#marvel u.k.

[frazerbrown-producer]

PUT ON 3-D GLASSES NOW!

Amongst the recent Marvel U.K. deep dive I found these cool OVERKILL cards.

I loved these things and thought they were long gone.

Work by Bryan Hitch, Gary Frank, Gary Erskine and many more.

John Freeman of DOWN THE TUBES wrote a great article about them:

“Back in the early 1990s, some fantastic trading cards were given away in three early issues of Marvel UK’s Overkill, which I edited, featuring art by Gary Frank, some of the cards inked by Cam Smith.

These cards feature Hell’s Angel (later, Dark Angel), The Guide, Algernon Crowe, Colonel Tigon Liger, Master Key, Misha, Motormouth, Killpower, Death’s Head, Tuck, Purge and Digitek.

Many Marvel UK fans will have no doubt come across these images in various places online before, conjuring up, perhaps, fond memories of the debut of Death’s Head II in Overkill #12 – 14 in 1992, his arrival further enhanced by fantastic covers by Mark Harrison and Steve Sampson.”

You can read the full thing here: https://downthetubes.net/1990s-marvel-uk-nostalgia-the-first-overkill-trading-cards/

The 3D cards by BRYAN HITCH are particularly cool.

I got the whole lot signed at UKCAC ‘92 as wee bairn. The reason I have so many DEATH’S HEAD 2 cards is he was my favourite, plus it was a ‘hot book’ in the speculator market, so I figured I’d retire on the money made from selling these in the future. We all know how that bubble turned out.

Fun times

[tomoleary]

Steve Stiles Titans #23 DPS Iron Man Marvel U.K. (1976) Source

[contentabnormal]

The fearful fortieth issue of We Belong Dead magazine featuring cover art by Content Abnormal contributor Josh Ryals is now available! This issue is a Dracula Special celebrating the centennial of Hamilton Deane's Dracula play being performed for the first time on stage in Derby, England. This issue is also dedicated to the late great David J. Skal.

Links to where you may order We Belong Dead #40 HERE

[comicwaren]

From Spider-Man Vol. 4 #007, “Spider-Genesis”

Art by Mark Bagley, John Dell, Andrew Hennessy and Edgar Delgado

Written by Dan Slott

[comicbooksaregood]

Marvel Super-Heroes (UK)

Volume: 1

Issue: 388

Graveyard Shift

Writer: Alan Moore

Penciler: Alan Davis

Inker: Alan Davis

Cover: Frank Miller, Bob McLeod

Marvel UK

[collapsedsquid]

In the U.K., the Health Security Agency recently raised its threat level to 4 out of 6, the stage immediately before large-scale human outbreaks. In Europe, countries are proactively vaccinating dairy and poultry workers against infection, with 15 nations already securing a total of 40 million doses through the European Commission. In the United States, despite having a stockpile of those vaccines, we are not distributing them, instead focusing on standing up voluntary supplies of seasonal flu vaccines to frontline workers. (The hope is that this will prevent animal infections of human flu that might aid in the further mutation of H5N1.) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has cited the low number of cases to justify its inaction, but it has also moved remarkably slowly to promote the kind of widespread surveillance testing that could actually identify cases. Only recently has the agency begun to mobilize real funding for a testing push, after a period of months in which various federal groups batted around responsibility and ultimate authority like a hot potato. And as was the case early in the Covid-19 pandemic, the C.D.C.’s preferred test for bird flu “has issues.” Three months into the outbreak, only 45 people had even been tested; six weeks later, the total number of people tested had grown only to “230+.” [...] Most farms aren’t supplying N95 masks, goggles or aprons to protect workers, either, and when Amy Maxmen of KFF News surveyed farm workers to ask why they weren’t getting tested, “no one had heard of bird flu, never mind gotten P.P.E. or offers of tests,” she reported. “One said they don’t get much from their employers, not even water. If they call in sick, they worry about getting fired.” Last month, a crew was deployed to slow the spread of the disease by killing every last chicken of 1.78 million on a large Colorado farm where H5N1 had broken out and six of the workers contracted the virus, partly because the gear they’d been provided was hard to use in the punishing 104-degree heat. In June, Robert Redfield, former director of the C.D.C., echoed many epidemiologists in predicting that “it’s not a question of if, it’s more of a question of when we will have a bird flu pandemic.” In July, Brown’s Jennifer Nuzzo warned that the steady beat of new cases “screams at us that this virus is not going away.” Tulio de Oliveira, a bioinformatician who studies global disease surveillance, marveled that the American effort to track the spread of the disease was absolutely amateurish and the country’s apparent indifference “unbelievable.”

[mrs-stans]

Sebastian Stan Scolds “Hypocrite” Trump at ‘The Apprentice’ U.K. Premiere: “Do You Really Trust This Person to Lead a Country?”

Stan, who portrays Donald Trump in Ali Abbasi's new movie, was asked whether this film debuting so close to the U.S. election could sway voters: "He's been trying to censor this movie, and at the same time, he claims he acknowledges free speech. I can't think of anything more hypocritical."

BY LILY FORD

Sebastian Stan has branded former U.S. president Donald Trump a hypocrite who has attempted to “censor” his new movie, The Apprentice.

The Marvel actor spoke at the BFI London Film Festival premiere of Ali Abbasi’s movie about Trump’s rise to power in 1970s and ’80s New York — in which he stars as the real estate mogul-turned-Republican politician — with the teachings of mentor Roy Cohn (played by Jeremy Strong) guiding him on his ascension.

The cast and crew, including Stan, Strong, Abbasi and screenwriter Gabriel Sherman, appeared on the red carpet at the BFI’s Royal Festival Hall in the U.K. capital.

When asked whether this film debuting so close to the U.S. election could sway voters, Stan told The Hollywood Reporter: “I don’t know, but what I do hope is that people, regardless of their opinion, are curious enough to try to dig deeper. Because I think we’re living in a world where it’s so easy to be handed an opinion everywhere you turn. And I know a lot of people love social media, and that’s where they go for information and for things. You’re being told what to think. You’re being told what to do.”

But, the Marvel star continued, “If you have any inkling of interest, go and really ask yourself: ‘Who is this man? Do you really know? Do you really trust this person to lead a country?’ He’s been trying to censor this movie, and at the same time, he claims that he acknowledges free speech … I can’t think of anything more hypocritical. So at the end of the day, it’s about him as a character. Forget the politics and just go in there and use your instinct and ask yourself: Do you trust this man? That’s what the movie is about.”

The feature film opened in roughly 1,700 theaters across the U.S. last weekend after its debut in Cannes and pulled in an anemic $1.6 million in its first weekend. Trump lashed out against the film after the numbers came in.

“A FAKE and CLASSLESS Movie written about me, called, The Apprentice (Do they even have the right to use that name without approval?), will hopefully “bomb.” It’s a cheap, defamatory and politically disgusting hatchet job, put out right before the 2024 Presidential Election, to try and hurt the Greatest Political Movement in the History of our Country,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

Sherman told THR: “It’s not surprising [that Trump lashed out]… You’ve seen the film, the first lesson that Roy Cohn teaches him is: attack, attack, attack. So Trump hasn’t seen the movie, but he’s clearly following the rules that are in the movie.”

Sherman also said part of the inspiration for this film was to show Trump as carrying on Cohn’s legacy, as sources who worked on the 2016 Trump campaign told him the businessman was just “using Roy’s lessons.”

The Apprentice received rave reviews and an 8-minute standing ovation after its Cannes Film Festival premiere in May.

[soleminisanction]

@mzminola I saw your tags on this post:

#you all have so many names #is this because of DC eating Fawcett, or a tiff with Marvel Comics, or several reasons??? #everything I learn about the Shazam Fawcett City fam makes me more interested

And immediately got excited because I happen to know this story and I think it's fun. It's one of the more interesting nuances of comics industry skullduggery out there.

See, Captain Marvel was the most popular superhero of the 1940s, at least based on raw comic book sales; he even outsold Superman, and he was the first comic book superhero to get adapted into a film serial. And National Comics, the company that would eventually become DC, hated that, so they sued for copyright infringement on the grounds that the Cap was a blatant Superman rip-off, and they eventually won, forcing Fawcett to stop publishing Captain Marvel and his family in 1953.

Then in the 60s, when Marvel Comics came along, somebody there eventually noticed that the trademark to the name "Captain Marvel" was up for grabs, so they jumped on that with their Captain in 1967. Between Mar-Vell and his family, Monica Rambaeu, Noh-Varr and Carol Danvers, Marvel's never let that trademark slip out of their grasp in the decades since.

So when DC acquired the rights to use the original Captain Marvel and his crew, first through a license with Fawcett in 1972 and then essentially absorbing the smaller company entirety in 1992, they found themselves in the awkward legal position where they couldn't publish Cap's books under the name "Captain Marvel." They could call him that in the book, because they owned the rights to the character, but they couldn't use his name as the trademark for the series, or in any of their advertisements, and when they tried to edge around it by calling him, "Shazam! The Original Captain Marvel" they got a cease and desist.

Of course people who weren't familiar with any of this drama found it confusing that this was one of the only books in the line-up that wasn't named for its hero. So DC spent a long time through the 90s and early 00s going through different names for Captain Marvel (and to a lesser extent Mary and Junior) trying to find a name that would let people know that this was the same Very Popular Character as in the old days without tripping into Marvel's trademark lawyers.

---

Meanwhile!! Back in the 50s, over the the U.K., the small press that had been importing the Captain Marvel comics decided that, when their supply was suddenly cut off by the lawsuit, they'd recruit a local artist to just help them keep going by changing the name to a thinly veiled expy called Marvelman.

Marvelman was then revived in the 80s by Alan Moore as Miracleman, which was basically his first jaunt into the metatextual explorations of superhero comics that he'd become famous for. When he left that run it was taken over by Neil Gaiman, through whom a debate over the rights to Miracleman would eventually become central to a protracted lawsuit with Todd McFarlane over work Gaiman did on the Spawn comics.

You could probably write a pretty compelling history of the superhero comics industry just by following the trademark and copyright drama of Captain Marvel. I'm a little surprised somebody hasn't done it already tbh.

[a-man-for-hire-and-his-archives]

Disney+ Not Going Forward With ‘Nautilus’ UK Series As Part Of Cost-Cutting Content Removal

EXCLUSIVE: Nautilus, the UK live-action Captain Nemo series commissioned by Disney+ two years ago, is no longer headed to the streamer, Deadline has learned.

The decision is part of Disney’s streaming content removal plan unveiled in May, for which the company is taking an impairment charge of approximately $1.5 billion-$1.8 billion. It followed the February announcement by Disney that it intends to cut $3 billion in non-sports content spend across the company.

As part of the cost-reduction strategy, Disney’s streaming platforms, particularly flagship Disney+, have been taking a closer look on their programming with a new emphasis on content curation.

As Deadline reported exclusively Saturday, Disney+ also is not going forward with another upcoming original series, the The Spiderwick Chronicles, a U.S. live-action series adaptation of the popular children’s fantasy books.

Over the past couple of months, dozens of original series and specials were taken off Disney+ as well as Hulu, and Disney CEO Bob Iger also announced a pullback in new Marvel and Star Wars shows and movies for Disney+.

Like The Spiderwick Chronicles, which is currently being shopped by lead studios Paramount Television Studios, Nautilus has been shot; it started filming in February 2022 in Australia. Disney+ is working with the production team to find a new home for Nautilus, with meetings and screenings underway.

Nautilus was announced during the 2021 Edinburgh TV Festival along with two other new original UK series for Disney+. No other UK local originals are understood to be impacted by the content cuts.

Disney+’s UK scripted and unscripted programming pipeline includes Culprits, from J Blakeson; Jilly Cooper’s Rivals; A Thousand Blows, from Stephen Graham; Coleen Rooney’s upcoming documentary, In Vogue, from Vogue Studios and Raw; and Shardlake, based on the novels by C. J. Sansom.

The streamer also recently greenlit two new U.K. drama series, Jeff Pope’s Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, and thriller Playdate.

Based on the Jules Verne’s classic novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Nautilus is a 10-part live-action adventure series about the origin story of Verne’s iconic character, Captain Nemo, and his famous submarine, The Nautilus.

In this retelling, Nemo (Shazad Latif) is an Indian Prince robbed of his birth right and family, a prisoner of the East India Company and a man bent on revenge against the forces which have taken everything from him. But once he sets sail with his ragtag crew on board the awe-inspiring Nautilus, he not only battles with his enemy, he also discovers a magical underwater world.

Also starring are Georgia Flood and Thierry Frémont, with Pacharo Mzembe, Arlo Green, Tyrone Ngatai, Ling Cooper Tang, Andrew Shaw, Ashan Kumar, Céline Menville and Kayden Price rounding out the cast. Nautilus is produced by Xavier Marchand’s Moonriver Studios and Anand Tucker’s Seven Stories.

Source: Deadline

Big thank you to @longlukearnolds for head up!

[frazerbrown-producer]

I was sorting through some storage boxes recently and found some curios from the dark depths of UKCAC ‘92 including this item a ‘TOM DEFALCO’ autograph card.

I have such fond memories of that time. In fact when I started TALES FROM THE QUARANTINE I made sure to reach out to all of those folk from Marvel U.K. that were so inspiring and accommodating to 13 year old me at the con.

The passing of Paul Neary recently has sent me back down a MARVEL U.K. collection rabbit hole and I’ve unearthed some fun stuff like this card. Tom DEFALCO and Paul NEARY gave me some great portfolio advice that day, and LIAM SHARP, ANDY LANNING, GARY ERSKINE and all the other attendees signed a multitude of items. If I remember correctly they gave everything on the table away for free so I asked for multiple copies for my buddies. My poor old dad had to carry around bags of posters, badges, comics and trading cards all day. It would be our last con together before he passed. Great memories were made.

A couple of years back I considered relaunching / producing a large UKCAC revival and sought the blessing of its creators to use the name, out of respect . The original producers preferred it stay as a great memory and moment in time, and whilst it saddened me, I can absolutely see their point. It was a unique moment in time.

Spending tonight on the nostalgia Choo Choo train.

[tomoleary]

Kevin O'Neill - The Punisher #17 Marvel U.K. Original Cover Art (1989) Source

[racefortheironthrone]

Can you please explain Jessica Drew to me and how is she connected to Peter Parker and Miles Morales?

Jessica Drew is a very complicated character with a truly bizarre origin.

As I discuss here, the origin of Spider-Woman is about as nakedly commercial as you can get. In the late 1970s, Stan Lee had left Marvel Comics in favor of doing Marvel film and television development in Hollywood - and he got spooked when ABC did the Bionic Woman spinoff from the Six-Million-Dollar Man. He was afraid that Marvel didn't have the rights to the distaff equivalents of their most successful characters, so he sent word back to Marvel Comics that they had to come up with She-Hulk (because of the Lou Ferrigno show), Ms Marvel (because of the legal fight over Shazam), and indeed Spider-Woman (because of the cartoon) right away.

This rush job meant that Jessica Drew's early years are a bit...weird.

Unlike Peter Parker, Drew isn't bitten by a radioactive spider: rather, her mad scientist father decided to inject her with spider-blood in order to counter-act the radioactive poisoning his experiments had given her, and then shoved her inside the High Evolutionary's genetic accelerator at Mount Wundagore (because her dad was working there at the time).

Then Jessica was trained by HYDRA to be the perfect assassin and brain-washed her into thinking that she was an artificially-evolved spider rather than a human. Oh, and for a while Jessica's mom was HYDRA's chief assassin Viper:

Within the context of ATSV, Drew is interesting because like Miguel and Ben Reilly, she's a Spider who wasn't chosen to be bitten by a spider, but became a Spider anyway. She has some of Spidey's powers - wall-crawling, super-strength/speed/stamina/reflexes/etc., but also venom blasts like Miles, a healing factor like Wolverine, and mood-altering pheramone powers.

She doesn't usually have that much to do with Peter Parker or Miles Morales - she didn't know either of them growing up in the U.K, she doesn't have the same "canon events" as they do, the only thing they have in common is that they're all totemic avatars.

[movie-universe-org]

‘THE MARVELS’ actually has a budget of $274.8M.

However $55M of that budget was a subsidy from the U.K. meaning they only spent $219.8M.

[athelind]

RIP Greg Hildebrandt

[ear-worthy]

UnReality Podcast Premieres -- Truth, Lies, Fact, Fiction

I first heard of  U.K. podcaster Talia Augustidis in October 2023 when I heard an episode of Lights Out on BBC4. In her episode -- called Dead Ends -- Talia manipulates sound with tape hiss, plaintive voices from the past, and the mystery of her mother's tragic death from a fall from a cliff while on a business trip in Majorca.

In this episode, I felt the pain of Talia's loss, the frustration at not knowing her mother, the hard questions about her mother's lifestyle, and the darkness surrounding her mother's death. It's a powerful episode, and the sounds she employs are poignant, somber, and wistful. Her narrative process in the episode is anything but circadian and more like entering a dreamlike state.

 Listeners in the United States may not know her, but Talia Augustidis is an award-winning audio producer and community organizer. She is the host and creator of the podcast, UnReality, which has been featured in festivals from Florence to Reykjavik to New York. 

 UnReality presents short anthology documentaries about truth, lies, facts, fiction and the unknown. The first season was selected for Tribeca 2022 and played at festivals around the world, from Lucia in Florence to Phonurgia Nova in Paris to the IFC in Reykjavik.

The first episode of the second season launches on January 15th.  UnReality is an independent project, made in collaboration with Transmission Roundhouse, a socially engaged podcast platform located in London. I was fortunate enough to get a preview of the second season. My reaction is that it is a tour de force of narrative podcasting. It isn't so much Talia Augustidis's voice that supplies the magic in UnReality. Her tone is understated with a slow, deliberate cadence, and a sonic smirk to her episodes that's hard not to enjoy. It's the sonic universe she creates by manipulating sounds, voices, time, logic, and perception. Her episodes are like being in a quantum physics puzzle. Is the cat in the box or not? The first season of  UnReality explored the unconscious, the rainforest and the North Pole, but this season finds the unreal in the everyday… in comedy clubs, smutty novels and HR meetings.

The second season presents a short anthology of documentaries about truth, lies, facts, fiction, and the unknown. These episodes are like funhouse versions of reality. Through Talia's audio narrative, listeners experience a strong brew of emotions. Episode One On The Cards - Imagine an entire company -- including the CEO -- getting laid off. This one is a shocker. The H.R. meetings meant to offer solace to employees backfire. The employees, however, resort to a deck of Tarot cards for support and an emotional lift. Episode two -- Breakfast on Tiffany - is my favorite. In an effort to read a classic, Truman Capote's Breakfast At Tiffany's, Talia inadvertently downloads an e-book called -- Breakfast on Tiffany -- a bodice ripper with vivid descriptions of a threesome with Tiffany in the middle. Episode three is a profile in courage. Talia decides to try standup comedy. In "Dad Jokes," Talia learns the hard truths and softer lies behind a stand-up comedy routine. As a cryptic, Freudian message from her unconscious, Talia discovers that her comedy routine consists of dad jokes at her father's expense.

These episodes expose audio podcasting at its very best. Talia Augustidis uses sound like a virtuoso violinist manipulates the strings.

Check out  UnReality. Be prepared to laugh, question reality, and marvel at the narrative excellence of a talented indie podcaster.