THE DECLINE OF TV CENTURY 21...?

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What's significant about this FIREBALL XL5 page from TV CENTURY #21 #105, Criv-ite chums?  It's the first time that The DALEKS hadn't featured on the back cover, their strip having ended the week before, with issue #104.  To be honest, I thought that TV21 was never quite as good as it had been with The Daleks, and it must've been around the same time that original editor ALAN FENNELL left the comic for pastures new.

MIKE NOBLE drew the Fireball page, as well as 2 interior pages of ZERO X (the first instalment of the strip I believe), so that was a full 3 pages in one issue, no mean feat considering how detailed his artwork was.  Again, to be honest, I never warmed to Zero X, despite the great artwork, seeing it as just a reworked, inferior version of Fireball XL5, which I much preferred.  Hard to believe though, considering how polished a magazine TV21 yet was, that this was probably the beginning of its decline, though regular, committed readers were probably unaware of that fact at the time.

What's your view, frantic ones?  Do you think the comic was still a force to be reckoned with on the newsagents' counters, or were things for you never quite the same again?  Feel free to record your views for posterity in our recently much-neglected comments section.

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