Marvel UK was an imprint of Marvel Comics formed in 1972 to reprint US produced stories for the British weekly comic market. Marvel UK later did produce original material by British creators such as Alan Moore, John Wagner, Dave Gibbons, Steve Dillon, and Grant Morrison. Seeing a gap in the popular weekly comics market of the UK, Marvel Comics formed their own British publishing arm. Starting with The Mighty World of Marvel (commonly shortened to MWOM), Marvel UK started with black-and-white (though early issues of MWOM did feature some colour) reprints of The Hulk, Spider-Man, and the Fantastic Four. A few months later Spider-Man Comics Weekly was released. Again this carried on reprinted American Spider-Man material originally started in MWOM,with the adventures of Thor starting as a back-up feature. The new title allowed an entire issue of the US The Amazing Spider-Man to be reprinted every week in the UK publication. Both of these initial series were huge successes and became the mainstays of the Marvel UK lineup; The Mighty World Of Marvel, in one form or another, was published continuously until 1984, while the Spider-Man weekly comic (under many different name changes) would continue until 1985. In 1976 they came up with a new and original character, Captain Britain. He came under his own title Captain Britain Weekly. Did any of you read and collect any of their titles? Many titles ran for a good few years and sometimes came in various sizes such as the landscape editions (two Marvel US pages printed next to each other on the same page), pocket books and the giant-sized Treasury Editions that would dwarf any child reading them. Titles included The Mighty World of Marvel Spider-Man Comics Weekly The Avengers Dracula Lives! Doctor Who Weekly Planet of the Apes The Hulk Weekly The Titans The Super-Heroes Star Wars Weekly The Transformers Savage Sword of Conan Super Spider-Man The titles would often have three or four back-up strips from other US titles such as Thor, The Fantastic Four, Doc Savage, Ant-Man, Dr. Strange, Nick Fury, The Micronauts, Star-Lord. Doctor Who Weekly was completely original with its main strip and the brilliant back-up strips (that featured several well-known DW monsters and villains without the Doctor, such as the Daleks, Abslom Daak, Cybermen, Ice Warriors, Zygons, Sontarans, Yeti, Autons and Voc Robots) with the only reprints being from the US Marvel Classic Comics range being serialised such as The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The First Men in the Moon, as well as reprinting The Daleks comic strip from the mid-1960s TV Century 21 comic.
Still got my Mighty World of Marvel #1 and Dracula Lives #1. Also used to read Spider-Man Comics Weekly, The Avengers, Captain Britain, Planet of the Apes, and Savage Sword of Conan regularly.
Some information on TMWoM from a British Comics Database Wiki http://britishcomics.wikia.com/wiki/Mighty_World_of_Marvel
The brainchild of Melvyn Bragg, "Opening Shot" was an arts programme for Channel 4. One episode, first broadcast 10th August 1993, focused on British creators working on US comics and included interviews with Stan Lee, Paul Neary, Liam Sharp, Andy Lanning, Jan Duuresema, Maya Gavin and Bobbie Chase and more. Watch out for cameo appearances by Edmund Perryman (Edmund Bagwell), Bryan Hitch and Martin Griffiths. It's a great show, for all its use of Marvel animated shows and sequences from the live action Hulk TV series. Fascinating to hear Stan's views on bringing comics to the big screen and see some 1990s computer games, too. [YT]c7pWinjolSs[/YT]
A special commemorative issue of Marvel's Doctor Who Weekly #0 has been produced - a printing of the original mock-up that editor Dez Skinn took along to the BBC to secure the license for the comic in 1979. Only 100 copies were ever printed, which disappeared pronto. Dez has reproduced another limited edition of DWW #0 (a slight variant and without the s+n certificate so as not to devalue the original 100 but still with the explanatory "Letter from the Dezter"). https://boysadventurecomics.blogspot.com/2018/05/doctor-who-weekly-0.html It's £24.95 inc postage (UK; plus £4.00 Europe, £5.50 rest of world). Just Paypal the amount to [email protected] - who informs me that he will mail your orders out pronto.