"Christmas is coming!"
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| me, Christmas 1982, posing with my haul (and clearly very chuffed with the Blondie calendar). That sign I'm holding would stay on my bedroom door well into my mid-teens... (also - The Fall Guy!) |
Welcome to the fourth post (the others are here -
2017,
2018 and
2019) showcasing one of the Christmas highlights from when I was a kid (
beyond the catalogues I wrote about in 2016), seeing which annual I got that particular year. For those who don't remember them, annuals were (and still are) large size hardback books, designed for children and based on existing properties, generally comics and popular TV shows, as well as the occasional film and sport and pop round-ups.
The ones based on comics featured the same cast as the weekly editions, while the TV and film ones had comic strips, the occasional short story, fact files and interviews and - brilliantly - in the case of
The Fall Guy, behind the scenes information on stunts and how they were filmed.
Published towards the end of the year, annuals are cover-dated as the following year to ensure shops don't take them off the shelves immediately after the new year (though, by then, unsold copies are often heavily reduced). Still as popular now, though kids today don't have the choice of comics we did, the only real difference seems to be that they're skinnier (and that's not me being all nostalgically misty - my ones from the late 70s and early 80s are substantially chunkier than the ones I’ve bought for Dude over the past few years).
Here, then, is another selection of old favourites, ones I received and ones I remember my sister Tracy having. I hope some of them inspire a warm, nostalgic trip down memory lane for you...
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| 1968 |
Mum & Dad must have got this second-hand for me - I was a big fan of the 60's Batman show with Adam West (who, for a long time, I was convinced must be related to us) but I had this much later.
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| 1976 |
One of Tracy's favourite TV shows (she would go on to work with - and compete on - horses) and just hearing the theme tune now makes me feel a slightly melancholic sense of nostalgia.
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| 1977 |
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| 1977 |
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| 1977 |
Everybody...
"Underground, overground, Wombling free, the Wombles of Wimbledon, Common are we..."
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| 1978 |
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| 1978 |
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| 1979 |
The annuals post wouldn't be complete without an appearance by Rupert The Bear!
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| 1979 |
My Dr Who...
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| 1979 |
I know this probably doesn't stand up to the modern Marvel version and yes, it's probably very silly (it's been a long time since I last saw it) but this is my Hulk. And I still think the theme tune is hauntingly beautiful...
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| 1980 |
I remember this (or, more precisely, I remember Dan Tanna parking his terrific car in his house!) but for me, Robert Urich will always be
Spenser. I wrote about the Vega$ novelisation, by Max Franklin,
which you can read here.
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| 1981 |
The first Judge Dredd standalone annual - and it's still a cracking read.
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| 1981 |
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| 1981 |
An odd - and often spooky - TV show I have fond memories of
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| 1983 |
Happy Christmas!
scans from my collection, aside from the girls titles (thanks to the Internet for those)
You can read more of my nostalgia posts here
Unbelievably, the only Annual I've got out of that lot is the Rupert one, though I didn't acquire it (from a jumble sale I think) until many years later. I remember looking at the Hulk one in the local C0-OP, but I didn't buy it. Was that the one with the Hulk tale 'The Beauty & The Beast'? If so, they omitted the splash page (deliberately) to fit the story in. If it wasn't that one, it was a later one.
ReplyDeleteIt is and I didn't realise that! Thanks, as ever, for commenting!
DeleteIt's very scary that I'm right about that, because if that's the 1979 Annual, it means that it came out in 1978. However, had you asked me when I saw it in the CO-OP (not C0-OP), I'd have said that it feels like it was around 12-15 years ago, not the 42 years it actually is. That's more than two thirds of my life away. Gasp!
DeleteWas just looking at your Three Investigators site, MW. Ever thought about doing a 'fan tribute' short story for the blog? It wouldn't be for publication in a book, and as you wouldn't be profiting from it, I don't think there'd be much of a problem with copyright. You could always amend the names slightly if you feared there might be; Jupitus Jones, Rob Andrews, and Pete Cranshaw for example.
ReplyDeleteI wrote a series of fan fiction, called The Three Intrepids, in my teens! :)
DeleteI got the Hulk and judge dredd annuals from that lot,and still have them.(along with all the annuals I got in the 70s/80s)
DeleteI got rid of most of mine, unfortunately, but have bought a lot of them back...
ReplyDelete