Title/issues: Marvelman#25-370 (3rd February 1954-February 1963); Marvelman Annual 1964-1960; Marvelman Adventures (annuals) 1961, 1963; Marvelman Magic#1-3 (1954)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Marvelman

616?: No.

Summary: To follow.

Reprinted in U.S.?: A very small percentage.

Comments: L. Miller and Son had been reprinting Fawcett's Captain Marvel since 1944, and the hero's line of comics had been consistently good sellers for them, so the decision by Fawcett to close the line in 1953 thanks to a decline in U.S. sales and the protracted, expensive lawsuit with National Comics Publications (a.k.a. DC Comics) over claims Captain Marvel was infringing Superman's copyright posed a problem for Miller. Unlike Fawcett's American sales, Miller's U.K. sales remained strong, so they didn't want to cancel their title, but their supply of new stories was about to abruptly dry up. Miller handled it the only way they could - they decided to make their own stories, with a hero who was similar enough to retain the current readers, but different enough to hopefully avoid any lawsuits.

  L. Miller was Leonard Miller; the Son was Arnold Miller, who also ran his own separate comic company, Arnold Book Company. Both companies had previously employed writer/artist Mick Anglo, for series such as the SF strip Captain Valiant, Ace Malloy of the Special Squadron, and Space Commander Kerry; notably, Anglo had also created an early and successful superhero character, Wonderman, for rival company Paget Publishing. Thus Anglo was an obvious option to approach to resolve the Captain Marvel drought about to hit L. Miller and Son. As Anglo later told Dez Skinn (former Marvel U.K. editor-in-chief and then publishing Marvelman's revival in Warrior - see below) "One day Leonard Miller phoned and said he wanted to see me urgently. His supply of the American material for the Captain Marvel series had suddenly been cut off. Had I any ideas? ... So I quickly told him I had plenty of ideas, and for my trouble I received a regular supply of work for the next six years."

   Anglo came up with virtually identical replacement characters for Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family. Young newsboy Billy Batson who became the adult hero Captain Marvel by saying Shazam was replaced by young newsboy Micky Moran who became the adult hero Marvelman by saying Kimota; Captain Marvel Jr. was replaced by Young Marvelman; and Mary Marvel by Kid Marvelman, presumably because it was felt a male hero would appeal more to their mostly male readership.

   With their Captain Marvel title coming out weekly, the changeover was announced in Captain Marvel#19's Club Page (see right), and subsequent issues continued to remind the readers of the forthcoming handover, giving them about six weeks notice of the change. Captain Marvel#24 was the last issue to feature Fawcett's hero, and with #25 the comic changed its name to Marvelman. With usually a couple of Marvelman stories per issue, Anglo's newly established Gower Street Studios, which used a stable of artists including future icons Don Lawrence and Ron Embleton, went on to produce over six hundred tales for the new hero before his series finally ended in 1963.

Title/issues: Young Marvelman#25-370 (3rd February 1954-February 1963); Young Marvelman Annual 1954-1961; Young Marvelman Adventures (annuals) 1962-1963; Marvelman Jr Annual 1963; Young Marvelman Magic 1-4 (1954)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Young Marvelman

616?: No.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No.

Comments: As well as Captain Marvel, L. Miller and Son were also publishing a Captain Marvel Jr. title. With #25 this became Young Marvelman. Like the sibling title, each issue tended to carry multiple stories, usually at least two Young Marvelman adventures alongside another, unrelated strip - for at least the first couple of hundred issues this was the swashbuckling tale Billy Brig and the Pirates by Tom Moore, whose strip began no later than #43 (the earliest issue I have access to is #44, and his story was already underway) and finished in #318. Other short strips came and went, but the only other ongoings that I know of were Captain Zip Morgan of Space Patrol and space adventurer Johnny Galaxia, the latter a character originally published in Spain. Since Marvel bought the rights for Marvelman from Mick Anglo, rather than the long defunct L. Miller and Son, I'm assuming Billy Brig was not part of the deal and is not now a Marvel character.

Title/issues: Marvelman Family#1-30 (October 1956-November 1959), Marvelman Family Annual 1963

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Marvelman, Kid Marvelman

616?: No.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No.

Comments: The third Marvelman title, and the shortest lived, lasting only thirty issues, plus an annual in 1963. Unlike its fellows it was a monthly rather than weekly title.

Title/issues: Annie Oakley#6-8, 11-18 (1957)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Annie Oakley

616?: No.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No.

Comments: After being given responsibility for providing content for L.Miller and Son's line of Western titles, Marvelman creator Mick Anglo had his studio of British and Spanish artists produce some new Annie Oakley stories to publish alongside the reprints taken from Atlas Comics' titles. While I can only personally confirm the final issue, #18, to be one of these, allegedly several earlier issues also contained new material. 

Title/issues: Smash!#38 (22nd October 1966); see also Smash! incorporating Fantastic#152

Where: U.K.

616?: Hulk - yes; referenced in Matador's Handbook entry. Others - no, due to presence of multiple non-Marvel characters.

Featuring: Hulk, Nick Fury, Spider-Man

Summary: (Smash!#38) - After fighting alongside Namor against the Avengers, the Hulk wanders into Spain, where he encounters a villainous matador, El Supremo.

(Smash! incorporating Fantastic#152) - A large number of Marvel characters attended the Special Squad Christmas party (see next entry for comments)

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes for the Hulk story, in Hulk: From the Marvel UK Vaults.

Comments: The first U.K. produced strip set in the Marvel Universe, pre-dating the creation of Marvel U.K. In 1966 Marvel strips were being licensed for reprint in serial format in titles owned by Odhams Press. For some reason the Hulk strip in Smash! was unable to use a reprint story for#38, and so a quick filler was produced (though the story was produced for a non-Marvel title, there was a small copyright notice in the comic noting that the strip belonged to Marvel Comics, not Odhams). Set immediately after the Hulk and Sub-Mariner's fight with the Avengers in Avengers I#3, it saw Bruce Banner fleeing that battle. Realizing he was in Gibraltar, he hid in a truck which crossed into Spain, which in turn led to him hiding in a pen in the bull fighting arena in Seville. After humiliating El Supremo, the Hulk departed Spain, setting off to swim the Atlantic.

   There's no credit in the issues, but a discussion of the strip by a group of former Marvel UK staff (editors, writers and artists) on a Marvel UK facebook group, also trying to figure out who drew it, suspected it was Spanish artist Jose Garcia Pizarro.

Title/issues: Pow!#33 (2nd September 1967); see also Pow!#21, 50

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Nick Fury, Spider-Man

616?: No, due to presence of non-Marvel characters.

Summary: (Pow!#21) - Nick Fury visited the Special Squad HQ.

(Pow!#33) - Nick Fury was ordered to help young Dare-A-Day Davy complete a dare, to whit a challenge to last six rounds in a ring with the spy.

(Pow!#50) - Nick Fury and Spider-Man attended the Pow! staff Christmas party.

Reprinted in U.S.?: No.

Comments: Odhams' Power Pack titles - Fantastic, Pow!, Smash!, Terrific! and Wham! - mixed US reprints with non-Marvel UK material, and adventure strips with comedy ones. And since comedy strips always had a looser definition of the boundaries between strips/realities, characters from a given strip could and did sometimes turn up unexpectedly in other strips, including the licensed Marvel ones on a handful of occasions. Spider-Man (and Nick Fury) were both being reprinted in Pow!, so that was the starting point for their cameos elsewhere. Nick Fury's encounter with Dare-a-Day-Davy in Davy's single page strip was a full appearance, but the rest of Nick (and Spider-Man)'s appearances above are from the strip "The Cloak" by Mike Higgs, whose titular hero was a superhero-like secret agent working for the "Special Squad." Nick And Spider-Man were presumably members of this squad, as they were mostly seen in the background at their headquarters. I don't have a full run of Pow!, so it's entirely possible that I might have missed other cameos; if so, they will be added as and when I learn about them.

   The Cloak strip moved to the combined Smash! and Pow!, and stayed there when Fantastic was also absorbed to create Smash! incorporating Fantastic. As a result the final cameo for Marvel characters in the Cloak strip appeared in Smash! incorporating Fantastic (listed in the prior entry), where they appear alongside not only cameos of characters Odhams owned or were licensing, but also many unrelated to the company. It was near the end of the Cloak's run in Odhams titles, so I can only guess that Mike Higgs figured he had nothing to lose throwing in any character he felt like.

Title/issues: Marvel Storybook Annual (Autumn 1967)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Ant-Man, Namor, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Captain America, Doctor Strange, Thor, Hulk

616?: Potentially

Summary: Ant-Man: Fightin' Fury 
Sub-Mariner: Howl in the Night 
Fantastic Four: The Chains of Abdul Rey 
Spider-Man: The Fire Raisers 
Iron Man: The Cushioned Clash
Captain America: Tomb of Terror
Iron Man: The Ghost of Ned Kelly 
Dr. Strange: Guardians of the Tomb 
Fantastic Four: The Bull of Minos 
Thor: North Sea Wolf 
Dr. Strange: Flight into Danger 
Hulk: The End of the Hulk 

Reprinted in U.S.?: Only the Hulk story, in Hulk: From the Marvel UK Vault

Comments: Though Marvel characters had appeared in some Odhams annuals, the first annual solely devoted to them was the Marvel Storybook Annual. Published by World Distributors, one of the companies that specialized in annuals based on licensed products, the Marvel Storybook Annual carried a dozen text stories written by Douglas Enefer, A. Tyson and John W. Elliott and illustrated by M.K. Powell, J. Leeder and P. Limbert. The next two years World Distributors released the Marvel Comics Annual, but in these two instance, and indeed most subsequent Marvel-related annuals until the late 1970s, the interiors only contained reprints of American Marvel strips.

   For anyone interested in the U.K.'s Marvel related annuals, including the ones that were purely reprints, complete cover galleries can be found at the excellent Tony's Trading. In fact, you can find the covers of the vast majority of U.K. annuals of any description on that site.

A quick note: At launch Odhams' Fantastic had the highest percentage of of Marvel reprints of any of the Power Pack, with Thor, the X-Men and Iron Man taking up three quarters of the title. The final story was the Missing Link, a character who was virtually a clone of the Hulk in both appearance and mannerisms. So much so that after only eight issues the Link got exposed to radiation and mutated into a normal looking human with superpowers, reinventing himself and his strip as Johnny Future. Meanwhile, starting from the second issue, the back page of the comic began displaying "A Power House Pin-Up" featuring different Marvel characters. The only non-Marvel character to be featured was the aforementioned Johnny Future. So with this in mind, it's not surprising that some people mistakenly believed Johnny Future to be another Marvel character, and though the misconception is far less common now than it was in the early days of the internet, some sites erroneously list (or used to list) his tales as new Marvel universe material originating in Britain. That's not the case. He was Odhams' property, and with Odhams being subsequently bought out his ownership has shifted a few times over the intervening decades and is currently held by Rebellion, the publishers of 2000A.D., who recently released a collected volume of Johnny Future's tales.

With the arrival of Marvel U.K. in 1972 far more of Marvel's output began to be reprinted in Britain. Although the Marvel universe (not counting the pre-FF Timely and Atlas era material) had a ten year head start on the British titles reprinting them, the weekly schedules of the British anthologies still meant that it wouldn't be long before some titles would begin to run short of available reprint materials, the same problem that had prompted so many other overseas publishers to begin producing their own stories.

   Since an average American issue would be split across three to four U.K. issues, the "middle" sections often needed new chapter titles and splash pages to introduce the latest installment - see for example the page to the right from Super Spider-Man and Captain Britain#249, intended to slot between the two color pages from Marvel Team-Up#65.

On other occasions changes were made to avoid confusing the U.K. audience. For example, when Mighty World of Marvel#15 reprinted the Hulk story from Tales to Astonish I#62, Marvel U.K. had not yet reprinted the Avengers stories where the Hulk's pal Rick Jones left the Hulk's side to become Captain America's sidekick. Thus a panel where Rick tells a supportive Captain America of his need to take a break in order to rush to the aid of the Hulk was deemed potentially confusing to readers who might not even know who Captain America was. Thus instead of having a costumed character the readers might not recognize and references to Rick having joined a team that readers might not have heard of, the editors decided to suggest Rick had left the Hulk's side to attend college, a much more mundane scenario that could be explained to readers in minimal time.

   Other changes were made to accommodate perceived differences between British and American sensibilities, most notably what was considered overly jingoistic references to "Reds" and the "Iron Curtain." Thus references to same were modified to mention a fictional nation, Bodavia, and Hammer and Sickles were swapped out for more generic lightning bolt emblems. Bodavia which would eventually be namechecked in the U.S. comics in Marvel Premiere#49 (1979).

Title/issues: Planet of the Apes#23-30 (29th March-17th May 1975)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Apeslayer

616?: No. Set on Earth-7481.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: One of the first titles to run short on available reprint material was Planet of the Apes. Series such as Avengers, Hulk and Spider-Man had a decade's worth of catalogue to burn through; Savage Sword of Conan could stave off problems because they were drawing their material from two American titles; and any series that was not in the title of the U.K. comic they were being reprinted in could simply be put on hiatus. However, Planet of the Apes was drawing from an American title only a few months older than the U.K. reprint, so it was only a matter of time before the well ran dry. The solution was a novel one. Figuring it would be easier to modify an existing story than make a new one, the title's U.S. editor Marv Wolfman decided to convert an entirely different series into a Planet of the Apes story, something he later explained in an interview published in Back Issue#121 (see below). Thus the warrior Killraven's battle against the Martian invaders from Amazing Adventures became the warrior Apeslayer's battle against the Ape dictators.

Title/issues: Super Spider-Man with the Superheroes#163 (22nd March 1976)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Spider-Man, Thing

616?: No. Set on Earth-59462

Summary: When aliens invade London, Spider-Man, the Thing and Hulk come to the rescue.

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: On 25th October 1975 Marvel U.K. began an experiment with the launch of a new title, The Titans. The content wasn't particularly unusual - reprints of the Inhumans, Captain America, Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD, Sub-Mariner and Captain Marvel, but the layout was, as unlike every other Marvel U.K. title, and indeed pretty much every other comic on the market, it was published in a landscape format. A few months later, on 21st February 1976, Spider-Man Comics Weekly made the first of many name changes when it merged with The Super-Heroes to become Super Spider-Man with the Super-Heroes; bizarrely, given that both pre-merger comics had been the more common portrait format, the new merged version was also landscape, and would remain so from SSMwtSH#158 (21st February 1976) through a merger with The Titans to become Super Spider-Man and the Titans from #199, until #228. From #229 SSM&tT reverted to portrait format, just two issues before merging with Captain Britain (see below).

   One consequence of the unusual landscape format was that the reprinted art needed amending more frequently than it otherwise might have done. Another was the inclusion of posters in some center spreads. Most were simply art of a given character, but two stood out because they together told a brief story of alien invasion and the space war that followed. Both were written and drawn by Frank Hampson, best known for being the artist who created Dan Dare, the space-faring star of The Eagle comic, each respectively among the most influential characters and titles in British comics history, and they marked, afaik, the only time Hampson worked for Marvel.

Title/issues: Super Spider-Man with the Titans#206 (19th January 1977)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Terran Commando Sergeant Superdare

616?: No, set in Reality-59462

Summary: After the alien invaders were repelled back into space, the SolPlanet League's forces drove them back out of the solar system.

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: The second part of the brief story produced by Frank Hampson.

Title/issues: Captain Britain I#1-39 (13th October 1976-6th July 1977)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Captain Britain

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes, numerous times.

Comments: Marvel U.K.'s first venture into an actual full new story began with Captain Britain#1, although it's debatable whether it really counts as "stories produced in the U.K." since the creative team was entirely American. Strictly speaking the initial writer, Chris Claremont, is English, since he was born in London, but he moved to America when he was three, while I believe original artist Herb Trimpe was chosen because he'd once visited the U.K. That's not to denigrate the groundwork they laid, as they told some excellent stories, but there was definitely an American-undertone to the depiction of Britain. To begin with Captain Britain's strip was mostly in color, an uncommon feature in British titles, but with Captain Britain#24 the strip abruptly shifted to black and white, and just four months later the title came to an end with #39, which carried an announcement that the title was going to be merged with Super Spider-Man "just to see if you're paying attention."

On a separate note, the final issue of Captain Britain also included this response to a reader's letter:

To which I can only say "Time will make fools of us all." See right.

The 1981 special (furthest right) is just a reprint of Captain Britain's encounter with Spider-Man from Marvel Team-Up, but the 1980 one has some new content that we'll come back to later.

Title/issues: Super Spider-Man and Captain Britain#231-247 (13th July-2nd November 1977)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Captain Britain

616?: Yes

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: With the cancellation of Captain Britain, the title merged with Marvel U.K.'s Spider-Man title, ousting the last victim similarly absorbed, The Titans, to take second billing on the cover. For the next seventeen issues Britain's own hero continued to enjoy new adventures, then Super Spider-Man and Captain Britain#248-253 published the team-up between Spider-Man and Captain Britain that also appeared in Marvel Team-Up I#65-66; I say published rather than reprinted because while I believe MTU came out first, it's a very close call. MTU#65 was cover dated January 1978, but American comics are cover dated a few months ahead to help prolong shelf-life, while U.K. weeklies are cover dated up to six days ahead for the same reason; it's hard to find data pinning down with certainty the exact day MTU#65 came out, but using the dates for later issues of that title provided in early issues of Marvel Age, titles cover dated January actually hit the shelves in the last week of September or the first three of October; if the dates remained consistent over the years, MTU tended to be on sale the Tuesday of the third week of any given month (including any partial weeks in that count), which would make the release date of MTU#65 the 18th October 1977 and MTU#66 the 15th November 1977. Meanwhile Super Spider-Man and Captain Britain#248 was cover dated November 9th 1977, which means it probably hit shelves on the 5th (the Saturday of that week, a common U.K. release date), while #251 (which reprinted the first part of MTU#66) would have been on sale 26th November. Not much of a gap between them!

   The crossover story between Captain Britain and Spider-Man had replaced Captain Britain's solo outing but not Spidey, who still enjoyed his solo adventure elsewhere in the issue. With the end of the crossover Captain Britain was unceremoniously dropped from the title. The letters page of SSM&CB#253 consisted of two letters bemoaning what they perceived as the British hero's poor treatment in the comic of late, and got semi-placatory editorial responses that failed to mention the character was about to vanish, while the end of the actual story included a note that Captain Britain was going on "holiday" and would be replaced from next week by Captain America. The next issue was titled simply Super Spider-Man, making it clear that Captain Britain wouldn't be back...at least not in the pages of Spidey's title.

Title/issues: Hulk Comic#1-46; Incredible Hulk Weekly#47-55, 57-63 (7th March 1979-15th May 1980)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Ant-Man: #48-49
• Black Knight (and Captain Britain): #1, 3-30, 31-41 (reprints of Captain Britain and Black Knight's origins, but with small amounts of new information added), 42-55, 57-63
• Hulk: #1-6, 9-20, 26-28
• Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.: #1-19
• Night Raven: #1-20

616?: Yes - all bar Ant-Man have been referred back to in Handbook entries and subsequent stories, and Ant-Man hasn't only because it was too minor an incident to warrant mention in the limited space available for his entry.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?:

• Black Knight/Captain Britain Otherworld saga - yes, multiple times
• Hulk - yes, in Hulk: From the Marvel UK Vaults
• Night Raven - yes, in the Night Raven Graphic Novel (not to be confused with Night Raven: House of Cards, listed below), and in Night Raven: From the Marvel U.K. Vaults
• Nick Fury and Ant-Man stories - no.

Comments: By 1978 Marvel U.K.'s sales were in decline, so while on a visit to the U.K. Stan Lee headhunted Dez Skinn, a former editor at IPC (International Publishing Corporation, one of the U.K.'s two largest comic publishers) who was then running Williams Publishing's comics section as well as self-publishing the successful SF news monthly Starburst. Taking over Marvel U.K. in August 1978, Skinn set about revamping Marvel U.K.'s titles to make them more competitive against their home-grown British rivals. One change was to speed up the pace of the stories - while a U.S. comic might have twenty pages per issue, the U.K. ones might only have three to five pages, and still needed to ensure that each episode moved the tale forward while being compelling in its own right. For some U.S. stories simply cutting them into three to five page segments didn't produce the required effect, so U.S. panels began to be resized and repositioned to fit more panels per page (see below).

   With the Hulk TV show was very popular in Britain, the decision was taken to launch the character in his own title, with new stories deliberately designed to feel more akin to the TV version than the U.S. comic version. Since U.K. titles tended to lean towards a mix of story types, and superheroes had never been the strongest sellers there, Skinn decided to fill the title with characters who could fit tales leaning towards other genres, and where possible/necessary produce new home-grown stories that would better fit these genres and a British audience's sensibilities. Thus the first issue of Hulk Comic included brand new Nick Fury tales playing up the spy thriller motif, new Black Knight series that leaned heavily into British mythology and fantasy, as well as bringing back Captain Britain from the "holiday" he'd gone on after his last appearance, and noir crime-thriller Night Raven, whose titular star was a brand new character cut from the same cloth as Pulps era icons such as the Spider or Shadow. The only actual reprint in the first issue was the origin story of Ant-Man, who for early issues would remain the titles' only out and out superhero strip.

   Sales were good, but costs were also obviously higher for a title with more original material and fewer reprints, and very quickly the percentage of reprint to new story began to rise, until only Black Knight remained - and even that took a hiatus for #31-41 to be replaced by reprints of the origins of Black Knight and Captain Britain, albeit with amendments and additions to reveal heretofore undisclosed ties between their origins and the current story. Nevertheless, Hulk Comic was a groundbreaking change for Marvel U.K., paving the way for Marvel U.K. to become a major producer of new tales.

Below: A comparison between Hulk Comic#4's opening of The Eternals, and the U.S. comic it came from, compressing nine and a third pages of U.S. material into three U.K. pages.

Title/issues: Frantic Winter Special (1979)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Santa Claus

616?: Potentially

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No.

Comments: The Frantic Winter Special featured a one-shot, two page strip called "Santa's Christmas Chaos," written AND drawn by Alan Moore under his pen name Curt Vile, covering Santa Claus' misadventures on Christmas Eve. The story was told entirely in pictures, with no dialogue, and, as the panel to the right shows, included cameos from the Black Knight, Silver Surfer, Millennium Falcon and Federation starship Enterprise.

Title/issues: Captain Britain Summer Special (1980)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Captain Britain, Black Knight

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes, in the 2021 Captain Britain Omnibus.

Comments: The 1980 Captain Britain Summer Special, released just after he had completed his appearances in Hulk Comic's Otherworld Saga, reprinted the Lord Hawk story from Captain Britain's weekly, a 1950s Black Knight tale, and a modern era Black Knight story from Doctor Strange#178. What made it noteworthy here however were two articles providing background for the recent Otherworld Saga, one ("Of Legends, Dreams and Otherworld") discussing the real world development of the tale and the other ("Of Mortals and Magi") providing an in-universe summary of the backgrounds of major characters. Though neither fits this page's remit exactly as they are not new stories, I nevertheless feel they are worthy of mention.

Title/issues: Doctor Who Monthly#47, 51, 60, 62-67; Doctor Who Magazine#135, 140-142, 173, 262, 292, 500 (December 1980-July 2016)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• CYRIL: #99, 207, Summer Special 1989
• Death's Head: #135, 173
• Dogbolter and Hob: #86-89, 250, 500
• Earth-33 1/3 (in Doctor Who?): #64
• Gwanzulum: #141-142
• Hulk: #173
• Keepsake: #140
• Merlin: #60, 62-63, 65-67, 262
• Special Executive: #51, 67
• Sleeze Brothers: #147
• Spider-Man: #292

616?: No, but many characters above might either be the 616 versions or have visited there.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Another of Dez Skinn's achievements while in charge of Marvel U.K. was securing the license to publish a Doctor Who comic. The long-running SF TV series had been featured in comic form since 1964, only a year after the show began airing, but this was the first time the character had headlined his own title. Though every issue carried new, U.K. produced stories, I intend here (as with other licensed titles) to only discuss those that are linked to the wider Marvel multiverse - i.e. they feature characters who either originated in, or went on to visit, more Marvel-specific realities.

   Initially weekly, the title carried three comic strips to begin with - the lead one featuring the titular Time Lord, a back of issue strip showcasing other characters, usually a villainous alien race, from the TV show, and a third strip, Tales from the TARDIS, lifted from Marvel Classic Comics' adaptations of classic SF novels; to make these last fit the comic's remit, a framing device was added with the Doctor introducing each chapter. From Doctor Who Weekly#30 the third strip became "Doctor Who's Time Tales," using time-related shorts from Marvel U.S anthologies such as Journey into Mystery, Strange Tales and Chamber of Chills. Again, the Doctor was added as the narrator introducing the tale, in one instance (see below) replacing the original "horror host," Digger. The forthcoming switch to Doctor Who Monthly as of #44 meant #43 was to be the last of these narrated tales.

   The next few links to the Marvel universe came in the form of characters who would later show up in other Marvel stories. Written by Alan Moore, Doctor Who Monthly#47's back-up strip featured the Doctor's own people, the Time Lords of Gallifrey, and though no Marvel-related characters appeared, it was the first part of a trilogy of tales about a time war between the Gallifreyans and the Order of the Black Sun, with the latter two parts (in #51 and 57) introducing Wardog and the Special Executive respectively, characters who would return in Moore's Captain Britain run. Similarly, Merlin encountered the Doctor in Doctor Who Monthly#60, and would later be confirmed to be the same individual who empowered Captain Britain. Characters belonging to the "Whoniverse" who would later cross into other Marvel titles include villainous businessfrog Josiah Dogbolter and his robot assistant Hob, and space pilot Keepsake. CYRIL, the star of a strip in Marvel U.K.'s Star Wars comic (see below) made cameos in a couple of stories drawn by John Ridgeway, the same artist who drew his strip. The alien Gwanzulum who menaced the Doctor would also battle a number of other licensed characters published by Marvel U.K. (see below), as well as Marvel universe resident Combat Colin. However, the closest Marvel ties are Spider-Man's cameo appearance in Doctor Who Magazine#292, seen when the Doctor is shown a kaleidoscopic image of the multiverse, Marvel heroes turning up in the Doctor Who? comedy strips in #64 and 191, and the Doctor's encounter with Death's Head, which served as the mechanoid's transition from the Transformers universe to the wider Marvel multiverse.

Merlin the Wise in Doctor Who Monthly, Captain Britain's strip in The Daredevils#1, and Captain Britain & MI13#3

1980 Annual, published 1979

1981 Annual, published 1980

1982 Annual, published 1981

1983 Annual, published 1982

1984 Annual, published 1983

1985 Annual, published 1984

1986 Annual, published 1985

1987 Annual, published 1986

1992 Annual, published 1991

1994 Annual, published 1993

1997 Annual, published 1996

Title/issues: Spider-Man Annual 1980-1987, 1992, 1994, 1997

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Spider-Man

616?: Some definitely - Bluebird was mentioned in Vulture's Handbook entry. All others, potentially.

Summary: (1980) A Sting in the Tail
Fun-House of Fear

(1981) Murder by Machine
Grin of the Goblin

(1982) Electric Sting

(1983) Blight of the Bluebird
Starngore the Superb

(1984) Scourge of the Sleeper
Hunter's Moon

(1985) Eight Legs Hath the Spider
Lord of Light

(1986) Hot Times
Hammer-Fist and Knife-Slice

(1987) The Contract

(1992) Sawdust and Diamonds

(1994) Computer Chaos
Spider-Man & The Phantom Fiend
Spider-Man & the Gruesome Grappler

(1997) The Spider-Shadow
The Berserker Machine

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Despite Marvel U.K. publishing the weekly comics reprinting Marvel U.S. titles, through the 1970s and 80s annuals were still being published by licensors. Throughout most of the 70s these were purely reprints, but in 1979 publisher World Distributors included brand new illustrated text stories in its Spider-Man, Hulk and Fantastic Four Annuals. The next year the license had passed to Grandreams, but the trend for new text stories continued through most of the 1980s, and recurred a few times in the 1990s, by which point Marvel was publishing the annuals themselves. The 1990s annuals also included a few new comic stories. After the demise of Marvel U.K. the licensors Pedigree and then Panini took over the release of Spider-Man Annuals into the 2000s, but by that juncture they were back to being solely filled with reprints.

   Note that U.K. annuals were generally released in September or later, intended to be available early enough to be bought as Christmas presents. To keep annuals received on December 25th of a given year feeling "new" to their young recipients, if an annual carried a cover date it was typically that of the next year. Thus for example an annual released in 1980 is generally considered the 1981 Annual. However some annuals carried no cover date, and this has led to confusion in later years, especially on sites selling them online - one person will list a given annual as being the 1980 one based on the indicia saying it came out in 1980, while another while another will list it as 1981 based on that same information. Since I'm sure at least some people reading this will try to hunt down and purchase the annuals with new stories in them, I've chosen to depict the covers of ALL the annuals that included such tales; if you're hunting for them, confirm which annual it is by the cover, not the year the seller claims it is.

    A full gallery of Spider-Man Annuals, including the purely reprint ones, can be found on Tony's Trading, mentioned above.

1980 Annual, published 1979

1981 Annual, published 1980

1982 Annual, published 1981

1983 Annual, published 1982

1984 Annual, published 1983

1985 Annual, published 1984

Title/issues: Hulk Annual 1980-1985

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Hulk

616?: Potentially

Summary: (1980) Wings of Death
Double Trouble
Secret Army
Terror of the Swamps

(1981) Pit of Doom
Blackmail
Might of the Mechadroid

(1982) A Hostage for the Hulk
Caged

(1983) Old Dark House
Death and the Droid

(1984) Armies of the Black Sun - Strike from the Stars
Armies of the Black Sun - Challenge of the Champions

(1985) Menace of the Maker
Star Scout

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes, in Hulk: From the Marvel U.K. Vaults

Comments: Like the Spider-Man Annuals above a number of Hulk Annuals included new text stories. In addition two, the ones with photo covers from the Hulk TV series, also featured multiple brand new comic strips.

   Again, a complete gallery of U.K. Hulk annuals can be found on Tony's Trading.

Title/issues: Fantastic Four Annual 1980, 1981

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Fantastic Four

616?: Potentially

Summary: (1980) Encounter
Where Walks the Wizard

(1981) A Shade Too Dangerous
The Rescue

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: As with Spider-Man and the Hulk, the Fantastic Four Annuals of the late 1970s/early 1980s carried new illustrated text tales, though since there were fewer FF annuals released there were also fewer with new material.

Title/issues: Forces in Combat#12-15, 17-26 (24th July-5th November 1980)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Winston S. Quaill in "I was Adolf's Double"

616?: No. Set on Earth-333333333

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No.

Comments: As mentioned above, Forces in Combat was action-themed, trying to avoid obvious superheroes for the most part. Thus the first issue carried war-action in "Fury of the Commandos" (a renamed Sgt Fury and His Howling Commandos); science-fiction action in Rom, Spaceknight; Western action with Rawhide Kid; fantasy action with Kull; kung-fu action with Shang-Chi; and a horror-themed mystery, "Lifeboat" reprinted from Monsters Unleashed.

   The first thirteen issues also carried Wulf the Briton, the only strip in full color. Those hunting for new Marvel material might be forgiven for mistaking this to to be another example of what they are searching for, since trying to figure what Marvel U.S. title it came from will yield no results, but in fact it was a reprint of an older British strip originally published in Express Weekly in the 1950s. The final segment in Forces in Combat#13 urged readers not to miss "next weeks thrill" but every reader did, as Wulf the Briton had vanished without explanation.

   Forces in Combat also began reprinting the John Kowalski stories from Marvel U.S's War is Hell, but chose to modify the story so that instead of the spectral star being John Kowalski, disgraced U.S marine wrongly convicted of treason and deported back to his native Poland where he fails to heed warnings about the impending Nazi invasion the star was now British spy Frank Charlesworth, son of a Polish immigrant whose original name was Juszczyk, sent by the War Department in London to set up resistance groups in Poland in anticipation of the Nazi invasion. However, apart from modifying some text and rearranging panel orders to accommodate this revised origin, the story's remained the same, so it was a modified reprint rather than new stories.

   Actual new material began appearing in Forces in Combat#12, with the arrival of Quinn and Howett's I Was Adolf's Double, featuring the misadventures of the unfortunate Winston S. Quaill thanks to his resemblance to the Nazi dictator. Each episode was a full page, for a total run of 13 pages when it concluded. As the cover for Forces in Combat#12 boasted, the strip was initially in full color, but this only lasted for the first four installments, after which it switched to black and white. The entire story was later collected and reprinted in the Channel 33 1/3 Special (see below).

Title/issues: Marvel Team-Up#1-11, 15, 17-23 (11th September 1980-18th February 1981)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Earth 33 1/3

616?: No. Set on Earth-333333333

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Launched in the second half of 1980, Marvel Team-Up featured a grab-bag of Marvel's superhero characters, as well as the debut of Quinn and Howett's Earth 33 1/3, a usually three panel humor strip that focused on an overtly silly version of the Marvel universe and its characters. The strip would go on to appear in multiple titles, surviving long after Marvel Team-Up was cancelled after only 25 issues, merging (as so many other titles did) into the main Spider-Man weekly comic.

Title/issues: Savage Action#1-4, 6, 8, 14-15 (November 1980-January 1982)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Night Raven

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: A monthly title, Savage Action reprinted the slightly more mature stories from Marvel's black and white magazines, and aimed for a gritty crime themed title, initially carrying Punisher, Moon Knight and thirties adventurer Dominic Fortune's stories. Alongside these was the return of Night Raven, no longer in the comic strip format he had enjoyed in Hulk Comic, but now in prose tales with a few illustrations. At this juncture however these short stories continued to be noir crime thrillers like his prior adventures.

Title/issues: Future Tense#1-9, 12, 15-16, 18-19; Future Tense & Valour#20-21, 23-26, 28-29, 31-35; Future Tense#37-40 (5th November 1980-December 1981)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Rev. Starkey in The Concise History of the Galaxy: #1-9, 12, 15-16, 18-21, 23-26, 28-29, 31-35, 37-39
• Whacker's Worlds: #40

616?: No. Set in Reality-333333333

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Launched the same week as its sister title Valour (see below), Future Tense was a science-fiction themed title, with a starting line-up of Micronauts, Starlord, Warlock, and Seeker 3000 and Paladin, both originally from Marvel Premiere. Despite appearing on the cover, presumably because he was wearing a spacesuit in the image, Nick Fury was nowhere to be seen. Alongside these characters was another Quinn/Howett strip, the SF epic The Concise History of the Galaxy, which followed the escapades of overly-evolved prehistoric ape Rev Starkey as he battled the evil Black Editor and gallivanted across time and space. After an initial full-page start, it switched to half pages until #37, with the last three parts reverting to full pages.

   Future Tense itself had also undergone some changes. After absorbing the failing Valour, it was retitled to carry both names from #20 until #35; the change back to just being called Future Tense was also accompanied by a shift to monthly publication, with new glossy covers and a higher page count.

   With The Concise History of the Galaxy having concluded in #39, #40 carried a one-off brand new one-page strip, Whacker's Worlds, parodying a well established U.K. documentary series, Whicker's World. Whether it might have continued is unknown, as Future Tense ended with #41.

Title/issues: Valour#1-6 (5th November-10th December 1980)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Earth 33 1/3

616?: No, set on Earth-333333333

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Launched the same week as its sister title Future Tense, Valour was fantasy-themed, with Conan, Dr. Strange, Devil Dinosaur and Tales of Asgard among its initial stories. Alongside them were more short Earth 33 1/3 strips by Quinn and Howett, though only for the first six issues. Valour itself was short-lived, ending with #19, after which it merged with Future Tense.

Title/issues: Spider-Man and Hulk Weekly#400-403, 406-408, 412-415, 418-425, 427-428, 432-434, 436-448 (5th November-7th October 1981)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Bullpen Bedlam

616?: Probably set on Earth-333333333, but potentially this could be 616

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: The same week that Future Tense and Valour both launched, Marvel U.K.'s Spider-Man title, at this point subtitled "and Hulk Weekly," hit its landmark 400th issue, and added its first Quinn/Howett strip, Bullpen Bedlam, purportedly showing the shenanigans going on in the Marvel U.K. offices. The strip, usually half a page, ran for nearly a full year, surviving when the title changed to Spider-Man and Hulk Team-Up (thanks to absorbing Marvel Team-Up), but stopping just before the next major title change, at which point it was replaced by a new series (more on which below). Bullpen Bedlam survived however, skipping over to both the new Incredible Hulk title and Captain America for a handful of appearances, before settling in a new long-term home in the Original X-Men comic - all of which are covered below.

Title/issues: Captain America#5-10, 12-13, 17-19; Marvel Action Starring Captain America#21, 23-26, 28-30; Captain America#31-32, 34, 37-39, 41-59 (25th March 1981-7th April 1982)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Earth 33 1/3: #5-10, 12-13, 17-19, 21, 23-26, 28-32, 34, 38-39, 42-59
• Bullpen Bedlam: #37, 41

616?: Earth 33 1/3 - no, set on Earth-333333333. Bullpen Bedlam - probably Earth-333333333, outside chance of 616.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Having launched in February 1981 with a line-up consisting of Captain America, Iron Man, the Defenders and Dazzler, Captain America added the humor strip Earth 33 1/3 from #5. The series continued to appear for the rest of the title's 59 issue run, skipping the odd issue and with Bullpen Bedlam twice stealing its slot.

Title/issues: Marvel Action#1-5, 7-8, 10, 12-14 (1st April-1st July 1981)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Earth 33 1/3

616?: No, set on Earth-333333333

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Earth 33 1/3's next home was in the pages of Marvel Action. With themed titles having presumably not proven better sellers, Marvel U.K.'s new comics shifted back towards more generic superhero action, and titles that were either named after headliner strips or generic enough to permit including almost any reprint. In the case of Marvel Action these were Thor, Doctor Strange and Fantastic Four, as well as the aforementioned Earth 33 1/3. It only lasted 15 issues before being merged into Captain America; though some sites list higher numbers thanks to the merged title briefly calling itself Marvel Action starring Captain America, it was definitely Marvel Action that had ended, as confirmed when the merged title reverted to simply calling itself Captain America.

Title/issues: Marvel Super Adventure#1-3, 7-9, 11, 13-16, 18-21, 23-26 (6th May-26th October 1981)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Earth 33 1/3

616?: No, set on Earth-333333333

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Earth 33 1/3's next home was Marvel Super Adventure, which also featured Daredevil and Black Panther. Despite the clunkier name, this title lasted marginally longer than Marvel Action, finishing on #26, after which it was likewise absorbed into Captain America.

Title/issues: Marvel Madhouse#1, 5-6, 8-9 (June 1981-February 1982)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Earth 33 1/3: The Movie: #1
• What if Thor Appeared in Nancy?: #5
• Hulk the Menace: #6
• L'il Spidey: #6
• The Nice Avengers: #8
• A Day in the Life of a Typical Marvel Fan: #9

616?: No, set on Earth-333333333, with the possible exception of L'il Spidey and the What If - but neither of these are 616 either.,

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Marvel Madhouse primarily reprinted Not Brand Echh!, but its humor remit also made it a prime spot for Quinn and Howett to test run new strips. Thus in #1 Earth 33 1/3 got a three page, rather than three panel strip, while #6 test ran two short strips, L'il Spidey and Hulk the Menace; the latter would subsequently pop up in other titles and accrue a decently long run. All the strips bar L'il Spidey and Hulk the Menace were subsequently reprinted in the Channel 33 1/3 Special.

Title/issues: Marvel Super-Heroes#377-397 (September 1981-May 1983)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Captain Britain: #377-388
• Night Raven: #382-386, 389-395
• Earth 33 1/3: #390, 393, 395-397

616?: Captain Britain and Night Raven, yes. Earth 33 1/3 - no, set on Earth-333333333

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?:

• Captain Britain - yes
• Night Raven - yes, in Night Raven: From the Marvel UK Vaults
• Earth 33 1/3 - no

Comments: Marvel Super-Heroes was actually Marvel U.K.'s very first comic, originally published from 7th October 1972 as the weekly Mighty World of Marvel. It was briefly simplified to just Marvel Comic as of #330, and then in September 1979 it became a monthly under the new title Marvel Super-Heroes, reprinting Avengers and the original X-Men (the All-New X-Men were then appearing in the sister monthly Rampage). The monthly title's third slot was initially filled by Ms. Marvel, and later by Champions. The ending of that latter series in #376 was accompanied by a note "Watch out for the Defenders -- next issue!" And sure enough, the very next issue, #377, there was...no Defenders strip. Instead, Captain Britain, fresh from co-starring in Black Knight's strip in Incredible Hulk Weekly, returned in his own series, complete with a new costume by Alan Davis and the privileged cover place. Written by David Thorpe, the new series found Captain Britain and his ally, the Otherworld elf Jackdaw, stranded on a dystopian alternate Earth by Merlin.

   A few months later CB's old Hulk stablemate Night Raven rejoined him, as MSH absorbed the dying Savage Action. Still in text format, the 1930s vigilante enjoyed a few "standard" crime stories before new writer Alan Moore came in and massively shook up the hero's status quo, as the previously enjoyable but unremarkable "pulps" crimefighter was targeted by a previously throwaway and unremarkable old foe for a truly brutal vengeance that would transform Night Raven into a tragic immortal forever isolated from normal humans as he tried to hunt down his elusive and similarly immortal nemesis to exact some payback. It would be a trend that would continue whenever Moore assumed writing duties on a series, as Captain Britain would discover when Moore also took over that series. The first four pages of Captain Britain's strip in MSH#386 saw him succeed in helping new ally Saturnyne of the Dimensional Development Court save the retrograde Earth he was stranded on. Alan Moore took over for the fifth and final page, and immediately pulled the rug out from under the hero, killing him two issues later and ending his strip, though only in preparation for moving the hero to a new home, The Daredevils.

   Night Raven continued for a few more issues, and was joined by the itinerant Earth 33 1/3. With #393 MSH absorbed Rampage, only to itself be cancelled with #397, and absorbed into The Daredevils. It seems that Captain Britain had left for pastures new, only for the remnants of his old title to take up residence in his new home.

Title/issues: Rampage#40-44, 52-53 (September 1981-November 1982)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Crusader, Time-Smasher, Earth 33 1/3

• Time-Smasher: #40, 42-44 (with text article about the series in #41)
• The Crusader: #41
• Earth 33 1/3: #52-53

616?: Time Smasher - yes, referenced in Merlyn's handbook entry. Crusader - potentially, but may also be on Earth-238, as the character makes a cameo in flashbacks to that world in Captain Britain's story. Earth 33 1/3 - no, set on Earth-333333333

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Like MSH, Rampage had begun life as a weekly title, but unlike MSH when it was relaunched as a monthly it was treated as a new volume and reset its numbering. Early issues reprinted the Hulk stories from the U.S. Rampaging Hulk magazine, alongside Defenders and Nova, but from #8 the All-New X-Men joined the line-up, and just as in the States they proved massively popular. With #24 they began usurping the cover spot, and with the Hulk's departure and replacement by the Thing from Marvel Two-in-One in #28 the X-Men became the defacto and literal headlines of the title, their name printed in larger font and a more dominant position on the cover than the magazine's actual name.

   During its early run Rampage was entirely reprints, but with #40, released the same month that Captain Britain arrived in MSH, an original new strip debuted, Time-Smasher, a tale with a tangential connection to Captain Britain's strip. It skipped the next issue, though an article about the new strip was published instead, discussing the hopes and plans for the story beyond it's initial four-part run, which then continued over the next three issues. Sadly, despite these plans, no further stories ever surfaced, leaving the subsequent fate of the lead character, Kilgore Slaughter, unrevealed.

   Though Time-Smasher skipped #41, there was still a new comic strip therein, The Crusader. A one-shot humorous story, it was later reprinted in The Daredevils#10, but with improved shading and backgrounds, and new text in the final panel, slightly changing the ending.

   With the end of Time-Smasher, Rampage reverted to being solely reprints, until #52 when Earth 33 1/3 began the briefest of runs, as Rampage ended with #53 and merged into MSH.

Title/issues: Super Spider-Man TV Comic#451-458, 461-499 (31st March-26th September 1982)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Earth 33 1/3: #473
• Fairly Amazing Spider-Hound: #482-499
• Jet Lagg: #451-458, 461-472, 474-481
• Spider-Man: #493

616?: Spider-Man - probably yes. Others - no, set on Earth-333333333

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Though the live-action American TV version of Spider-Man had finished in 1979, it only began airing in the U.K. in 1982. To capitalize on this, Marvel U.K. rebranded their long running Spider-Man title, for once not to acknowledge a merger with another title, but to try and draw in viewers of the TV show. Thus with #450, Super Spider-Man TV Comic was born, with a whole "8 pages of colour" and an article on the show. The next issue a new Quinn/Howett half-page strip was added, featuring superhero speedster Jet Lagg. With a couple of skipped weeks his adventures ran for the next 30 issues.

   Lagg's replacement was another superhero, the Fairly Amazing Spider-Hound, which ran from #482 through #505, by which time with the departure of the Spider-Man TV series from the air, the comic had again reinvented itself (see below).

   One more notable, and non-humor, new tale was a brand-new two page Spider-Man story, The Mistake; in #450-452 the comic had run a "Become a Marvel artist" competition, and in #454 had run a similar competition calling for would-be writers; the winning script from the latter was then sent to the art competition winner, and the result by writer Gary Mountford and artist Stephen Easterbrook was published in Super Spider-Man TV Comic#493.

Title/issues: Incredible Hulk#1-27 (31st March-26th September 1982)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Bullpen Bedlam: #12
• Earth 33 1/3: #9
• Hulk the Menace: #1-11, 13-27

616?: Earth 33 1/3 and Hulk the Menace, no, set on Earth-33333333. Bullpen Bedlam - probably set on Earth-333333333, but slight chance of 616.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: In 1982 Marvel U.K. gave Hulk another shot at being the headliner for his own title. Marvel's new strategy for weekly titles was glossy covers on titles named after a headline character, and each issue reprinting at most two American comics - in this case Incredible Hulk, and a What If? Alongside the reprints was Quinn and Howett's Hulk the Menace, taking up residence in his obvious home. The strip appeared through almost the entire 27 issue run prior to the title, like its namesake predecessor, being absorbed into Spider-Man's title.

Title/issues: Not the World Cup (1982)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Ricardo Del Wolverine

616?: Unlikely, but not impossible.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: "Not the World Cup" was a three page comic strip produced by Marvel UK as part of a 1982 World Cup souvenir brochure, a humorous tale penned by Alan Moore around the same time that he started writing Captain Britain, and drawn by Barrie Mitchell, a highly experienced U.K. artist little known to U.S. audiences but an excellent choice for this strip as he had been drawing football-related strips for over a decade. 

Title/issues: Warrior#1-18, 20-21 (March 1982-July 1984)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Marvelman: #1-11, 13-18, 20-21
• Young Marvelman: #12
• Warpsmiths: 9-10

616?: No.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Dez Skinn left Marvel U.K. in January 1980, only 17 months after taking up his role as Editorial Director, citing a desire to return to more creative roles. In 1982 he set up his own company, Quality Communications, and launched Warrior Magazine. Aimed at older readers, Skinn deliberately tried to capture some of the feel of Marvel U.K.'s more successful strips. Alan Moore and David Lloyd's dystopian thriller V for Vendetta was intended to recapture the mystery strip feel of Night Raven; fantasy series The Spiral Path echoed the appeal of Hulk Weekly's Black Knight/Otherworld saga; and psychotic cyborg Axel Pressbutton sought to catch the imagination of fans of Abslom Daak, a character who had debuted in Doctor Who Weekly. However, the significant series from the perspective of this list of Marvel-related comics produced in the U.K. was the superhero relaunch, similar to the one Dez had overseen for Captain Britain, which saw Alan Moore revamp 1950s hero Marvelman with the able assistance of hit artists including Dave Leach and Alan Davis. 

   Though the entire line-up was strong, Marvelman was the immediate fan favorite, prompting Skinn to capitalize on this by publishing a Marvelman Special later that year (see below), which unfortunately seems to have been the trigger for problems with Skinn's old employers, Marvel, who apparently objected to a rival company publishing a comic with "Marvel" so prominent in the title. Despite the fact that Marvelman predated Marvel even calling itself that, legal action was threatened, ultimately leading to Marvelman being dropped from Warrior's line-up; though apparently intended only to be a temporary measure until things got sorted out, sales dropped without Marvelman in the magazine, and ultimately Warrior was cancelled. Moore completed his Marvelman tale under the new name Miracleman for American publisher Eclipse, and handed the reins over to Neil Gaiman, whose run got halted for decades thanks to Eclipse going bankrupt and complex legal shenanigans that arose over Marvelman/Miracleman's ownership, which were finally untangle by (ironically) Marvel. So now Marvel owns the character they tried to get cancelled back in the day.

    Note that creator-owned characters the Warpsmiths and (Dez Skinn's own) Big Ben appeared in Marvelman's strip, then went on to have their own separate stories. The Warpsmith stories are set in the same reality as Marvelman, so I'm listing those (and Marvel has reprinted them as part of their Miracleman reprints), but Big Ben was an alternate universe version from the one seen in Marvelman, and so I'll not be tracking those. Which is just as well, as that version of Big Ben shares a reality with the Liberators and Bogey (two other strips from Warrior) and the Steel Claw (an old IPC character reprinted in the U.S. by Skinn's Quality Periodicals), so adding him would add several additional stories to this list by association.

Title/issues: Spider-Man#500-535, 537-547 (6th October 1982-31st August1983)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Earth 33 1/3: #547
• Fairly Amazing Spider-Hound: #500-505
• Hulk the Menace: 505-535, 537-546
• Would You Make a Marvellous Hero?: #500

616?: No, set on Earth-333333333

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No.

Comments: With the Amazing Spider-Man TV show off air and the latest Incredible Hulk comic ending, Marvel U.K.'s long running Spider-Man title celebrated it's 500th issue by changing title back to just Spider-Man. Well, Spider-Man plus (in really small letters) The Incredible Hulk, but that subtitle only lasted till #505 before being quietly dropped.

   In terms of new strips, #500 had a one-off humorous quiz by Quinn/Howett, "Would you make a Marvellous Hero?,", and The Fairly Amazing Spider-Hound rounded out its run to end in #505. That same issue Hulk the Menace was restarted as its replacement - ironically the very issue that marked the last cover mention of his original title. Hulk the Menace ran for almost the entire length of this latest incarnation of Spider-Man's weekly, and would pop up one more time under the next title (more on which below). Earth 33 1/3 reappeared for #547, the final issue under the current name, then to take advantage of the new Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends cartoon that had begun airing, Spider-Man's comic adopted the same title.

Title/issues: Fantastic Four#1-29 (6th October 1982-20th April 1983)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Fantastic 400

616?: No, set on Earth-333333333

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No.

Comments: The new Fantastic Four weekly title featured yet another new Quinn/Howett creation, the world's largest super group the Fantastic 400. The series appeared in every one of the new title's 29 issue run, and survived its cancellation. While the Fantastic Four comic merged into (you guessed it) Spider-Man's title, the Fantastic 400 strip jumped over to the new Mighty Thor comic.

Title/issues: The Daredevils#1-11 (January 1983-November 1983)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Captain Britain: #1-11
• Night Raven: #6-11
• Earth 33 1/3: #1-3, 5-7
• What If?: #7-10

616?: Captain Britain and Night Raven, yes. Earth 33 1/3, no, set on Earth-333333333. What If?, no, set on Earth-8377.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Captain Britain and Night Raven, yes. Earth 33 1/3 and What If?, no.

Comments: Simultaneously to Alan Moore revamping Marvelman in Warrior, he was also revamping Captain Britain in The Daredevils, Marvel U.K.'s latest monthly title. As with Marvelman, he dipped into the character's past lore and re-examined it from a new lens; what differed was that in the former case he revealed most of what had gone before was illusion, in the latter he took the disparate fragments of Captain Britain's past tales and developed them into something deeper and more powerful. A few issues in Moore brought in the Special Executive that he had created for Doctor Who Monthly and again developed that initial concept into something deeper.

   Captain Britain had jumped ship from Marvel Super-Heroes nine issues before that title's demise, in preparation for relaunching his tale in his new home, leaving behind Night Raven to hold the fort. Six issues in, Night Raven followed his old friend, the now immortal hero once again escaping a dying title by leaping across to a new one.

   As remained common through most of Marvel U.K. at this juncture, humor strips also appeared, initially in the form of Quinn/Howett's Earth 33 1/3, but also in later issues with single panel "What If?"s by artist Lew Stringer. This was Stringer's first professional work, but it would be far from his last, as he would go on to produce multiple strips for Marvel U.K. (detailed below) as well as working for IPC and as an independent creator in a career that now spans forty years.

Title/issues: Worzel Gummdidge#1-? (9th March 1983-?)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Soggy and Saggy: #1, others unconfirmed (see comments)

616?: Unlikely, but not impossible

Summary: Soggy and Saggy are a scarecrow couple who are secretly alive, unknown to the farmer whose fields they guard.

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Soggy and Saggy appeared in a strip in the first issue of the Worzel Gummidge weekly title (not to be confused with the monthly magazine of the same name that immediately preceded it). As licensed title based on the TV series starring ex-Doctor Who John Pertwee as the living scarecrow Worzel Gummidge, itself based on a series of children's novels, the main strips featured the characters from the show, but Soggy and Saggy were original characters, albeit clearly in the same vein, and per the indicia they belonged to Marvel (which specified that anything in the comic not based on the TV show was Marvel property), so in theory they could be brought back in another Marvel title. As I only have access to the first issue, I don't know what other issues, if any, of the 23 issue run they appeared in; since the covers of #5 mentions a Wind in the Willows strip starting up, that may well have replaced Soggy and Saggy. 

Title/issues: Mighty World of Marvel Special (1983)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Various

616?: No, probably set on Earth-333333333

Summary: Marvel Heroes When They're 64

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: A summer special that was mostly reprints, but which also included a full page Quinn/Howett humor strip.

Title/issues: Mighty Thor#1-19; Mighty Thor and the X-Men#20-21 (20th April-7th September 1983)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Fantastic 400: #1-21
• Earth 33 1/3: #14

616?: No, set on Earth-333333333

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Thor was the next character to get his own title in this era of Marvel U.K. Keeping him company were the Fantastic 400, late of the Fantastic Four weekly. After 19 issues Thor absorbed the failing Original X-Men title, and only two issues later the Fantastic 400 ended. Outside of the strip in Doctor Who Magazine, this also marked the end of new Quinn/Howett humor strips (though two more titles are listed immediately below, they came out prior to Thor and the X-Men#21) in Marvel U.K. titles, at least until the 1990s. There would be some reprints (notably Earth 33 1/3 in The Thing is Big Ben), and humorous back-up strips continued, but produced by other creators, most notably Lew Stringer. It was not the end of Tim Quinn's involvement at Marvel U.K. however, as he remained active as an editor, including developing proposals for several new comics.

Title/issues: Original X-Men#1-17 (27th April-17th August 1983)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Bullpen Bedlam: #1-16
• Earth 33 1/3: #17

616?: Earth 33 1/3, no, set on Earth-333333333. Bullpen Bedlam - probably Earth 333333333, but slim chance of 616.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: The Original X-Men was the new, and final, home for Bullpen Bedlam, as well as carrying the last new Earth 33 1/3 installment in its final issue. The end of Bullpen Bedlam was not however the last the Marvel U.K. staff would find themselves parodied in one of their own comics, as they'd be supporting cast in two later strips, Secret Artist and CYRIL, both discussed below.

Title/issues: Channel 33 ¹/₃ (July 1983)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Channel 33 1/3 - The Kid's Comic Station

616?: No, set on Earth-333333333

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: By July 1983 there were enough Quinn/Howett strips to fill their own special - in fact, the special only had space to reprint a tiny portion of the strips they had produced, with a small additional framing strip to introduce the collected title. The special reprinted the entirety of I Was Adolf''s Double, the early episodes of Jet Lagg, and a select number of examples of all the other Quinn/Howett strips.

Title/issues: Spider-Woman Annual 1984 (released 1983)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Spider-Woman

616?: Potentially

Summary: Inside Story

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: With the Spider-Woman cartoon having belatedly made its way to the U.K., in 1983 Grandreams released a Spider-Woman Annual, and, as they had done for other Marvel annuals over the last few years prior, it included a new ten-page text story, Inside Story, by Steve Moore, Jerry Paris and Leigh Baulch.

Title/issues: Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends#557, 569, 578 (9th November 1983-4th April 1984)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• George the Spider: #578
• Hulk the Menace: #557
• What If?: #569

616?: Hulk the Menace, no, set on Earth-333333333. What If?, no, set on Earth-8377. George, no, set on Earth-84632

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Having previously been titled simply Spider-Man, on October 12th 1983 with #553, Marvel UK's longest running title renamed itself Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends in an attempt to capitalise on the popularity of the cartoon series of that name which was then airing on British TV. After three issues reprinting the US comic adaptation of the cartoon's pilot episode, the ongoing Spider-Man strip reverted to reprinting the regular US Spider-Man titles, but the Amazing Friends subtitle was retained. With #567 on January 18th 1984 the comic absorbed failing sister title Thor and the X-Men, briefly acknowledging the merger on the cover. The last issue titled Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends was #578; the next issue the comic renamed itself back to just Spider-Man.

   During this brief run the title carried three humor strips - the last Hulk the Menace, the last single-panel Lew Stringer What If?, and a one-off short George the Spider, also by Lew Stringer.

Title/issues: Mighty World of Marvel#7-17 (December 1983-October 1984)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Captain Britain: #7-16
• Night Raven: #7-17
• What If?: 8-10, 13
• Marvel Comics Work-In: #15
• Marvel Showcase: #7-17
• Slipstream: #7

616?: Captain Britain and Night Raven, yes. All others set in a variety of alternate realities.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: With the cancellation of The Daredevils and its merger into The Mighty World of Marvel as of #7 of that title the two original series, Captain Britain and Night Raven, both transferred to their new home. Additionally, a new feature, Marvel Showcase, began running a range of new tales from new comic creators, some of whom (Mike Collins, Mark Farmer, Kev Hopgood, etc.) would go on to long term careers in comics. Each issue Showcase featured a different strip, though two - Right Foot Backwards and Disenchantment - became recurring tales. Lew Stringer also continued to produce new humor shorts for the title, and #7 also carried Slipstream, a fake advert accompanied by a one-page comic strip, written by Alan Moore and drawn by Steve Dillon and John Higgins; Slipstream also appeared in some other Marvel U.K. titles the same month.

   Moore finished off his Captain Britain epic in MWoM#13, handing over the writing duties to the series long time artist Alan Davis, and swearing off working for Marvel again more out of ire at their firing of his well-liked editor Bernie Jaye than their actions against Warrior and Marvelman (though that probably didn't help). Davis continued Captain Britain's tale before the strip ended in #16, in preparation for moving to a brand new Captain Britain title. Night Raven continued to the end of the run, which proved to be the very next issue; MWoM#17 was the last issue, and the title merged into (bizarrely) Savage Sword of Conan.

Title/issues: Paper Empire#1-3 (1984), Captain Empire#4 (1987)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Captain Empire

616? No, set on Earth-741

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: After first appearing as a cameo in Captain Britain's strip, Captain Empire got his own story in the fanzine Paper Empire, written and published by Dominic Regan. Notably, what elevates this beyond just being fan fiction is that it was done with Alan Moore's permission. Paper Empire renamed itself Captain Empire with the fourth issue, which also proved to be the last, ending his story mid-adventure.

   Captain Empire's tale only took up the first half of each of the first three issues; the second half was occupied by Peter Coyle's superhero story Black Ice, a series that had no Marvel connections.

Title/issues: The Thing is Big Ben#1-12 (28th March-13th June 1984)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Donald Dogfly

616?: Probably not, but not impossible

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: The Thing is Big Ben was a weekly title that reprinted Marvel Two-in-One alongside Iron Man and Captain America; later issues dropped Cap in favor of Power Man and Iron Fist. Why the unusual title? Trying to appeal to U.K. audiences by using the nickname of the famous clocktower? After all, the Thing isn't normally known as "Big Ben," even if he is admittedly a guy called Ben who is somewhat large. That allusion was the official reason for the title, but very few fans had any doubts that the real reason for the unusual title was that Marvel was messing with Dez Skinn. At the time this new title emerged, Marvel was in a dispute with Skinn over Warrior, and specifically the use of a character with Marvel in his name. Skinn had also introduced his own superhero Big Ben, and was very open about his hope of spinning his character off into his own stories, and perhaps even his own title down the road. So the widespread belief was that Marvel had released a title with Big Ben mostly to trademark that name and block Skinn from releasing his own comic.

    Alongside the reprint material, the comic had one new strip, a full page humor tale Donald Dogfly by Hunt Emerson, which ran for the first 12 issues of the title. The comic itself lasted for only 18 issues, before merging into (yes, of course) Spider-Man.

Title/issues: Spider-Man#607-611 (27th October-24th November 1984)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Spider-Man

616?: Yes. Thunderclap has reappeared in American comics since debuting in this story.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Having most recently gone by the title Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, seeking to capitalise on the popularity of the cartoon of that name, Marvel UK's longest running title renamed itself simply Spider-Man as of #579, released 11th April 1984. Spider-Man #595 saw the comic absorb failing sister title The Thing is Big Ben, briefly acknowledging this merger on the cover.

  While this era of the title included none of the humor strips that had been prevalent until recently across the Marvel UK line, it did feature a brand new, multi-part Spider-Man tale. Apparently worried that British fans might not take well to Spider-Man's upcoming change to his black costume, editorial decided to test the waters for new U.K. tales that would keep Spidey in his original outfit. Thus Mike Collins and Barry Kitson produced a story where Peter Parker goes to London, and finds himself battling the cyborg Assassin-8. This was also the story that introduced the inept hero Thunderclap, later to return during Marvel U.S.' Civil War storyline. Though the U.K.-originated story finished in Spider-Man #610, the next issue's editorial page included "excerpts from Peter Parker's diary," which provided both additional details about his departure from London and return home, as well as an update on Thunderclap's activities while Peter was overseas and a small amount of new art - so when all is combined, effectively a minimal additional episode of the story. Plans for any further new stories were abandoned however when it became clear fans liked Spider-Man's new black costume.

   A few months later, with sales dropping, the decision was made to refocus the Spider-Man title towards younger readers, and with #634 the series was rebranded as The Spider-Man Comic.

Title/issues: Star Wars: Return of the Jedi#73-126 (10th November 1984-16th November 1985)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: CYRIL

616?: Potentially.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes, in Star Wars: From the UK Vault

Comments: On 10th November Marvel's long-running Star Wars title added its own humor strip, CYRIL: The Adventures of an Editing-Droid. CYRIL actually debuted far earlier, in Star Wars Weekly#41 (15th November 1979), when he began responding to readers' letters on the title's letters' page; long unseen, he was finally shown in visual form in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi#61 (15th August 1984). Finally with #73 he got his own series, usually consisting of one page at a time, which depicted his misadventures working in the Marvel U.K. offices (last seen in Bullpen Bedlam).

   As most Star Wars fans know, the UK Star Wars comic also featured some brand new Star Wars stories, including some by Alan Moore. Since covering new tales based on licensed properties would open the floodgates (Marvel UK produced a lot of licensed titles, and many of them featured U.K. originated tales - listing them all here would only make this already extremely long list immeasurably longer), I'm only covering here any those that featured Marvel characters or new, non-licensed tales that Marvel might retain ownership of. I may do a separate Marvel/Lucasfilm list at some point.

Title/issues: Transformers#5-79, 81-128, 130-181, 183-193, 195-332  (17th November 1984-18th January 1992)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Chromobots: #12-26
• Circuit-Breaker: #30, 32, 41
• Combat Colin: #153-181, 184-193, 195-332
• Death's Head: #113-114, 117-118, 120, 133
• Matt and the Cat: #5-29, 31-35, 37, 39-59, 61, 64-73
• Robo-Capers: #15-45, 48-57, 59-79, 81-128, 130-152, 183
• Spider-Man: #132

616?: Spider-Man and Combat Colin, probably yes. Circuit Breaker and Death's Head - their stories here are not in 616, but CB has a 616 counterpart while DH has visited there. The others - probably not.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Deaths Head and Circuit Breaker - yes. All others - no.

Comments: Marvel U.K.'s Transformers comic launched on 20th September 1984, only a few months after the U.S. version (though it too was cover dated September, Marvel Age#17 confirmed it shipped in April). Thus, as almost anyone with a passing knowledge of Transformers comics knows, it wasn't long before to avoid running out of reprint material they had to produce U.K. material to gain some breathing space and let the U.S. comics get a lead again. However, since generally I don't intend to list new stories in licensed comics (because that would open a vast floodgate), most of those aren't relevant for this page. Instead I'm sticking to the new material that either contained Marvel-owned characters or was outwith the Transformers (or any other licensed) universe.

   On the former front, though mostly debuting in Transformers, both Circuit Breaker and Death's Head remain Marvel-owned. Though she first appeared in U.S. comics, the former had three appearances in tales that originated in the U.K. comic. As for Death's Head, all his Transformer appearances were U.K. stories. Additionally, and somewhat incongruously, #132 also included a brand new four page Spider-Man story written by Simon Furman and drawn by Barry Kitson; including no Transformers content, it may well have been printed in that title simply because by September 1987, the date the story was published, Marvel U.K. no longer had a regular Spider-Man comic.

   Transformers also carried home grown humor/adventure strips, initially by Mychailo "Mike" Kazybrid, starting with Matt and the Cat, a humor strip using characters Kazybrid had originally created for newspaper strips in The Bradford Telegraph & Argus, and The Manchester Evening News. He later accompanied this with Chromobots, a robot adventure strip. Matt and the Cat ultimately had a lengthy run, starting in #5 and ending in #73.

   In #15 Lew Stringer introduced his new strip, Robo-Capers, which lasted an impressive 138 issues, and was only ended when the Transformers title absorbed Action Force, bringing with it the latter title's more popular Lew Stringer creation, Combat Colin, who became a permanent fixture in Transformers until it was finally cancelled with #332, nearly four years after Colin came on board.

   Though I don't intend to go into any detail (as that can easily be found elsewhere online, such as the Transformers wiki), the following issues had UK-originated Transformers stories: #9-21, 29-32, 41-50, 59-65, 74-88, 93, 96-104, 113-120, 125, 130-153, 160-161, 164-175, 182-189, 198-205, 213-289, 302

Title/issues: Savage Sword of Conan#85-93 (November 1984)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Night Raven: #85-92
• Marvel Showcase: #85-93

616?: Night Raven, yes. Showcase - various non-616 realities.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: In November 1984 the failing Mighty World of Marvel was merged into Savage Sword of Conan. This was actually the second British SSoC series, with the first, a weekly launched in 1975, having only lasted 18 issues before it merged into the Avengers. The monthly version had launched in November 1977, and until the merger had solely consisted of reprinted tales. Now it added the survivors of MWoM - completing a reprint of the Magik miniseries, and continuing with both the new Night Raven text stories and Marvel Showcase feature. Because of the identical main title and the overlapping dates, beware if trying to buy this online, as from personal experience many online sellers can't seem to distinguish between the UK and US editions of the magazine, despite the former clearly having prices in pennies rather than dollars and cents. SSoC ended with #93, this time not being absorbed into any other title. Night Raven survived by once again belatedly following Captain Britain to that worthy's latest home, but Marvel Showcase came to an end.

Title/issues: Captain Britain#1-14 (January 1985-February 1986)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Captain Britain: #1-14
• Captain Granbretan: #13
• The Cherubim: #11-14
• City: #5-7
• The Eye Witness: #8
• Freefall Warriors: #1-4
• Night Raven: #10-12
• Paragon of Painthorpe Street: #1-4
• Space Thieves: #5-10
• Thicker Than Water: #9

616?: Captain Britain, Cherubim and Night Raven, yes. Other stories are set in various non-616 realities.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Captain Britain, Captain Granbretan, Cherubim and Night Raven - yes. All others, no.

Comments: Judging the time was right to give Captain Britain his own title again, Marvel U.K. launched the new monthly in January 1985. He shared his first issue with reprints of Abslom Daak from Doctor Who Weekly and the Night Raven comic strip from Hulk Comic, as well as a new text story, Paragon of Painthorpe Street, and a new comic strip based on more characters who had originated in Doctor Who Monthly, the interstellar pilots known as the Freefall Warriors. As Alan Davis' original draft of the cover reveals, the original plan for the title had to use reprints of non-Marvel space hero Jeff Hawke, before changing this to the Warriors. When Paragon and Freefall Warriors concluded in #4, they were replaced by new text tale City and new strip Space Thieves. City was replaced by a string of one issue text tales, most notably the return of the Night Raven text stories, transferring here after the cancellation of their last home, Savage Sword of Conan, and the story of Corps member Captain Granbretan. Meanwhile Space Thieves was replaced by the Cherubim, newly introduced Captain Britain characters now spinning off into their own series.

   Sadly sales were too low to sustain the new title, and so after 14 issues the series ended. There was no merger of titles this time, and so Captain Britain and Night Raven both found themselves finally homeless after nearly seven years of more or less continuous adventures. Captain Britain would return to comics in the U.S. New Mutants and X-Men Annuals, both written by his original scribe Chris Claremont, before joining the new X-affiliate title Excalibur, penned by Claremont and drawn by CB's long-time artist Alan Davis. Night Raven's time as a mostly text character had come to an end, and he returned to appearing in comic format, starting with his own graphic novel, more on which below.

Title/issues: Spider-Man Comic#634-650 (4th May-24th August 1985)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Captain Wally, Snailman

616?: Probably yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: With the long-running British Spider-Man title suffering flagging sales, it was revamped to attempt to appeal to younger readers. Renamed The Spider-Man Comic, it had a very mismatched line-up: initially reprints of Spider-Man from the Denver Post free giveaway comics and then Spidey Super-Stories (Electric Company) stories; Star Comics' Wally the Wizard, here retitled Willy the Wizard, Fraggle Rock, and later first the Dukes of Hazzard and Further Adventures of Indiana Jones.

   Alongside these were two new superhero humor strips by Lew Stringer: the one-page Captain Wally and the half-page Snailman. These were firmly rooted in the Marvel universe; in his first appearance Captain Wally was inspired to become a crimefighter after reading about Spider-Man foiling a bank raid, and in #650, the final issue using the title The Spider-Man Comic, the two heroes enjoyed a crossover adventure, confirming Snailman to be a Marvel hero too.

   With sales apparently still falling, Spider-Man Comic revamped once more, trying even harder to appeal to young readers by retitling itself Spidey Comic as of #651. Both Captain Wally and Snailman survived the revamp, at least initially - more on which below.

Title/issues: Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars#1-9, Secret Wars#10, 13-14, 16; Secret Wars featuring Zoids#25; Secret Wars II#42, 44, 51-53, 58, 63, 67, 69, 75, 79 (27th April 1985-3rd January 1987)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Secret Artist: #1-10, 13-14, 16
• Spider-Man: #25
• Macho-Man: #42, 44, 51-53, 58, 63, 67, 69, 75, 79

616?: Probably yes for all.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: With the release of the massive cross-company Secret Wars crossover in the U.S., Marvel U.K. launched their own title to reprint the series and all the tie-in issues. Accompanying this was a new two page strip, Marvel's Secret Artist, about a largely unseen gremlin-like being who lived in the air vents at the Marvel U.K. offices, sneaking out at night to leave distorted artistic representations of various Marvel characters. Since CYRIL from the Return of the Jedi strip was also depicted as working in those same offices, the robot even had a crossover appearance.

   Additionally, to commemorate then Marvel U.S. Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter visiting the U.K. and appearing on Saturday morning children's show The Wide Awake Club alongside artists Barry Kitson and Mark Farmer, Shooter penned a new three page Spider-Man story for #25 of Secret Wars, depicting the web-slinger also visiting the show.

  Later, as Secret Wars became Secret Wars II, heralding the reprinting of the second miniseries (and it's numerous tie-ins), a new Lew Stringer humor strip began, featuring alien hero Macho-Man. Unquestionably set in the Marvel universe, it featured many appearances by "serious" Marvel characters, and the character would later appear (alongside Snailman and Captain Wally) in Combat Colin, cementing their shared universe.

Title/issues: Spidey Comic#651-660 (31st August-2nd November 1985)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Captain Wally: 651-653
• Snailman: #651-653
• Spider-Man: #654-660

616?: Probably yes for all.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: The final incarnation of Marvel UK's longest running title, and seemingly trying with increasing desperation to appeal to an ever younger audience given its abbreviated name and new line-up of strips. Spider-Man's stories were, in many instances, reprints of Spidey Super Stories, while other pages were filled with reprints of Star Comics' Ewoks, an adaptation of Disney's The Black Cauldron, Indiana Jones (from Marvel's Further Adventures of Indiana Jones), and, incongruously, The Tough Guys, a translated reprint of French series Les casseurs - Hauts et Bas à San Francisco by writer and artist Christian Denayer and writer André-Paul Duchâteau, which had originally seen publication in Tintin magazine.

   Alongside these reprints were the final three installments of Captain Wally and Snailman. The issue after they finished, an unheralded new feature began a brief run, as the next seven issues included new two page Spider-Man text adventures.

   Ultimately the mismatched combination of strips was not a strong seller, and Spidey Comics was cancelled on 14th December 1985 with issue 666.

Title/issues: Scan#39, 41 (1985)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Captain Babylon

Summary: To follow

616?: No, set on Earth-451

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Scan was a fanzine edited by John Freeman. Though its numbering went as high as #44, there were actually only thirteen issues. As Freeman noted "We started with #26 and then jumped all over the place with issue numbers and formats to bewilder any potential readers." The series is notable on this list for two reasons: First, in Scan #39 and 41 Freeman wrote two stories featuring Captain Babylon, a counterpart to Captain Britain, and second because it was this fanzine that got Freeman started in comics, leading to him becoming a major writer and editor in Marvel U.K. only a few years later.

   Many of the issues, including the two featuring Captain Babylon, are available to read online (with the full permission of those involved in creating and publishing the zine).

Title/issues: Mad Dog#10 (1985)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Captain Airstrip-One

616?: No, set on Earth-744.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Another fanzine, Mad Dog#10 was notable because it included a strip by Alan Moore featuring one of the background Captains he and Alan Davis had first introduced in Captain Britain.

Title/issues: Action Force#5-20, 22-29, 31-50 (4th April 1987-13th February 1988)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Combat Colin: #5-20, 22-29, 31-50
• Shang-Chi: #17

616?: Combat Colin, probably yes. Shang-Chi, no - this is a version of the character who exists on Action Force/G.I. Joe's world.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: In the U.K. the G.I. Joe toys had been marketed under the less American-centric name of Action Force, and thus the comics also went by that name. Marvel had not been the first to print Action Force stories either - that had been the IPC war-themed title Battle, which had even changed its name to Battle Action and then Battle Action Force. Starting in 1983 these tales had an entirely different mythology than the story established in Marvel's GI Joe comics, with Action Force combating the evil Red Shadows, led by Baron Ironblood. When, in 1985, the U.K. toys were repackaged to match the American ones, the story in Battle Action Force even had Ironblood abandon that identity in the 2nd November 1985 issue to adopt the new title of Cobra Commander, abandoning his Red Shadows organization which Action Force had decimated to found its replacement, Cobra. There's an extensive and detailed site dedicated to the Action Force version of the mythology, the excellent Blood for the Baron.

   When Marvel gained the license they understandably kept the title Action Force, hoping to attract fans of the previous iteration of the comic. Almost immediately to fill the title new U.K. stories began appearing, but as with other licensed titles, I'm not tracking here those new tales that only feature the licensed characters.

   From #5 Lew Stringer introduced another of his comedy strips, Combat Colin. This would become his most prolific strip, appearing not just in over forty issues of Action Force, but surviving the title's cancellation and merger into Transformers, where he garnered over 150 additional stories. During that lengthy run Colin encountered Marvel heroes including Spider-Man, battled Marvel villains including Doctor Doom, met fellow Stringer creations Macho-Man, Captain Wally, Snailman and Brickman (a character Lew self published outside of any Marvel title), and the Transformers. When Marvel U.K. shut down, they gave Lew back ownership of Combat Colin, and Lew has continued to publish new adventures for him.

   Action Force#17 also carried a new story to introduce readers to Shang-Chi, whose stories were going to be reprinted as a back-up feature from #18. In this new tale Action Force martial artist Quick-Kick reminisces about one of the greatest martial artists he had ever seen, recapping Shang-Chi's origin and confirming that he'd also encountered Batroc, Iron Fist and Elektra.

   If anyone is trying to track down back issues of this series, please be aware Marvel U.K. launched a short lived Action Force Monthly after the weekly was cancelled, so be careful which one you are purchasing.

Title/issues: High Noon Tex (1987)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Death's Head

616?: No, though DH has since visited 616.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Since Marvel's contract with Hasbro meant that any new characters first introduced in Transformers comics would belong to Hasbro as and when the licensing deal ended, Marvel took steps to retain the rights to two characters by ensuring they had been published elsewhere first. In the case of Circuit Breaker, who appeared in the American version of the title, this meant introducing her in the pages of Secret Wars II, where she encountered the Beyonder. In the case of Death's Head, a special one page strip, High Noon Tex, was created. As Simon Furman tweeted on 16th March 2022 "High Noon Tex was fast-tracked to make DH a Marvel character, written on a napkin by me and drawn overnight by 16-year old Bryan Hitch at a UKAC (UK Comic Art con)." The strip was later published in various Marvel U.K. titles.

Title/issues: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers#1-9 (21st May-10th September 1988)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Tall Tales from Duffy's Place: #1-9

616?: Probably not, but not impossible

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Another licensed title, Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers included a new back-up humor strip by Dan Abnett and Brian Williamson, Tall Tales from Duffy's Place. The comic only lasted nine issues, merging into Thundercats, and Duffy's Place transferred there for one final appearance.

Title/issues: Thundercats#30-59, 66; Thundercats and Galaxy Rangers#79 (10th October 1987-17th September 1988)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• One Cat and his Cod: #30-59
• Gwanzulum: #66
• Tall Tales from Duffy's Place: #79

616?: One Cat and Tall Tales - probably not, but not impossible. Gwanzulum - no, they appeared in the Thundercats' reality.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Another licensed title that produced new material for the property they licensed, Thundercats also included an ongoing humor strip, One Cat and his Cod, by Ian Rimmer and Lew Stringer, plus the last episode of Tall Tales from Duffy's Place after the title absorbed the failing Galaxy Rangers comic. One Thundercats story (that I know of) also included a tie to Marvel's other properties when the titular felines faced the Gwanzulum, alien shapeshifters who also encountered the Doctor in Doctor Who Magazine, the Ghostbusters in Real Ghostbusters, and Combat Colin in Transformers around the same time.

Title/issues: Real Ghostbusters#9, 42 (16th July 1988-1st April 1989)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Gwanzulum: #9
• Death's Head: #42

616?: No, both were present in the Real Ghostbusters reality. DH was an extradimensional visitor, and the Gwanzulum likely were too.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No.

Comments: Like many of Marvel U.K.'s licensed titles, The Real Ghostbusters included many new stories of the title characters that were produced in the U.K. As mentioned above, in one of these the Ghostbusters encountered the Gwanzulum, providing a link to the Marvel multiverse since the shapeshifters had also run into Combat Colin. Another link, albeit only a one-panel cameo, saw the Ghostbusters investigating a building storing movie monster props, and standing among those was Death's Head. Obviously, that could mean he was just another monster costume/prop, but I prefer to think that the Freelance Peacekeeping Agent was actually there and just chose to blend in to avoid the unnecessary complication of dealing with locals armed with nuclear-powered back pack weapons.

Title/issues: Arken Sword#17-18, 20 (1987)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Captain Britain, Marvelman

616?: No.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Arken Sword was a fanzine published by Paul Duncan that ran from 1980 to 1990, though it abbreviated its name to just Ark from #24. In the 1987 double issue #17/19 Alan Davis provided a partially finished story page depicting Captain Britain and Miracleman facing off against each other, and offered the original art as a prize for the best script that provided the story context and finished off the tale in the yet-to-be-drawn final panel. The winner was Spencer Woodcock, whose story Devilswrack added in two more characters Alan Davis was known for drawing, the alien delinquents D.R. and Quinch from 2000A.D. Richard Starkings lettered the finished page, which was then published in Arken Sword#20.

Title/issues: Dragon's Claws#1-10 (July 1988-April 1989)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Dragon's Claws

616?: No, set on Earth-5555

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: In 1988 Marvel U.K. began experimenting with producing comics in the format more common to America - while exceptions did exist, U.K. comics were most commonly anthology titles coming out weekly, with black and white interior art and perhaps a few color pages, and physically larger than their American cousins. Dragon's Claws, and many of the titles that followed, were designed to look like American comics, because (as the cover price information showed) they were intended to also be sold in the United States alongside American Marvel titles. As such the covers listed them simply as Marvel comics rather than Marvel U.K., but despite this they were undeniably British titles produced in the U.K.

   The drive behind these new format titles was new Marvel U.K. editor Richard Starkings. Per an article by Starkings in Elephantmen#16, Marvel U.K. had been wanting to produce monthly titles in the style and formats of their U.S. counterparts for several years; at one point they thought their best bet was Captain Britain, but the failure of his 1985 title killed that hope. However, when Simon Furman and Geoff Senior pitched a "Science-Fiction Rollerball meets Judge Dredd" series called Dragon's Teeth, it became the first project to go with the American format. The name Dragon's Teeth was a nod to the myth most famously tied to Jason and the Argonauts' quest for the Golden Fleece, where warriors arise in the spots where teeth taken from a dragon were planted. However it turned out a small press comic was already using that name, so at the eleventh hour the name was changed to Dragon's Claws.

Title/issues: Marvel Bumper Comic Holiday Special (Summer 1988)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Spider-Man

616?: Probably.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Though Marvel U.K. was beginning to move towards publishing comics in American format for the American market, they continued to produce new titles in the more traditional U.K. format to be sold in shops on British high streets. One of these was the Marvel Bumper Comic Holiday Special, a reprint title with a truly scattershot range of strips (as the cover to the right shows). The Holiday Special depicted also included a two page Spider-Man strip, which letterer Gordon "Kid" Robson noted on his blog had been done "for some promotional purpose or other", but was later reprinted in the Special. However, I have no clue where this strip was previously published, if indeed it actually was; I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it was intended for promotional use, then got shelved and kept aside as inventory until finally someone thought to publish it here. Intriguingly Kid also mentions that there was also a Hulk strip, but if that ever saw publication I'm unaware of it.

   The Special must have sold well, because an ongoing title was created soon after, as discussed below.

Title/issues: Death's Head#1-10 (December 1988-September 1989)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Death's Head

616?: Among other realities visited.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: The next American format title, giving fan favorite guest star Death's Head his own series. Again per Richard Starkings' article in Elephantmen#16, while Marvel U.K. was working on Dragon's Teeth (as it was then known), they learned that Marvel's creator-owned Epic imprint was negotiating to reprint The New Statesman and Third World War, two series that in the U.K. had appeared in Crisis, a spin-off title from 2000A.D. and published by Marvel U.K.'s rival IPC. Not wanting to see this "cross-pollination" with their competitor, Marvel U.K. appealed to then Marvel president Jim Galton to block the deal, and he agreed but only on condition that Marvel U.K. produce two new titles to take their place. Given his popularity, Death's Head was an obvious choice. The other series was The Sleeze Brothers, detailed below.

Title/issues: Marvel Bumper Comic#10-18 (4th February-22nd April 1989)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Halibut Square: #10-18
• Magnetic Sisters: #10-12

616?: Magnetic Sisters - doubtful but not impossible. Halibut Square - no.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: As mentioned above, Marvel Bumper Comic was launched as a weekly title featuring a range of stories mostly reprinted from all across Marvel U.K.'s recent output, with additional reprints of some European sttrips. Doctor Who, Alf, Real Ghostbusters, Scooby-Doo, Popeye, Combat Colin, Thundercats, Tom and Jerry, William Tell, Defenders of the Earth, Star Wars' Droids, France's Souperman and the Hulk all appeared at one point or another during the series surprisingly long 31 issue run.

   In addition to all the reprints, two original humor strips were included, The Magnetic Sisters, a short-lived series about twin sisters Maureen and Meg who become magnetically charged by a strange cosmic storm, and Halibut Square, an anthropomorphic animal parody of popular U.K. soap Eastenders.

Title/issues: A1#1 (1989)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Warpsmiths

616?: No.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Published by Atomeka Press, A1 was an anthology series. The first issue included a Warpsmiths story set between episodes of Marvelman/Miracleman, and as such it has since been reprinted by Marvel as part of their Miracleman run.

Title/issues: It's Wicked!#1-17 (20th May-9th September 1989)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Best of Fiends: #1
• Billy Bones: #10-17
• Burpzilla: #17
• Clare Voyant: #1-10
• Daily Howl: #15-17
• Dunstable D. Dragon: #1-15
• Ghosthunters: #1-17
• Ghostman Bat and his Black and White Rat: #1-17
• Ghoul School: #1-3, 5
• Gordon Gremlin: #1-17
• Grotty Lotty: The Schoolgirl Witch: #16-17
• Inspector Spectre, Private Eye: #1
• It's a Nightmare...a Nursery Nightmare: #4, 6-17
• Mummy's Boy: #1-17
• Toad in the Hole: #1-17
• Were Woof: #6-16
• Wick Ed and his Ectoplasmic Ball: #2
• Winnie the Witch Doctor: #1-4
• Zombears (Night of the Living Ted): #11-14

616?: Potentially yes. There are weirder individuals in 616.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Marvel U.K. wasn't just experimenting with releasing new tales in American formatted comics in 1989. That same year they published It's Wicked!, a humor anthology title very much in the mold of the Beano, Dandy or Buster - all extremely long running British titles from rival publishers DC Thomson and IPC. Like IPC's Monster Fun from the 1970s, It's Wicked! was horror-themed, and apart from the headliner, popular licensed character Slimer from Real Ghostbusters, all the other strips featured original characters. In keeping with its forebears, each strip had one to two pages per issue to tell a short humorous story. An interesting experiment on Marvel U.K.'s part, and a huge departure from their norm, it only lasted 17 issues. Some of this might have been due to the comic simply not being as polished as its more experienced rivals, but it's also fair to say that at the time the British comic market was contracting - per the excellent Rusty Staples blog, in 1988 there were around 120 comics being published in the U.K., but by 1991 that had plummeted 25% to around 80 titles. There would be a resurgence to 106 titles in 1993 (likely due to the glut of American formatted titles Marvel U.K. released during that period) before dropping off a cliff thereafter, as Rusty Staples' handy infographic shows. Whatever the reason, It's Wicked! only lasted a few months; unsurprisingly Slimer survived, and went on to his own title, where he was briefly accompanied by The Daily Howl (presumably using the remaining episodes that had already been created prior to the axe falling), while Winnie the Witch Doctor moved to the next anthology title attempt, the Bog Paper (see below). As for the rest of the It's Wicked! characters, they haven't been heard from since.

Winnie the Witch Doctor

Ghostman Bat

The pupils of Ghoul School - not identified on panel is Doris Dracula (girl with fangs)

Mummy's Boy

Toad

Nursery Nightmares

Moe (left) and Joe (right) Mole, the Ghosthunters

Werewoof

Billy Bones

Clare Voyant

Title/issues: Sleeze Brothers#1-6 (August 1989-January 1990); Sleeze Brothers: Some Like it Fresh (1991)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Sleeze Brothers
(Marvel cameos) Archie Goodwin, Death's Head: #5
Hulk, Namor, Spider-Man, Thing: Some Like it Fresh

616?: No.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Another of Marvel U.K.'s American format titles, this one featured the Sleeze Brothers who had previously appeared as guest stars in Doctor Who Magazine#147. A SciFi take on the Blues Brothers, private investigators el Ape and Deadbeat were created by writer John Carnell and artist Andy Lanning, the latter of whom loaded the background of many scenes with guest cameos including Daleks and Sontarans from Doctor Who, Judge Dredd, Freddy Krueger, Concrete, Judah Macabee and a Head from Nexus, the Lost in Space Robot, D.R. (of D.R. and Quinch), Middenface McNulty, Cerebus the Aardvark, Rorschach, Roachmill, the Spirit, Spock; Bungle, Zippy and George from British children's TV show Rainbow; Alien Xenomorphs, Slimer, Thanagarian Hawkmen, Martial Law, the Mekon, Charlie Brown, Fat Freddy Freak, Hard Boiled's Nixon, and, importantly for the Marvel connection, Archie Goodwin (the real world editor's comic counterpart often seen in Marvel Fanfare), Death's Head, Hulk, Namor, Spider-Man and the Thing.

   After the initial six issue miniseries finished its run a one shot followed in 1991. Originally intended as a Marvel U.K. title, thanks to the assistance of Epic editor Archie Goodwin it was instead published as the first (and as it turned out, last) Epic UK title, meaning that the rights to the characters reverted back to Carnell and Lanning in the mid-90s. As a result, the Sleeze Brothers also made appearances in Epic#2 and Image's Elephantmen#16.

Title/issues: Bog Paper#1-11 (4th November 1989-13th January 1990)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Anty: #1-11
• Chicken Vindaloo: #1-11
• Dampers: #1-6, 8-11
• Doctor Phoo: #1-11
• Flush Gordon: #1-11
• The Gents: #1-11
• King John: #1-11
• Roystone Roylette: #1-11
• Rude Goollitt: #1-11
• Spenda Penny: #1-11
• The Stynx: #1-11
• Super 'Lu: #1-11
• Winnie the Witch Doctor: #1-11

616?: I'd like to say definitely no, but there's honestly nothing in the stories that precludes the characters existing in 616..

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Marvel U.K.'s next attempt at an original humor anthology weekly was The Bog Paper. As the title suggests, the theme of this comic, such as it was, was toilet humor. I assume they hoped to tap into the same market that had made the extremely crude Viz comic (not a Marvel title) a success a few years earlier, but the trouble seems to be that the title was still aimed at children, not the older teens and young adults who bought Viz. Meanwhile younger kids might find toilet humor funny, but an entire comic devoted to it was probably too much even for them. And as for parents who might be checking the shop shelves looking for a comic to keep their kids quiet, this wasn't going to be anyone's first choice. Perhaps unsurprisingly it only lasted eleven weeks before being cancelled. Its poor showing had a knock on effect for future Marvel U.K. titles - as Tim Quinn noted in an article on Down The Tubes "When I joined the company, I was keen to attempt to put together a humour title, but because of the sales figures on The Bog Paper a few years earlier, it was decided that humour didn't sell."

   During its eleven week run the comic's line-up remained steady, with only one series, Dampers, skipping a single issue. Those strips were:

• Flush Gordon, an alien superhero who lived in the sewage pipes and emerged from toilets.
• Rude Goollitt, an obnoxious soccer player with excessive flatulence - his name is a play on real life Dutch soccer player Ruud Gullit
• The Gents, two "toilet gremlins" who looked like the male figure used on doors to denote men's toilets, and who played nasty tricks on those who tried to use the facilities
• Anty, a boy with a long, prehensile tongue
• Dampers, an infant with a potty obsession
• Doctor Phoo, a Doctor Who parody who traveled across time and space in an outhouse.
• King John, recounting the feud between King John and Robin Hood with toilet humor shoehorned in.
• Winnie the Witch Doctor, a survivor from the previous humor title, It's Wicked!
• Chicken Vindaloo, an anthropomorphic chicken trying to avoid becoming someone's dinner
• The Stynx, an extremely smelly Egyptian
• Super 'Lu, a young girl who transforms into a superhero by eating lots of beans...
• Spenda Penny, a young girl obsessed with checking out other people's bathrooms.
• Royston Roylette, a boy who always ends up buying new toilets no matter what errand he's actually meant to be on.  

Doctor Phoo

Royston Roylette

Rude Goollitt

The Gents

Anty

Chicken Vindaloo

The Stynx

Super 'Lu

King John

Spenda Penny

Title/issues: Strip#1-20 (17th February-10th November 1990)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Chronicles of Genghis Grimtoad: #1-20
• Collector's Item: #11
• Combat Wombat: #13
• Death's Head: #13-20
• Dexter Pantry: #15
• Eight Miles High: #3
• Ephraim, Utah: #8
• Flatman: #20
• Incognito: #1
• Jazz Renegades: #6
• Jenny Styrene: #10
• Job for the Boys: #5
• Man from Cancer: #1-2, 9-11, 16-20
• Profane: #7
  Stalking: #14
• The Wand: #4
• Wrong Bros: #12

616?: No. Various alternate realities.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Grimtoad and Death's Head, yes. Others, no.

Comments: Edited by Dan Abnett, Strip was a fortnightly anthology aimed at older readers, with almost all strips within being creator-owned. Some strips within were reprints: Though creators Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill were both British, Marshal Law (#1-12) had first been published by Marvel U.S.' Epic imprint; British art legend Don Lawrence's Storm (#2-7, 14-19) had been published in the Netherlands; Viking (and secretly part alien) warrior Thorgal (#8-13) was a Franco-Belgian series that had first appeared in Tintin magazine; On the Road Again (#9), Wolfram (#12-13, 18-19), Planetfall (#14-15) and Kyballium Odyssey (#16-17) were French stories by Eric Puech; and the last four issues included colorized reprints of early Punisher magazine stories.

   The only story to appear in every one of Strip's 20 issue run, The Chronicles of Genghis Grimtoad, wasn't entirely a new story, but nor was it a reprint; it had originally begun running in the short-lived IPC magazine Look Alive. As a result the first five parts had already appeared, but for Strip they were redrawn from scratch by Ian Gibson. Strip's cancellation meant the tale was curtailed two episodes before the epic's end, but the subsequent graphic novel (see below) included those missing installments, finally completing the story. The next most prolific series, Glenn Dakin and Phil Elliott's Man from Cancer told the surreal adventures of anthropomorphic crab detective Crusht Acean, while Death's Head came on board to replace Marshal Law as of #13, in a story later collectd in the graphic novel The Body in Question. The remaining stories were all single issue one-shots, many of them "twist in the tale" types, but some introduced new characters who might potentially have come back for return engagements had Strip lasted a bit longer. The Wand starred John Freeman and Liam Sharpe's Rourke of the Radlands, who might be described as "Red Sonja if she lived in a post-apocalyptic world where technology was mostly forgotten and now treated like magic." Prior to Marvel U.K. going bust in the 1990s there were plans afoot to team her up with Wolverine and Monark Starstalker. Though that fell through, Rourke has resurfaced for adventures in the British digital comic anthology 100% Biodegradable in the tales "Death Duty" and "Skow Dogs."

   Another one-shot, Jazz Renegades in "Out o' the Blue" introduced a fugitive band determined to bring uplifting tunes to worlds where only gloom was permitted,while Jenny Styrene was a troubleshooter in a dystopian world ruled by the dictatorial Railways, Combat Wombat was an anthropomorphic mercenary, and Dexter Pantry of the CIA (Catering Investigation Authority) was the world's top food-crime detective.

   The axe falling with #20 clearly came with minimal notice, as that issue included an ad encouraging readers to subscribe to "the next 26 issues of Strip" and a next issue blurb explaining that two new strips were starting in #21: Burton and Cyb (a reprinted Spanish series) and Night Raven: House of Cards.

Don Lawrence's Storm (and Ember)

Rourke of the Radlands

Jazz Renegades

Thorgal

Jenny Styrene

Crusht Acean, the Man from Cancer

Combat Wombat

Dexter Pantry

Wolfram

Burton and Cyb - planned to start in Strip#21

Night Raven: House of Cards - planned to start in Strip#21

Title/issues: Knights of Pendragon#1-18 (July 1990-December 1991)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Captain Britain, Dai Thomas, Knights of Pendragon

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Though their prior ventures into American format titles hadn't bee runaway successes, they'd apparently also not been so disastrous as to kill the idea, plus Captain Britain was now a more saleable figure thanks to his major role in the highly successful Excalibur title (launched 1988) and a trade paperback collecting his Alan Davis-penned run from Captain Britain monthly and the latter issues of Mighty World of Marvel. Prior to Excalibur American readers without access to someone who could send them British comics had only minimal exposure to the character, but Excalibur had raised his profile, as well as that of his ally Dai Thomas. Thus editor Steve White oversaw plans to create a new series starring them both, Knights of Pendragon. Since Captain Britain was still appearing in Excalibur and so (unlike Wolverine or Spider-Man) couldn't be reasonably expected to appear in multiple ongoing titles simultaneously, Knights of Pendragon was intended to be a six issue miniseries, dipping into the myths of the British Isles in similar manner to the earlier Black Knight strip in Hulk Comic. It proved so successful that it was extended into an ongoing title, and while Captain Britain had to be written out and replaced with fellow British hero Union Jack, Dai Thomas was able to stay on as the series added in new characters to take up the roles of the titular knights. After 18 issues the series ended, but not due to lowering sales; rather because plans were underway to launch a much larger Marvel U.K. American-formatted line, and Knights of Pendragon was to be rebooted as more of a superhero title, as it was felt this would sell better in the U.S.

Title/issues: Slimer!#11-12 (August-September 1990)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Daily Howl

616?: Unlikely but not impossible.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Following the cancellation of It's Wicked!, Slimer was spun off into his own series, consisting partially of reprints from the American Now Comics' title of the same name, and partially of British produced stories reprinted from It's Wicked! Additionally, in Slimer!#11 and 12 there were new episodes of the Daily Howl, a strip about a newspaper run by monsters that had previously been part of It's Wicked!'s line-up. Slimer! was cancelled with it's thirteenth issue, and merged into The Real Ghostbusters.

Title/issues: Super-Heroes Annual 1991

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Hulk, Namor

616?: Probably yes.

Summary: War Beneath the Waves

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes, in Hulk: From the UK Vaults

Comments: After a few years gap where U.K. Marvel annuals didn't carry any new stories, the dry spell was broken by The Super-Heroes Annual 1991 (published, as ever, late the prior year). While the bulk of the book reprinted Iron Man#234, Fantastic Four from Marvel Fanfare#43 and Classic X-Men#20 stories, it also included a new Hulk vs Namor text tale, The War Beneath the Waves.

   As ever, Tony's Trading has a full gallery of these Marvel annuals, including all the ones that were solely reprints.

Title/issues: Death's Head: The Body in Question (October 1990)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Death's Head

616?: No.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Strictly speaking this one isn't a new story, as The Body in Question graphic novel collects the tale originally serialized in Strip. However, for those wanting to pick up that story and not interested in the other, far less connected to Marvel, stories in that title, this graphic novel is a one-stop shop and thus far better option. Plus it's notable for being (one of?) the first Marvel U.K. graphic novels.

Title/issues: Chronicles of Genghis Grimtoad (1990)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Genghis Grimtoad

616?: No.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: The Chronicles of Genghis Grimtoad graphic novel collected the serialized story from Strip, and added in the conclusion originally intended for publication in Strip#21 and 22.

Title/issues: Night Raven: House of Cards (1991)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Night Raven

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: As noted above, Strip#21 was supposed to host the start of a new Night Raven comic story, which would then be collected into a graphic novel, complementing the graphic novel of Night Raven's original strips from Hulk Comic that had been released in 1990. With Strip's cancellation as of #20, Marvel U.K. simply fell back to the latter half of the plan, and released the tale as a graphic novel. The A4-sized first edition with a green cover depicting a hand of cards was released in 1991; a year later a smaller, American comic sized, version was released with a new cover by David Lloyd.

Title/issues: The Totally Stonking, Surprisingly Educational And Utterly Mindboggling Comic Relief Comic (March 1991)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Captain America, Captain Britain, Hulk, Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic, Silver Surfer, Sleeze Brothers, Spider-Man, Thing, Thor, Wolverine

616?: Probably not, given the presence of non-Marvel characters.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Published by Fleetway (a comic company absorbed into IPC in the 1960s and reformed as a separate company in 1987), the Comic Relief Comic was a tie-in to the third Red Nose Day, a bi-annual fundraising event held by the charity Comic Relief. The brainchild of Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Peter K. Hogan and filmmaker/Comic Relief co-founder Richard Curtis, it featured contributions from dozens of prominent comic writers and artists and appearances from both real world individuals connected to the charity (such as the comedians who presented the telethon) and characters from TV and comics, their respective copyright holders giving permission for them to appear alongside one another because it was raising money for a worthy cause. Thus (as the example panels show) Marvel characters share panels with DC, Fleetway and DC Thomson creations. Per Neil Gaiman, though it sold out in minutes it was never reprinted because DC had given permission to use their characters only so long as they appeared in provided "standard poses" and the comic had strayed from that guideline.

Judge Dredd, Dan Dare, Captain Britain, Desperate Dan and real-life comic fan and TV presenter Jonathan Ross have a chin-off.

Title/issues: Marvel Superheroes Annual 1992

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Daredevil, Captain Britain

616?: Probably yes.

Summary: The Wild & The Blind
Annihilator

Reprinted in U.S.?: Daredevil, no; Captain Britain, yes, in Hulk: From the UK Vaults

Comments: Another annual with new text tales to accompany the comic strip reprints. In this case Daredevil and Wolverine starred in the eight page "The Wild & the Blind," while Captain Britain, the Hulk and others appeared in the nine page "Annihilator."

Title/issues: Uncanny X-Men Annual 1992, X-Men Annual 1996

Where: U.K.

Featuring: X-Men

616?: Probably yes.

Summary: (1992) Professional Rivalry

(1996) Grave Danger

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Having somehow skipped the new text story trend despite having annuals released during the text tale heydays of the 1980s, in 1991 the U.K.'s Uncanny X-Men Annual 1992 finally joined the club with the twelve page story "Professional Rivalry"; there were no X-Men Annuals after that until 1995, which included the five page "Grave Danger." Again, all British annuals for X-Men can be seen at Tony's Trading.

Title/issues: Death's Head II#1-4 (March-May 1992)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Death's Head II

616?: Among other realities visited, yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: By 1992 Marvel U.K. was preparing for a huge shake-up under the editorial leadership of Paul Neary. This "Genesis: 92" planned to build on the previous American-formatted projects and expand on them. The details are thoroughly summarized by John Freeman on his site, Down the Tubes, and since I'm only wanting to track what stories are out there, not the full backstory behind their creations, and, more importantly, there's little point in anyone reading my second-hand account of those plans rather than his far better first-hand account, anyone interested can read more about them at this link.

   Suffice to say the plan was to launch a number of titles intended to be sold to the American market under the Marvel U.K. reprint, while the same stories (more or less - see below) would be reprinted in a more traditional to the U.K. anthology title, Overkill, shortly thereafter. The headline star of this new line was to be a revamped Death's Head, who was introduced in a four issue miniseries a few months ahead of the other titles.

Title/issues: Overkill#1-52 (April 1992-August 1994)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Dark Angel: #26
• Knights of Pendragon: #5
• Mys-Tech Board: #8

616?: Yes.

Summary: (Overkill#5) - no title -

(Overkill#8) - "Arcane Rites" -

(Overkill#25) - "Double Cross" -

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes, except for the stories listed above.

Comments: While the American-formatted comics were intended to be marketed and sold in the U.S.A., they were not originally intended to be sold in the U.K.; in fact, at the time there were rumors going around at least the comic shops that I went to that there would be an embargo on them coming into the country. Instead British readers were expected to buy Overkill, a weekly anthology that contained (more or less) the same stories, but in a title that more closely matched the norm for British comics. In the end the alleged embargo never happened, so fans who bought their titles from specialist shops simply bought the American-formatted versions, while those who purchased them in the high street shops picked up Overkill instead - and honestly, that isn't the worst marketing strategy, since the high street option reaches more casual readers who either don't know or don't bother with specialist shops. A few curious anomalies arose as a result of this format double dipping:

   Hoping to appeal to the same audience that continued to make 2000A.D. a success, and believing that superhero stories were not what they'd want to read, editor Paul Neary came up with the idea of having each story written so that the superhero sections could be excised for Overkill. Thus early stories were written so that guest star superheroes would appear in roughly half of each issue, but their segments could be cut and the story would still make sense. In practice this tricky to follow remit tended to produce slightly disjointed stories, and thankfully it wasn't too long before market research revealed that readers were quite happy to have superheroes in the title and this requirement was dropped.

   Given the sheer number of American-formatted titles, not everything released in that format got reprinted in Overkill. Conversely, though I say Overkill reprinted the American-formatted titles, that's not completely accurate - a number of stories appeared in Overkill first, such as Digitek, who debuted in Overkill#2 (cover date 8th May 1992), several months ahead of his American-formatted title being released (Digitek#1 was cover dated December 1992, so probably released late September/early October). Some short stories were commissioned specifically for Overkill; many of them then went on to appear as back-up stories in the American-formatted titles, but not all. For simplicity's sake, if not accuracy's, I'm only listing here the stories that didn't also appear in American-formatted titles, regardless of where they appeared first. It is worth mentioning that several issues of Overkill also included handbook-like features that didn't get reprinted elsewhere (see right for an example); I'll probably get round to cataloguing them at some point.

   At least a couple of Warheads stories were commissioned but never published anywhere - Paul Cornell and Martin Geraghty's completed Needles, and an unnamed and at least partially drawn tale by Nick Vince and "Smuzz."

Knights of Pendragon II#3 - Iron Man and Rhodey, yes?

Overkill#6 - Iron Man and Rhodey, no.

Overkill#22 - part one of a Mys-Tech Central diagram.

Title/issues: Motormouth#1-4; Motormouth & Killpower#5-10 (June 1992-May 1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Motormouth, Killpower

616?: Yes (as well as other realities).

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: An ongoing series starring new characters Motormouth and Killpower.

Title/issues: Knights of Pendragon#1-15 (June 1992-September 1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Knights of Pendragon

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: The revamped, more superheroic, Knights of Pendragon.

Title/issues: Warheads#1-14 (June 1992-August 1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Warheads

616?: Yes (as well as other realities)

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Inspired by Frederick Pohl's Gateway novels, Warheads followed one of the mercenary troops working for Mys-Tech to plunder the multiverse.

Title/issues: Hell's Angel#1-5; Dark Angel#6-16 (July 1992-December 1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Dark Angel

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Forced to change its name after five issues because of complaints from the real world Hell's Angels organization, the series starred the daughter of one the Mys-Tech Board who accessed mystical powers to fight the evil organization.

Title/issues: Death's Head II#1-16 (October 1992-March 1994)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Death's Head II

616?: Yes, among other realities.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: After the success of his miniseries Death's Head II received an ongoing title, and would also become the defacto main character of this Marvel U.K. subdivision of the Marvel universe, his popularity with fans guaranteeing him numerous guest appearances in the other Marvel U.K. titles.

Title/issues: Exploits of Spider-Man#1-22, 24 (21st October 1992-27th July 1994)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Fantastic 400: #1-22, 24
• Spider-Man: #11

616?: Spider-Man, potentially yes. Fantastic 400 - no, set on Earth 333333333

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Exploits of Spider-Man was the latest venue for Spider-Man stories to be reprinted, a hefty full color volume that reprinted several entire American comics in each issue, alongside Motormouth, a somewhat unusual choice given that the same tales had been published in Overkill only a few months earlier. In addition 23 out of the first 24 issues saw the return of Tim Quinn and Dicky Howett's Fantastic 400 (rebranded from the second issue as the Dark Fantastic 400, to reflect the 90s being a more gritty decade than the 80s). While some of these episodes were completely new, a number reused older Fantastic 400 scripts, albeit with the art completely redone from scratch and now in full color.

   Additionally, #11 carried a brand new two page Spider-Man story, a fairly inconsequential tale of the hero's encounter with a depressed girl atop a Manhattan roof. The only thing that makes it stand out as unusual is that instead of being drawn, it was told in photos, a method that had been used in British girl's comics, the early issues of the 1980s IPC revival of The Eagle, or Italian fumetti comics.

Title/issues: Battletide#1-4 (December 1992-March 1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Death's Head II, Killpower

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: A crossover tale between Death's Head II and Killpower, both forced to participate in alien death match.

Title/issues: Digitek#1-4 (December 1992-March 1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Digitek

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Introducing the computerized hero Digitek.

Title/issues: Total#13 (January 1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Spider-Man, X-Men

616?: Probably yes.

Summary: (Total#13) - Amazing Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Total!#13, a computer gamer magazine covering Nintendo, included a pull-out 8 page Spidey and X-Men UK-originated comic tied into the game Arcade's Revenge.

Title/issues: Funday Times#186-189 (1993), 1995, 2001

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Spider-Man

616?: Probably yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: The Funday Times was a 16 page newsprint comics supplement included with the U.K. newspaper The Sunday Times between 1989 and 2006. It featured a variety of strips, including on a number of occasions, new two-page Spider-Man stories. I've only been able to confirm the exact issues for the first batch from 1993, but there were apparently further strips in (at minimum) 1995 and 2001.

Title/issues: Codename: Genetix#1-4 (January-May 1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Genetix

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: With sales of the Genesis 92 titles proving encouraging, Marvel U.S. asked for additional titles, sparking a second wave of new characters and titles to expand Marvel U.K's American-format line. One of the first of these was the miniseries Codename: Genetix, originally intended to be called Team Helix.

Title/issues: Incomplete Death's Head#1-12 (January-December 1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Death's Head, Death's Head II

616?: Yes, among other realities visited.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Death's Head's early stories were also repackaged to introduce the character to American audiences who had missed the prior incarnation. What makes this notable for this listing of new material was the framing sequences that involved Death's Head II and Tuck, and eventually looped in both the prior Death's Head and the Doctor from Doctor Who.

Title/issues: Mys-Tech Wars#1-4 (March-June 1994)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Everyone

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: A climax if not a conclusion to the Mys-Tech storyline that had been building across all the Marvel U.K. line, Mys-Tech Wars was a grand crossover which roped in guest stars from mainline Marvel as well.

Title/issues: Black Axe#1-7 (April-October 1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Black Axe

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Another American-format title, this time featuring a 10,000 year old mercenary. From this juncture Marvel U.K. pounded out several new series, unaware that the direct sales market was about to crash in 1994.

Title/issues: Super Soldiers#1-8 (April-November 1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Super Soldiers

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Another American-format title, featuring British Super Soldiers.

Title/issues: Wild Thing#1-7 (April-October 1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Wild Thing

616?: No.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Another American-format title, set in the then future of 2020 and starring cyberspace hacker Wild Thing.

Title/issues: Spider-Man Holiday Special (1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Spider-Man

616?: Probably yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: To mark the 20th anniversary of Marvel U.K.'s Spider-Man titles, a holiday special was released, which included a new two page photo story, similar to the one included in Exploits of Spider-Man#11 (above).

Title/issues: Shadow Riders#1-4 (June-September 1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Shadow Riders

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: And another American-format title.

Title/issues: Cyberspace 3000#1-8 (July 1993-February 1994)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Sol III crew

616?: No.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Set in the distant future, the next American-format title went into deep space.

Title/issues: Warheads: Black Dawn#1-2 (July-August 1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Warheads

616?: Not in this miniseries.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: A miniseries to accompany the main Warheads title.

Title/issues: Battletide#1-4 (August-November 1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Death's Head II, Killpower

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: After the success of the first Battletide miniseries a second was almost inevitable.

Title/issues: Death's Head & the Origins of Die-Cut#1-2 (August-September 1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Death's Head II, Die-Cut

616?: Yes

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: A two issue miniseries to introduce a new character, Die-Cut, with help from Marvel U.K. MVP Death's Head II.

Title/issues: Death³#1-4 (September-December 1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Death's Head II, Death Metal, Death Wreck

616?: Linked to 616, but I don't think any part of the story takes place there.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: If one Death's Head is a fan-favorite and top seller, then clearly three versions would be even better. Thus Marvel U.K. introduced his "brothers," the prototype Death Wreck and the new and improved model, Death Metal.

Title/issues: Children of Voyager#1-4 (September-December 1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Voyager

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: With the ongoing success of their main line, Marvel U.K. created another line, Frontier Comics, aimed at more mature storylines, their answer to DC's Vertigo line. One of these was Children of the Voyager, about a mysterious entity known as the Voyager.

Title/issues: Dances with Demons#1-4 (September-December 1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Ghost Dancer

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Another Frontier Comics title.

Title/issues: Immortalis#1-4 (September 1993-March 1994)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Mortigan Goth

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Another Frontier Comics title.

Title/issues: Killpower: The Early Years#1-4 (September-December 1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Killpower

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: A miniseries covering the origins of Killpower.

Title/issues: Body Count (October 1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Various

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Not a story, but a preview title discussing forthcoming series, Body Count is most of interest for the tantalizing glimpses of titles that ultimately were never published thanks to Marvel U.K.'s collapse a few months later. The cover alone includes at least half a dozen characters who were intended to feature in new comics that didn't make it to the shop shelves.

Title/issues: Bloodseed#1-2 (October-November 1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Bloodseed

616?: No.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: The fourth Frontier Comics miniseries.

Title/issues: Dark Guard#1-4 (October 1993-January 1994)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Dark Guard

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: A team book bringing together some of Marvel U.K's most popular characters.

Title/issues: Gene Dogs#1-4 (October 1993-January 1994)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Gene Dogs

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Another team book, Gene Dogs was intended to evoke the style of the X-Men.

Title/issues: Genetix#1-6 (October 1993-March 1994)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Genetix

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: After their previous miniseries Genetix returned for a second, longer miniseries.

Title/issues: Gun Runner#16 (October 1993-March 1994)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Gun Runner

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Another miniseries, this time involving alien warrior Gun Runner.

Title/issues: Die-Cut#1-4 (November 1993-February 1994)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Die-Cut

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: After being introduced alongside Death's Head II, Die-Cut graduated to his own solo miniseries.

Title/issues: Die-Cut vs G-Force#1-2 (November-December 1993)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Die-Cut, G-Force

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Die-Cut also enjoyed a short miniseries battling new character G-Force, who would have then had his own miniseries, had Marvel U.K. not collapsed.

Title/issues: Plasmer#1-4 (November 1993-February 1994)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Plasmer

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Another miniseries, Plasmer featured established Marvel U.K. villain and mad scientist Oonagh Mullarkey as she accidentally split herself in two, creating a heroic doppelganger, the titular Plasmer.

Title/issues: Death Metal vs Genetix#1-2 (December 1993-January 1994)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Death Metal, Genetix

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Another miniseries, this time pitting Genetix against the sometimes villainous Death Metal.

Title/issues: Marvel Frontier Comics (January 1994)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Bloodseed, Ghost Dancer, Mortigan Goth, Charles Gray, Children of Voyager

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: A one-shot anthology title in the Frontier Comics line.

Title/issues: Death Metal#1-4 (January-April 1994)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Death Metal

616?: Yes

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Having shared the headline with others, Death Metal finally got his own miniseries.

Title/issues: Death Wreck#1-4 (January-April 1994)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Death Wreck

616?: Yes

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Originally intended to be called Death Rattle, Death Wreck was the "older" brother of Death's Head II, last seen sharing a title with his siblings in Death³.

Many more titles were planned and in development when the comics market collapsed in 1994. Marvel U.K. was forced to abruptly cancel all its line, with some issues pulled even though they were completed and already at the printers. Titles that were due out imminently include 'Roid Rage, Death Duty and Bloodrush, all intended to be four issue miniseries taking part in a crossover storyline called Red Mist. Another miniseries, Wild Things, instead got published by Marvel Italia, a couple transferred to Marvel U.S. (see below), but most have sadly been lost, probably forever, except for odd pages that have resurfaced online. Since they weren't released, I'm not going to make this already lengthy list even longer by covering them all here (at least for the moment), but details of them can be found on Down the Tubes or scattered across profiles for some of the intended stars of these projects on the Appendix.

Title/issues: Dangerous Breakfast (1994)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Dangerous Dave, Super HB

616?: Potentially.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Produced by Marvel for London-based radio station Kiss-100 FM to celebrate the station's third birthday, The Dangerous Breakfast comic featured the real world presenters, Dave Pearce and Sarah HB, of the titular morning radio show as superheroes, Dangerous Dave and Super HB, taking on the villainous Rude Boy. The comic was sixteen pages, not including the covers.

Title/issues: ClanDestine#1-12 (October 1994-September 1995)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Destine family

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: As evidenced by their presence in Body Count, Alan Davis' ClanDestine was originally intended for release by Marvel U.K. The comic market collapse claimed most of that branch's planned output but luckily Davis had sufficient star power that Marvel U.S. took up the series.

Title/issues: Fury & Black Widow (February 1995)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Black Widow, Night Raven

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: A one-shot title bringing back Night Raven, this was apparently another title originally planned by Marvel U.K. that survived the collapse by transferring to Marvel U.S, and saw Night Raven directly interacting with characters from the mainstream Marvel universe.

Title/issues: Amazing Spider-Man (BBC Radio 1, January-March 1995)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Spider-Man

616?: No, set in an alternate reality.

Summary: To follow

Available in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: The Amazing Spider-Man radio series was originally broadcast in fifty three minute episodes on BBC Radio 1 from January 1995. The initial idea came from Tim Quinn while he was an editor at Marvel U.K., and he convinced composer (and Queen guitarist) Brian May to come up with a new Spider-Man theme. Dirk Maggs, who already had a strong pedigree adapting comic characters to audio with Superman and Batman, produced the series, with actor William Dufris playing the lead role. May's wife, actress Anita Dobson, was cast as Liz Allen, and even posed for publicity photos, as did May (as can be seen on Down the Tubes' article about the audio).

Title/issues: Nocturne#1-4 (1995)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Nocturne, Night Raven

616?: No.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Another series apparently originally planned for Marvel U.K. but published by Marvel U.S. after the comic market collapse, Nocturne was intended as a reboot of Night Raven. Given that it's depiction of the noir vigilante's fate contradicts the one seen in Death Duty and elsewhere, it's considered an alternate reality tale.

Title/issues: Spectacular Spider-Man Adventures#23 (9th July 1997); Spectacular Spider-Man Adventures#52-95; Spectacular Spider-Man#95-226 (29th September 1999-28th September 2011)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: (#23) X-Men; (all other issues) Spider-Man

616?: No.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Only #114.

Comments: In 1995 Marvel U.S., having bought Figurine Panini, merged the offices of Marvel U.K. and Panini U.K. and put the Panini editors in charge of Marvel U.K. operations. That same year Marvel U.K. launched another new Spider-Man reprint title, Spectacular Spider-Man Adventures. Initially this carried no new material, barring #23 which carried a two page comic by Glenn Dakin and Adrian Salmon "X-Men: Investigating the World of Mutants" to supplement that issue's reprinting of Adventures of the X-Men#3. In 1999 as part of Marvel U.S.' Chapter 11 bankruptcy settlement they had to divest themselves of a number of acquisitions, one of which was Panini. Thus at the end of that year Marvel U.K. was no longer owned by Marvel U.S. but by Panini, who now controlled (and continue to control as of this writing) the vast majority of Marvel reprint publications across Europe. Perhaps not coincidentally, at the end of September 1999 Spider-Man Adventures#52 contained the first of what was to prove an unbroken 12 year run of new Spider-Man stories, during which time the comic dropped the word Adventures from its title, and which only ended when Disney took over Marvel in 2011 and ordered Panini to stop producing home grown material. A total of 175 issues, it marks the longest single run of new Marvel stories produced outside of the U.S.A. (not counting Doctor Who Magazine, since it's a licensed title). Some issues (I'm not sure which) also apparently included Lew Stringer's Mini Marvel strips.

Title/issues: Astonishing Spider-Man#57 (1st March 2000), 140-148 (12 July 2006-21st February 2007)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Spider-Man: #57
• Mini-Marvels: #140-148

616?: Spider-Man, yes. Mini-Marvels, no.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Yet another Panini title reprinting American Spider-Man stories, Astonishing Spider-Man#57 included a new text epilogue to the Clone Saga's Revelations storyline. Additionally, a number of later issues carried Lew Stringer's Mini-Marvels humor strip.

Title/issues: Wickid#5-9, 11, 21, 23, 25, 28, 42-43, 49, 53-54 (July 2001-August 2004?)

Where: U.K.

Featuring:

• Fantastic Four: #7-8
• Hulk: #5, 9, 11, 25, 43, 49
• Spider-Man: #21, 28, 42, 53-54
• X-Men: #6, 23

616?: No, set in the realty of the Fox Kid Cartoons versions.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Published by Panini, Wickid was a licensed magazine covering Fox Kids cartoons. Because those included several Marvel cartoons, during its 54 issue run Wickid featured a number of new Marvel stories.

Title/issues:  Just 1 Page: Brits (2003)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Dragon

616?: No, set on Earth-5555

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Just 1 Page was a charity comics anthology produced for the U.K.'s Comic Festival in Bristol. Four issues were produced, in 2001, 2003, 2005 and 2006 respectively, each featuring single page contributions from a range of writers and artists. Some of these contributions were just artwork, but others were short stories, including one written by Dragon's Claws scribe Simon Furman and drawn by Paul Ridgon, depicting a final confrontation between team leader Dragon and his foe Slaughterhouse, serving as a coda to the original comic run.

   Though the original charity comic is ridiculously rare and hard to come by, it was later redrawn and recolored for inclusion in the 2008 Panini Dragon's Claws collection.

Title/issues:  Rampage (Panini)#1-24, 30 (November 2004-February2007)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: X-Men, Spider-Man, Hulk, others

616?: No.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Another Panini magazine, the monthly Rampage (not to be confused with the similarly named title from the 1980s) featured new strips for the first 23 issues, before switching to being mostly reprints. Rampage#21-30 also included some of the Mini-Marvel strips that had previously appeared in Astonishing Spider-Man, here rebranded as Marvel Mini Toons, but the Mini Toons in #24 and 30 were not reprints but brand new (or at least, previously unpublished) ones.

Title/issues: Loose Cannons#1-4 (April 2005)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Virago Troop Warheads

616?: Yes, among other realties

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Available online

Comments: Loose Cannons was originally intended to be a four issue Marvel U.K. miniseries released in January through April 1994, per their listing in November 1993's Previews Magazine. It was to feature Virago Troop, an all-female Warheads unit. Like many series it was a casualty of the collapse of Marvel U.K., with the plug pulled despite the story being almost completely drawn and with less than a month to go before the first issue went to press. Luckily for fans, artist Mark Harrison kept all the artwork and in April 2005 released it online. Additionally, one survivor of Virago Troop later showed up in Marvel's Revolutionary War: Warheads, which also made a passing reference to this story.

Title/issues: Spider-Man & Friends#1-66 (October 2006-October 2011)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Spider-Man, others

616?: No

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Aimed at much younger children (aged 3-9 approximately), Spider-Man & Friends was another Panini magazine that told new stories featuring Spider-Man and a range of other Marvel characters, all depicted as kids using a mangaesque "super deformed" style of appearance. It lasted for 66 issues, and was only cancelled because of Disney withdrawing Panini's license to produce new stories.

Title/issues: Marvel Heroes#1-35 (November 2008-June 2011)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Spider-Man, Hulk, Captain Britain, Wolverine, others

616?: No

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No, apart from #33's Death's Head vs. Hulk story, which was reprinted in the Death's Head TPB.

Comments: Another Panini magazine that included new stories, Marvel Heroes lasted 35 issues before being forced to switch to purely reprints because of Disney's edict.

Title/issues: Soulman Inc. Sketchbook (2009)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Death's Head, Hulk

616?: Yes

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: A professional artist who had drawn multiple Marvel stories for Panini, Simon Williams (no relation to the comic character of the same name) produced a crossover story between the Hulk and Death's Head (and some other surprise guest stars) as a homage to Marvel U.K. comics. It was later given a very limited print run to raise money for charity at Auto Assembly 2009, a Transformers fan convention.

Title/issues:  Spider-Man: Tower of Power/Heroes and Villains Collection#1-60 or 80? (2008-2011)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Spider-Man

616?: Potentially at least some, but others definitely no.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Called Spider-Man: Tower of Power to begin with, and then later renamed Spider-Man: Heroes and Villains Collection, this was a title with new stories published by Eaglemoss rather than Panini. Arguably this entry might belong in the French section, as though developed by Britain's Alan Cowsill and Rob Green, and written and drawn mostly by British creators, it was apparently developed for Eaglemoss' French division, but was also published in the U.K. and several other countries. Eaglemoss was best known for partworks magazines, which is to say magazines where each issue carried a piece of an overall collection. Thus Tower of Power carried segments of a literal tower that could be built if you bought the entire run. However, in some territories it was sold with trading cards instead, despite retaining the Tower of Power name. In France it appears to have remained called The Tower of Power for its entire run, and per at least one auction site offering a full set it appears to have run to 80 issues. On the other hand, in Australia it was called Heroes and Villains Collection from the outset, and apparently only ran to 60 issues. Since I have copies of later U.K. issues called Heroes and Villains Collection and earlier ones called Tower of Power I'm assuming it changed title in the U.K., but I am working from at best incomplete information.

Title/issues: Destroy All Robots (2011)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Death's Head

616?: Yes.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Written by Simon Furman and illustrated by Nick Roche and Josh Burcham, Destroy All Robots was a pitch made by those creators to Marvel for a new series. Though Marvel passed at the time, a one page story based on the pitch later appeared in 2019's anthology Marvel Comics#1001, and the creators have shared the first four pages of the original pitch online.

Title/issues: Ultimate Spider-Man#282, 284-285, 293-296, 298-299 (24th December 2014-23rd December 2015)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Spider-Man

616?: No

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: No

Comments: Though Disney mandated no new U.K. stories back in 2011, the Panini title Ultimate Spider-Man (the new name for Spectacular Spider-Man) has apparently included a number of new tales. Per the excellent and usually reliable Spiderfan, these are by Jim Zub, a Canadian writer and artist, so while they don't appear to have been published in the U.S. (before or since), it's feasible they were actually written for an American title and then not used there for some reason

Title/issues: Anubis "Breaking the Mold" (2016)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Death's Head

616?: No, set in the Transformers reality, though it is the same DH who also visited 616.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Yes

Comments: Strictly speaking this one's not a U.K. title, but since the artist and character both are, I'm listing it for completeness' sake. Mastermind Creations produce "third party" Transformers toys - that's to say, toys that are not actually called Transformers because they aren't licensed, but let's be honest, if it looks like a truck and transforms like a truck... At the 2016 TFCon Chicago they released a limited edition figure "Anubis" who was a "freelance peacekeeper." If there was any doubt as to who this was really intended to be, the box included a new 6 page Death's Head comic drawn by Simon Williams, wherein the freelance peacekeeping agent had acquired himself a new, transforming body that looked just like the Anubis toy.

Title/issues: Death's Head II: A Hitch in Time (2022)

Where: U.K.

Featuring: Death's Head II

616?: Probably no.

Summary: To follow

Reprinted in U.S.?: Available online

Comments: To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Death's Head II#'s debut, the character's original artist Liam Sharp produced a two page story for the character which he published online.

Spider-Man: Spirits of the Earth (1990)

Excalibur#42-67 (October 1991-July 1993) - the Alan Davis run

Punisher: Blood on the Moors (1991)

Excalibur#83-103 (November 1994-November 1996) - the Warren Ellis run

Pryde & Wisdom#1-3 (September-November 1996)

Wisdom#1-6 (January-July 2007)

Clan Destine II#1-5 (April-August 2008)

Captain Britain and MI-13#1-15, Annual#1 (July 2008-September 2009)

Revolutionary War (March-May 2014)

The Union#1-5 (February-July 2021)

Doubly Honorable mention: Jack Staff#1-12; Jack Staff II#1-20; Weird World of Jack Staff Special; Jack Staff Special; Weird World of Jack Staff#1-6

Jack Staff was a self-published title by British writer/artist Paul Grist, that was then taken up by Image for wider distribution. However, it started out as a pitch for a Union Jack comic; when Marvel rejected it, Grist developed it into something very different, though the Marvel connection can still be felt, especially in the early issues, which introduce Jack's World War II allies and their greatest enemy, who clearly resemble the Invaders and Baron Blood.