Strange Tales.

I dug out one of my old comics - who can resist an advertisement for 'X - Ray Spexs';

You have no idea how I longed for this 'Polaris Nuclear Sub' and it was only $6-95!

But even I knew it was too good to be true and anyway, they wouldn't deliver it all the way to England.

Marvel and DC comics would sometimes lurk in a corner of a newsagents - where they had been persuaded to take a bundle on trial. You could never get them in sequence so you never had a full story but what a world!

My Mum bought me these comics when I was very young - it was something my Dad didn't approve of and he put a stop to it.

But I still have a small and very tattered pile of Marvel and DC comics.....and even though I haven't looked at them for ages I can still remember all the stories.

They were electrifying - nothing like our tame and boring comics here - this was another world, an alternative universe.

This surge of nostalgia came about because Hollywood is working its way through all the characters from the old comics and it has now reached "Dr Strange", perhaps the weirdest of them all.

Bizarrely, I had a single copy of 'Strange Tales' when I was a kid and here it is;

At the beginning, Marvel put a variety of stories in the comic, later 'Dr Strange' had it all to himself.

'Dr Strange (Master of the Mystic Arts)' was comic art taken to the ultimate level;

He moved from our world by day to fighting battles against evil in another dimension by night.

At the age of 8 or 9, this was amazing stuff - it opened the doors of my perception.

The pages are faded now and I'm really glad that the great Stan Lee's long forgotten character will have a new CGI life in the movies.

Looking forward to seeing it!

I couldn't resist posting part of this ad from the back pages - models of sportsmen to assemble in the comfort of your own bedroom;

Ooooooh!

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com