TV Action: Difference between revisions

In the late 1960s, Polystyle was eager to start a magazine that appealed to a slightly older audience than its ''de facto'' television adaptation flagship, ''[[TV Comic]]''. Whereas that publication had debuted with "funny animal" comics and adaptations of young children's shows like ''[[Muffin the Mule]]'', they wanted something to compete with ''[[TV Century 21]]'', which had been replete with comics based on [[Gerry Anderson]] properties. When that magazine folded, the license to print Gerry Anderson comics became available. Polystyle seized on it, buying not just the right to do new comics, but to reprint what had come before in ''TV21''. Since shows like ''[[Stingray (series)|Stingray]]'', ''[[Thunderbirds (series)|Thunderbirds]]'', ''UFO'' and ''[[Fireball XL5 (series)|Fireball XL5]]'' all had a kind of space-age theme, a natural title was ''Countdown''. To reinforce the theme, Polystyle unusually numbered the pages backward, so that readers were "counting down" to 1 as they read.

Unfortunately for Polystyle, public enthusiasm for Anderson properties was drying up. All these shows, except for ''UFO'', had been cancelled by the time ''Countdown'' debuted. Dwindling sales figures quickly reflected the market's lack of appetite for a comic based mostly on programming that was no longer on the air. The publisher had to move to re-orient the publication. Polystyle sought licenses to produce wholly original comics based on popular action shows still in production. As the Gerry Anderson material gradually faded, so too did the ''Countdown'' name. At issue 59, they started numbering the pages in normal order. By the time the magazine became ''TV Action'' it had little to do with science fiction and much more to do with shows like ''Hawaii 5-0'', ''Tightrope'', ''[[Mission: Impossible (franchise)|Mission: Impossible]]'' and ''The Protectors''. Unfortunately, the changes never put the magazine on solid financial footing and it folded after only a little more than two years.

In the end, ''[[Doctor Who]]'' proved the longest-running strip of the magazine, having been left out of about five issues along the way. Although it failed to make the final issue of ''TV Action'', it survived by returning to the pages of ''TV Comic''.