text: STARLOGGED - GEEK MEDIA AGAIN: 1984: CYRIL IN RETURN OF THE JEDI WEEKLY (Marvel UK)
  The saga continues... another instalment of CYRIL, from the pages of Marvel UK's RETURN OF THE JEDI weekly issue 79, cover-dated 22 December 1984.
  Labels: 1984, C.Y.R.I.L, MARVEL UK, RETURN OF THE JEDI, STAR WARS
  Anonymous 19 July 2013 at 15:11
  I hope it's OK to go off subject but I wanted to say thanks for your fascinating revelation ( which I only found yesterday ) that Marvel were banned from using Charlton Heston's likeness in their POTA adaptation! I have a huge fondness for that adaptation as POTA No.5 was my first ever Marvel comic. I didn't see the movie until February 1977 ( by coincidence ITV showed it on my 11th birthday ) so Marvel's version of Taylor was the "original" one for me. George Tuska's artwork was fantastic I thought. I'd love to re-read all those POTA strips but I assume they are not in print and never will be.
  SLOW ROBOT 22 July 2013 at 07:35
  Well... never say never as BOOM STUDIOS currently hold the POTA comics rights. They were planning to reprint the Marvel TERROR ON THE POTA strips as a limited series but abandoned the idea when pre-orders were too low. That suggests they do have the rights to reprint the Marvel material although whether they are now inclined to do so is another matter. Surely, a hefty omnibus collection of the five movies (ideally with cover reproductions from the US and UK editions and copious background notes) would find a niche audience.
  I think Adventure Comics reissued, in trade paperback form, Marvel's adaptations of the first two movies as part of their early 1990s line although I don't own either. I remember they seemed to suffer from very murky printing although its roughly twenty years since I last saw a copy. They never seem to resurface in the usual secondhand outlets.
  Anonymous 22 July 2013 at 14:55
  To be honest I'm not that interested in the movie adaptations apart from the first one. What I remember from POTA were the other apes stories like the "King Arthur" one and the one where they all lived on ships and the Jason and Alexander one. I found Escape and Conquest rather dreary and I never finished Battle as I'd abandoned the comic by then- the merger with Dracula Lives spoiled the comic for me.
  Anonymous 21 July 2013 at 14:42
  Have you covered Savage Sword Of Conan monthly yet ? I googled SSOC MARVEL UK but I couldn't find any links to your blog apart from Avengers And SSOC which I've already read. All the SSOC covers are easily available online but they don't provide the interesting extra information that you do. One of these days I will have to scroll back through all your posts, the whole 18 months !
  SLOW ROBOT 22 July 2013 at 07:45
  Nope - Google hasn't failed you. I've done very little with CONAN I'm afraid. I did post the covers (well, two covers and a house ad) for the (very) brief CONAN THE ADVENTURER comic that M-UK published in the 1990s. Since then, I acquired a copy of the first issue so - some day - I'll post that as well.
  I posted the cover of the first issue of the CONAN THE BARBARIAN POCKET BOOK as part of a post on the Pocket Books line but i don't have anything like a complete run so no cover gallery I'm afraid.
  My SSoC (volume 2) collection is pretty non-existant as well. I have the first and last issues and a few around the time that MWOM (volume 2) merged (why?) but I'd be surprised if I had more than 10 of the 93 issues. There was also at least one annual (reprinting Marvel's CONAN THE DESTROYER movie adaptation) and one (or more) appearances in other seventies Marvel annuals although I forget which one(s).
  When I get around to it, I will post a Conan M-UK "biography" as the strip shuffled through a great many titles.
  OK thanks for that - I've seen all the SSOC covers online and was really surprised to see that I'd stopped getting it by early 1981, I thought I'd been buying it until '83 at least but I have no memory at all of the new look from May '81 onwards. I noticed that later issues had covers that were reprints of earlier covers and also a whole run of photo covers of Arnie- you'd think they'd run out of cover designs or something!
  SLOW ROBOT 23 July 2013 at 07:56
  One thing I did notice from the few later copies that I do have is that they had - at some point - added some colour pages inside. It wasn't full colour throughout, just that weird Marvel UK hybrid of some colour and some b&w pages, which made reading a strip akin to watching a faulty TV. That had - it seems - opened-up the possibility of reprinting strips from (I'd guess) the US colour comic book or one of the spin-offs (CONAN THE KING?) that were doing the rounds at the time.
  I guess the photo-covers were - like RETURN OF THE JEDI weekly - a good way of luring in casual punters who might have been alienated (or simply never noticed) the traditional art covers.
  Merging THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL was a weird decision. Did it actually hasten Conan's demise? I can't imagine the crossover audience for the two titles was huge and show-horning in MWOM (albeit parts 2-4 of the fantasy-themed MAGIK limited series... demonstrating a degree of thought) pleased the old guard much. The lack of options say a lot about the poor state of the British superhero line by this point.