CAPTAIN BRITAIN COVER COMPENDIUM...

Copyright MARVEL COMICS

A few years ago I posted a 12 part series of Captain Britain Cover, Splash Page & Image Galleries which spanned the entire 39 issue run of the Marvel UK weekly comic from back in the '70s.  This time around I thought I'd publish only the covers, all in one post for your convenience, to save you trawling through the blog in search of a specific cover should you ever be looking for one.

For this post I've used my original copy of #1, which I either kept when I gave them all to a pal back in the '70s, or reclaimed shortly after when I was in his house one night and realised I missed it.  (My memory can sometimes be a bit frayed these days, but it was 'either/or'.)  I did occasionally retrieve comics (with his consent), but it only ever amounted to a handful at most, measured against the many dozens I passed on to him.

(Number 10, along with the first combined issue of Super Spider-Man [#231], are also my original copies, freely given back by him well over 30 years later.)

The remaining issues are replacements obtained from various sources in the early '80s ('83/'84), and it amazes me to think I've now had them far longer than I owned my originals.  Our dog Tara was alive when I (separately) owned each individual set, though she passed in 1986, but I'm glad that my possession of both sets fell within her lifespan.  I got her successor Zara a month after Tara died, though she was born the month before, so again there's a sort of overlapping continuity with the comics and the dogs.

I thought Captain Britain was a great wee comic, though it lost a little of the magic when the colour pages were dropped after 23 issues, probably to cut costs in the face of a declining circulation.  Anyway, enjoy refreshing your memory of the covers and also your youth if you bought the title back in the day.  In fact, why not share your reminiscences of the comic and any associations it conjures up in the caverns of your mind?!  

Might as well show show the cover for the CB Annual as well, on sale around August/September of '77.  This is my original copy, in my possession since bought in Woolworth's back in the day.  It contains the Cap tales from issues 1 - 7, and the two b&w pages (in #s 2 & 3 respectively) were coloured for their appearance in this book.

Apparently, when the comics were prepared, it was forgotten that the colour cover would leave only seven pages of CB for colouring, not eight, necessitating the eighth page in those two numbers being in B&W.  The first issue had contained only seven pages of CB, and from #4 up until #23, when the interior colour was dropped, that's how it remained

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