PRESENTING A PERSONAL PERUSAL OF A 'POWER PACK' PUBLICATION...

One of my very favourite comics from the past is one that regular readers of this humble blog will doubtless have noticed me refer to before - FANTASTIC. This worthy weekly was published by ODHAMS PRESS, the debut issue being cover-dated February 18th, 1967. At the time of its release, I was too busy lusting over the feminine charms of SUSAN STORM in the pages of WHAM! to pay much attention to the arrival of this new periodical, but my mother bought me a later issue from a newsagent's kiosk on our way home from shopping one day.

The issue in question was #7 (cover-dated April 1st) - and I was hooked! How could I not be, with stories like THOR - "THE THUNDER GOD AND THE THUG!",  X-MEN - "TRAPPED: ONE X-MAN!", IRON MAN - "VERSUS KALA, QUEEN OF THE NETHERWORLD!", alongside the superb adventures of THE MISSING LINK for good measure? I soon acquired the earlier issues, and it wasn't long before I became a POWER COMICS junkie, buying all five of the weekly publications regularly. (Wham!, SMASH!, POW!, Fantastic, and TERRIFIC.) 

Fantastic had forty pages per issue, but not even that number could accommodate the above tales in their entirety, so only the first halves of the Thor and X-Men stories were presented, the remainder of these particular adventures being completed the following week. These early LEE/KIRBY/HECK MARVEL epics were printed in black and white, but that - and the fact that some characters' names were changed from their American originals - didn't seem to spoil the readers' enjoyment one whit.

For example, THE BLACK WIDOW's name of NATASHA was altered to NATASIA (although perhaps they're pronounced the same, who knows?) and THE RED GHOST's moniker was changed (for reasons that later became obvious to me) to THE APE MASTER. I can still remember my astonishment in a shop one day at seeing the same story (FF #13) in an issue of COLLECTORS' ITEM CLASSICS that I had already read in WHAM! and my bewilderment at the altered appellation of the baddie. How was such a thing possible, I wondered.

Nowadays, of course, I can see that the amended lettering in the British reprints is easily discernible, although it wasn't quite so apparent to me back when I was a lickle kiddie-winkie. (Okay, I was eight - but that's still 'lickle' in my book.)

Anyway, I have very fond memories of Fantastic #7, so I thought I'd kindly share a few pages with you here. Remember, if you enjoy them half as much as me, then I'll have enjoyed them twice as much as you. (Profound, or what?) Doh!