JUST WHERE IS MY LOOK-IN KUNG FU MEDALLION?

Finding our old metal star again in the garden in a rare ray of sunshine this month, I just had to throw it at the shed for old time's sake.

Back in the early Seventies I made tons of throwing stars, or shurikens, out of tin cans and loved whizzing them at my parents' wooden fence in the back.

I was a bone fide martial arts nut and devoured the whole scene back then. 

Finding our rusty shuriken has reminded me of another lost treasure that's languishing somewhere in the loft.

It was a free gift with Look-In comic back in May 1974. I was 13 and wanted desperately to be a Shaolin monk like Kwai Chang Caine!

It was the metal Kung Fu dragon medallion, as seen on the comic's fantastic cover.

Somewhere up there is that medallion and cover!

Did you have one too readers?

SPACE 1999 ALIEN BUGGY KIT: A POSSIBLE ORIGIN BY READER MIKE N.

Hi Woodsy

The only loose connection - and it's VERY loose - I can find is that it, Terranova47's Alien buggy kit [featured the other day], slightly resembles a buggy driven by an invading alien force in a story from Look-in's comic strip version drawn by the great Mike Noble.

Here are the Look-In pics as promised.

Cheers.

Mike Nicholl

 

Alternatively it's maybe a pre-production prototype of the 2-man buggy they rode around in but the design was altered before shooting in a similar way to the original Eagle design by Chris Foss?

PS. also a cracking model from Martin Bower that I found whilst googling pre-production art although I think it's a much more recent creation - would pay serious money to own a kit of that! We need to see this design in a sci-fi show sometime.

Mike N.

the door mat lies silent as a dead mysteron

Its Saturday morning at Moonbase.

The coffee is hot and the sun is shining on the first of July.

But something's missing.

Nothing has slapped on the door mat. Nothing has flopped through the letterbox.

I've nothing to read!

It'd odd. My childhood was filled with comics and magazines and the best way of getting them was a subscription from the local 'paper shop' and delivered by a paper boy. I loved how our old address was scribbled in the top corner in pencil, 24 Powis ...

I got a few TV21's this way [respect to anyone who got them all through the door!] but the big mat hitter for me was Look-In.

I got stacks of them through the door as a kid and adored the thing. On The Buses, the free gifts, the lot. My favourite was Kung Fu as it tapped into the oriental craze sweeping through the West and right through my bedroom!

Getting your favourite comic through the door was a joy and perhaps a rare joy these days. I'm not sure if its possible to get comics and magazines from the paper shop now and delivered by a paper boy. Is it?

I did enjoy that weekly buzz once more in the Nineties when I subscribed to Model and Collectors Mart and I have to say it was equally as thrilling. I adored that mag as much as Look-In and consumed every word on the steamy bus to work!

But all good things seem to come to an end and Model Mart's sales dropped and it sadly faded away. My pile of magazines was huge and by 2003 when we moved house I had to recycle most of them keeping a few choice ones to follow me into the future.

I have thought about another subscription but nothing leaps out. It could be an age thing with me now. The modern 2000 AD perhaps [is it any good?] or maybe the revamped Warren Creepy of old called Creeps?

Maybe I'm just being an old curmudgeon but perhaps the golden age of kids' adventure comics has gone and subscriptions have faded like the contrails of Thunderbird 2. I've not heard a single modern kid ever mention a subscription comic or magazine to me. If they do talk about them its always superhero stuff, which they got from a city centre comic shop.

Is 2000 AD the last UK gasp for a genre that filled our lungs with the air of excitement and outer space when we were kids in the Sixties and Seventies - and maybe even the Eighties and Nineties?

LOOK OUT FOR LOOK IN

As a follow on to Woodsy's piece about comic subscriptions and his mention of Look - In magazine I thought I'd dig out some of my old Look - In's and covers that featured some of Gerry Anderson's shows.

First up is an early edition with a photo from UFO on the cover. Disappointingly, there's no feature on the series inside.

A lovely cover featuring Space 1999 painted by the late Arnaldo Putzu.

Dated 13 September 1975

An Asteroid size problem from Commander Koenig in a second season Space 1999 comic strip story.

   This issue from 13 February 1982 had a centre page spread on the Supermarionation series, apart from Four Feather Falls and The Secret Service.

There was also mention of the newly formed Gerry Anderson Appreciation Society, Fanderson which charged a 'hefty' £6 to join!

Finally, a cover from 22 October 1983 showing the evil android, Zelda, with the excitable Cy-Star and the terminally thick, Yung-Star from Terrahawks. Inside was a two page feature on the show.