This Week in ... 1971 - Thunder!

This week we return to another issue of Thunder, which was originally sold as an unnumbered #18 on 13th February 1971! As I recently discovered in Steve Holland's book on Lion comic, Thunder was created simply to merge into Lion and boost sales, which is disapointing as it is my favourite adventure comic. As always, this issue's cover had famous firsts, and this time it's about Dinosaurs!


Undoubtedly Adam Eterno was the most popular strip in the comic, and his adventure got four pages each week - incredibly long considering most comic strips of the time were no longer than two pages. This episode is drawn by Colin Page.

The next strip is Cliff Hanger, although nothing like the more popular version from Buster in the 1980's. I'm not too sure who illustrated this strip.

I love the artwork on Fury's Family, Denis McLoughlin did a fantastic job! I've said it before, but Denis is one of my all time favourite adventure strip artists - the amount of detail in each panel is incredible!

Steel Commando is a strip about a steel soldier in the army, a robot who could (as is proved in this strip) bend tank barrels with his own bare hands, and then pick them up and throw them! This strip continued from Thunder, survived Lion and ended in Valiant.

And finally, the only humour strip in the comic - Sam. This strip is a reprint of Leo Baxendale's Biff, that appeared in Wham, although this one doesn't look like it came from Baxendale.

.............................................

The first birthday of Cor!
 - with no mention of
the occasion.

On a side note, the 12th of February marked the second birthday of Wacky Comics. Last year when I wrote a blog post about this site's first birthday, I mentioned that I had reached my original goal of 10,000 views! Well, I can proudly say that I beat that goal in just a month, in January of this year I got just over 11,000 views! 

So a big thanks to everybody who has made this possible, wether you joined at the start, in 2012 or even if you're new this year!

This Week In... 1970 - Thunder!

A very exciting, informative and incredibly drawn front cover,
restored to look like new on a computer!

A new comic hit the shelves in 1970, with the exciting name of Thunder! The comic was a bit pricier than most on the market, costing 8d, or 3 1/2 new pence, but for your extra money you did get 36 pages with some excellent artwork from the hands of artists such as Francisco Solano Lopez, Alfonso Font and Denis McLoughlin.

Possibly the most popular strip in Thunder was Adam Eterno. Adam Eterno was about a man who, in the 16th Centruy had a curse put on him by an alchemist to enternal life, and the only way he could die was from a fatal blow from a solid gold object. This series was wonderfully illustrated by Colin Page, until the much more well known artist of the strip Francisco Solano Lopez took over for good in issue #18.

The centre pages were taken up by the full colour Phil the Fluter. Phil had come across a magic flute that, whenever he played a tune anybody within hearing distance (except for himslef) turned into statues for a short period of time, and afterwards remembered nothing about it. 

If you were wondering, yes - Phil does get his
flute back before the dustbin is emptied!

Fury's Family was a strip about a circus boy who could talk to the animals, and had led them to freedom! The artwork of this strip is incredible, so much detail has been crammed into the woodland scenes. The artist who do the strip was Denis McLoughlin, one of my favourite adventure artists, who worked on many comics and characters such as Commando, Wizard and Buffalo Bill. Sadly, Denis decided to take his life in 2002.

Click on the picture to appreciate the art
in full size!

Amongst the adventure strips there were two humour stories. The first, The Spooks of Saint Lukes, is about a group of spooks who share their building with a school. But, unlike other strips with the same storyline, their intention is to help the kids out and defeat the nasty teachers!

The back page featured Leo Baxendale's Sam, who is obviously Biff (from Wham! comic), only with a much less creative name. 

If you'd like to read more about Adam Eterno, there is an entire website dedicated to the character, which also holds all of his comic strips and other appearences. You can find the site by clicking on the link below.

http://adameternoforever.tripod.com