Look In

Bit of a diversion here - and also a ponder:

Just HOW much pocket money was i getting???????????????

Aside from the titles already covered, i was also regularly getting Mighty World Of Marvel, Dracula Lives, Planet Of The Apes, Spectacular Spiderman (and all the other Marvel variants that followed) a lot of humour titles, Plop!, Mad, Dez Skinn's horror mags and Look In.

Look In was great.

Could've done without all the Gary Glitter, Sweet, Bay City Rollers stuff, ditto the How? and Magpie features.

No, the sole reason for getting was the extra adventures of my then TV heroes, be it the Six Million Dollar Man, Tomorrow People, Catweazle, Space 1999 etc.

Seemingly always drawn by John Burns, an artist that has always left me cold.

But it didn't matter - here were further adventures, long after the shows had stopped and very often with plotlines far more ambitous than the show that spawned the strip could've hoped to attempt.

Posted a pic here of Kung Fu here not because i liked it or the show but even now, 34 years after the event, i can still feel the deep misery of getting the issue with the free medallion only losing it on the way to school and having to stand there in the playground while everyone else ran around with theirs.

Smash annual 1973

Thought i'd have a re-read of this this morning.

Along with The Swots And The Blots, the highlight for me are the two Janus Stark strips.

The first is odd in that its in colour. Its a nice tale - but colour REALLY doesn't suit the strip - part of the strips appeal is the moody b/w artwork, evocative of its Victorian setting. Doing away with it takes something away from the strip i feel.

Much better is the second strip, back to black and white and set in India.

And here we have a couple of classic Janus moments, squeezing through gaps far too narrow for a human to fit though.

I remember from my childhood the oft-uttered phrase "... the pain..." as he underwent his trial, but its only now as an adult that its occured to me that he gets through the gaps with his hat on. Ha!

Vulcan 13th March 1976

Two strips of note in this issue.

First, a Spider tale i've not read before. And a silly one it is too. A shape changing alien comes to Earth because he enjoys imitating criminals of the past (!). When the Spider tries to stop him, the alien fires "Peril-Bubbles" (!!) which turn the Spider into a giant and his slave (!!!). The Spider disposes of his friends by chucking them and the Helicar into the sea, where they're captured by Mermen Warriors (!!!!). And this issue has the Spider regaining his will, defeating the alien by turning him into a handsome prince charming lookalike (!!!!!). And then goes down to the sea bed to take on the Sea God (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).

As i say, silly.

The other strip is Mytek the Mighty. Not a character or strip i really care for, especially with this awful colouring. But thought this idea here is really neat - to round up and detain hostages, he picks up sheds, ties them upside-down round his waist and drops the people in. Brilliant idea.

Sorry for the absence.

Indeed. Been real busy at work, plus i've got the modelling bug again, as seen on me other Blog:

http://2000admodelling.blogspot.com/