IT'S FLIPPIN' FANTASTIC...

The fantastic 1st issue of Fantastic!

Well, I'm a little early, but in about 11 days or so it will be an astonishing 43 years since FANTASTIC made  its debut on the newsagents' counters and shelves of Great Britain. Published by ODHAMS PRESS, the comic was the next step in the evolution of titles like WHAM!, SMASH! and POW!, which featured British humour strips amongst the MARVEL COMICS reprints. (Or vice versa if you prefer.) Unlike its companion papers 'though, the contents of Fantastic were not resized to fit a typical British comic's page, instead being granted the privilege of appearing (more or less) in their original format - albeit in a slightly larger page size and in black and white.

True, the credit boxes were omitted, and American spellings, references and speech patterns were routinely changed ("I ain't" to "I'm not" for example), but that didn't matter; just to see classic art by JACK KIRBY, DON HECK and, later, STEVE DITKO in all its crisp and cataclysmic glory,was what mattered to the readers back in the day - to say nothing of the power-packed dynamism of scripting by STAN LEE, LARRY LIEBER and ROY THOMAS.

The comic did contain SOME home-grown produce however, in the form of the occasional humour page, plus THE MISSING LINK/JOHNNY FUTURE strip that lasted for the first 51 issues, drawn throughout its entire run by Spanish artist LUIS BERMEJO.

Despite lasting only 89 issues, a Summer Special and 3 Annuals, Fantastic remains one of the more fondly remembered comics of the '60s by those who were fortunate (and discerning) enough to have bought and relished it at the time.