All-Action, All-Picture

Comic covers, posters, and ads (mainly from UK weeklies of the 70's and 80's) plus images from movies, TV shows and games.

[all-action-all-picture]

Warlord No. 151, dated 13 August 1977. Killer Kane cover by Jeff Bevan.

Inside was a 'Starting Next Week' ad for what would prove to be one of the most popular strips to appear in Warlord - Kampfgruppe Falken.

D.C. Thomson & Co. Ltd.

[all-action-all-picture]

The Story of Tron. 7" single and story book from 1982 to tie in with the movie. Although it was a 7" single it was to be played at 33 1/3 rpm instead of the usual 45 rpm. I haven't listened to this in years (mainly as I don't have a record player).

I remember seeing a few of these. Must have been back in the 70's and 80's. Not sure how popular they were though.

[all-action-all-picture]

Get to de Choppa! Action Force Datafile featuring Chopper, the SAS Pilot from Battle Action Force cover dated 5 May 1984. Chopper was an Action Force Series Two figure from 1983. Like his fellow SAS buddy, Sparrow Hawk, he was a repaint of the Mission Pilot and Helicopter Pilot figures from the Series One range in 1982. Art by Jose Gonzalez.

[all-action-all-picture]

Warlord No. 307, dated 9 August 1980. The Knight's Cross cover by Jeff Bevan. This was another strip with Germans as the lead characters. This time it was unit of paratroopers who were led by an arrogant soldier who had his eyes set on winning a Knights Cross. It ran until No. 318 with the action moving from Crete to Russia. DC Thomson.

[all-action-all-picture]

Warlord No. 359, dated 8 August 1981. Cassidy cover. In this strip Cassidy had joined The Flying Tigers - US pilots who had formed a volunteer group fighting the Japanese during the invasion of China in the early 1940's.

He plane shown is a P-40 (or P-40B), the Curtiss Warhawk. The Warhawk was painted with the famous shark face or shark mouth that had been copied from an RAF Curtiss Tomahawk (there was also a Curtiss Kittyhawk but they were all essentially different versions of the same plane). The big air scoop was just crying out for a big set of teeth to be painted on it. DC Thomson.

[all-action-all-picture]

Leatherslade Farm, Buckinghamshire circa 13 August 1963. The staging point and hideout for the gang behind The Great Train Robbery which had occurred on 8 August. £2.6 million was stolen at the time (somewhere between £50-60 million today).

16 robbers were 'trackside' at the robbery (with a few others having an involvement before and after the event). All bar one had criminal records. They hid out at Leatherslade briefly after the robbery but started to move out on the 9 August after monitoring news reports of what the police were doing.

On 14 August Roger Cordrey was the first to be caught following a tip-off when he paid in cash to rent a garage to hide his loot. The owner of the garage, a policeman's widow, put two and two together and Cordrey was arrested along with a William Boal who was in his company at the time. Cordrey had been the leader of a gang called The South Coast Raiders and had earlier come up with a simple but effective method of stopping trains by rigging the trackside signals.

Eleven of the Great Train Robbers were later identified from fingerprints and other forensic evidence found by the police at Leatherslade (such as footwear marked with yellow paint used to try and disguise ex-military vehicles they had used in the robbery). No better way to disguise a military vehicle in rural 1960's England than to slap bright yellow paint on it.

Four men apparently kept gloves on the whole time they were at the farm and were never officially identified.

Cordrey's fingerprints hadn't been found at the farm so unlucky for him that he chose the wrong place to stash his cash. He ended up being the only member of the trackside robbers to plead guilty but did receive a lighter sentence as a result. He was released in 1971.

William Boal, arrested with Cordrey as mentioned above, was somehow mis-identified from the yellow paint evidence. He was convicted in 1964 and died in prison of a brain tumour in June 1970. It's now accepted he took no role in either planning or carrying out the robbery and wasn't at the Farm. The moral of the story is be careful of who you try to rent a garage with.

[all-action-all-picture]

A well worn picture sleeve from the 1978 UK single release of Sweet Talkin' Woman by Electric Light Orchestra. It was the third single from the Out of the Blue album and this copy is pressed in a purple vinyl.

The idea for the sleeve originated with John Kosh who had designed the circular ELO logo for the sleeve of 1976's A New World Record LP (as well as loads of other stuff). This was then adapted into the 'UFO' sleeve used on Out of the Blue by Shusei Nagaoka.

[all-action-all-picture]

"Wings. The band The Beatles could have been!" - Alan Partridge.

Mull of Kintyre. Written by Paul McCartney and Denny Laine (former singer and guitarist with The Moody Blues). The single still appears to be the fourth biggest selling single ever in the UK charts (Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody is at No. 3 but that might include both the 1975 and 1991 releases).

Recorded at McCartney's Spirit of Ranachan studio, High Park Farm, Kintyre, Scotland. Bagpipes courtesy of the Campbelltown Pipe Band.

UK 7" single picture sleeve for this double A side (?! I don't think I've ever heard the other side) from 1977.

[chernobog13]

The Red Skull by Jack Kirby.

[all-action-all-picture]

Paul McCartney and the Frog Chorus. This band of unknowns came out of nowhere, got to No. 3 in the Charts and never had another hit single. We All Stand Together from the animated featurette Rupert and the Frog Song. UK 7" single picture sleeve for this one-hit wonder from 1984.

Produced by someone called George Martin. Probably talented enough but just never got the right breaks.

Joking aside, McCartney wasn't really an unknown and had some hits in the 1960's with another band.

Eric Stewart, of 10cc fame, is one of the backing singers.

[all-action-all-picture]

F1 News Vol.2 No. 12, dated 3 August 1993. Damon Hill looking a bit miffed after his German Grand Prix ends with an engine failure just two laps from the end. The 45 lap race was won by Alain Prost with Michael Schumacher second and Mark Blundell (not to be confused with his similar sounding Ligier teammate Martin Brundle) third.

Confronted with the ban on tobacco advertising Schumacher, below, definitely had no Camel sponsorship here whatsoever.

[all-action-all-picture]

"I will not give that order!" One of my guilty pleasures is The Rock. Definitely in my top 10 movies. Lot of great actors in it but Michael Biehn, 70 today, steals the show in one of cinema's greatest shower scenes.

[all-action-all-picture]

"Like playing ping-pong with four balls" was John Barry's description of working with a-ha. It was also Barry's last contribution to the Bond franchise in a relationship that dated back to Dr. No in 1962. Sadly I've been unable to confirm whether a cello was used in the recording of this theme.

UK 7" single picture sleeve from 1987. I think the last great Bond theme was A View To A Kill by the Durans. I like this song too but it doesn't quite top their predecessor's effort. It's still memorable though and works well in the movie.

[all-action-all-picture]

At Your Command feature on the Boeing F4B-2 from Battle dated 23 July 1983. Treasury of British Comics.

[all-action-all-picture]

Eye of the Tiger by Survivor from Rocky lll. UK 7" single picture sleeve from 1982. Written by band members Frankie Sullivan and Jim Peterik. They were commissioned to write the song after Queen had turned down the use of 1980's Another One Bites The Dust. A strange choice as that song was already associated with sports and the Rocky franchise was going strong. I think this all worked out for the best though and we ended up with a song that better suited the movie.

[all-action-all-picture]

Strawberry Fields Forever c/w Penny Lane by The Beatles. UK 7" single picture sleeve which, from what I have read, is a re-release from 1976. The band had split in 1970 but EMI's contract with them only came to an end in 1976 and they were still able to release existing material.

In keeping with the other re-released singles the band were featured on the back in a photo from the time of its original release (in this case 1967). Lots of facial furniture and menswear options on display here. George just managing to slightly outdo the others with his choice of headgear.

[all-action-all-picture]

We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome) by Tina Turner from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. UK 7" single picture sleeve from 1985. The song was written by Terry Britten and Graham Lyle who had written "What's Love Got To Do With It?" in 1984 for Tina Turner.

The image on the sleeve cover was from the movie poster by Richard Amsel. This was his last movie poster in a very successful career. Just look up his name and you'll see a lot of familiar movie posters. He died in 1985.

I went to see this movie in the cinema, probably on a Saturday afternoon at the ABC in Belfast. I was a bit disappointed in it. I remember Barry Norman, the BBC movie critic on (presumably) Film 85, describing it along the lines of "not so much Mad Max, more slightly cheesed-off Max".