August 7th 1972 – The New English Library and The Very Best In Horror, Science Fiction And Fantasy

The back covers of the New English Library’s shortlived 1972 comic Dracula – which infamously/confusingly didn’t feature Dracula at all – hosted the above ad for the publisher’s substantial line of fantastical novels. The very best in horror, science fiction and fantasy promised the headline, which wasn’t entirely hyperbole. The NEL did indeed have a […]

August 6th 1972 -Comicon ’72 – How Was It For Them Then?

In iT #136, Ges Cox painted a picture of the first day of Comicon ’72: “The downstairs suite of the Waverley Hotel is packed with freaks, odd looking people in their Saturday casuals and straight comic collectors, all milling round surrounded by piles of old posters, tables which groan under the weight of old Marvels, […]

August 5th 1972 -The London Rock & Roll Show – The Future Refusing To Be Born

Today in 1972 saw the all-day London Rock and Roll Show at the city’s Wembley Stadium. It was a one-day festival which served to draw the cultural line between those who wanted to appropriate/update ’50s pop culture and those who held to it with all the force of, to use a word used by Jon […]

August 4th 1972 – The Coming Week’s Fantastical programmes on UK TV and Radio.

It’s August 1972 and you’re trapped in a London suburb. You’re short of the readies for trips beyond the front doorstep and reliant on the TV and radio for injections of the fantastical into your mundane existence. These are your choices, such as they are, for this week. Please be aware that the reviews of […]

August 3rd 1972 – The Electric Cinema Club & A Film Show For Comicon ‘72, part 2 of 2

The above ad for London’s Electric Cinema Club appeared in the first August 1972 edition of the underground magazine iT, or International Times as it had previously been known. As you can see from the movies on show, there was a clear reason for the Club advertising in the countercultural press. For these are selections […]

August 3rd 1972 – The Electric Cinema Club & A Film Show For Comicon ‘72, part 1 of 2

As an example of a film show for a comics convention, it’s hard to think of one that’s more impressive than that provided by the Electric Cinema Club for August 6th/7th’s Comicon ‘72. In truth, the line-up of movies the ECC provided, and indeed helped to sponsor, would make for a quite brilliant film festival […]

August 2nd 1972 – Arthur C. Clarke & The Party at The End Of Apollo

The London Day By Day column in August 2nd 1972’s The Daily Telegraph carried gossip about a purported plan by Arthur C. Clarke to celebrate, as it were, the end of the Apollo space missions. Clarke, described in the piece as the “doyen of British science fiction writers”, was said to be planning to charter […]

August 1st 1972 – What The Heck Is On The TV Tonight?

Look In was branded the Junior TV Times. Yet it was more than a listings magazine covering the kids shows shown across the UK’s many independent broadcasting companies. In truth, Look In was a curate’s egg, containing so many different kinds of features that it rarely felt like a satisfying read. There were strip cartoons […]