Spider-Man in The Wotcha-Ma-Callit Club

A few months after the cancellation of the Marvel strips in the Sunday Observer Comics supplement the following appeared in the pages of the Watcha-Ma-Callit Club:

Published 5 October 1975, the strip reprints Marked for Destruction by Dr. Doom, which had previously been serialised in Newton Comics' The Amazing Spider-Man #'s 4 and 5. 

Contrary to expectations there is very little tampering with the original panels, apart of course from the rearrangements on the page. The splash page is omitted but the banner from it is inserted as background information over the first panel. 

This story is serialised weekly until early 1976.

The next three instalments are of similar scale with three tiers of panels:

 12 October 1975 

 19 October 1975 

26 October 1975 

By November 1975 the strip has been reduced to two tiers:

 2 November 1975 

9 November 1975 

The strip regains its vertical profile for a couple of weeks but is still on a more modest scale than the first few weeks: 

 16 November 1975 

23 November 1975 

However, the trajectory is clear, and by 30 November 1975 the writing for the strip is on the wall:

 30 November 1975 

 7 December 1975 

 14 December 1975 

 21 December 1975 

 28 December 1975 

 4 January 1976 

 11 January 1976 

 18 January 1976 

25 January 1976

The end of the strip was rather ignominious. It spluttered to an end with just over two pages worth of material to complete the narrative, but clearly this was not a priority for the Newton office at the time as they had just weathered the shutdown and rebirth of the operation over the holiday break and just managed to get books back onto the market in this period. 

Back in May 1975 when it was time for the comic books to splash onto the market the Sunday Observer Comics supplement was summarily dropped. A few months later, as the returns from newsagents started to pile up, cover prices were raised and Swap Cards were instituted to generate interest, the flagship character was employed in the Wotcha-Ma-Callit Club to raise the profile of the  character and support the flailing comics line. There was one more strategy employed by the Sunday Observer in the fun pages towards this goal: Gentle John's Comics Corner...

The Newton Comics supplement in the Sunday Observer: 30 March 1975-18 May 1975

As mentioned previously, the collection of the Sunday Observer Comics supplement in the State Library of Victoria is incomplete, but I have taken photos of the available supplements, specifically the Marvel pages. I have previously uploaded my pics of the supplements from 2 March 1975, 9 March 1975 and 16 March 1975. Here are the rest:

30 March 1975:

6 April 1975:

13 April 1976:

20 April 1975:

4 May 1975:

18 May 1975:

This is the final Comics supplement to feature the Marvel properties before the launch of the comics a couple of weeks later.

The copies missing from the State Library of Victoria collection are from 23 March 1975, 27 April 1975 and 11 May 1975.

Luckily I can chime in with my copy of the supplement from 27 April 1975:

Interesting to note this supplement contains an Ape Mask competition. As mentioned before, Planet of the Apes was not included in strip form in the supplement, which is odd given the franchise was such a popular and prominent piece of the Newton Comics pie, and  there is no advance notice of the comic book line to be launched shortly. Indeed the appearance of this ad is a rather ironic harbinger of things to come in mid-1976, when the Sunday Observer would advertise Marvel-related merchandise to generate cash flow whilst the comics themselves had been suspended by the Receivers. 

The Newton Comics supplement in the Sunday Observer: 16 March 1975

Following on from the 9 March 1975 supplements, here's pics of the four Marvel pages from the Sunday Observer 16 March 1975:

As you can see these pages belong between the segments of each story in the previous two instalments. In other words, the reading order is 1. Inner supplement 9 March 1975; 2. Supplement 16 March 1975; 3. Outer supplement 9 March 1975.

The sequences are sometimes modified to fit the pages. Some sequences are compressed by omitting the odd panel, whilst other sequences are missing chunks by the page. One might suggest that if these supplements were tryouts for the comic books, this is where Newton honed their particular brand of editing... 

The Newton Comics supplement in the Sunday Observer: 9 March 1975

If you're looking for Newton's Sunday Observer Comics supplement 9 March 1975 you're looking for two supplements.

Allow me to illustrate - this is page 1:

Followed by pages 2 and 3:

And this is the back page:

Things appear to be as expected. The first page is dated and features The Fantastic Four; Spider-Man makes his debut as promised the previous week; and the Conan the Barbarian and Doctor Strange features round out the Marvel quota for the week.

However, when you turn to the centre pages 4-5, this is what you find:

That's right - there's another inner supplement also dated 9 March 1975! And it prominently features Spider-Man from his appearance in The Amazing Spider-Man #1. 

Sure looks like someone stuffed up... Not that kids would have complained - after all, a bonus is a bonus... and the next couple of pages offer more goodies:

And then we have page 8 of the second supplement:

Of course the second inner supplement is actually the first in the reading sequence - and there are pages missing between the segments. When Newton stuffed up they didn't do so by half measures.

I'm lucky to have seen the inner and outer supplements bound into the Sunday Observer, courtesy of the State Library of Victoria. Imagine trying to make sense of the publication dates and sequence if these supplements turned up randomly, divorced from their context. And in case you're wondering, there was indeed a Comics supplement in the newspaper the following week.

The Newton Comics Supplement in the Sunday Observer

According to Wikipedia Australian television stations moved to colour in March 1975 with the slogan March First into Colour. 

The next day a colour revolution on a much smaller scale occurred in the grimy Sunday Observer tabloid.

Months before Newton Comics launched their line of comic books a notice in the Sunday Observer 23 February 1975 heralded the launch of Marvel Comics in strip form:

In early 1975 the Sunday Observer contained a supplement for kids titled Fun World which included the Fun World Comics section:

Fun World Comics featured humour and adventure strips as per the above sample from 5 January 1975. The New Color Funday headline promised an extensive revamping of the comics section with bold colours as well as the Marvel super heroes - although one might have wondered who in the hell the "Favorite Four" were...

The first instalment was scheduled for 2 March 1975 and as young readers eagerly turned the pages (past the tits and the diatribes against Gough Whitlam) this is what they saw:

This was certainly a vibrant, full scale refurbishment of the previous iteration of the comics section!

The new comics supplement carried four Marvel features: Conan the Barbarian, The Fantastic Four, Doctor Strange and - beginning the following week - The Amazing Spider-Man. 

This was a an 8-page supplement and the Marvel characters typically featured in half of the pages - the first three and the back page. The rest of the pages had the likes of The Phantom, Flash Gordon, The Wizard of Id, Mickey Mouse and others.

Here's the rest of the Marvel pages from the first instalment:

I took these photos from the bound copies of the Sunday Observer held in the State Library of Victoria. It is an incomplete collection but I have taken photos of the editions available and I will post them on the blog in due course.

The Marvel properties continued weekly in the supplement until 18 May 1975. The following week the forthcoming comics were advertised in the Sunday Observer and the comics section of the newspaper began to slowly revert back to its blander black and white iteration.

The Spider-Man strip did return to the newspaper in October 1975 and ran until January 1976, and in this period there was a greater synergy between the comics section in the newspaper and the comic books themselves - but I'll detail all of that in a separate post.

It occurs to me that the 'missing' strip is Planet of the Apes. As this was such a prominent title for the comic books its absence from the Comics supplement is surprising, as is the late inclusion of the Spider-Man strip. I note that an April 1975 instalment of the supplement includes an Ape Mask competition, so the Newton office was certainly conscious of Apemania at this stage. Methinks there's a little chapter of the story to be teased out here...

Hulk King Size Annual #1: The Newton edition

Newton Comics' Hulk King Size Annual #1 was published 20 September 1975:

The story contents are as follows:

A Refuge Divided!, originally published in The Incredible Hulk Special #1, October 1968

The Keepers of the Crypt!, originally published in Conan the Barbarian #8, August 1971

A Marvel Masterwork Pin-Up The Incredible Hulk, originally published in The Incredible Hulk Special #1, October 1968

A Refuge Divided! and The Incredible Hulk pinup appear to be reprinted intact. 

The Keepers of the Crypt has the cover image from Conan the Barbarian #8 in lieu of the original splash page. Here's a photo of the two-page spread:

The Yaffa printing of this story in Conan the Barbarian #3 goes one better by reproducing both the cover and the splash page:

It's odd that this issue should contain a Conan the Barbarian story given Conan had his own ongoing series at the time. However, this was not unprecedented by Newton Comics - we recall the Fantastic Four features in Planet of the Apes #1. Note also this is the story from which the Conan poster was drawn in Planet of the Apes #5. 

This issue was published during the Newton Swap Card promotional period. My copy includes Spiderman (sic) Series A (1 of 15) No. 3:

This issue did not contain a regular poster. However, as the cover and the  letter column above informs readers, one could send in for a "FREE glossy giant-size Hulk poster". This offer was prominently advertised alongside the contest:

This Hulk poster was still being offered as an enticement in December 1975:

This issue contains a number of in-house advertisements for other Newton comics:

Planet of the Apes #8

The Fantastic Four #6 

The Avengers #6

Conan the Barbarian #3 

Doctor Strange #2 

The Silver Surfer #1 

Dracula #4 

The Annual was advertised in-house:

The Planet of the Apes Annual #1 was published in July 1975. The Hulk Annual was the first of a projected 'series' of Annuals to be published monthly henceforth, according to the letter column. Sure enough, over the next three months readers were treated to Annuals featuring Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four  and The Avengers. (The Spider-Man Annual was in fact a Team-Up Annual, which begat a second Team-Up Annual, and indeed a series of such issues, but this is a rather convoluted episode in Newton's program which I'll address in a separate post).

This issue includes The Swap Cards Cometh advertisement and a T-shirt offer.