a kid. I had the first issue and never bothered with it again. It seemed to be a very bland comic that didn't compare favourably to TV21 or American comics. Some of its content, such as the aforementioned Magnus Robot Fighter, were actually resized, edited reprints from U.S. Gold Key comics, but they lacked the dynamism of the Marvel Comics being reprinted in Fantastic at that time.

Seems that other kids felt the same, as TV Tornado only lasted 88 weeks before merging into TV21. (A merger that arguably weakened TV21.) However, I know that some have a soft spot for this comic so I thought I'd show a few extracts from the final issue...

By the way, TV Tornado was edited by Mick Anglo, who had created Marvelman in the 1950s. TV Tornado's fictional editor, Ed Storm, bore an uncanny resemblance to "The Skipper", the fictional editor of Super DC, which was launched in 1969. Even the page layouts looked similar. Hardly surprising, as the editor of Super DC was also... Mick Anglo!