Thursday 17 October 2019

Type Forty.

It has been Forty years since the first issue of Doctor Who magazine went on sale ( it was Doctor Who weekly to begin with. Such valiant optimism.). Damn, how did four decades go past so quickly?
For me it has been forty years since I raced up Etna Drive to the newsagent on Aliance Avenue in the hope of finding a copy. And there it was. Then I had to race back down Etna Drive to beg my da for twelve pence to pay for it. If it had been anything else I do believe he would have said no. But he knew what this television show meant to me so he counted off the pennies.We hardly had a pot to piss in back then and the pennies were important. A hundred of them add up to a pound, after all.
              I devoured this publication, part comic part magazine. The most amazing Pat Mills and Dave Gibbons comic kicked it off. The Iron Legion, a strip I have read and appreciated so much over the years it has embedded itself as canon in the recesses of my imagination and memory.Great articles, great photos and a whole load of photos i had never seen before. In those far off pre internet days it was probably the biggest and best source of photographs I had seen other than the Malcolm Hulke book The Making Of Doctor Who or the legendary, and rarely been equalled, Radio Times Doctor Who Tenth Anniversary Special.
              There were free transfer stickers also but they were an embarrassment of riches.
              I would hold this issue in as high regard as 2000AD #1 or even Mighty World Of Marvel #1.
              Three mighty number ones.
              The three who ruled.
              And just look at that Tom Baker cover.i think that photograph was taken as part of his initial publicity shoot in the car park of BBC centre. Just look at him; full of the bear and ready to take on all of time and space.
               He did not let us down.