An introduction to Marvel.

Being born in 1964, the main source of entertainment for kids on wet days was the weekly comic.

Each week, alongside Mum and Dads Daily Mail, would magically appear through the letter box a copy of our favorite comic cuts, for me this would mean Buster.

In 1972 all this would change.

Whilst playing around at my mates house with our Action Men, his big sister came running in clutching a new comic that she'd just bought from the paper shop.

"Look at this!" she cried, holding up a sheet of paper with an ugly green giant on it.

"What's that?" we asked.

"It's a transfer, you iron it on to a T-shirt" was the reply.

Off she ran, I assume to get a clean white T-shirt out of her bedroom, leaving us both with the copy of the comic that she'd left on the floor.

We both looked on in amazement at the cover, with its bold title and strange ensemble of characters.

For us "Marvel", for we hadn't yet noticed "The Mighty World Of", was the most amazing comic we'd ever seem.

Returning home, Mum was asked if I could swap Buster for the new Marvel comic, "No problem".

Over the coming years I would get a Marvel comic each week, the title changing depending on mergers or new publications

1974 was a very special year, as instead of one comic I was allowed two, Dracula Lives and Planet Of The Apes.

My final memories of Marvel UK were with the introduction of Star Wars Weekly and its "Cut-out" X-Wing.

Is it just me, but I can still smell those comics now, weird?

Most of the comics were thrown away after reading, or used to light the fire on cold winter nights.

A few, particularly Dracula Lives, had the added honour of being used as colouring books.

My comic reading ended when I was 15.

Most of the comics that weren't thrown away were passed on to my youger brother, who still has them now, along with his complete collection of all Marvel UK titles.

I particularly remember the Marvel and Fantastic Four Annuals from 1974 and 1979 respectively.

In 2011, whilst being laid up in bed for two weeks with back problems and suffering from boredom, I picked up an old copy of a Spider-Man annual from 2004 that my son had destined for the bin during a teenage clearing out session.

That one moment rekindled my interest in comics.

This brings us to the idea behind this blog.

For anybody, the fondest memories are those of their childhood, mine being from the 1970's.

I can't remember the specifics of each comic from back in the day but, like many others of my age, have decided to re-explore the Marvel UK age of comics from this time period, 50 years later on.

The plan is for me to attempt to read each comic, based on their "Week Ending" date between 1972 and 1979.

The first two years will be easy, however 1975 and its 7 issues per week may take its toll.

There are many Bloggers on the net undertaking the same task, I'll try to link to their sites when I come across them.

Blogging is not my strong point, so in order to ease the load I have decided to create my blog around the Splash pages from each issue. As they say, a picture paints a thousand words.

Hopefully this will stir memories amongst my readers and may function as an unofficial database to the stories held within and their origins from the American source material.

See you at the Week End.