Several weeks ago I found a Fleetway comic that I'd hadn't come across before. It was called All Action Monthly, and this particular issue is number six, dated July 1987 and priced 65p.
The first strip inside was Splash Gorton, an obvious mick-take of Flash Gordon, and is reprints from whichever comic he appeared in (which I think was Tiger). There are six strips inside, each two pages in length. Here's the first one:
Charlie Champ's War takes up a thick chunk of the 72 page comic, and also in the lineup are Racey's Rocket, Dredger and "You've Got To Be Lucky", the latter starring Roy Race of Roy of the Rovers.
The back page was occupied with a strip called Operation Rescue and subtitled 'True Thrilling Tales Of Human Endeavour'.
All-Action Monthly launched in February 1987 but didn't take off and after a mere eight issues it was laid to rest, failing to merge into any other comics. I like coming across comics I haven't seen or heard of before. It only goes to show that there's always more out there!
3 comments:
It was entirely reprint, launched at a time when kids were already tiring of that style of writing so it's no surprise it didn't sell very well.
Interesting find from 87, I think I agree that these seem a little dated for then. The dilemma posed by the decision whether to move with the times and update a successful formula or not, is not straightforward, I think here they've got left behind a little. 87 must be about the time the broader interest in comics peaked, I think it was also around the time 2000ad upgraded its repro specs, funnily enough they went other way, everything got a bit -worthy- at the prog and a lot of readers got turned off.
They churned out a lot of reprint comics around that time; Funny Fortnightly, Best of Whoopee, Big Comic, Buster pocket books etc. Even a Johnny Cougar reprint monthly (which lasted all of 6 issues).
It was an affordable way for collectors to obtain old stories but they didn't last too long.
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