Mighty World of Marvel

The Mighty World of Marvel, launched on October 7th 1972, was the first title to be published by Marvel UK, the British subdivision of US comics giant Marvel Comics. Marvel had previously licensed strips to be reprinted in the UK by other publishers including Alan Class and Odhams, but now felt the time was right to break into the potentially lucrative UK market themselves. Like most British comics of the time, MWOM was a weekly, and was primarily black & white with some full colour and some part colour pages. All the material included was reprinted from US titles published around a decade earlier, with the opening lineup including Spider-Man, the Hulk and the Fantastic Four. Spider-Man proved popular enough that after only 19 issues he was removed from the pages of MWOM and awarded his own title, Spider-Man comics Weekly, which he shared with the Mighty Thor; the Hulk and the Fantastic Four remained in place in MWOM, with Spider-Man's former slot being taken by blind superhero Daredevil; though the lineup would vary over the years, the Hulk remained MWOM's lead feature in every issue until shortly after its eventual relaunch as Marvel Comic in 1979, when he was given his own title. Daredevil, too, aside from a brief break between issues #33 and #68, remained with the title until its final weekly issue.