Tuesday 9 December 2014

1988: THUNDERCATS and THE ADVENTURES OF THE GALAXY RANGERS MERGE (Marvel UK)


From September 1988: Two-become-one when MARVEL UK folds the short-lived THE ADVENTURES OF THE GALAXY RANGERS into the pages of the (considerably more successful) THUNDERCATS.

The SF Western, based on the superior animated series, mustered only nine fortnightly issues before the axe fell.  I suspect it was down to a combination of poor sales, the higher-than-average costs of origination (each issue featured a brand-new GR strip created by the British Bullpen) and the poor scheduling of the TV series itself (as I recall, ITV tucked it away in their summer holiday schedules... which ensured an episode five days a week... but in a time slot with few viewers).

The Annex of Ideas obviously had a few weeks of inventory already on-file which they burnt-off in the new weekly, followed by several more reprints of the original strips initially commissioned for the GR ANNUAL, published around the same time.  

The Galaxy Rangers license was exclusive to Marvel UK and wasn't picked-up by the US operation.  Whether these British strips were syndicated anywhere else is unknown.  

Both the THUNDERCATS and THE ADVENTURES OF THE GALAXY RANGERS have been released on DVD.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...