philcom55 wrote:I'm not sure of the exact timeline but I think Longacre/Odhams (who'd previously swallowed Hulton's comics) and Fleetway were both acquired by the company that became IPC quite early in the 1960s. For a time the two groups were relatively autonomous but Fleetway gradually gained the upper hand and ousted a lot of the Odhams editors, instituting a more homogeneous product. Somewhere along the line other independent publishers like Pearson and City were also hoovered up in the process so that a lot of the old variety went out of British comics.
Yes, IPC was formed in 1963 as a combination of Fleetway, Odhams, and Newnes, but it didn't really affect the comics until 1968 when they began reorganising the business. By the start of 1969, they were all branded as IPC comics and we started to see drastic changes (Smash! revamped, Eagle and Jag merged into Lion and Tiger etc). Fleetway had the upper hand in that reconstruction so Smash had no chance of surviving in its old form and was basically turned into a copy of Lion. (Although it did include some good stuff of course. Some strips were from Blackjack, an aborted Fleetway comic.)
There was to have been a sixth 'Power Comic' called Spitfire, which would have been a bit more traditional than the others. A dummy issue was created (Mike Higgs did a strip for it) but it never came to anything when the comics division was reconstructed.
By the way, it might be worth remembering that before the 'Power Comics' came along, Boys' World, launched by Odhams in 1963, didn't survive that long either (89 weeks I think). They also revamped Eagle into what many consider a poorer version of its Hulton glory days. Perhaps the Odhams editors just couldn't create comics with enough mass appeal in the 1960s?
Intersecting discussion. Despite their shortcomings, the Odhams Power Comics were my absolute favourite comics, and remain so to this day. The humour strips had a raw edge to them, and a recklessness that their rivals didn't quite have. The adventure strips such as Moon Madness and The Legend Testers were just barmy! And reprints of the early Marvel strips too. What a great combination! Brilliant fun for young minds.
I always felt that the 'Power Comics' connected with their readers in a way that their competitors didn't. Partly due to them using methods adopted from Marvel (i.e. "News from the Floor of 64" being a UK equivalent of Stan Lee's "Bullpen Bulletins", and lively letters pages that discussed the
comics, not boring historical facts or other second hand anecdotes.) Plus the comics seemed very in tune with the sixties, and had numerous references to pop culture of the time. Much as I also loved the Thomson humour comics, the Odhams ones seemed like the cool guys.