Hulk Comic #16

History

Hulk Comic launched on 7 March 1979 under editor Dez Skinn, who had been brought in specifically to move Marvel UK's editorial operations to Britain and commission genuinely British-made content rather than solely reprinting American material. Skinn conceived the title as an adventure anthology — deliberately avoiding pure superhero fare — and assembled a roster of emerging local talent including Steve Moore, Dave Gibbons, Steve Parkhouse, David Lloyd, and a then-sixteen-year-old Steve Dillon. Issue #16 falls during Skinn's tenure, before Paul Neary took over editorial duties and the original-content strips began to be wound down in favour of US reprints; the Black Knight / Otherworld strip, written by Parkhouse and drawn by Neary and John Stokes, was the one original feature that outlasted the transition, running all the way to issue #63. The Night-Raven concept was developed by Skinn alongside editor Richard Burton, with scripts by Parkhouse and art by David Lloyd, consciously evoking 1930s pulp vigilantes such as The Shadow and The Spider.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Issue #16 (June 1979) falls within the confirmed original-material window of Hulk Comic #1–20, during which all five core strips — Hulk, Nick Fury, Night-Raven, Black Knight/Captain Britain, and Ant-Man — ran as new or reprint content each week.
• The Black Knight / Captain Britain strip running through this issue is part of the Otherworld Saga, written by Steve Parkhouse and illustrated by Paul Neary and John Stokes; the saga introduced Arthurian characters including Valinor (the Black Knight's winged horse), Cormac, and The Walker into British Marvel continuity.
• Night-Raven — the pulp-era vigilante created by Dez Skinn, Richard Burton, Steve Parkhouse, and David Lloyd — debuted in Hulk Comic #1 and ran continuously through #20; issue #16 is one instalment of that unbroken serial, set in a 1930s American city where Night-Raven brands criminals with a distinctive ring-mark.
• The Nick Fury strip appearing in this issue was drawn by Steve Dillon, who was approximately sixteen years old at the time of the title's launch — one of the earliest professional comics credits for the artist who would later become known for Preacher and Wolverine: Origins.
• The Hulk strips in this early run portrayed Bruce Banner's alter ego as the inarticulate, wandering figure familiar from the then-current live-action TV series, a deliberate editorial choice by Dez Skinn to connect with the show's British audience.
• The Ant-Man material appearing in Hulk Comic around this period consists of Silver Age reprints drawn from the Lee/Kirby-era Tales to Astonish stories featuring Henry Pym, heavily edited to fit the anthology's page count.
• The Night-Raven serial from Hulk Comic #1–20 has been collected twice in print: in Night Raven: The Collected Stories (Marvel UK, 1990) and more comprehensively in Night Raven: From the Marvel UK Vaults (Marvel, 2017), the latter also covering subsequent prose and strip appearances across multiple UK titles.
• Hulk Comic ran for 63 issues (March 1979 – May 1980) before merging with Marvel UK's Spider-Man weekly title; the series was also notable for reviving Captain Britain in British-originated stories after the character's US-originated beginnings.

Cast · 12 characters

Full credits

Key issues in Hulk Comic