Fantastic news! The Complete JOHNNY FUTURE is coming in 2020!

It's up for pre-order on Amazon now so I guess it's OK to finally reveal that next year Rebellion will be collecting the complete Missing Link / Johnny Future stories into one volume! The Complete Johnny Future is set for an April 2020 release. Britain's swinging Sixties superhero is back in print!

Written by Alf Wallace and drawn by Luis Bermejo, the strip ran in Fantastic weekly in 1967, - the only originated strip in a comic otherwise dominated by Marvel reprint.

Beginning as a Hulk-like creature, the character's strip was titled The Missing Link for the first few months until exposure to radiation evolved the primitive being into a highly advanced human. The strip then changed its title to Johnny Future, and the lead character embarked on a career as a costumed superhero, fighting bizarre villains.

If that all sounds a bit strange, it was, and the quirky, unpredictable nature of those strips published by Odhams is what made them appealing. The artwork by Luis Bermejo is stunning, and the strip became a firm favourite of those of us who read it back then (including Alan Moore). I know for a fact that the news of this collection will be warmly received by many, and I'm sure the book will delight new readers too.

Bear in mind that the cover shown here may be subject to change before publication. Amazon tend to want covers well in advance and changes often occur in the final design, so it might look a bit different by next April! 

You can pre-order the book from Amazon here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Johnny-Future-Missing-Link/dp/178108758X

I'll post more news about the book when Rebellion issue the official press release. For now, here's a few pages I scanned from my own Fantastic collection...

Comic Oddities: WONDER (1968)

Here's a comic from the 1960s that wasn't on sale in any newsagents but still had national distribution. The reason being that Wonder Weekly was published by the Esso Petrolium Company Ltd, and sold at Esso garages.

Wonder was edited by Roberta Leigh, a multi-talented author, artist, composer, and tv producer who was responsible for the cult classic Space Patrol puppet series. She had also created the puppet show Wonder Boy and Tiger, and featured them as the cover stars of the new comic.

Wonder had 16 pages including 4 in full colour, and was printed web offset (like Jag and Cor!! but on slightly thicker paper). It sold for 6d, so it was a competitive price to other comics of the day, even though most others would have more pages. Most of the artwork was uncredited (typical of UK comics) but has a very European look so I imagine most of the artists were recruited through an agency. Here's a few pages. I've credited them where known...

Hovercraft Patrol, art by Luis Bermejo.

Nitwits art by Joseph Lee.

Bossy Boots art by Juan Rafart (signed as RAF).

Gulliver Travels art by Juan Rafart (signed 'Raf').

I only saw this comic once, in the summer of 1968, sold from a stall at the Royal Show when I was on a school trip. I didn't buy it then as it probably wouldn't have survived the journey with a bus full of kids wanting to borrow it, so I made a mental note to get it when I returned home. My family never had a car so as I never visited a garage I never saw the comic again, and it always puzzled me for years until I learned of its restriction to Esso outlets. I've since bought a few on eBay, but it remains a rare item to find, and no one seems certain of how many were produced. Denis Gifford's books say 52, and a year's contract would make sense, but I've never known of anyone to have issues beyond No.20. If you have any more info, please post a comment below (or just post a comment anyway if you have any thoughts on this comic).

FANTASTIC 50th!

Fifty years ago, on Saturday 11th February 1967, Odhams launched Fantastic comic, a new weekly that is still fondly remembered to this day. Odhams had been presenting reprints of Marvel strips in their other comics for several months by this time; The Incredible Hulk in Smash!, The Fantastic Four in Wham!, Spider-Man and Nick Fury in Pow!, but those reprints were sharing space with traditional British humour and adventure content. With Fantastic, the content was 90% Marvel reprint, (later 100%), making the comic unlike any other weekly on the stands in 1967.  

We're talking about classic Marvel material too, with strips by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Don Heck and more from the dawn of what Stan coined as "The Marvel Age of Comics". (Not that Odhams called it that. They changed references of Marvel to Power, to suit their Power Comics imprint.) Although it reprinted the strips in black and white, and usually cut into two or three parts, the reproduction of the strips had never been so crisp and clear. 

For many readers, Fantastic was a great introduction to the Marvel Universe and we became hooked on the comic. It was exciting and dynamic, making traditional British comics such as Victor look terribly dull in comparison. An advert in the Daily Mirror proclaimed Fantastic as "The new comic book that's so different!" and for many of us, that was part of its appeal. It had 40 pages, so was thicker than most other comics of the period, although that necessitated a 9d cover price meaning it was also one of the most expensive comics in 1967 too. (Most comics were 7d, Dandy and Beano were still only 3d.)

Sadly, perhaps the majority of British kids had more conservative tastes, or 9d was too expensive, for Fantastic only lasted for 89 weeks. Clearly it was ahead of its time (as were its loyal readers) because that similar template of packaging three Marvel stories into a 40 page comic was used with more success in 1972 with Marvel UK's The Mighty World of Marvel, and is still pretty much the format still used today in the popular 76 page Marvel Collector's Editions published by Panini UK.

The back-up strip in Fantastic was brand new; The Missing Link, superbly illustrated by Luis Bermejo. The Link would later evolve into UK superhero Johnny Future but here's the first episode when he was still a lumbering brute...

The free gift in Fantastic No.1 was suitably different too; a soft plastic pennant that could be used for various purposes. (I used mine as a pen holder for a while, and, yes, I still have it.) Artwork to insert into the pennant was on the back page of Fantastic and different characters were on the back pages of Wham!, Smash! and Pow! that week as well.

From a personal viewpoint, I have fond memories of Fantastic. It was a bit expensive, and my parents were already buying me several comics a week, so my Aunt Joan used to buy me Fantastic (and its soon-to-follow companion comic Terrific). I remember her bringing them for me every Saturday afternoon when she'd finished her shift at the bakehouse. (I'd save Terrific to read on a Sunday.) Happy times, long gone, but comics can be great artefacts for stirring up memories. 

I know some feel that 50 years ago was just like yesterday, but I must admit it really does feel like a very long time ago to me, when one considers the numerous things that happen in one's life over such a period. They were good days though, and Fantastic made the swingin' sixties swing even more. 

Here's how Fantastic was advertised in the Daily Mirror on Friday 10th February 1967. (Yes, I've kept this clipping for 50 years!)

...and how it was heralded in Pow! a week earlier (Pow! No.4, on sale 4th Feb 1967)...

As they told us, there's no doubt about it. It certainly was Fantastic!

Luis Bermejo Rojo 1931 - 2015

I'm very sorry to hear of the passing of Spanish artist Luis Bermejo Rojo, who has died at the age of 84. Some of his many comic strips included work in War Picture Libraries for the UK and Creepy for the USA. I knew his style through the pages of Fantastic in 1967 when he illustrated The Missing Link, the Hulk-like creature who, after several weeks, evolved into the British superhero Johnny Future. In all, the strip ran for 51 weeks, with Bermejo producing top class artwork every time, making it a favourite of many readers (myself included).

John Freeman has a more thorough tribute to the artist on the Down the Tubes blog, which you can read at this link:
http://downthetubes.net/?p=27595

My condolences to Mr.Berjemo's family and friends at this sad time.