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65-423: Practical Electronics was founded in 1964 by IPC Magazines as a constructors' magazine for the electronics enthusiast. (It was a sister publication to IPC's other "Practical" titles, including Practical Mechanics , Practical Motorist , Practical Television , and Practical Wireless .) In 1971 a novice-level magazine, Everyday Electronics , was begun by the same publisher. Until 1977, both titles had

130-662: A (future) Power Comic title was the Incredible Hulk , who showed up in Smash! #16 (dated 21 May 1966). The Hulk's initial appearance took up a massive six pages, one-quarter of the 24-page issue, pushing five existing strips out of that issue (and causing the cancellation of two of them). A month after the Hulk's debut, DC 's Batman became the second American superhero to debut in Smash! , in issue #20 (18 June 1966), in re-edited reprints from American daily and Sunday newspaper strips. This

195-449: A business coup that overnight freed Marvel from a restrictive distribution agreement, which for a decade had limited it to publishing only 8 titles a month: Marvel was suddenly quadrupling its monthly output, and dozens of new titles were flooding into Britain. Odhams' black-and-white Marvel reprints in their Power Comics range suddenly faced much more extensive competition from four-colour Marvel originals, and this began to harm sales. In

260-499: A cover price of 7d, and even that proved unsustainable. Smash! had launched in February 1966 with a cover price of 7d for 24 pages. By March 1969, although its cover price had not changed, circumstances had conspired to increase its page count, such that each issue now contained 36 pages. In fact the page-count jumped overnight from 24 to 36 pages (a fifty per cent increase), with a consequent sharp rise in production costs, and so

325-502: A cover price which forced Fantastic to close within 18 months. Terrific , having the same high content of American material, also had a high cover price of 9d, and closed even quicker. In contrast, the comics The Dandy and The Beano published by rival DC Thomson , sold at a cover price of 3d. Fantastic! and Terrific! cost three times as much, which (even with double the number of pages compared to many DC Thomson titles) proved unsustainable. Wham! and Pow! each peaked at

390-457: A few years later in 1972. The number of Power Comics titles was increased to five on 8 April 1967 with the first appearance of Terrific , which was similar in format to Fantastic and was again dominated by Marvel reprint material: The Avengers , Doctor Strange , and the Sub-Mariner . The Power Comics line remained at five titles for nine months, after which it started to dwindle. Wham!

455-402: A letter from a reader pointing out the origin of the strips. But, throughout, Marvel credit boxes containing the names of Stan Lee and collaborators such as Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby were invariably deleted from the splash pages ; the space they occupied was either left blank or covered with drawn-in artwork. Apart from the compulsory copyright acknowledgment in small print, the name "Marvel"

520-551: A major cost-cutting exercise, reducing the ongoing production costs on the Power Comics line by four-fifths. As for actual losses incurred due to the sudden and unexpected nature of the problem, and the inability to quickly terminate the long-term licensing contracts with the Americans, Smash! as sole survivor could not hope to generate enough income on its own to meet these. In fact, it did not need to. The fortunate circumstance that

585-528: A management development department in 1965, to rationalise its holdings, so that its various subsidiaries would no longer be in competition with each other for the same markets. This led to a reorganisation of the Group, in 1968, into six divisions: All the divisions were headed by chairmen who originated in Mirror Group, except for Hamlyn, Quick and McIntosh. The turmoil at IPC in 1969 led to major consolidations in

650-408: A marked decline in profit-per-copy. The tipping point was Smash! issue #144, in which Smash! , Pow! , and Fantastic were merged into a single title. The recently created Smash and Pow lost its Daredevil and Spider-Man strips, which together had comprised a full third of each 24-page issue, but now had to accommodate both Thor and Fantastic Four from the discontinued titles, plus

715-523: A new publisher, Electron Publishing Limited. The new publisher's first issue was January 2019, and from the April 2019 issue the magazine reverted to its original title of Practical Electronics . IPC Magazines TI Media Ltd. (formerly International Publishing Company , IPC Magazines Ltd , IPC Media and Time Inc. UK ) was a consumer magazine and digital publisher in the United Kingdom , with

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780-589: A portfolio selling over 350 million copies each year. Most of its titles now belong to Future plc . The British magazine publishing industry in the mid-1950s was dominated by a handful of companies, principally the Associated Newspapers (founded by Lord Harmsworth in 1890), Odhams Press Ltd , Newnes / Pearson , and the Hulton Press , which fought each other for market share in a highly competitive marketplace. In 1958 Cecil Harmsworth King , chairman of

845-673: A single Time Inc. brand in both the US and UK. In April 2012, IPC Media won an award for Best Production Team of the Year at the Professional Publishers Association Production and Environment Awards 2012. On 26 February 2018, Meredith Corporation , who had completed its purchase of Time Inc. almost a month earlier, announced it was selling Time Inc. UK to a fund associated with British private equity firm Epiris . The transaction closed on 19 March of that year. In June 2018,

910-503: A week, but by publishing five Power Comics titles, IPC were pricing themselves out of the market. The situation in Britain was not like that in America, where, with comics published just once a month, a child might afford five titles; in Britain, comics were published weekly. Under those conditions the Power Comics were effectively competing with each other – a factor IPC were certainly aware of, as

975-398: A whole slew of new British adventure strips (which were being added in preparation for the comic's impending transition to solely British content). All this could not be achieved within the standard Smash! format of 24 pages. IPC "bit the bullet" and increased the page count, at a single bound, by fifty per cent – a necessity if they were to achieve their intention of reproducing with Smash!

1040-572: The West German Deutsche Mark into devaluation, and culminating in a new Sterling crisis in Britain in November 1968. These repeated falls in the value of the pound against the U.S. dollar significantly increased the cost of publishing the American strips, which had to be paid for in dollars, and raised the daunting spectre of further increases if the pound fell in value yet again. Increasing

1105-433: The letters pages in Smash! in 1968 actually carried readers' complaints that they could not afford all five Power titles. The five together cost an astonishing three shillings and threepence a week (39d), to buy them all, far beyond the reach of the average child's weekly pocket money. The Power Comics titles were also competing with IPC's other titles, including Lion , Valiant , and Buster , potentially dragging

1170-441: The "with" in the title being dropped from the November 1995 issue. In February 1999, the publisher acquired the former rival, Electronics Today International , and merged it into EPE . In November 2018, Wimborne Publishing passed EPE and all rights to earlier material, including Practical Electronics , Everyday Electronics , Hobby Electronics (which later became Electronics Monthly ) and Electronics Today International to

1235-601: The DC Thomson titles afloat for more than 30 years to come. The highly competitive nature of the UK's publishing industry meant margins were thin: a minimum number of sales each week were needed to reach break-even point, and the lower the cover price, the greater was the number of sales needed to reach that point; but the higher the cover price, the fewer were the number of sales that could actually be achieved. The juvenile readers (or their parents) might be able to afford two or three comics

1300-439: The Power Comics line consisted of five weekly titles: Wham! , Smash! , Pow! , Fantastic and Terrific . The first three of these titles were essentially traditional The Beano -style British comics papers, supplemented by a small amount of Marvel and DC Comics material, while Fantastic and Terrific were more magazine-like in style and were dominated by their Marvel superhero content. The Power Comics imprint

1365-533: The Power Comics were all published by Odhams Press Ltd, a subsidiary company with limited liability, meant that it was possible to ring-fence all debts on the Odhams publications within that one company, thus preventing any losses affecting the rest of the IPC Group (since IPC's other titles were all published by other IPC subsidiaries). Accordingly, with effect from 1 January 1969 Smash! was transferred to IPC Magazines Ltd,

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1430-564: The UK, they began by incorporating superhero stories such as the Hulk and the Fantastic Four into their existing titles Smash! and Wham! respectively. The Marvel material was reproduced in black-and-white and serialised in short installments alongside the original British strips which still dominated the content of those comics. Smash! also reprinted the Batman newspaper strip , to cash in on

1495-655: The USA. In addition to reprints of many of Marvel's most popular series, such as Spider-Man and the X-Men (all written by Lee), there was also an attempt to create a home-grown British superhero: firstly with the Missing Link/Johnny Future, who appeared in Fantastic prior to its merger with Terrific , and subsequently with Tri-Man, who appeared in Smash! after its merger with Fantastic . The first superhero strip to appear in

1560-401: The case of Fantastic , where the existing contract with Marvel had some months to run, were those strips transferred to its replacement, the merged Smash! and Pow! Incorporating Fantastic . Despite being the longest survivor, and inheriting many popular strips from the other four titles, Smash! was only a limited success. The Power Comics line officially came to an end in November 1968, when

1625-532: The closing titles to surviving IPC comics rather than to rival DC Thomson comics. Another factor Odhams had not anticipated was the distribution of American comic books within the UK. Although this had always been a consideration, the volume of such comics arriving in Britain had traditionally been small, and their distribution haphazard. In 1968, distribution and quantity suddenly underwent a marked improvement: in America, Marvel Comics' owner, Martin Goodman , pulled off

1690-401: The comics publishing industry were being fought against a backdrop of ever-declining circulation figures, Odhams took a big risk in launching five titles. It has been suggested that it was common practice for a publisher to quickly clone a successful title, in order to forestall its competitors from doing so, but that does not seem to have been Odhams' strategy. Smash 's only distinctive feature

1755-489: The companies involved had been acquired without any significant change in management, save for the appointment of Mirror Group directors as chairmen. In 1963 all the companies were combined by the creation of a parent (or "holding") company called the International Publishing Company (known informally as IPC ). All of the existing companies would continue to exist, but as IPC subsidiaries. IPC then set up

1820-443: The company was renamed TI Media. In September 2018, TI Media sold its library of pre-1970 IPC Comics titles to Rebellion Developments. In 2019, TI Media sold its music magazines to BandLab Technologies. TI Media was acquired by Future plc on 21 April 2020 following shareholder and Competition and Markets Authority approval. Future subsequently divested Amateur Photographer , Trusted Reviews , and World Soccer and absorbed

1885-520: The course of the 1960s, the British television industry introduced a new channel ( BBC2 in 1964), cheaper television sets (in consequence of the transistor revolution), hire-purchase (broadening the market so that anyone could afford a TV), and — dealing a near death-blow to mass-market comics — launched British television into colour in Christmas 1969. In the limited UK market, where circulation wars in

1950-523: The cover price of the Power Comics titles to compensate was impossible because of stiff competition (with sales on a sharp downward spiral, as circulation fell victim to the ever-increasing popularity of television); so the fall in the value of Sterling made the American strips unaffordable. The toughness of the competition is apparent from examining other contemporary titles. The first issue Fantastic , published in February 1967, cost 9d for 40 pages (due to its very high content of American superhero strips),

2015-431: The early 1990s IPC launched Loaded , which began a wave of " lad's mags ". In 1992, following a merger with Dutch science publisher Elsevier NV , Reed International underwent a further name change, becoming Reed Elsevier (now RELX Group ). In 1987, part of the comics holdings of IPC Magazines Ltd (comprising those comics and characters created after 1 January 1970, plus 26 specified characters from Buster , which

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2080-419: The group's entire line into bankruptcy. Rationalisation, by closing some of the titles, would produce an overall benefit, as it would dramatically cut IPC's production costs. Although it would mean fewer titles, as IPC's comics were actually competing against each other it ought to result in better sales for the survivors. In theory, there would be no overall loss of sales or revenue, provided readers switched from

2145-504: The joint comics publishing divisions, IPC Magazines Ltd., which was under the responsibility of Jack Legrand, formerly the Managing Editor of Fleetway's juvenile publications. Odhams' Power Comics line of titles were cancelled, as was Hulton Press 's long-running adventure comic Eagle (merging with Fleetway's Lion from 2 May 1969). The humour comic Giggle , aimed at the slightly younger market dominated by Fleetway's Buster ,

2210-475: The lack of synchronisation between reprints of different storylines. The alterations were quite crudely done and easy to spot. One of the more controversial aspects of Power Comics was the relative lack of credit given to Marvel Comics and the American creators of the material used. For the first few weeks of the Marvel reprints the company was not acknowledged at all, but Odhams then had a change of heart and published

2275-503: The logo was dropped from Smash! and Pow! 's #143 cover. Smash! continued to include some Marvel material but, once the Marvel contract expired in March 1969 (and having already dropped Batman ), IPC quickly made extensive changes to the title, firing Alf Wallace and ending many other strips as well. By introducing a new cover feature, new strips, and free gifts (in the style of established IPC titles such as Lion and Valiant ), Smash!

2340-470: The managed decline of the British comics industry in general during the 1960s, in the face of falling sales resulting from the growing power of television. With the advent of commercial television in Britain in 1955, displacing the staid, old-fashioned children's television offered by the BBC up to that point, comics circulation began to decline, and the decline accelerated as competition from television increased. In

2405-446: The month of March 1961. In consequence, King controlled publishing interests which included two national daily and two national Sunday newspapers (the newspaper interests being informally tagged The Mirror Group ), along with almost one hundred consumer magazines, more than two hundred trade and technical periodicals, and interests in book publishing. This included the combined business interests of Fleetway, Odhams, and Newnes. All of

2470-524: The name of its headquarters, Fleetway House in London's Farringdon Street. Shortly thereafter, Odhams Press absorbed both George Newnes and the Hulton Press. King saw an opportunity in this to rationalise the overcrowded women's magazine market, in which Fleetway and Newnes were the major competitors, and made a bid for Odhams on behalf of Fleetway that was too attractive to ignore. Fleetway took over Odhams in

2535-666: The newspaper group, The Daily Mirror Newspapers Limited which included the Daily Mirror and the Sunday Pictorial (now the Sunday Mirror ), together with provincial chain West of England Newspapers, made an offer for Amalgamated Press . The offer was accepted, and in January 1959 he was appointed its chairman. Within a few months he changed its name to Fleetway Publications, Ltd. after

2600-518: The other comics characters and titles, i.e. those created before 1970 (except the 26 characters from Buster ), including Sexton Blake , The Steel Claw , and Battler Britton . One character, Dan Dare , was sold separately and is currently owned by the Dan Dare Corporation. In 2016 and 2018, Egmont sold its remaining library of IPC/Fleetway to Rebellion Developments , who had previously acquired 2000 AD in 2000. In 1998, IPC Magazines Ltd

2665-455: The page count in Smash! , from its original 24 to 36 pages, and eventually to 40 pages in 1970 (i.e. it might be more than double the price of a DC Thomson title but it was also more than double the size). The difficulty was that the much lower price of The Dandy and The Beano gave those titles a significant advantage, since a kid could choose to buy only one of them, at 3d – a winning competitive advantage which, as of 1966, would keep both of

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2730-411: The popularity of the live-action TV show . The Power Comics logo first appeared on Smash! #44, with a publication date of 3 December 1966. Power Comics took more concrete form with the appearance of Pow! and Fantastic early in 1967. The first issue of Pow! appeared on 14 January 1967, by which time Wham! had reached issue #136 and Smash! was at issue #51. Pow! was similar in format to

2795-505: The publishing interests of Reed International were separated into IPC Magazines Ltd (comprising the magazine and comics holdings) and Mirror Group Newspapers (comprising the newspaper holdings). The latter was sold to Pergamon Holdings Ltd, a private company owned by Robert Maxwell , in 1984. In 1988, IPC acquired Family Circle from the International Thomson Organization . In 1989, IPC acquired TVTimes . In

2860-401: The rest of TI Media into Future Publishing. TI Media divisions up until Future plc acquisition including: Power Comics Power Comics was an imprint of the British comics publisher Odhams Press (itself a division of IPC Magazines ) that was particularly notable for its use of material reprinted from American Marvel Comics . Appearing chiefly during the years 1967 and 1968,

2925-484: The same production and editorial team. In 1986, both titles were sold by their owner, IPC Magazines , to independent publishers and the editorial teams remained separate. By the early 1990s, the title experienced a marked decline in market share and, in 1992, it was purchased by Wimborne Publishing Ltd. which was, at that time, the publisher of the rival, novice-level Everyday Electronics . The two magazines were merged to form Everyday with Practical Electronics (EPE) –

2990-615: The successful formula which was buoying-up sales of their most popular titles, Lion and Valiant , both of which were 36-pagers (in effect, to produce another clone of them: an identical mix of adventure and humour, with an identical page count, at an identical price). One fundamental difficulty for the Power Comics line, however, was always the stark economic truth that a kid could buy both The Dandy and The Beano , at 3d each, and still have change left over, for what it cost to buy Smash! , Wham! or Pow! at 7d each. The DC Thomson titles only had 16 pages, and this more than anything drove up

3055-429: The turbulent economic conditions, any part of IPC's business that was loss-making had no future. Standard industry practice was to close a comic or magazine if its revenues dipped towards the break-even point; publishers did not wait for a title to actually incur losses. Hence, merely to anticipate losses on the other four titles ( Pow! , Wham! , Fantastic and Terrific ) was enough to doom them. The closures represented

3120-435: The two earlier comics, a mixture of traditional British material and Marvel reprints — in this case Spider-Man and Nick Fury . Fantastic first appeared on 11 February 1967, and was quite different in style from its predecessors. In many ways, it looked more like one of the American black-and-white anthology magazines of the time, such as Creepy and Eerie , than a traditional British comic such as The Beano . It

3185-549: The unexpected nature of the economic crisis of 1968 that hit the British economy, resulting in the devaluation of the Pound. The economic chaos began with a Sterling crisis in Britain in 1967, leading to devaluation in November. There then followed a crisis for the U.S. dollar in March 1968, which had a cascade effect on the international economic system, sending first the French franc and then

3250-433: The year's end only Smash! was still being published, the otrhers having been merged into it one by one. Readers had to notice that something was wrong, as the series of mergers resulted in ever more ludicrous titles, culminating in Smash! and Pow! Incorporating Fantastic (commonly spoofed as Smash, Pow, Wham, Incorporating Fantastic and Terrific ). When Odhams obtained the rights to reprint Marvel Comics material in

3315-635: Was Odhams staff editor Alf Wallace, "Bart" was Eagle editor Bob Bartholomew, and "Cos" was Albert Cosser, who would later be the editor of TVTimes magazine. Each title had its own letter column (such as "Fantastic Fan-mail"), and also a half-page editorial ( "News from the Floor of 64" , a reference to the editorial offices at 64 Long Acre in London , an address common to all of the Power Comics), comparable in style and purpose to Marvel's " Bullpen Bulletins ". As

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3380-596: Was a response to the sudden and enormous popularity of the Batman television series starring Adam West . The success of the Hulk then led to the introduction of the Fantastic Four into Wham! on 6 August 1966. The Fantastic Four eventually became the longest running Marvel strip, ultimately appearing in three Power Comics titles in succession. Spider-Man headlined Pow! , and more Marvel heroes followed: in 1967 Odhams launched two new titles entirely dedicated to Marvel superheroes: Fantastic and Terrific . A distinctive feature of both Fantastic and Terrific

3445-552: Was aimed at an older audience than the latter, though a younger one than the American anthology magazines. The content of Fantastic was dominated by the Marvel Comics superheroes Thor , the X-Men , and Iron Man , with only a minimal amount of British material. In general appearance, style, and content, Fantastic can be considered a direct precursor of the Marvel UK weeklies such as The Mighty World of Marvel that first appeared

3510-414: Was also dropped, being merged into Buster in the spring of 1969. Buster , like Odhams' Smash! , also now became a publication of IPC Magazines Ltd. (IPC Magazines also took over another UK publisher, City Magazines , around this time.) In May 1968, a boardroom coup had replaced Cecil King with his deputy chairman, Hugh Cudlipp , a former newspaper editor. Cudlipp had no interest in management, and

3575-399: Was its American superhero strips, so Fantastic and Terrific (which most of the time contained only Marvel superhero strips) might loosely be described as clones of Smash! , even though they lacked any humour strips, but IPC had an exclusive licence from Marvel Comics to reprint Marvel's strips in the UK, which precluded anyone else from doing so. The actual cause of the closures lies in

3640-546: Was led by a three-man editorial team, known as Alf, Bart, and Cos. Alfred Wallace ("Alf") was the Managing Editor at Odhams, and supervised the entire Power Comics line. Under his direction, Bart (a pen-name for Eagle 's Bob Bartholemew) and Cos were the staff editors who handled the individual titles. Following the initial success of Wham! in 1964, Odhams had launched four more Power Comics during 1966 and 1967, only to close them in quick succession. Whereas 1968 began with all five Power Comics titles apparently flourishing, by

3705-532: Was merged into Pow! on 13 January 1968, while Terrific merged into Fantastic three weeks later. This left three Power titles for just over six months, after which Pow! and Fantastic were merged into Smash! in September and November 1968 respectively. Odhams' parent, IPC Magazines , was eager to shed the licensing fee expenses for their American reprints, so as each title in the Power Comics line shut down, its respective superhero strips were given up. Only in

3770-522: Was never mentioned — wherever it appeared in the strips it was changed to "Power". Marvel continued to be mentioned occasionally, though. For example, when the Hulk was removed from Smash! , the editors had to justify the decision by admitting the reprints had caught up with the American originals. After a gap of several months, due to the character's popularity with readers, the Hulk reappeared, but this time in Fantastic . The history of Power Comics reflects

3835-531: Was part of Odhams, headquartered at 64 Long Acre , London . Odhams was owned by International Publishing Corporation , a company formed in 1963 by Cecil Harmsworth King , chairman of the Daily Mirror and Sunday Pictorial (now the Sunday Mirror ), through a series of corporate mergers. All of the comics published by IPC were under the control of one or other of the subsidiary companies which King had brought together to form IPC, including Fleetway Publications and Odhams Press . The Power Comics imprint

3900-410: Was revamped in all but name into a new comic. Despite more editorial shakeups, Smash! , the last surviving member of the Power Comics line, lasted until April 1971, when it was merged into IPC's Valiant . Power Comics was the first attempt to integrate elements of American superhero comics into mainstream British comic publishing, motivated by the huge success of Stan Lee 's line of Marvel Comics in

3965-490: Was standard practice with UK reprints of American comics, due to the larger UK page size, pages from the original American comics were rearranged (and sometimes panels dropped altogether) to fit. Unlike the otherwise similar Marvel UK reprints of the 1970s, the Marvel material in the Power Comics was frequently edited to replace American spellings and slang with their British equivalents. Dialogue and/or images were also changed occasionally to remove snags in continuity caused by

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4030-456: Was subject to a management buyout financed by Cinven , a venture capital group, and the company was renamed IPC Media. Cinven then sold the company to Time Inc. , then the magazine publishing subsidiary of Time Warner (now Warner Bros. Discovery ), in 2001. In January 2009, Evelyn Webster became the company's chief executive, replacing Sylvia Auton who had run it since 2001 IPC Media formally became Time Inc. UK in September 2014, creating

4095-537: Was the full-colour pin-up that featured as the back cover of most issues. Many of these were reprinted from American Marvel comics, but at least some (including a Johnny Future pin-up) were produced especially for the Power Comics by a young Barry Windsor-Smith . As well as drawing heavily on Stan Lee's creative output, Power Comics also attempted to emulate Lee's chatty style and community building efforts, through their own editors, who were "Alf and Bart" on some titles, and "Alf and Cos" on others. In point of fact, "Alf"

4160-557: Was then still being published) were placed in a separate company, Fleetway Publications , which was sold to Pergamon Holdings. In 1991, Egmont UK purchased Fleetway from Pergamon, merging it with their own comics publishing operation, London Editions, to form Fleetway Editions . The latter was absorbed into the main Egmont brand by 2000, having sold off the continuing titles (such as 2000 AD ), and continued with only reprint and licensed titles (e.g. Sonic The Comic ). IPC had retained

4225-534: Was uneasy both with his new role and with IPC's diversification into computerised publication and other new technology. In 1969, Cudlipp proposed to former Mirror Group director Don Ryder — who was then chairman of the Reed Group, in which IPC had a 30% shareholding — to mount a reverse takeover of IPC by Reed. IPC-Mirror Group was thus itself taken over in 1970, by the paper-making company Albert E Reed , which then renamed itself Reed International . In 1974, part of

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