The Beatles Story

MARVEL COMICS SUPER SPECIAL — Issue No. 4, May 1978

Chance Shirley

Jan 31, 2023

Book: Marvel Comics Super Special

Issue No.: 4

Published: May 16, 1978

Title: “The Beatles Story”

Cover Price: $1.50

Format: Digital scan

The Marvel Comics Super Special color magazine would eventually primarily serve as the home for comic book adaptations of popular movies, flicks like Jaws 2, The Empire Strikes Back, and For Your Eyes Only. And Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which was the subject of Super Special issue no. 3. But of the magazine’s first five issues, three were dedicated to rock and roll bands — that’s two Kiss-centric issues and this one, which is billed on the cover as the ultimate unauthorized Beatles book.

This Super Special is one of those books that reminds me how much the world has fundamentally changed since the late 1970s. It opens with a Beatles appreciation text piece by David Kraft. Kraft is a fine writer, but this is the kind of thing would be a blog post these days, or maybe even a very long Twitter thread. The Super Special also includes a Beatles discography and a listing of the Beatles’ film and TV appearances, stuff which you could just find on a wiki these days. Heck, instead of reading about the band’s film and TV appearances, you could actually watch many of them on YouTube. And the stuff that isn’t available for free (like the Beatles feature film A Hard Day’s Night) can be rented on Apple TV for a few bucks.

Three panels from this issue showing the four Beatles first donning their gray matching suits with collarless jackets. Panel one is captioned "But, right now, there's just one more thing..." The band's manager says "Boys, if you're going to take the world by storm, you have to look the part -- and start setting your own style." Panel two features Paul saying "Say no more, leader man." Panel three shows all four band members in their suits. It is captioned "Thus, the four of them are finally set to conquer the cultural world. Their distinctive haircuts, modes of dress, mannerisms -- and, especially, their music -- are destined to mold the entire decade of the sixties! They are -- the Beatles!"

One thing that the internet hasn’t replaced is iconic comic book artists, and that’s the thing this book delivers, with pencils by the great George Pérez and inks by the great Klaus Janson. The two tackle Kraft’s fairly epic script (the comic book sections of the magazine add up to about 40 pages in total) that covers the rise and eventual fall of the Beatles, AKA one of the greatest and most influential rock music bands of all time. As a slightly-more-than-casual fan of the Beatles, I learned several things about their history that I didn’t previously know, and the artwork is, of course, excellent. Janson inking Pérez is interesting as he brings a lot of his own style to the proceedings, so the overall look is different than what I am used to seeing from Pérez.

(The lettering by Tom Orzechowski is also, of course, excellent.)

The Masked Rider of Stonerock Gulch

I also read The Flintstones issue no. 6, from Marvel’s 1978 line of licensed Hanna-Barbera books. This aimed-at-younger-kids book features three Flintstones stories — one where Fred Flintstone buys a cheap cattle ranch (he got a deal because the livestock consists of a single longhorn-asaurus), one where Fred’s car gets a flat tire (and those gigantic stone tires aren’t easy to change), and one where Fred is volunteering at the local fire department and has to deal with a fire-breathing dinosaur. Plus there’s a short story teasing the next issue of Yogi Bear’s comic book and a “Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera” text piece (written in the voice of Hanna-Barbera’s Space Ghost) about the various H-B action hero characters like Birdman, Mightor, and the Herculoids.

Next time — the incredible Hulk, plus my week twenty wrap-up!

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