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Power Comics was an imprint of the British comics publisher Odhams Press that was particularly notable for its use of material reprinted from American Marvel Comics. Appearing chiefly during the years 1967 and 1968, the Power Comics line consisted of five weekly titles: ''Wham!'', ''Smash!'', ''Pow!'', ''Fantastic'' and ''Terrific''. The first three of these titles were essentially traditional ''Beano''-style British comic papers supplemented by a small amount of Marvel and DC material, while the last two were more magazine-like in style and were dominated by their Marvel content. ==History== When Odhams obtained the rights to reprint Marvel material in the UK, they began by incorporating superhero stories such as the ''Fantastic Four'' into their existing titles ''Wham!'' and ''Smash!''. The Marvel material was reproduced in black and white, and serialized in short instalments alongside the original British strips which still dominated the content of those comics. "Smash!" also reprinted the Batman newspaper strip, to cash in on the popularity of the live-action TV show. Power Comics took more concrete form with the appearance of ''Pow!'' and ''Fantastic'' early in 1967. 'The first issue of ''Pow!'' appeared on 14 January 1967, by which time ''Wham!'' had reached issue 136 and ''Smash!'' was at issue 51. ''Pow!'' was similar in format to the two earlier comics, a mixture of traditional British material and Marvel reprints — in this case Spider-Man and Nick Fury. ''Fantastic'' first appeared on 11 February 1967, and was quite different in style from its predecessors. In many ways it looked more like one of the American black-and-white anthology magazines of the time, such as ''Creepy'' and ''Eerie'', than a traditional British comic such as ''The Beano''. It was aimed at an older audience than the latter, though a younger one than the American magazines. The content of ''Fantastic'' was dominated by Marvel superheroes The Mighty Thor, the X-Men, and Iron Man, with only a minimal amount of British material. In general appearance, style and content, ''Fantastic'' can be considered a direct precursor of the Marvel UK weeklies, such as The Mighty World Of Marvel, that appeared during the 1970s. The number of ''Power Comics'' titles was increased to five on 8 April 1967 with the first appearance of ''Terrific'', which was similar in format to ''Fantastic'' and was again dominated by Marvel reprint material: The Avengers, Dr Strange, and the Sub-Mariner. The Power Comics line remained at five titles for nine months, after which it started to dwindle. ''Wham!'' was merged into ''Pow!'' on 13 January 1968, while ''Terrific'' merged into ''Fantastic'' three weeks later. This left three Power titles for just over six months, after which ''Pow!'' and ''Fantastic'' were merged into ''Smash!'' in September and November 1968 respectively. ''Smash!'' continued to include some Marvel material till early in 1969. In December 1968 the Power Comics logo was dropped, and in March 1969 ''Smash!'' was revamped into virtually a new comic, in the style of established titles such as Lion and Valiant (into which ''Smash!'' eventually merged in 1971). The history of the Power Comics is really a history of the managed decline of the UK comics industry in general during the 1960s, in the face of falling sales resulting from the growing power of television. In the course of that decade the UK television industry introduced a new channel (in 1964), cheaper TV receivers (in consequence of the transistor revolution), hire-purchase (broadening the market so that anyone could afford a television set), and, dealing a death-blow to mass market comics, launched British television into colour at Christmas 1969. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Power Comics」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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