13 Comments
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ed ILYA's avatar

I really think we need a photo of the shed, if you have one.

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Matthew Bunce's avatar

I'll second that!

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Steve Cook's avatar

Hmmm... okay, if you insist. With the next batch.

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John Tomlinson's avatar

I was getting Valiant & SMASH! when M.W.O.M. and Spider-Man first came out I think. M.W.O.M. and Spidey were a whole 2p more expensive, which my Mum and Dad had conniptions about. Agree about Ditko's art in the 'raw'. I loved seeing how Kirby's style developed from his early FF stories onwards – some of those images (seen first in two-tone UK reprints) are lodged in my memory forever, iconic as Mount Rushmore!

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Liam Sharp's avatar

Also, agree re. Football!

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Steve Cook's avatar

I think Steve MacManus is the only comics guy I know who likes football.

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Matthew Bunce's avatar

My parents bought me one comic a week group, any others I had to pay for myself. The two I remember them getting me weekly were Whizzer and Chips, which I dropped for 2000ad when that came along (I started with issue 2). My brother got Battle. I don't think they were expensive, but they were a luxury, or it sort of seemed that way to me.

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Jason Fiorito's avatar

So that aforementioned Overkill collection? I was bagging and boarding the issues I was able to scrap together when a familiar photographic style caught my eye!

https://tinyurl.com/2sd2vmdr

(I scanned through your SO archives to see if you posted this already, but I didn't see it. So apologies if this is a repeat.)

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Steve Cook's avatar

Thanks so much for that, Jason! I don't have a good copy of that ad, and that's a really nice scan. I kind of wish that ad had used an alternative photo, in fact I'd put it onto a website I'm building. You can see it here. Breeze was my rather glamorous landlady at the time :) https://www.secretoranges.com/1992

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Stevie Holland's avatar

Spider Man Weekly was a great gateway into the character. There is no way I could have picked up the original US Ditko/ Romita run. Great selection of covers. What a shed!!!!

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Liam Sharp's avatar

And how great are those Thor illos? I was never a huge Ditko fan - possibly because I wasn’t exposed to much of his work in formative times, and was always hooked on Buscema - but these are all great. It’s never too late to review early ill-formed opinions!

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Gavin Sheedy's avatar

The first of those is about a month younger than I am.

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Max More's avatar

Wow-eee indeed! Also: Football, ugh. I avoided most football (and cricket) at boarding school by going on twice weekly hikes around the Bristol area with my biology teacher Mr. Walker. (Seriously that was his bame.)

I must have read some of these as back issues because I don’t think I has started reading Marvel in 1973 (I was 9) but I can't remember when exactly I started.

Thanks for the memories, Steve.

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