The Mighty World Of Marvel

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The Mighty World of Marvel #1 published in 1972

The Mighty World Of Marvel (commonly shortened to MWOM) was Marvel UK's first-ever title, published in 1972 and is also the name of a similar current comic printed by Panini Comics

[edit] The Original 1972-1985

Starting out publishing reprints of 1960s stories featuring Marvel's existing characters including Spider-Man, The Hulk and the Fantastic Four, it proved to be a great success. Marvel gained a foothold in the (at the time) vast UK weekly comic market. Its success allowed Marvel to cross-market and later introduce non-superhero UK-reprint titles such as Planet of the Apes and Star Wars.

Spending much of the 1970s as Marvel UK's flagship title it carried on providing black & white reprints of American Marvel four-colour material. The monthly format of the U.S. material was crudely adapted to fit the British weekly format, with stories being split up.

This situation changed when in 1978 Dez Skinn was hired by Stan Lee to revamp the now ailing Marvel UK. Skinn revamped all of Marvel UK's titles, including The Mighty World of Marvel by making it a monthly title and renaming it Marvel Superheroes. In issue 377 the first of a new series of original Captain Britain stories started, continuing directly from Hulk Weekly, which also featured original material.

These stories were written by Dave Thorpe and drawn by Alan Davis. However, erratic distribution affected sales and eventually Marvel Superheroes was cancelled with issue 388 in 1982. This ended the continuous run of Marvel UK's longest-running title, but re-appeared re-numbered from 'issue one' in the same year. This also mainly concentrated on reprint material, but it did later feature the end of Alan Moore and Alan Davis's Captain Britain story. After Moore left, Jamie Delano took over writing duties of Captain Britain but this volume of MWOM was cancelled with issue 16 and Captain Britain left to his own monthly title in 1985.

[edit] The New Version 2003+

The title remained in limbo until Panini Comics obtained the license for Marvel UK in 1995 and began publishing it as a Marvel Collectors' Edition in February 2003 featuring reprints of American Marvel material, it reprints normally 3 comics per issue and different from other Collector's Editions each comic is always from a different American comic. It is 76 pages long with most stories lasting 22 pages. Issue 50 was 100 pages long to celbrate the milestone.

It reprints comics from all eras of Marvel history, from 1960's [[Daredevil (Marvel Comics)|Daredevil] right up to 2005's Marvel Team-Up, it also regularly prints spotlights on the more obscure characters featured. These spotlights are a page long and feature a fictional charcter biography with pictures and a description of their abilities.

Mighty World Of Marvel is referred to as Mighty World Of Marvel; The Mighty World Of Marvel and MWOM in about equal measure.

It initially reprinted a Hulk and a Daredevil story per issue with a revolving guest spot. This format has now been replaced with 3 revolving guest spots; comics are reprinted for 1-6 issues before being replaced by something else.

Characters featured include She-Hulk; Blade; Ghost Rider; Captain Britain; the Fantastic Four; Daredevil; Hulk; Nick Fury and the Defenders.

MWOM has also printed many Marvel team-up stories featuring multiple superheroes such as Volume 3 of Marvel Team-Up and the Contest of Champions II.