In the Twinkling of an Eye

As an American, I have had only select exposure to comic magazines originating from the United Kingdom. Though I’m aware of such stalwarts as 2000AD and The Beano, my primary interests mean that I’m far more familiar with the country’s licensed titles (mostly Marvel’s Transformers and Action Force), plus a small smattering of material from that time in the ’90s when Marvel’s US branch tried to foist Marvel UK’s original output onto US soil as The Next Big Thing. (SPOILERS: it wasn’t, because that output consisted of titles like Gun Runner, Gene Dogs, and Death’s Head II… and Death Wreck, Die-Cut, and Death Metal, and… anyway, you get the idea.)

Given this limited sampling, imagine my genuine surprise when I encountered a stack of vintage My Little Pony tie-in comics for sale at a dealer’s booth at the 2012 My Little Pony Convention and Fair - comics from a publisher I had never heard of, in a story format I had never before experienced. These magazines - printed by Egmont under their “London Editions” imprint - are slightly taller than the licensed Marvel UK books I own, and each issue contains a mix of comics and illustrated text stories. What really makes these stand out to me, however, is the way the comic stories are laid out: with their art and narrative captions on separate planes, they’re more like storybooks, which is a construction I have never encountered in a traditional American comic.

As for the stories themselves, most of them are prosaic (so far as yarns about magic pastel ponies go)… but every now and again, I have encountered tales that are on the cusp of madness. The story reprinted here is one of those!


Read that? No? Well, in summary:

Applejack feels bad about being clumsy, so decides to go see if a friendly witch can help her. On her way over, she knocks down a pixie laundry line, and gets so scared she runs until she’s in the mountains… where a boulder moves, and suddenly Applejack finds herself in the lair of the evil Jewel Wizard! The Jewel Wizard has enslaved some Ponies, who have worked in his mines for so long that they can’t see in real light anymore. Applejack tries to go for help, but ends up shattering the Jewel Wizard’s crystalline throne - and throwing him into the bowels of the earth! The flying crystal shards from the throne embed themselves in the other Ponies’ eyes, which, amazingly, restores their sight… and, it just so happens, turns them into the Twinkle-Eyed Ponies!

So... this story of Applejack KILLING A WIZARD to END FORCED PONY ENSLAVEMENT that includes EYE-LACERATION BY GEMSTONES was written to sell a sparkly-eye toy gimmick.

That... that is amazing. That is GENUINELY AMAZING.

And that's all I've got to say about that.

"Applejack’s Amazing Adventure," from issue 11 of the London Editions/Egmont Magazines My Little Pony comic. No credited writer or artist.

Soundwave is BLUE?

This is a little piece of ephemera that's not going to be of any surprise to most people, but which will hurt other people's brains a little bit. You see in the Marvel Transformers comic books Soundwave (one of the more famous Transformers) wasn't blue, he was purple.

At least in the American Marvel Transformers comic.

In the UK comic he was purple for the reprints they did of American stories, but for UK-originated stories they made him blue! Just like the cartoon.

And the toy.

Except... One time they did redeco him from his original American colouring:

Wow! That hurts my brain.

Serpentor in Cobra-Lalaland

And then there was that time the United Kingdom's Action Force Monthly decided to do a tie-in story to promote the release of G.I. Joe: The Movie Action Force: The Movie, resulting in a scene where Serpentor gently caresses Destro's metal mask when he hallucinates that Destro is Pythona. Which was, so far as I know, Pythona's only appearance in a comic book until Devil's Due did their G.I. Joe/Transformers crossovers around 2004.

Scans from G.I. Joe: European Missions #6, "As Thick As Thieves!". Story by Mike Collins, art by Robin Smith.

It Came From The Dollar Bin: Action Force #17

Andrew Sorohan already went on at length about the formatting differences between US and UK comics, so I'll skip any explanations along those lines and go straight to the meat of this week's featured find.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen: It's a story about how Quick Kick from Action Force G.I. Joe totally learned to fight from Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu...by Grant Morrison.

UK vs. USA #1: Make Sure It's Formatted

This is gunna be a big, long, rambling one folks. I wanna talk to you about the super interesting topic of comic book formats. So brace yourselves! Just a quick note up front that this article will basically be ignoring newspaper comic strips (and their reprints), and internet comics (and their reprints) just for simplicity's sake.

Can you guess which are the UK and which are the US comics?

THE BASICS
So let's talk about the essential difference between American comic books and British comic books. Not the stories or the characters. Not the themes, or style, or tone. Let's talk about the difference in format.