The Crunch #1 (1979)

I had lost the memory of ever owning this comic until I stumbled over a copy on  EBay.  Once I saw the cover again it all came flooding back. Well at least the smell of it did. I swear just looking at this image is enough to make me be able to smell the cheap paper and printing ink and the Saturday morning high street of the town I brought it in. Never mind the mind's eye, who knew there was a mind's nose lurking in there too.

After that initial olfactory hit came the remembrance of how much I loved that first free gift and the sense of loss at the fact that not only did I no longer own it anymore but that I had also allowed it to fall down the back of my memories and remain unnoticed there for so long.

It may have looked like a simple ribbed black plastic strap with room for a sticker but it almost certainly allowed me to communicate with Command HQ, most probably fired lasers and almost definitely had the power to teleport me anywhere my imagination dictated. What a wonderful device and what a terrible loss to technological advancement.

It broke, I now recall, from the constant use but there's little doubt that even if it hadn't I would have almost certainly thrown it away a hundred different times between now and then; a casualty of growing up. I'll also wager that not only would it not go round my big old man-wrists anymore but it would also be unlikely to perform to its previous high-spec. So, on reflection, the physical loss is negligible but its nice to get the memories back; I suspect they are worth far more anyway.

But to get back to the reading matter at hand, checking the cover scans on a couple of comic fan sites, I think I owned the first half a dozen issues of The Crunch and although I retain virtually no memory of the comic's content the covers are vaguely familiar.

As to the remaining free treasures given away with the first few issues. Well the poster with No2 would never have gone on the wall and probably hit the bin with a huge sigh of disappointment but I do recall the skull badge being worn and even the little plastic car being kept on the shelf for a while.

The comic its self didn't last for all that many more issues before being merged with something else - Which is how they used to kill comics back then - but I think I probably knocked it on the head after just a few weeks because it simply wasn't sci-fi enough for who I was back in 1979. Perhaps that's how the rest of the UK kids felt.

 

 

 

Steve

Cybermen - 1975 to 1982

I've been thinking about the Cybermen recently, following a couple of very good articles in a recent issues of DWM. Now I'm old enough to remember watching The Revenge of the Cybermen on first transmission back in 1975 and I was still watching when they made their surprise return in Earthshock in 1982.

 

Somewhere in between that I became a "proper" Doctor Who fan and as such you have to decide who your favourite monster is and for me it was the Cybermen.  Sure the Daleks were good but the Cybermen were much better, much scarier, much more unknown and unknowable.  As a modern fan of the new series, I'm very much of the opposite opinion because the new writers really understand the Daleks, where as the Cybermen have been reduced to tin plated soldiers, looking for a good plot.  And with hindsight, they always were.

 

Anyway my recent thoughts were about how and why the Cybermen had become my favourites back then, especially when there was so little of them on screen for so long.  And we are going back to a time before the internet, video and with little or no repeat of old shows on any of the two BBC channels. How then did they even feature in my younger life.

 

How indeed...

 

Revenge of the Cybermen 1975

 



1975

1975

 

 

1975

 

1976

 

1977

 

1977

1978

 

1978

 

1979

 

Black Legacy - Comic strip 1980

 

Deathworld - comic strip 1980

Throwback - Soul of a Cyberman comic strip  (1980)

 

1981

Earthshock in 1982

 

And there you have it; they were hiding in plain sight.   Interesting though how almost no two are quite the same and at least half are not the correct version for the story they are meant to be illustrating.  And yet the Cyber brand is clearly identifiable and strong enough to carry the race's reputation across the decade.

 

Steve

"6" Seventies Super T-shirts - Rollerball (1975)

What an iconic image of 70's Sci-fi.  What a powerful and iconic film that's still has so much to say all of these decades later.  I knew of Rollerball because I read Action(1) and knew that Death Game 1999(2) was a crib on the movie.  I got very excited a few years later when I discovered a handful of images in Sci-Fi Now and was most probably treated to my first viewing on a late night TV channel - It didn't disappoint.

 
There's only a handful of films that have travelled the years with me from TV to Video to DVD and Rollerball is one of them.  You get older, you view it through different eyes and it tilts and shifts and gives you something new each time.  As a youngster its the game and the violence and as an adult its the media and the politics and the power.  Well worth a look if you never have or a revisit if its been too long since you last did. All the truths are still valid and the corruptions still relevant.

But when all is said and done, very little says 70's Sci-fi to me quite so loudly as that font on that orange T-Shirt.

 

 

(1) (2)

 

And who remembers The Goodies parody of Rollerball as featured in the 1976 episode "2001 and a Bit" in which the MCC cricket team take on the Rolleregg side. No?  Oh well, it stayed with me.

 

 

  

Steve

 

(Pages 56,58 & 59)

A Candy and Andy Gallery - part one (1967)

This is Candy and Andy....they want to play with you!

 

Candy and Andy live with two panda bears called Mr and Mrs Bearanda

 

They enjoy pre-decimal ice cream

 

They like the colour red

 

 They really like the colour red

 

 Sometime it seems that they are planning something

Sometimes Mr Bearanda and Andy like to pretend they are having car trouble

 

In 1966 Gerry Anderson came up with a "killer" idea for a new TV show.  Unfortunately no one shared in his vision and the project was never developed.  However, maintaining his belief that the idea had some potential, Gerry developed it into a weekly comic instead which began publication in January of the following year

 

 

Photography was by Doug Luke who struggled through 154 issues of the "Candy" comic as well as various annuals and numerous story books.  Some would say this was one of Gerry Anderson great misjudged failures! I, on the other hand, think it a work of dark genius.

 

 

Steve

The Day of the Triffids - Comic adaption (1975)

Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction (1)  was a black & white, sci-fi anthology comic magazine published by Magazine Management, who were Marvel Comics' parent company at that time. It featured original and reprint comic strip stories, literary adaptations of SF novels, and interviews with authors such as Alfred Bester, Frank Herbert and Larry Niven.

The premiere issue featured part one of a two part adaption of John Wyndham's seminal "catastrophe" novel; The Day of the Triffids, by writer Gerry Conway and artists Ross Andru and Ernie Chua.  Interestingly it's thought the adaption had originally been intended for Worlds Unknown #7 and #8 (2) but had been bumped for The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, a more contemporaneous film which it was calculated might help lift the flagging sales figures of the latter publication. - It didn't!

The second part of the adaption followed in #2 of Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction with art on this occasion by Rico Rival.  Though full of some wonderful material, the magazine lasted only 6 regular issues and one Giant Size special before dying the death of diminishing sales.

All of which is marginally interesting but only really relevant long after the fact because I read The Day of the Triffids as a back-up strip in the Marvel UK published; Planet of the Apes Weekly some time around about July 1975, issues 40 and 41 (3)  I will write more about The Planet of the Apes and Planet of the Apes Weekly and some of the other back up strips it carried but that's for a another day. This day if for Triffids and my first major encounter with them.

I spent a lot of time reading and re-reading the Triffids strip and studying the potent artwork. If I say it haunted me that might suggest it troubled me but that's not actually the case.  Its hard to describe the feelings really especially after all this time. Transfixed? Enthralled? Possessed?  Yes-no-maybe.  It spoke to me but it didn't corrupt me.  I was complicit in it you see because it was my secret to witness these monstrous and murderous creatures and the end of civilisation.  I knew it was just story but what power it held.  No one else looked at my comics, not my parents or my siblings.  They were just comics after all.  Silly childish stories about superheroes and monsters and those funny looking monkeys off the TV.  And in their ignorance my weekly visits to these dark grown-up worlds were safe, week after week.  Something of my own to savour and explore...  or so I thought

There was a moment, some months after the strip had finished when my mum said something about the willow tree in the garden being like a Triffid.

     "A what?"

     "A Triffid."

How did she know that word?  And then I realised, although it made no sense, that she must have been reading my comics when I wasn't around.

     "..a sort of big killer tree with a sting?"

     "Yes a giant plant that can walk."

      "Have you been reading my comics?" I asked her outright and upon her denial, raced upstairs to retrieve exhibit: A. from the pile in the cupboard

I seem to recall that she was equally impressed with me for knowing what a Triffid was and upon revealing just how I knew, she was also impressed with the fact that this "children's" comic contained adaptions of grown-ups novels - either missing the point or ignorant to the fact that  Pierre Boulle's 1963 novel La Planète des Singes, progenitor of the entire Apes franchise, was writ large upon the cover!

So how did she know about Triffids then if she hadn't been looking.  There's a film of it, she said.  It's a very good film.  And the book is good as well.

I was blown away and on a mission to find both.

We connected in an interesting new way that day.  A bond tangential to mother and son, one of a shared interest in stories of sci-fi and horror and strange goings on. And there was me thinking she made tea in time for Doctor Who for my benefit!

Steve.

(1)(2)

 

(3)