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Marvel - Free in The UK
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46 posts in this topic

Oldhams, or Power comics as they published their Marvel comics under, next gave us UK readers Fantastic. This was different to POW in that it contained little to no UK material but was nearly all Marvel reprints - Thor, X-Men and Iron-man.

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The free gift here was a plastic pennant/wallet. The comic provided several uses for the pennant/wallet and suggestions where you could put it. The power comics for that week all had a back-page of Marvel pennants you could cut out and store in your wallets;

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In 1972 Marvel decided to publish comics specifically for the UK in-house (by what became to be known as Marvel UK). First up was The Mighty World of Marvelwhich reprinted The Hulk, Spider-man and Fantastic Four with some new editorial along the lines of Stan's Soapbox and letters pages;

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Previous transfers must have been popular (or cheap) as MWOM #1 came with a free Green-skinned monster iron-on transfer. Presumably Marvel thought the Hulk would not be a house-hold name in the UK hence the transfer being touted as "Green-skinned monster" but it was in fact the Hulk;

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MWOM sold well (print run 325,000) so these transfers are not uncommon still in the UK and pop up for sale fairly regularly despite a lot ending up on t-shirts and being very fragile. #2 came with a Spider-man iron on transfer;

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After great transfers of two of it's features MWOM #3 free gift wasn't a fantastic Four transfer but a set of stickers, the art isn't great and we can only wonder what a Fantastic Four transfer would have been like;

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This is the extent of my UK gifts, although I am on the look out for Avengers Weekly #1 which had a set of transfers (the type you could put on your skin) and #2 which had a gun similar to the Spider-man one in POW#1. There are plenty of gifts in later UK Marvels but after Avengers Weekly they tended to be a centrefold glossy poster or some stickers, if there's any interest perhaps others could post their comic free gifts, I recall Secret Wars had a cool rub-down transfer set. 

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50 minutes ago, GARYSTAR said:

This is the extent of my UK gifts, although I am on the look out for Avengers Weekly #1 which had a set of transfers (the type you could put on your skin) and #2 which had a gun similar to the Spider-man one in POW#1. There are plenty of gifts in later UK Marvels but after Avengers Weekly they tended to be a centrefold glossy poster or some stickers, if there's any interest perhaps others could post their comic free gifts, I recall Secret Wars had a cool rub-down transfer set. 

Great trip down memory lane there Gary - it's nice to see some of these old favourites again :)

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26 minutes ago, Robot Man said:

 

Wow, these are cool. I think I have a few of those some where. A Star Wars and Judge Dredd come to mind, 

 

Stars Wars Weekly had a free cut out x wing fighter. 2000AD also had free gifts, Judge Dredd started in issue 2, I don’t think the early issues had any Dredd gifts but not sure if there were any later in series. 

Edited by GARYSTAR
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26 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Great trip down memory lane there Gary - it's nice to see some of these old favourites again

I still remember my dad buying me Pow #1, although I could hardly be old enough to read, and the impact the Spider-man and SHIELD stories had on me - I’d never read anything like them before. 

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9 minutes ago, thunsicker said:

Really cool stuff, Gary.  Thanks for sharing.  Kind of like the UK equivalent of Marvelmania.

Marvelmania - now you are talking really cool. I’m constantly looking for more Marvelmania stuff, it costs a fortune to get it in UK with shipping and taxes but it  really is great stuff

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2 hours ago, GARYSTAR said:

I still remember my dad buying me Pow #1, although I could hardly be old enough to read, and the impact the Spider-man and SHIELD stories had on me - I’d never read anything like them before. 

It stays with you doesn't, reading some of those first comics. Good times. 

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I agree. I still recall getting some copies of Pow and Fantastic from a little second hand shop down the road from where I lived, around the time of MWOM and when I'd started buying distributed American comics from the newsagent.  No free gifts though.

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Oh, the memories.

The companion comics, "Wham" and "Smash" are not mentioned, but were available here. Those comics announced the arrival of "Pow" and I was all over it. Newsagent reserved a copy for me every week and when #8 "didn't arrive" I made my mother drive all over the place to other outlets to secure the missing issue.

That's when my true CDO* presented.

 

*OCD, but in the CORRECT order

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5 hours ago, batmiesta said:

Don't know how I missed this thread, awesome stuff Gary, any chance of showing some more of your stuff UK or American? 

I think this is the extent of my UK comic give-always. I’ve posted a couple of MMMS items in a MMMS thread. My favourites are Marvelmania items - perhaps I’ll have a search see if there is already a thread or perhaps start one to show some stuff. 

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