When people hear "Marvel Comics" they usually think "American Superheroes", however, they also had a hugely popular British arm, called Marvel UK. What started as reprints of the hero-centric comics from the US, the British Marvel eventually began to specialise in owning the licence to (mostly) animated TV shows. In the US, Marvel would release these under their Star Comics banner but in the UK, the Marvel UK brand remained. Some became their own thing, with comics like
Transformers actually being written in Britain by native writers and
It's Wicked was a prime example of that. A short lived example, however as the weekly comic only lasted 17 issues in 1989. Designed as a competitor to popular UK comics such as
The Beano and
The Dandy,
It's Wicked was a different direction for Marvel, a response to the "funny" comics that had been a cause of kids spending pocket money for decades so the new title had to be entirely humorous. No violent adventures of transforming alien robots trying to sell toys here, the comic had to be one or two page stories that could make children smile. Of course, in order to actually sell copies, Marvel needed to have a hook so they decided that the stories would have a supernatural bent to them. Nothing scary, just stories centred around ghosts and ghouls and who better than to be their cover star than a little green spud from a very popular cartoon that Marvel UK currently had the rights to?
The Real Ghostbusters comic from Marvel UK was a huge seller from 1988-1992 with 193 issues and four annuals so it made sense to spin-off
Slimer into his own title. Except, rather than him be the star of a book of stories just about him, Marvel decided he's be the ideal character to be the figurehead of their new humour comic. The problem is,
Slimer... isn't very interesting... Although, this is actually preferable to a regular comic of just him (America did that for 19 issues the same year and Marvel UK would also try it the following year, again for only 19 issues) there wasn't enough in the character to justify three pages of a weekly. And this is even with the new characters introduced in the cartoon in order to make the little turd a bigger star than he had any right to be. Anyway, enough about him...
It's Wicked is notable for more than just having a major "star" adorning its pages, it also introduced brand new characters. This was something that Marvel UK wasn't in the habit of doing, the British environmental comic
Acorn Green failed to make an impression back in '86 with only 36 issues and two annuals to its (now forgotten) name. Editor Helen Stone assembled a bunch of writers and artists from other British weeklies, including Barrie Appleby (
Cuddles and Dimples) and John Geering (
Bananaman) to create new characters.The results were mixed.
The cast of characters in
It's Wicked largely remained the same for its entire brief run, with the odd change here and there. The main problem with It's Wicked's cadre of misfits was, most of them were neither likeable nor relatable. One of the reasons for the success of comics such as
The Beano,
The Topper, The Beezer, Buster etc was the fact that the main characters were kids who could easily go through the same things as the nippers reading their exploits. An outlier of this is
The Dandy (whose masthead
It's Wicked shamelessly cribbed from) with its biggest stars being a cat and an American tough guy who eats cows baked in pies.
The Dandy did have it's fair share of kid characters, though, with Cuddles and Dimples being breakouts when they joined forced in the mid-80s after
It's a Hoot folded. Not many kids could relate to a snivelling postman or an unfunny skeleton or a cute dragon or a spoiled Mummy or whatever the crap
Toad in the Hole was about. The characters were bland, the stories dull and unimaginative (with the exception of the aforementioned
Toad in the Hole, an odd kind of continuing story that was wonderfully drawn but one I didn't appreciate as a kid) and despite the best efforts to make
Slimer less annoying, the comic wasn't a success. It also sadly didn't help that the particular market there were trying to jump in on, was on the wane. With once popular titles as
The Topper and
The Beezer about to merge the following year
before ceasing publication in 1993. The market was changing and Marvel UK was finding this out the hard way. Maybe if they tried it a decade earlier. they may have had something. As it stands,
It's Wicked is nothing more than an interesting failure.
Still... it was better than
The Bog Paper, Marvel UK's second attempt a few months later at a "funny" comic. That nonsense was just dire and only lasted 11 issues and doesn't deserve to be mentioned ever again.
