The Mighty World Of Marvel
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Starting out publishing reprints of 1960s stories featuring Marvel's existing characters including Spider-Man, The Hulk and the Fantastic Four, it proved to be a great success. Marvel gained a foothold in the ( at the time ) vast UK weekly comic market. Its success allowed Marvel to cross-market and later introduce non-superhero UK-reprint titles such as Planet of the Apes and Star Wars.
Spending much of the 1970s as Marvel UK's flagship title it carried on providing black & white reprints of American Marvel four-colour material. The monthly format of the U.S. material was crudely adapted to fit the British weekly format, with stories being split up.
This situation changed when in 1978 Dez Skinn was hired by Stan Lee to revamp the now ailing Marvel UK. Skinn revamped all of Marvel UK's titles, including The Mighty World of Marvel by making it a monthly title and renaming it Marvel Superheroes. In issue 377 the first of a new series of original Captain Britain stories started, continuing directly from Hulk Weekly, which also featured original material.
These stories were written by Dave Thorpe and drawn by Alan Davis. However, erratic distribution affected sales and eventually Marvel Superheroes was cancelled with issue 388 in 1982. This ended the continuous run of Marvel UK's longest-running title, but re-appeared re-numbered from 'issue one' in the same year. This also mainly concentrated on reprint material, but it did later feature the end of Alan Moore and Alan Davis's Captain Britain story. After Moore left, Jamie Delano took over writing duties of Captain Britain but this volume of MWOM was cancelled with issue 16 and Captain Britain left to his own monthly title in 1985.
The title remained in limbo until Panini Comics obtained the license for Marvel UK in 1995 and began publishing it as a Marvel Collectors' Edition in February 2003 featuring reprints of American Marvel material. The title featured classic issues of Daredevil and the Incredible Hulk (plus a revolving guest spot) until November 2005 when reader response prompted the printing of more modern comics, typically published originally two to three years ago, as in the other Collectors' Editions. Today normally two modern comics and one classic comic are printed in each issue.
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