With the snow buggering up the plans, i've a bonus morning here at home. So thought i'd give you number 4 in my countdown.
The Pow! annual of 1971 seems to be quite an oddity in that, instead of its usual mix of Marvel reprints and British humour strips, we were given 10 all new origin tales of superheroes and villains.
The were mostly patently rip-offs of established DC and Marvel characters, but given the usual for the time British bizarro spin on things. That made them distinctive but, even more so, was the fact that the art seems to be all from the Spanish studios, given them an even odder and more surreal feel.
Both aspects made a huge imapact on the 9-year old me, no more so than the tale of "Norstad - Ruler Of The Deep!".
A despot ruler of a medievil-style underwater kingdom, he's deposed, dumped into the depths, loses his strength, forms a mental link with explorer Mike, gets his strength back from him whenever Mike's asleep, gets back his kingdom, rises to the surface, runs amoke but then flees back to the depths when Mike wakes up.
All that in 9 pages.
Great, mad stuff.
And the reason for posting is this page making it my number 4. Its a combination of the image of Norstad killing the shark by sitting on it and punching it to death. And his return to his palace to find his people had been over-powered by their jellyfish slaves.
I mean, c'mon - have you ever seen anything anywhere punching a shark to death? or ever thought how jellyfish could take over a kingdom?
I know i hadn't. But spent ages studying those two panels and pondering it.
And that's why its my number 4.
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