'Hulk Smash!'
Posted: 18 May 2014, 15:38
The latest instalment of Lew Stringer's blog features an excellent summary of the first issue of Smash! to star Marvel's Incredible Hulk - a comic that appeared 48 years ago this week!
http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/
Looking at this again after so many years I couldn't help being reminded how much it baffled me when I first saw it. The fact is that, even though I was already a fan of Marvel's Hulk, at first I couldn't work out whether this was a brand-new British character with the same name and similar powers, or whether it was connected in some as-yet unexplained way to the US series then appearing in Tales to Astonish.
But even more memorable than that first Hulk story was this high-impact advert that appeared out of the blue in the previous week's issue (I've scanned it again here, though Lew featured it some time ago in another blog post).
Even at the time I was struck by that strangely unamerican "Arrrr!", which sounds more like something out of a pirate yarn than a contemporary saga of the Atomic Age!
By contrast it's notable that when Odhams announced the arrival of yet another American superhero to these shores just three weeks later they were much less coy about acknowledging his transatlantic origins!
To be honest I'd completely forgotten that these two historic events occurred within a month of each other - leading me to wonder whether Odhams' deal with Marvel could have also been inspired by the popularity of the Batman TV series, just as their serialization of the caped crusader himself was.
- Phil Rushton
http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/
Looking at this again after so many years I couldn't help being reminded how much it baffled me when I first saw it. The fact is that, even though I was already a fan of Marvel's Hulk, at first I couldn't work out whether this was a brand-new British character with the same name and similar powers, or whether it was connected in some as-yet unexplained way to the US series then appearing in Tales to Astonish.
But even more memorable than that first Hulk story was this high-impact advert that appeared out of the blue in the previous week's issue (I've scanned it again here, though Lew featured it some time ago in another blog post).
Even at the time I was struck by that strangely unamerican "Arrrr!", which sounds more like something out of a pirate yarn than a contemporary saga of the Atomic Age!
By contrast it's notable that when Odhams announced the arrival of yet another American superhero to these shores just three weeks later they were much less coy about acknowledging his transatlantic origins!
To be honest I'd completely forgotten that these two historic events occurred within a month of each other - leading me to wonder whether Odhams' deal with Marvel could have also been inspired by the popularity of the Batman TV series, just as their serialization of the caped crusader himself was.
- Phil Rushton