Marvel UK

Marvel UK was the British division of Marvel Comics, founded in 1972, initially to reprint material originally published by Marvel US. Its first ongoing title was The Mighty World of Marvel, which ran 329 issues from 7th October 1972-17th January 1979 before becoming 'Marvel Comic', and later 'Marvel Superheroes'. Spider-Man Comics Weekly followed on 17th February 1973, and from there, Marvel UK published a host of titles both weekly and monthly, including The Titans, The Superheroes, Avengers Weekly, Dracula Lives, the popular and long running Star Wars Weekly/Monthly, Doctor Who Weekly (later Doctor Who Magazine), Savage Sword of Conan, Captain America, Planet of the Apes, Fury, Forces in Combat, Marvel Action, Marvel Team-Up, Marvel Super Adventure and Transformers.

Though for the first few years of the company's existence it was restricted to US reprints (aside from Apeslayer, which we don't talk about), in October 1976, Marvel UK got its first original character (albeit one created in America, specifically for the British market) in Captain Britain, who starred in 39 issues of his own title before moving into the pages of Spider-Man, and from 1979, under new editor Dez Skinn, they began publishing UK originated material in titles such as Doctor Who Weekly and Hulk Comic as well as reprints. The eighties also marked the launch of a line of digest sized 'Pocket Books' including Chiller (a horror anthology) and Star Heroes (a sci-fi anthology, which was later turned over to the X-Men) and a move towards more monthly titles (including Rampage, Blockbuster, Future Tense, Frantic, the TV tie-in Blake's 7 and Dez Skinn's movie magazine, Starburst), since the weekly line which it had founded on was faltering somewhat, largely thanks to the increased availablity of the US monthlies which the weeklies were reprinting from. In the nineties, Marvel would attempt to cash in on that market with a range of monthly titles in the US format, sold in comic shops in both the UK and the US and reprinted in the high street in Britain in the monthly magazine Overkill. Marvel UK was eventually sold to Panini UK in 1995.


 * One of Marvel UK's editors in the 1970s was Neil Tennant, later to become one half of the Pet Shop boys.

Marvel UK Cover Gallery