Marvel UK’s Mystery European Strips – Can You Help Identify Them?

Author Rob Kirby is close to completing his long awaited book on the history of Marvel UK, From Cents to Pence – but he needs some help identifying a final few strips published in some titles that were first published in Europe, probably with different titles.

“I’ve managed to identify about 75 per cent of the foreign strips that Marvel UK reprinted over the years,” Rob tells downthetubes, “a mixture of strips taken from other US publishers such as DC and Eclipse, as well as various European titles. But there are some that remain elusive.

“Hopefully, one or two downthetubes readers might have an interest in this area and be able to help. Ideally, I’d like to know the exact issues numbers for the titles the strips appeared in originally, as well as any other details that might be relevant.

“For instance, ‘The Battle of Hastings‘, may well have gone under a different name in its native publication.”

Where did this "Betty Boop" strip, first published in Marvel Bumper Comic #15, first appear?

Where did this “Betty Boop” strip, first published in Marvel Bumper Comic #15, first appear?

"Trapped Beneath the Waves" ran in Marvel UK's Transformers #15 - but where was it originally published?

“Trapped Beneath the Waves” ran in Marvel UK’s Transformers #15 – but where was it originally published?

"Alcatraz" ran in Marvel UK's Transformers #17 - but where was it originally published?

“Alcatraz” ran in Marvel UK’s Transformers #17 – but where was it originally published?

Is "The Battle of Hastings", which ran in Marvel UK's Transformers #19 a European reprint? Can you help?

Is “The Battle of Hastings”, which ran in Marvel UK’s Transformers #19 a European reprint? Can you help?

Two strips recently identified appeared in Spidey Comic and Transformers, and we’re including them here just to give you an idea of what Rob has been trying to find more details on.

“The Tough Guys”, featured in Spidey Comic #651

“The Tough Guys”, featured in Spidey Comic #651

The Tough Guys”, featured in Spidey Comic #651 – a reprint of  Les casseurs – Hauts et Bas à San Francisco, by writer and artist Christian Denayer and writer André-Paul Duchâteau, one of a series of adventures initially in Tintin magazine and published from 1979 to 1994 by Éditions de Lombard. This British reprint seems to have eluded online documentation, but the strip has been republished in Intégrale Les Casseurs, Tome 2 by Lombard.

MUK Transformers #21 - Erik the Red

Transformers #21 – Erik the Red

“The Saga of Erik the Red”, in Transformers #21, is the work of artist J.M. Woehrel and Yves Duval, “La Saga d’Erik Randa” first appearing in Tintin.

• If you can help Rob Kirby in his quest, please do comment below. If you have never commented on the site in the past, please note that your first comments will go through an approval process, then you can comment freely (subject to good taste, politeness etc)

 



Categories: downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

12 replies

  1. Thanks for looking this all out for me everyone – this is all super useful! I’ve passed on a few additional pages I overlooked when scanning the images here, so I’ll be interested to see what you make of these once John’s had chance to put a piece together.

    At present I’m busy working my way through a complete electronic collection of The Real Ghostbusters – a super useful discovery – which wasn’t a title that I bought at the time, and therefore represented a serious gap in the material indexed. After all, I didn’t know that I was going to be working on a Marvel UK back book then, or I might have felt that I had to pick up all of their nursery titles too. From Cents to Pence!, certainly mentions them, and I’ve been building up as complete a picture as I can of what was actually released, but there’s no way that I can catalogue their precise contents to generate additional indices for these titles, alas.

    Another smaller gap, due to budgetary constraints at that time, are the latter UK edition of The Thundercats, so if anyone reading this has #113 right through to the final #129, do let me know. Thanks again!

  2. …and the dates :
    27 heures prisonniers sous la mer (art : G. Van Dessel) TINTIN 489 (jan. 22, 1985)
    La dramatique histoire d’Alcatraz (art : Marc-Rénier, wr : Yves Duval) TINTIN 441 (feb 21, 1984)
    La bataille de Hastings (art : Decrocq – wr : Yves Duval) TINTIN 608 (may 05, 1987)

  3. Now I found out that Ulf himself remember next to nothing about making this story, and doesn’t have any further information.

    Otherwise I got some help in the identification by his fellow artist/ inker Johan Andreasson, and his collaborative scriptwriter Magnus Knutsson.

  4. If you’d really like to have more information about the Betty Boop story, I guess you could try to get hold of the Norwegian editor Dag Kolstad (a.k.a. Dick Kolby) for querying.

    I don’t know about his contact information, however.

Discover more from downthetubes.net

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading