UFO Comic Anthology Volume One by Shaqui Le Vesconte

The Protectors exist to protect those in peril, its members are the super agents of the world’s best detective agencies, who now work for a private organisation which is unrestricted by legal red tape.

The complete strips, or ‘big stories’, were promoted with a front cover illustration, and after a colour photo centrespread introduction in issue 100, this was how The Protectors started… ‘TV spots’ were listed for both TV Action and TV Comic that week, on a form for shops to place new or bolster existing orders.Ĭome issue 101, perhaps the only familiar thing to readers was the rotation of strips, a feature of the Countdown era, where they alternated between complete stories, serials and being rested for a few issues. T he relaunch did warrant being listed as a ‘boom issue’ in Smiths Trade News – the trade term for publications which had additional advertising which could increase sales.

‘ Yes!’ was the emphatic reply, ‘ We shall incorporate these in a new-style TV Action beginning with issue 101’. The following issue, reader Carl Jackson from Birmingham had his letter published asking if The Protectors could be put in TV Action. Issue 96 had already flagged that The Protectors, along with Cannon and Droopy, were ‘ coming soon in TV Action’ with a half page photo montage. While the UFO strip had a high profile throughout, the other Anderson strips dwindled away to be replaced by popular television fare such as The Persuaders!, Hawaii Five-O and Mission: Impossible. actor Robert Vaughn, with Nyree Dawn Porter and Tony Anholt, the series is usually overlooked among the Anderson series, and its appearance in TV Action means the comic tie-in is usually equally dismissed. With contemporary action series becoming increasingly vogue on television, their next production – which the Andersons admit was thrust upon them by Lew Grade – had to follow suit, and The Protectors was born. Unlike the 1960s, where one Anderson series followed another on an almost annual basis, UFO was to be the last future orientated production for a few years. The Protectors arrive with a ‘boxfull of trouble’ in TV Action issue 101.

UFO Comic Anthology Volume One by Shaqui Le Vesconte