Friday 11 January 2013

Marvel UK - the 'invasion' of Back Issue magazine!

Although I provided an overview of my work on a reference book about Marvel UK back in March 2012 (A Distant Beacon blog - March 2012), with the sudden announcement of the release date for a hotly anticipated new album by Ultravox I then found most of the rest of the year was taken up with the release of no less than four editions of my magazine (re:VOX). In all honesty was probably one issue too many to fully cope with, but a topical magazine will always have to respond to the times its published in, and that was one rollercoaster ride of a year we were never going to miss!

All this activity naturally meant that something had to give, and so work on From Cents to Pence ground to a halt. Fortunately, when Michael Eury from Back Issue magazine requested an article outlining the (surprisingly complicated) history and development of Marvel's own line of British comics to head up a special "British Invasion"-themed edition, there was just time to write one for #63 before switching tracks.

A year later, and this will be shortly available in comic stores this spring. I'm thrilled to have been given an opportunity to share a tiny portion of my work with a larger audience for the first time. They've done an outstanding job on the feature, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing all the other British-related goodies they've come up with. You can advance order a copy directly from (Twomorrows) own web site right now.

2 comments:

  1. Rob

    A brief note to say how much I enjoyed your article in Back Issue #63, which I read this weekend. As a long-standing British reader of Marvel comics since youth it was entertaining to read the publishing history in historic order, and to be reminded of a few titles I've since forgotten.

    I hope you can commit to From Cents to Pence again in future, as I think the subject deserves a first, comprehensive history.

    Best wishes, and thanks again for a great read

    Richard

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  2. Thanks Richard,

    That's very kind of you - it was a blast trying to hone some 500,000 words into an intelligible 13,000 word article :) And it sounds like I might have sent you off to search the back issue boxes too.

    It would hard to be more committed to the book, though - it's been a labour of love spanning some two decades. When you see it, I think you'll realise why it's taken so long to achieve :) Right now, I'm in the midst of final revisions to the history part of the book, and about half-the-way-through.

    Thanks for your support - keep watching this blog and checking out mags like Back Issue for more details in the near future.

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