From the Annex of Ideas

November 5, 2013 11:55 PM

Starlogged is a "celebration" of all things British and geeky, with a focus on 1972 - 1995 and Marvel UK, especially their early nineties attempt at creating their own superhero line. A true nostalgiafest for people raised on dodgy black and white reprints of American comics and hardcover annuals.
posted by MartinWisse (8 comments total)

All this just in time for the Marvel UK relaunch next year.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:55 PM on November 5, 2013

I was a big fan of the Marvel UK Warheads title in the early nineties.

Here are unprinted pages from an unreleased Warheads miniseries called Loose Cannons.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:30 AM on November 6, 2013

Editor Dez Skinn has all sorts of Marvel Uk titbits.
posted by Artw at 5:01 AM on November 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

All this just in time for the Marvel UK relaunch next year.

I know this is mostly about reviving some older stuff that predates her, but I'm a bit worried that Fazia Hussein seems to have disappeared.
posted by Artw at 5:03 AM on November 6, 2013

I was working in a comic book and used book shop at the time (in Canada), and I remember the UK stuff being tonally... off somehow, in a way that I couldn't quite put my finger on. This was long before I got any amount of exposure to 2000AD and other British comics, so I didn't really understand the passion for dystopian SF that was injected into all of the MUK properties.

I will forever be grateful to Death's Head, however, for pulling Doctor Who into 616 continuity.
posted by Shepherd at 5:23 AM on November 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

One of the original Marvel UK series, Knights of Pendragon, was a creepy, weird story that took a Welsh cop character from Excalibur and turned him into a mythic hero. Along the way, madness, body horror, ageing superheros, and the idea of Albion all got explored.

Of course, this was a bit too weird for the readership and the editors, so it was relaunched as a pretty standard superhero comic. Which is a shame, as it was pretty close to some of the early Vertigo stuff in tone, before it got shoved into spandex tights.
posted by The River Ivel at 6:48 AM on November 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

I really liked the OG Knights of Pendragon. Felt very different in tone to most other things out.

I can't find it in my scan of the site - can anybody else remember when Marvel UK did their own Spider-Man strip, featuring Spider-Man in Great Britain? Drawn by, I think, Barry Kitson? Am sort of curious to re-read/read about that/have my memory corrected.

Also: Dragon's Claws, which I never read, but as a kid I'd see the adverts for it and be fascinated.
posted by Hartster at 7:50 AM on November 6, 2013

I don't know if it was reading Alan Moore's Captain Britain at an impressionable age or what, but I *love* the Marvel UK stuff to an unreasonable degree. I still do a little mental fist-pump any time a Death's Head shows up in the larger Marvel universe. (I think there's one running around with the Micronauts? Fighting Hulk villains?)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I also think of Alan Davis as _the_ quintessential Comic Book Artist. Like, if I were writing a horror movie that had a comic book artist protagonist, and I needed to show samples of his work that the audience would a) recognize as "what comics looks like," and b) didn't want it to be embarrassing, it would be some Davis work. It also helps that he's done just about every character in either of the Big Two rosters at one point or another, and they ALL look right.
posted by Amanojaku at 1:31 PM on November 6, 2013