July 14th 1972 – The Coming Week’s Fantastical programmes on UK TV and Radio.

Can it possibly have been another denuded week where fantastical shows on terrestrial TV and radio were concerned? Well, with even the recent weekly Star Trek repeat disappearing from BBC1’s schedule, things weren’t exactly looking up. But there were some interesting old movies & episodes, including one ghostly classic … Saturday 15th July 1972 BBC2 […]

July 13th 1972 – The Best Of The Previous Week’s American Comics?

Of course, the comics released into the American marketplace during this week wouldn’t be seen soon, if they were ever seen at all, in British newsagents. Not that most American fans had it, by all accounts, easy. Even there, in the promised land, as it seemed, comics never arrived in local shops, or, perhaps worst […]

July 12th 1972 – The Penguin Science Fiction Covers Of David Pelham (1)

David Pelham has insisted that he’s dissatisfied with his cover for 1972’s first Penguin Books edition of Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange. With Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of the novel generating both ticket sales and public debate, the rights to a paperback edition of the book all but guaranteed healthy sales. But with that came […]

July 11th 1972 – Tom Tully, Comic Book Writer

(Comics writer Tom Tully is perhaps best known today for his work on strips like Dan Dare for 2000AD, Johnny Red for Battle and an almost quarter century run on Roy Of The Rovers. The interview summarised below comes from several years before a few British weekly comics such as 2000AD started to aim, in […]

July 10th 1972 – Neal Adams, Making Superheroes Out Of The Mighty Groundhogs

On this day in 1972, heavy-blues trio The Groundhogs continued their only American tour with a concert at the Pocono International Raceway in Blakeslee, Pennsylvania. Their sole excursion across The Pond was soon to be curtailed by band leader Tony McPhee’s fall from a horse. By the 21st of this month, they’d be back in […]

July 9th 1972, Sunday – The New Book Of The Week: William Butler’s “The Bone House”.

The Bone House by William Butler You quickly learn which critics in 1972 have a problem with the fantastical. In Sunday July 9th’s The Observer, Russell Davies, who had already chalked up some previous with his scathing, even furious, review of William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, discussed The Bone House, a short novel in which […]

July 8th 1972 – This Week’s NME: The Fantastical In What Looks Like Its Absence

One of the great myths of rock music in the early 70s is that it was awash in the fantastical: wizards, warriors, spaceships and so on and on. But the truth is that it can be pretty darn tough to dig out the evidence to back that up. Take the New Musical Express cover-dated this […]

July 7th 1972 – The Coming Week’s Fantastical programmes on UK TV and Radio.

Last week was a terrible week for the fantastical on TV and radio. Will this week have proven to be any better? (It will not.) Saturday 8th July 1972 Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Sunday 9th July LWT – 1.15pm – Stingray: Rescue From The Skies (repeat) Monday 10th July BBC1 – 9pm – Doomwatch: Hair Trigger […]

July 6th July – David Bowie’s Starman On Top Of The Pops

There seems little to add about Bowie’s famous break-through appearance on Top Of The Pops on this very day in 1972. It is, after all, one of the most of the most documented and discussed moments in the history of pop. But it’s also, in a broader sense, one of the key events in the […]

July 5th 1972 – The Approach Of Comicon

Given how the counter-culture had long embraced comic books, it should be little surprise to note that an early mention of 1972’s Comicon arrived in the pages of May 18th’s issue of the underground paper ‘IT’. There, amongst the pieces about Vietnam, rock festivals and Marcuse, and in the company of comic strips such as […]