Collecting Action! Comic


Hands up who remembers Hookjaw, the huge great white shark that infested the blood-soaked pages of the UK’s ‘Action’ comic in the mid 1970s? Blink and you might have missed him, for the unusually gory ‘Action’ comic sure lived up to its name and after a year of publication was pulled from the newsagents shelves after protests from outraged parents. Nowadays, ‘Action’ is becoming particularly collectible – if you’ve got a big wallet and a strong stomach!

‘Action’ had a great concept – why not take the great adult action adventures of the time and rewrite for them for the kids who were not allowed to experience them? Thus the X-Rated hit movie ‘Rollerball’ – about a super-violent hockey game of the future – was bloodily redrawn in the pages of ‘Action’ as ‘Death Game 99’ (this title cannily alluding to another forbidden fruit, the recently released road kill movie ‘Death Race 2000’). The X-Rated Dirty Harry movies were reprised through the Clint-alike adventures of ‘Dredger’ which, if anything, were way more violent than the Magnum-inspired mayhem of the original Clint Eastwood films. This was the truly perverse aspect of ‘Action’, the comic didn’t tone down the adult content for its juvenile audience – instead it virtually doubled it!

The prime example was ‘Hookjaw’, an obvious attempt to exploit the success of Steven Spielberg’s hit monster movie ‘Jaws’. The body count of this crudely (but effectively) drawn shocker surpassed Spielberg in the first issue alone – with heads, arms and legs all bitten off and spat out in glorious colour. ‘Action’ was almost doomed from the start and although successful (death sells!), it enjoyed a limited shelf life in the years 1976-77. Interestingly, many of the talented writers and artists associated with ‘Action’ were soon plying their trade in ‘2000 AD’, the UK comics industry’s answer to the immense success of ‘Star Wars’.

Prices for ‘Action’ vary on the collectors market – with top prices being paid for the early and very late issues (early issues should come with free gifts where appropriate). The comics were printed on cheap newsprint paper so fine copies are virtually unknown. Expect to pay about £10 for rarer issues and about £3 - £4 for less scarce installments. The very last issue (#36) is rumoured to be selling for up to £40 on today’s collectors market. Collectors should note that ‘Action’ was published in two stages. The first (and most violent) series ran from 14 February to 23 October 1976, a toned down second run of comics reappeared in December and lasted through to November 1977 before being incorporated into ‘Battle’.