Pow! (comics)

Pow! was a weekly British comic book published by Odhams Press in 1967 and 1968 from their headquarters at 64 Long Acre, London. Part of their Power Comics imprint, it was printed on newsprint stock, in black-and-white except for its colour front and back covers, and initially comprised 28 pages.

This article is about the British comic. For the album by Sonny Stitt, see Pow! (album).
Pow!
Publication information
PublisherOdhams Press' Power Comics
FormatOngoing series
Genre
Publication date21 January 1967 – 7 September 1968 (merged into Smash!)
No. of issues86
Main character(s)Spider-Man (reprints)
Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD (reprints)
The Dolls of St Dominic's
The Group
Kicks
Wee Willie Haggis: The Spy from Skye
Dare-a-Day Davy
The Cloak
The Python
Jack Magic
Creative team
Written byStan Lee (reprints)
Artist(s)Steve Ditko (reprints), Jack Kirby (reprints), Ron Spencer, Mike Brown, Ken Reid, Mike Higgs
Editor(s)Bart

Pow! first appeared on 21 January 1967. After 12 months, with its 53rd issue cover-dated 13 January 1968, it merged with its sister title Wham! to form Pow and Wham. The 86th and final issue appeared on 7 September 1968, after which it merged into Smash!, another of the Power Comics line.

Smash and Pow incorporating Fantastic, issue 144, 2 November 1968

It is unrelated to POW! Entertainment, an American media production company.

History of POW

Pow! was owned by IPC, the International Publishing Corporation, a company formed in 1963 by Cecil Harmsworth King, chairman of the Daily Mirror and Sunday Pictorial (now the Sunday Mirror), through a series of corporate mergers.[1][2] All of the comics published by IPC were under the control of one or other of the subsidiary companies which King had brought together to form IPC, including Fleetway Publications Ltd and Odhams Press.[3]

Advertisement for Pow! in the 1968 Fantastic Summer Special

The Power Comics, including Pow!, were published by IPC's Odhams Press division, and were controlled by a three-man editorial team, known as Alf, Bart, and Cos. Alfred Wallace ("Alf") was the Managing Editor at Odhams, and supervised the entire Power Comics line. Under his direction, Bart and Cos were the staff Editors who handled the individual titles. Bart (a pen-name for Eagle's Big Bartholemew) was the editor directly responsible for Pow!.[4]

Strips and characters
Pin-Up published in the 1968 Fantastic Summer Special

Like the other Power Comics, Pow! supplemented its British content with reprints from American Marvel Comics, including Spider-Man (from issue #1), and (after the merger with Wham! in issue #53) the Fantastic Four.[5]

Apart from the Marvel reprints of Spider-Man (drawn by Steve Ditko) and Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD (drawn by Jack Kirby), both of which began in issue #1, prior to the merger with Wham it principally featured humour strips. These included The Dolls of St Dominic's, The Group, Kicks, Wee Willie Haggis: The Spy from Skye, Dare-a-Day Davy, and (from issue #18) The Cloak. It also featured some adventure strips, including The Python and Jack Magic.

British artists whose work appeared included Ron Spencer (who drew The Dolls of St Dominic's) and Mike Brown (who drew The Group), Ken Reid (who drew Dare-a-Day Davy, in colour, for the back page), and Mike Higgs (who wrote and drew The Cloak).

gollark: I don't think they should have any control whatsoever over devices they don't own.
gollark: You said "school".
gollark: There are not many things like that.
gollark: Maybe there are people other than average users.
gollark: And the ability to actually add other FS types (FUSE).

References
  1. History of IPC on the IPC Media website
  2. Birmingham Mail article by Paul Birch Archived 20 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  3. History of Look and Learn
  4. Career history of artist Ken Reid at DC Thompson and Odhams
  5. History of Marvel UK
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.