Bye, GeoCities! We’ll miss you every FUNday!

To celebrate the closing of GeoCities today (farewell, old Alpha Flight Collector site), another installment of Monday’s FUNday is ready to go. For the record, the old site had NO blink tags, NO animated gifs, NO “under construction” images and (almost) NO broken links. It was a ton of FUN to build and I’ll miss it, you guessed it, every FUNday… speaking of which, today’s issue is:

Marvel Age #29
Aug 1985

Marvel Age was a monthly series featuring previews of upcoming comics, news articles about various subjects, advertisements, humorous pieces, and the occasional interview with creators and Marvel staff.  Long removed from the Internet age, it was a great way (sometimes the ONLY way) to get news about what was going on in the world of Marvel Comics.  This issue has a small Sasquatch cameo on the back cover.

The issue’s inside front cover has a small inset by Jim Salicrup where he lists the top 10 sales figures for ongoing Marvel titles.  The data is quite mashed up, representing the average sales of the titles during their July, August and September on-sale period for comics dated October, November and December (of 1984). Got all that?  Headache?  OK, that corresponds to Alpha Flight volume 1 issues 15, 16, and 17 during the initial Byrne run.  Here is the entire list:

1. Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars
2. X-Men
3. Kitty Pryde and Wolverine
4. The X-Men Annual
5. The Amazing Spider-Man
6. Alpha Flight
7. New Mutants
8. West Coast Avengers
9. G.I. Joe
10. The Transformers

Yes, Alpha Flight was once a top 10 book and here’s the proof!

This issue was concurrent with Alpha Flight #25 and solicits issue #26 in the section, “Marvel Coming Attractions”:

ALPHA FLIGHT #26 – Omega Flight is out for Alpha Flight’s blood – and this time it looks like they’re going to get it!  Meanwhile, Guardian is acting weird and Heather wants to know why!  She is certain that what she doesn’t know about her husband can – and will – destroy her!  “If at First You Don’t Succeed . . .” is written and penciled by John Byrne and inked by Bob Wiacek. 65¢.

Also in the section, “Newswatch” is a quick mention of the X-Men/Alpha Flight LS:

ITEM! Boy, do we have a bunch of stuff to tell you about! To start off with, we’re proud to announce the long-awaited X-MEN / ALPHA FLIGHT cross-over special! It’s a two-part Limited Series, scripted by Chris Claremont with art by Paul Smith and Bob Wiacek – from a plot by Ann Nocenti, Denny O’Neil and Jim Shooter! The outlaw mutants and the northern stars face Loki . . . so you know it’s going to be a battle to remember! X-MEN / ALPHA FLIGHT #1 will be showing up in September, so mark your calendars!

Alpha Flight is once again referred to as the “northern stars”. This must have been written by the same guy who wrote the solicit for the creative team switch in Marvel Age #26!

Now finally, the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the FUN part of FUNday: the calendar! The back pages of many Marvel Age issues featured a comical calendar with staff birthdays, one-liner jokes and parodies of various Marvel characters. This issue had a calendar for May 1985 and Sasquatch appears on the 31st. Credits for the calendar are w-Jim Salicrup, a-Ron Zalme and c-Andy Yanchus, who was the regular colorist for Byrne’s 28-issue run on Alpha Flight volume 1 and numerous other Alpha Flight appearances.

Tags: Parody, Sasquatch