Part Two: The Space-age Comic
By early 1971, TV21 was failing. What had once been the most prestigious comic in Britain, with the best artists, and content sourced from some of the most popular television titles of the day had been reduced to a travesty: Marvel characters abounded (fine in Marvel, but unwelcome in TV21); original material was dull and derivative, the page size was the smallest of any British comic, and the paper was cheap. Of the science-fiction content that had once been its raison d’etre, only Star Trek remained, and its one-time artist Mike Noble was long gone, having vanished through the time-barrier to Look-In. There was no earthly reason to carry on having TV21, and Look-In had been its de facto replacement for me. But within weeks a new comic emerged, a comic that not only featured UFO (plus Dr. Who to boot), but which promised its readers nothing less than the entire Gerry Anderson universe. Countdown had arrived...
With its funky futuristic masthead, cute ‘reverse page numbering’ gimmick and science fiction/ science fact content, Countdown was an impressive new arrival, at least from where I was standing. And they had me taped from day one by promising all of those Gerry Anderson series. They couldn’t all fit into one edition, of course, and instead, Countdown would rotate new comic strips of every Anderson series from Fireball XL5 to date, mixing serial stories with ‘Countdown Complete’ adventures – these being self-contained stories told within a single issue, their pages spread evenly throughout the comic.
I'd pitched hard for Look-In and had it bought for me from day one. Having bagged this prize, however, I was out of luck when Countdown came along. All things being equal, our mum decided that this new comic would be bought for my brother. Which didn't really matter, because I still got to read it, but it did mean that the groovy space wallchart that came free with issue one would hang above my brother's bed, not mine. Still, I had my Magpie studio cut-outs to play with (Look-In’s enticements with issues one and two), and the ‘Star Wheel’ free gift out of isssue three. I’m fairly certain they’re still around somewhere...
Like Look-In, Countdown was heavily promoted via TV advertising: indeed, this was probably how we found out about it. I'd been getting its sibling title TV Comic on a semi regular basis since 1969, so it's likely we would have seen some promotional items in there; but it was the TV ad, with its clips of Gerry Anderson's UFO that really sold Countdown to us. At last it became clear why Look-In had no Gerry Anderson content: Countdown had pre-empted the lot!
Countdown arrived in our house on Saturday 13th February, 1971. It was immediately clear to me that I’d backed the wrong horse with Look-In: this was much more my kind of comic. I don’t think there was a single item in that first edition that didn’t have some kind of appeal for me, with the possible exception of the titular strip – of which, more later.
Issue One featured a complete UFO story, whose interstitial photographs look like a nod back to TV21. The UFO artwork was, sadly, not of the first rank, coming from the capable, but uninspired Jon Davis, whose art I recognised from the by now defunct Joe 90 comic. Crediting the artists was a laudable development in Countdown, as British comic artists were very rarely acknowledged in print, and only a very few were allowed even to sign their pages. Elsewhere in that same issue there were two very nice Thunderbirds pages from Don Harley (his tight, realistic style always found favour with me), a double page colour Dr. Who from Harry Lindfield (great art, but his style was too loose for my hyper-critical 9-year-old self), another page of Jon Davis (Joe 90) and some very rushed Captain Scarlet art from John Cooper that looked more like a rough visual (I know a lot of comic fans seem to like John Cooper, but I’ve hated his art from the first time I saw it in TV21).
There were two more colour pages inside that first issue, and these were given over to the comic’s sole original creation – Countdown. Featuring spaceship designs licensed from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, and some extremely stylish art from comic strip giant John M Burns, Countdown looked and read like a feature one might have expected to find in some hard-nosed sci-fi periodical aimed at a much older readership. By comparison, the Gerry Anderson fare seemed naïve. Countdown told the story of the titular ship’s return to Earth after a long voyage of discovery. Unfortunately, the planet is now in the grip of a Hitlerian dictator, William Costra, who orders the craft’s destruction, and the first episode swiftly sets the scene for an ongoing struggle between the Countdown crew and the forces of Costra’s evil empire. Sounds familiar? I wonder if Terry Nation ever saw a copy... ?
Today, I can see John Burns’ artwork for the genius it undoubtedly was, but back in 1971, my opinion was more equivocal. Burns’ work seemed to set the bar for art in Countdown, with an almost psychedelic style that employed hard coloured shadows and innovative line work that made the characters or their faces seem to merge into their backgrounds. If Top of the Pops had made an episode of Dr. Who, it would probably have looked like this. Similar techniques were employed by Harry Lindfield and Gerry Haylock, whose colour UFO strip appeared from issue 2. I liked Haylock’s artwork a lot – his work on Land of the Giants for the Joe 90 comic had been superb, resulting in strips that made the TV series look rubbish by comparison. But whereas Haylock and Lindfield mixed realistic and psychedelic effects on a single page, and generally erred more on the side of realistic depictions and colouring, John Burns took more chances. Faces were seldom flesh-toned, and his pages often had a dark, green/pink/magenta vibe suggestive of a black mass held in a funky discotheque. For me, this was several steps too far into the realm of experimentalism, and accordingly, I tended to skip the Countdown strip.
The mature tone of the Countdown storyline was echoed by the comic’s approach to editorial, a sizeable chunk of which (in issue 1, at any rate), came courtesy of the editor of the UK journal Flying Saucer Review. Features on space exploration were clearly intended for consumption by budding James Burkes, and in general, there was a technocratic tone to the proceedings that probably hadn’t been seen in British comics since the glory days of Eagle. TV21 had certainly never patronised its readers, but it didn’t take them half so seriously as did Countdown...
It wasn’t all rocket science, though: Countdown found room for a single humour page every week, in the form of Dastardly and Muttley in their Flying Machines. Printed in blue and black line and wash, this was a splendidly-illustrated strip, perfectly in tune with the original cartoons. Ironically, though, the artist went uncredited, while lesser contributors were getting their names in print...
Countdown’s second issue saw an editorial mis-step in the decision to feature Gerry Anderson’s seldom seen The Secret Service as its complete story. Even at the time, I found myself wondering what they were playing at. The one redeeming feature of this story is that it did what the TV series itself had been incapable of, by supplying an origin story for Father Unwin and his ‘minimiser’. This was probably deemed necessary, given that most ITV regions had passed on the series and new readers would have understandably wondered what the hell was going on. I’d watched The Secret Service and derived a certain amount of enjoyment from it, but it certainly wasn’t Thunderbirds; and to feature it so prominently so early in the run of a new comic must have been close to editorial suicide. Jon Davis’ art didn’t help, either: his Father Unwin was unrecognisable as the real world or even puppet version of Stanley Unwin, looking more like the bespectacled half of avant garde artists Gilbert and George...
After four issues, Countdown’s stylish masthead changed colour from blue and purple to a less attractive red/ magenta scheme. Red has always been seen as a classic ‘stand out’ colour for comic and magazine covers, so the change is perhaps understandable: but I always preferred the look of those first four editions. Editor Dennis Hooper didn’t go back on his Gerry Anderson promise though, and as the weeks went on, Countdown found room for every series from Fireball XL5 up to present: with, it has to be said, some mixed results.
The covers of Countdowns Nos 1 through 3 had been excellent, featuring photographs of UFO, a solar prominence and Jon Pertwee’s Dr. Who respectively. Thereafter, science-based images prevailed, with an odd mix of press agency material featuring Nasa astronauts, hot air balloons, formula one racing cars and a vintage London omnibus with the result that Countdown began to look less like a comic for kids and more like a niche magazine for men of a certain age. Someone must have said something, because after a time, the comic strip content, which had previously been confined to the inner pages, began to break out onto the covers. Someone may also have noted that, with its sci-fi and hard science pitch, Countdown was failing to find an audience. Interest in space and science fiction had fallen off a cliff after the first few Nasa moon missions. The general public, and that includes the average comic reader, quickly began to accept the space programme as commonplace. You’ve seen one man land on the moon, you’ve seen them all. You’ve even seen them abort and turn back in a nail-biting drama that makes a smashing film... Science fiction had been all well and good in the early days of the space race, but science fact was taking the sheen off the average space opera, and it would take the phenomenon of Star Wars, still six years in the future, to remind everyone that deep down, they still liked spaceships, robots and ray guns...
None of this cut any ice in 1971, and in the autumn of the year, after some 34 editions, Countdown began a slow process of reinventing itself. The Gerry Anderson and science fiction content was still present, but was now elbowed out of the spotlight by those two playboy adventurers Brett Sinclair and Danny Wilde, known collectively as The Persuaders! This was the big television event of autumn ‘71, and Countdown quickly took it on board; one might imagine them beating off Look-In’s Alan Fennell with a big stick to secure the rights. The inclusion of a non-SF strip was the first sign of a sea change at Countdown, which soon began to include the tagline ‘for TV Action’ as part of its masthead. The change would finally come on April 1, 1972, with a de facto relaunch that saw Countdown ‘absorbed’ by an all-new title: TV Action...
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