In the UK’s album charts at number 3 in the first week of August 1967, the Jimi Hendrix’s sublime Are You Experienced, from which The Almanac will unashamedly claim the sci-fi fable Third Rock From The Sun for its own. In it, the occupant of an alien scout ship, dazzled by the Earth but baffled […]
Read More A Fantastical August 6th 1967Heaven only knows how many fans were buying UK comics zines in the early 1970s. A few hundred? Somewhere in the (very) low four figures? Whatever the figure was, it was tiny, and the same names would often appear across a number of different fanzines as writers and correspondents. In and around London especially, there […]
Read More July 25th 1972 – The Comic Books We Never SawThere is a remarkable, if not heartening, similarity to the way in which fantastical fans were often discussed in the past and how they’re discussed today. Take the review of 2025’s new Superman movie in The Observer of Sunday 15th July. It was respectful, upbeat and, to a surprising degree, informed. Not only did the […]
Read More 22nd July 1972 – The Respectable OnesOn 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 […]
Read More July 10th 1972 – Neal Adams, Making Superheroes Out Of The Mighty GroundhogsGiven 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 […]
Read More July 5th 1972 – The Approach Of Comicon
The Almanac Of The Fantastical 