The Brand New Comic for the New Breed of Comic Fans - Strap line on the cover of Pow! No.1 published Saturday 14th January 1967.
Forty years ago today, following the success of Wham! and Smash!, Odhams launched the first issue of Pow! across the UK. For the tens of thousands of British kids who bought it, myself included, it was our first exposure to Spider-Man, the lead strip in the new weekly. That's hard to believe today, now that Spidey is the megastar of movies, games, and countless items of merchandise, but back in 1967 that wasn't the case.
Back then, unless one had seen the imported Marvel comics that some newsagents stocked, the Odhams comics provided the perfect introduction to Marvel superheroes. (Although I suspect the main reason for including US reprint was to save Odhams money on originating new material.) Therefore The Incredible Hulk thundered into Smash! in 1966, closely followed by The Fantastic Four in Wham! and (presumably because it had a smaller budget) Pow! featured not only Spider-Man but also Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Like its companion papers, the rest of Pow's contents were a mixture of Beano-style funnies and Valiant-style adventure strips. Alongside the Marvel reprint, this made for an interesting and varied package. (A formula sadly abandoned in the 1970's when IPC segregated adventure and humour comics into their own titles.) The free gift of that first issue was a cardboard gun that shot cardboard pellets; a style of freebie that Odhams excelled in.
Looking at Pow! No.1 today, forty years later, it's clear that design-wise it's not as slick as the magazines of the 21st Century, but its strips had an energy and anti-authoritarian irreverence mainly lacking in modern comics. In the St.Trinians inspired Dolls of St.Dominics schoolgirls throw their teacher into the river and, tooled up with daggers, mallets, and axes, chase the errand boy out of school with cries of "Lynch him! Get the oil boiling!". Whilst in the kid-gang strip The Group the kids use a springed-boot device to kick a policeman in the face (but he gets his revenge by beating them up in the woods).
All that sounds shockingly irresponsible and violent in text like that, but in strip form it was presented as a slapstick cartoon. As far as I'm aware there was never any calls for Pow! to be banned as back then parents understood that kids could differentiate between cartoon violence and the real thing. In fact, such slapstick cruelty was frequent in the Odhams comics and it certainly never inspired my friends or myself (who read them) to imitate the acts.
Other strips in Pow! No.1 worthy of note include the start of the adventure serial The Python. (Pilots crash in the Bay of Bengal and encounter a giant robot python, which they later take control of. It's like Mytek the Mighty but with a mechanical snake instead of a mechanical gorilla!)
As he was busy on other comics, Pow! contained no work by Leo Baxendale, but artists such as Mike Brown on The Group ghosted his style well enough. However, the standout strip of the issue, and the main reason Pow! is still collectible, is the back-page strip, Dare-A-Day Davy, illustrated by the marvellous Ken Reid. The plot was simple; Davy cannot resist any dare, and this always lands him into trouble. As the weeks progressed, and the readers were invited to send in their outrageous dares (for the prize of... a pound!) the strip became even more manic and violent, showing Ken Reid's artwork at its most outrageous, and funniest.
Like any new comic, Pow! had some clunkers in there too: Jack Magic (13th Century magician's apprentice finds himself in modern times), and Wee Willie Haggis (Scottish version of Eagle-Eye from Wham!). Neither appealed to me much, and presumably didn't appeal to many readers as they were eventually dropped and replaced by much more memorable strips... but that's a story for another blog later this week.
For the second of an occasional series looking back four decades, here's the issue of Valiant that would have been on sale 40 years ago. One of Fleetway's flagship boy's weeklies it ran for many years (1962-1976) until it was eventually replaced on the production schedule by 2000 AD.
The issue dated January 14th 1967 (on sale Jan 7th) kicks off with a cover feature illustrated by Mike Western. The article reveals to its readers how commandos of the future (that's where we are now folks) will use rocket belts to "jump over the heads of an encircling enemy and enable them to escape across country by means of gigantic kangaroo leaps". Unfortunately, here in the real future, the military can't even provide troops with clean socks, so "jump belts" never got a look in.
Inside the 32 page comic, Tim Kelly (of Kelly's Eye fame) meets a duplicate Tim Kelly. And we know he's an evil duplicate because he speaks backwards and is irrationally violent! "YMENE! YORTSED...LLIK!"
Meanwhile, at the House of Dollmann, mechanical puppets Togo and Raider are captured by bank robbers, while The Steel Claw fights "an evil freak-show owner" and Captain Hurricane beats up some more comedy Nazis, as he did every week with tedious repetition.
As for Mytek the Mighty, drawn by Eric Bradbury, the giant robot ape was up against... evil robot legs. Yes, evil robot legs. Look at the panel scanned here. And it's all presented completely straight-faced. How mad is that?
One interesting ad in the comic is a page that announces the publication of the Fleetway Super Libraries. (See scan.) Four decades before Manga hit the UK, these black and white digest-sized 132-page comics featured complete full-length stories. Incidentally, the Fantastic Series which featured the Steel Claw alternating with The Spider changed its title to Stupendous Series with No.3. Presumably because Odhams were launching Fantastic the following month. (I'll be covering Fantastic in a later blog.)
It's always good to see new comic artists come along, and particularly good to see new humour artists. Best of all, to see a new comic artist doing humour comics that are genuinely funny! Recently my old pal Hunt Emerson pointed me in the direction of the website of cartoonist Laura Howell http://www.laurahowell.co.uk/Laura is currently inking Hunt's work on Ratz for The Beano (as well as writing the strip). However she's also a very accomplished cartoonist in her own right with an impressive ability to alter her style to suit the gag. Take a look at Laura's website and check out her gallery of strips. Brilliant work.
The latest issue of The Comics Journal (No.280) arrived in the post today. (It began as the fanzine The Nostalgia Journal many years ago and is now a slick 200 page square bound mag.) The standout features of this issue include an interview with Frank Thorne (an often overlooked artist with a distinct flowing style) and a great article on Crime Does Not Pay, the influential and sometimes notorious crime comic of the 1940's. Not only does Ron Goulart give a good account of the history of the comic, there's also 40 pages of full colour reprint to showcase some of the strips in their entirety. A must have mag for any fan of pre-code comics! More details at the Journal's website http://www.tcj.com/
Concluding our look back at 'zines of the heyday of UK comics fandom, here's another handful from the 1970s and 1980s.
Chain Reaction No.5 (Summer 1984): Published by Frank Plowright, Steve Whitaker, and Hassan Yusuf (who were also the organisers of the UKCAC events back then). A nicely produced and well liked fanzine with a good balance of features, art, letters and exclusive interviews. Cover of this issue is by Mike Collins (now the artist of the Doctor Who strip in Doctor Who Magazine) and inked by Mark Farmer (who went on to ink many strips including X-Men).
Doomzine No.2 (1979): Published by Jonny White. Good little 'zine which didn't run for long but was enthusiastic and enjoyable. Cover and much interior artwork by Martin Forrest, a skilled fan artist of the time.
Fantasy Advertiser No.83 (February 1984): By this time F.A. was published by Martin Lock and was similar in content and style to his old Bem 'zine. Good variety of contents, including a regular feature on British comics I contributed that I'd completely forgotten about! Cover is by Cliff Robinson who still occasionally contributes covers for Judge Dredd Megazine.
Fantasy Express No.4 (Summer 1982): Another one of my fanzines, having changed its title from Metamorph with the previous issue for reasons that now escape me. (I think I believed F.E. would be more commercial.) Contains the only fanzine interview ever published with the late Charley's War artist Joe Colquhoun (who provided the front cover). Logo is by Kevin O'Neill, who also drew the fantastic back cover which I had to include here. (Kev of course is now the artist of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.)
Golden Age Fanzine No.2 (October 1976): Another of Alan Austin's fanzines, this one focused on the superheroes of the 1940's. Like many early fanzines, the interior pages were stencil produced, which meant for some poor print quality in places but all fans cared about was the information, - and this 'zine delivered. Cover art by Jean-Daniel Breque.
I hope you've enjoyed these looks into fandom's past. Please leave comments if you wish.
