Thursday 29 October 2015

Terrific news!



The Judge Dredd tale, "The Cursed Earth" is to get yet another reprint - this time with the banned episodes put back in.
Time to put those issues up on the 'Bay methinks.

Sunday 18 October 2015

POW! Annual 1971 - #3 - The Marksman



At Number Three of my nine year-olds countdown of the characters from this annual is the Marksman.
Gawd knows why.
He looks like the Punisher with a crew cut, is the "Dynamic Young Security Chief" at the Excel Advanced Rocket Research Establishment (though its never revealed if his natty clobber is an official uniform), and a more boreish, big headed good guy you'd be pushed to find.
He's deathly dull, in a deathly dull story.
In the space of an incredible seven pages, is a tale that in other strips would run to three tops.
We get:
Pages 1 and 2 set up how great he is - writing his initials in the target from a thousand yards away with a machine gun, shooting dead centre holes in a bunch of coins thrown in the air - and the sabotage of the companys new rocket that would guard against any enemy in the galaxy (!).
The whole of Page Three is given over to discovering the plans to the rocket have been pinched,
Page Four has him ride off on a nifty motorbike, fall off, then get tied up in a canoe and sent off to the Rocky Falls,
Page Five has him escape,
Page Six has him leap upon the baddies plane,
Page Seven has him jump out the plane with the bad guy.
That's it, - very dull and no reason why i'd have rated him so highly. He doesn't do much in the way of Markmanship except for his showing off at the start.
Thinking the only reason i'd have liked the strip would've been for the various James Bond-like devices he keeps concealed in his out fit, should just such situations arrive.