Fleetway Publications

Growing up Christmas wasn’t Christmas without a comics hardcover Annual to read. Earlier in the year I picked up a run of Valiant Annuals from the mid to late sixties and thought it would be fun to revisit them around the holidays. Valiant was a boys adventure comic mixing historical, military, and sports stories with the occasional educational article, and as expected this Annual reflects the same content. While some of the jingoistic undertones are a little uncomfortable from today’s show more perspective, the few strips that also have female characters are surprisingly progressive with them having equal agency with the lead males, although it’s the men who get their name in the strip title. Highlights for me were a fascinating article about a Nuclear powered US Army camp situated under the Greenland icecap (it apparently was shut down in 1967), and a fun pulp style space adventure which included the line “You cant expect a chimp to do much in the way of running a spaceship!” - There are no credits for any of the writers or artists but the cover looks to be by the excellent Ron Emberton who also contributed a couple of painted strips inside. Overall a real nostalgia trip and a fun read. show less

The front cover shows 4 male footballers and a cameraman. It looks as though the number 9 scores a goal, a defender unsuccessful and a goalkeeper with a cap, diving to his right but failing to the old-fashioned ball. There is intensity in the colour illustration. Inside, pp. 116-120, there is a lively story by Hal Wilton: 'The centre with two left feet'. Kingshurst Rovers is on the edge of applying to the Third Division for the third year running. They needed to win one more match - against show more Barnstone. How difficult it is for a manager to take control - but he did succeed or did he? The short story reflects reality. show less

The coloured frontispiece shows blond Roy Race nodding in another winner. What a hero. Roy's fame in the Tiger led him on to greater things, a whole annual devoted to him. This one is a mixture of stories e.g. Wanted for Wembley by Harry Clements, cartoon strips, 'The football bandit fighters', bright and colourful pictures of national colours and badges, the league club badges including Portsmouth. There are puzzle pages, a crossword. clues such as Trautmann's first name and first name of show more Kinsey, Birmingham City forward - I think he was Welsh and called Noel - and a simple board game occupying the inside back cover. Life was much simpler in 1958. Third Lanark played at Cathkin Park. show less

This is a great annual from 1978. It features themes of time travel, space operas, the occult, top secret government human experiments, dystopian games, alien monsters; and of course Judge Dredd.
Most of the book is in black & white (one is black & red), with only a very few full colour pages: The Biggest Game of All, and Harlem Heroes.

The biggest game of all!
This is a blatant rip-off of a well known story by Ray Bradbury called 'Sound Of Thunder' that was first published in Collier's show more magazine in the June 28, 1952 issue and Bradbury's collection The Golden Apples of the Sun in 1953. Only the ending is slightly altered to avoid copyright. [Artist: Marzal Canos]

Feature - "Twelve Lunours Past Zero" (timekeeping on the moon)

M.A.C.H.1
Not so much a secret agent... more a secret weapon. John Probe has been altered via a process called Compu-Puncture, and given the strength of fifty men.

"Personality Data Banks": Von Braun

Final Vision [text story]
Astronaut Mike Walker fears that something is waiting for him in deep space, and he is seeing a doctor about it. But is it feally just all in his mind?

Food! On another planet, in another time a spacecraft returns to a devastated planet following nuclear war looking for food.
[Artist: Brett Ewins]

"Jules Verne"

The Phantom Patrol At the height of World War Two, Joe Timm's platoon stumble on a time device that strands them in time during the ancient Roman invasion. [Artist: Gerry Embleton]

Feature: "Ten Seconds to Doomsday" (cruise missiles)

Feature: "We have a problem" (Apollo 13)

Feature: "Personality Data Banks" (profile of Gagarin)

Doctor Sin
Harry Ellis becomes involved in the forces of evil when his dead brother's right hand becomes possessed. [Artist: Horacio Lalia]

Feature: "Magician or time-traveller?" (Mark Twain and Douglas Home)

In 2178AD Dan Dare leads a legion of tough soldiers to explore The Lost Worlds.

A Serious Case for Treatment [cover story]
Nirvada is the planet that houses the Lizardoreli - a race of servants who want to be masters instead. [Artist: Kevin O'Neill]

Watch This Space... For laughs

Guinea Pig In 1990 an out of work man applies to the Dartmoor Research Station as a Guinea Pig, but during the experiment he becomes out of phase with normal matter. [Artist: Brian Lewis]

The last lonely man takes place on Earth a million years from now... All Earth's natural resources are used up, all its people moved on to new homes on planets scattered across the galaxy. Then imagine that there is one person who never left, who is you. You are the last lonely man.

"Personality Data Banks" (profiles of LT. Col. John Glenn)

Invasion! 1999, the Volgan invasion of Britain has just begun.

Cross-word

Judge Dredd faces Dr. Panic
[Artist: Brett Ewins and Brendan McCarthy]

Harlem Heroes stars the original heroes of Aeroball, the game that gave birth to Inferno! (Imagine Rollerball with rocket packs!)

Dan Dare's Eagle Craft Cut-away

Personality Data Bank (Armstrong, Aldrin & Collins)

Tharg ends the annual with two mini-stories. show less