Entertainment For Lively Minds
Adam Ant – Hero of a Hundred Ages!
When I was growing up, my parents regarded ITV (at the time the UK’s sole commercial television station) to be a corrupting influence on the mind of a young child. My only contact with this illicit third channel - it’s wealth of gleaming American imports (The A Team, Battlestar Galactica) and cobbled-together, homegrown talent (Metal Mickey, Super Gran) - came via a magazine called Look-In.
Billed as “the junior TV times”, Look-In contained comic strips based on popular ITV shows. Another regular feature in the magazine were the pictorial biographies of well known bands and musicians, starting with the greats - The Beatles and Elvis
These true-life stories were always written in a peculiar, tongue-tied narrative (“A vicar got in touch with them” is surely a line that has graced no other Beatles biography). At times it could get alarmingly highbrow for magazine aimed at the under 10s - In the story of The Beatles an elderly professor announces: “It is my intention to show the guitar has always been a symbol of subliminal stimulation in the popular sub-culture.”
Eventually the magazine clued-up to the fact that they were writing for an audience of kids raised in the 1980s and so moved on to chronicling the lives of contemporary pop acts – among these Madonna, Duran Duran and Paul Young.
The Madonna story is hilarious in its wide-eyed account of T-shirts costing “OVER TEN POUNDS!” being sold at her concerts, while, in the following panel, a group of boys lament the empowering effect the singer has had on women. The grand scale of the star’s wedding to the actor Sean Penn is suitably illustrated by the revelation that a member of the 1980s pop group, The Thompson Twins, attended the ceremony!
In addition to these potted biographies I have vague recollections of Look-In running comic strips based around the dramatised adventures of popular groups such as Bucks Fizz, Five Star and Madness. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to locate any of these online. What I did find instead was a few pages of a comic that appeared in TOPS magazine, titled Adam Ant – Hero of a Hundred Ages.
The story revolves around the singer being transported to an alternate dimension where he is attacked by “Bats!! Gigantic savage blood-sucking bats!!” and hounded by the essence of evil itself (represented by a gaggle of ghouls, led by what appears to be Adolf Hitler and the wicked uncle from Aladdin). Eventually a mysterious cloaked figure reveals that Adam is the chosen one – a warrior spirit, reincarnated down through the ages to do battle with evil.
It’s brilliant – absolute genius; more-so because you suspect that it was written with complete sincerity. You can’t imagine this kind of thing ever happening to Oasis or Radiohead.
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Blimey! I remember
having several issues of that TOPS comic as a kid! In the one I remember, Adam had to do battle with Cerberus, the three headed dog, in order to gain entry to the underworld and the River Styx. I seem to recall there was some sort of chess game as a metaphor for the cosmic battle between good and evil.
I'd forgotten all about that.
Pink Floyd Comic
Look up the Rog Of The Rovers strip
http://www.pinkfloydz.com/1975%20Tour%20Book/1975_tour_book_part_1.htm
To view all 16 pages click on "next" below picture
Bloody Hell!
I've got that somewhere! Isn't it the tour programme from 1975? (note to self - yes it is Paul - read the link...)
Anyway, without clicking on the link I can still recall a number of fun facts...
Doesn't David Gilmour admit to being 19?
Don't they all profess to be left-wing?
Isn't there some whimsy about tripping out (beyond the planet Zod?) by forming a triangle with your fingers??
I really don't want to click on the link in case all my illusions are shattered.
Will someone look for me? Please??
No
Yes
along with grout cleaning fluid
dubbing for boots and their own stock cube I think Kiss had their own comic as well. I bet it was rubbish as they were.
Kiss
Did have a Marvel mini series in the 70s (with a rumor some of the band's blood was used in the red ink - this is pre heavy H and S).
But you can also find The Beatles at a Fantastic Four wedding, The Thing meets the Beatles, Uri Geller in Daredevil and Batman playing with The Beatles 'Paul is Dead' myth if you know where to look.
PS check out Marco Pirroni's New Band The Wolfmen, they've got a some fantastic two fisted tunes.
www.myspace.com/thewolfmen
LOOK OUT FOR LOOK IN
was the Ad slogan. Now we are talking, 70's comics.
wasn't it Ed "Stewpot" Stewart (He of the world's most boring autobiography) who did the adverts ? and Mick Robertson from Magpie ?
More Rock /Comic interaction
Steve Norman and Gary Kemp from Spandau Ballet both played for Melchester Rovers in the 80's.
also Roy Race and Gary Lineker released a record,in 90/91 i think,called "Europe United".
Viz regularly had Rock groups in Comic strips."The Human League in Outer Space" was one i remember.
The famous Kiss comic as well.
I can'r remember where i've put my keys but this stuff came flooding back.
I became an agent for Peter Flint...
... in WARLORD: included secret agent wallet with a winged "W" on the cover.
Also became a secret member of BULLET's gang and got a Fireball flame logo on a pendant.
Both of the above cost 25pence (+ postage) if my mem'ry serves me well.
Of course, at the time you wouldn't keep any of this stuff secret!
I think I remember Trevor Francis appearing in a "Roy of the Rovers" story in TIGER & SCORCHER too.
Wow, I thought I'd forgotten all this stuff.
As One
Me too Nicodemus.Warlord agent too.
The Trevor Francis one from Roy Of The Rovers was the one where Roy Became player manager of England for a game against Holland (5-1) . the other Player Roy Chose was...............SuperMac.
The Dutch got there revenge in that year's European Cup as Melchester lost to some Dutch Team(SPV or something similar ?).
Sensational update while writing this a mate just sent this link.
http://www.royoftherovers.com/
well there goes the rest of the evening.
Thanks a million, Paul...
.. good to hear from another WARLORD agent after all this time.
I have just bookmarked that Roy Of The Rovers site, also.
Secret Agents
I'm stunned to find a bunch of Sleeper Warlord and Fireball Agents in the camp. I thought that I was the only one reactivated.
I'm off to the Laundry
to see if my U.N.C.L.E. badge still opens the sliding doors.
Mr. Waverley called me on Channel D.
It's Clobberin' Time, yeah, yeah, yeah!
Marvel jumps aboard the good ship Beatlemania in Issue 130 of Strange Tales from March 1965. Doesn't the ever lovin' blue-eyed Thing look fetching in his Beatles wig...
Escape to Victory 2
Bob Wilson and Emlyn Hughes were in Spandau Ballet? Blimey.
Rock Band?
Ah! Not enough space to write namby-pamby pop poseurs.
Utter Bollocks
In 1995 Marvel Comics put out this. Voodoo Lounge a graphic novel based on the songs of the Stones By Dave McKean. I bought it as I do like my "Graphic Novel" but it was absolute tosh. It remains in my attic waiting for the (plane crash) I mean day that it will become much sought after and therefore valuable.
Just checked EBay its about $10 worth. I'll have a long wait.