Countdown (comic)
Encyclopedia
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
published weekly by Polystyle Publications
Polystyle Publications
Polystyle Publications were a British publisher of children's comics and books.Among the titles they published were:* BEEB * Buttons * Countdown/TV Action * I-Spy* Pippin * Playland * Read To Me...
- ultimately, under several different titles - between February 1971 and August 1973.
Initially it was a high-quality (but expensive) publication, featuring full colour art on the cover and many of the inside pages, and was printed on expensive, glossy paper. The pages in each issue were numbered in reverse order, with page 1 at the end, a gimmick which was derived from the comic's title in order to create a countdown to one each week.
Countdown was also unusual in carrying both weekly serials and complete stories, rotating the latter among the various TV shows it featured. In addition, it carried a totally original strip, "Countdown", drawn by John M. Burns and including spacecraft designs from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Publishing History
Under the title Countdown it ran for 58 weeks, beginning with the issue cover-dated 20th February 19711971 in comics
This is a list of comics-related events in 1971.-Year overall:* The Comics Code Authority revises the Code a number of times during the year. Initially "liberalized" on January 28, 1971, to allow for the sometimes "sympathetic depiction of criminal behavior . ....
. It was relaunched as TV Action + Countdown from issue 59 in 1972, dropping many of the original strips from Countdown and substituting new ones based upon then-current television shows. By issue 100 its title became simply TV Action. The final issue was cover-dated 25th August 1973.
From issue 59 it also dropped the glossy magazine-quality printing which had distinguished it, and reverted to cheap newsprint-quality paper, abandoning also the expensive photogravure printing which had been a feature until then.
Initial launch
TV Century 21
TV Century 21, also known as TV 21, was a weekly British children's comic of the 1960s and early 1970s. It promoted the many television science-fiction puppet series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Century 21 Productions...
, and the consequent availability of the licence to publish strips based on the 1960s Gerry Anderson puppet shows, which had been popular for many years on television.
The comic strongly featured a strip based on the latest Anderson TV show, the live-action UFO, together with reprints of strips from TV21
TV Century 21
TV Century 21, also known as TV 21, was a weekly British children's comic of the 1960s and early 1970s. It promoted the many television science-fiction puppet series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Century 21 Productions...
based on Stingray, Thunderbirds and Fireball XL5, along with original material.
However, Polystyle had not taken into account the fact that TV21 had folded, something they looked upon merely as an opportunity to acquire the licence to use the Anderson shows, without noting that the popularity of the puppet-based strips in TV21 had drastically declined once those shows were no longer in production and were no longer being seen on television every week.
Moreover, the expense of the high quality paper and photogravure quality printing, needed for the colour pages and photo features, pushed the cover price up, such that it was almost twice as expensive as any other boys comic on the market, with a cover price of One Shilling (against 6d and 7d for competing IPC titles such as Valiant, Lion and Smash).
Relaunch as TV Action
After 58 weeks the publisher cut its costs by relaunching the comic in a much cheaper format, on cheap newsprint paper, and dropped all the Anderson puppet shows, replacing them with strips based on then-current TV programmes that were appearing on television every week (and hence were perceived as potentially more popular than the discontinued Anderson shows), including The Persuders, Hawaii 5-0 and Cannon.With only a couple of continuing strips, such as Doctor Who, the result was virtually a new comic: TV Action.
In order to capitalise on the continuing popularity of the Doctor Who strip, featuring the likeness of Jon Pertwee (the actor who was then playing the part on television), that strip now became the regular cover feature. As an added inducement, for the first time the publisher obtained a licence to also use the ever popular Daleks in the strip: hence the first re-launch issue had a colour cover featuring Doctor Who and the Daleks. Doctor Who had an unshakeable popularity: it had emerged from, and would ultimately return to, the pages of TV Actions stablemate, TV Comic
TV Comic
TV Comic was a British comic book published weekly between November 9, 1951 and June 29, 1984 for 1,697 issues. With its bright, eye-catching covers, it featured stories based on television shows running at the time of publication. The first issue had 8 pages and had Muffin the Mule on the cover....
.
Whether the changes were entirely effective is open to question, as the new TV Action lasted just 74 issues: only slightly longer than Countdown, which had run for 58 issues. Undoubtedly the reduction in production costs from dropping the expensive lithographic printing and magazine-quality paper played some part in TV Action lasting as long as it did. But it nonetheless ceased publication in August 1973.
Like TV21, which had also tried to ride the coat-tails of the popularity of television, Countdown and TV Action had shown that the approach was not sustainable in the teenage market. Nevertheless, Polystyle did achieve a long-running success with the concept in a slightly younger market, with its all-humour offering, TV Comic
TV Comic
TV Comic was a British comic book published weekly between November 9, 1951 and June 29, 1984 for 1,697 issues. With its bright, eye-catching covers, it featured stories based on television shows running at the time of publication. The first issue had 8 pages and had Muffin the Mule on the cover....
, which ran for more than thirty years. And, in later years, one of Countdowns strips would show that a weekly comic based on television could succeed in an older market, when Marvel UK launched Doctor Who Weekly in 1979 - the ultimate specialisation: focusing on a single TV show - making a success of it by including factual coverage of the actual show and its production, alongside comic strips based upon it.
Title
The title changed greatly in the course of the run:- 1-18 Countdown
- 19-45 Countdown The Space-age comic!
- 46-56 Countdown for TV Action!
- 57-58 TV Action in Countdown
- 59-100 TV Action + Countdown
- 101-132 TV Action
Strips
The strips in issues 1 to 58, many of which were reprinted from TV21TV Century 21
TV Century 21, also known as TV 21, was a weekly British children's comic of the 1960s and early 1970s. It promoted the many television science-fiction puppet series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Century 21 Productions...
, included:
- Captain Scarlet and the MysteronsCaptain Scarlet and the MysteronsCaptain Scarlet and the Mysterons, often referred to as Captain Scarlet, is a 1960s British science-fiction television series produced by the Century 21 Productions company of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, John Read and Reg Hill...
- CountdownCountdown (comic strip)Countdown was the title strip in the British comic of the same name published by Polystyle in the early 1970s.It was an original science-fiction story - one of the few strips in the comic not to be based on a television series...
- Dastardly and Muttley
- Dr WhoDoctor WhoDoctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
- Fireball XL5Fireball XL5Fireball XL5 is a science fiction-themed children's television show following the missions of spaceship Fireball XL5, commanded by Colonel Steve Zodiac of the World Space Patrol...
- Joe 90Joe 90Joe 90 is a late-1960s British science-fiction television series documenting the exploits of a nine-year-old boy, Joe McClaine, who embarks on a double life as a schoolboy turned spy when his scientist father invents a pioneering machine capable of duplicating and transferring expert knowledge and...
- Lady Penelope
- The Persuaders!The Persuaders!The Persuaders! is a 1971 action/adventure series, produced by ITC Entertainment for initial broadcast on ITV and ABC. It has been called "the last major entry in the cycle of adventure series that had begun eleven years earlier with Danger Man in 1960", as well as "the most ambitious and most...
- The Secret ServiceThe Secret ServiceThe Secret Service is a British children's espionage television series, made as a Century 21 production for ITC Entertainment and broadcast in 1969...
- StingrayStingray (TV series)Stingray is a children's marionette television show, created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and produced by AP Films for ATV and ITC Entertainment from 1964–65. Its 39 half-hour episodes were originally screened on ITV in the UK and in syndication in the USA. The scriptwriters included Gerry and...
- ThunderbirdsThunderbirds (TV series)Thunderbirds is a British mid-1960s science fiction television show devised by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and made by AP Films using a form of marionette puppetry dubbed "Supermarionation"...
- UFOUFO (TV series)UFO is a 1970-1971 British television science fiction series about an alien invasion of Earth, created by Gerry Anderson and Sylvia Anderson with Reg Hill, and produced by the Andersons and Lew Grade's Century 21 Productions for Grade's ITC Entertainment company.UFO first aired in the UK and Canada...
- Zero-XZero-XThe Zero-X is a fictitious Earth spacecraft that appeared in two of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Supermarionation productions...
Strips featured in issues 59 to 132 included:
- Alias Smith and JonesAlias Smith and JonesAlias Smith and Jones is an American Western series that originally aired on ABC from 1971 to 1973. It stars Pete Duel as Hannibal Heyes and Ben Murphy as Jedediah "Kid" Curry, a pair of Western cousin outlaws trying to reform...
- Autocat and Motormouse
- CannonCannon (TV series)Cannon is a CBS detective television series produced by Quinn Martin which aired from March 26, 1971 to March 3, 1976.The primary protagonist was the title character, Frank Cannon, played by William Conrad....
- Dad's ArmyDad's ArmyDad's Army is a British sitcom about the Home Guard during the Second World War. It was written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft and broadcast on BBC television between 1968 and 1977. The series ran for 9 series and 80 episodes in total, plus a radio series, a feature film and a stage show...
- Dr WhoDoctor WhoDoctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
- Droopy
- Hawaii Five-OHawaii Five-OHawaii Five-O is an American police procedural drama series produced by CBS Productions and Leonard Freeman. Set in Hawaii, the show originally aired for twelve seasons from 1968 to 1980, and continues in reruns. The show featured a fictional state police unit run by Detective Steve McGarrett,...
- Mission Impossible
- The ProtectorsThe ProtectorsThe Protectors is a British television series, an action thriller created by Gerry Anderson. It is Anderson's second TV series using live actors as opposed to electronic marionettes, and also his second to be firmly set in the present day...
- Tightrope