Continuing the very first post of this new blog, here are another 31 images of Fantastic, including numbers 31 to 60 plus the very first annual. Alf, Bart and Cos were the editors of the Power Comic titles, of which Fantastic was the fourth out of five. There was a brief period when all five comics were published concurrently, but that didn't last for long, with Terrific being merged into Fantastic and then Wham! being merged into Pow!, followed by Pow! being merged into Smash!, and finally Fantastic also being merged into Smash!, which was the only Power Comic left standing... but only for around five months, whereupon it was revamped and relaunched as a more traditional periodical in the style of Valiant.
And a valiant attempt it had indeed been by Odhams Press, who'd tried to introduce the mighty world of Marvel to British readers accustomed to an arguably more staid style of comics, and while Odhams had been successful to an extent, the comics hadn't quite caught on with enough readers to the extent necessary to ensure longevity. Surprisingly though, there were complaints from enough loyal readers who preferred the old-style superhero Smash! to prompt IPC (who had subsumed Odhams) to introduce their own super-powered hero strip - Tri-Man - for a short time in the pages of the new-direction paper.
But note the clever way in which I've laid the foundation for what was to follow less than four years later. We'll read all about that in a future post, but in the meantime savour the sight of these sensational issues.
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