[ Retro Scan of the Week ] Blip: Marvel’s Video Game Magazine
April 20th, 2015 by Benj Edwards
Marvel should turn this into a movie
In 1983, comic book giant Marvel experimented with publishing a video game magazine called Blip. Here is the cover of the premiere issue, which features Little House on the Prairie star Matthew Laborteaux.
Wikipedia says this about Laborteaux, who was apparently a dedicated video game fan:
Laborteaux is a skilled video game player. In October 1981 he finished in tenth place for Centipede at the Atari, Inc. world championships, and in April 1982 became the United States Pac-Man champion at a People-sponsored tournament, with a score of 1,200,000.
Celebrities are people too.
Regarding the magazine itself: Blip retained the size, shape, weight, and thickness of a typical 1980s Marvel comic book. It was even printed on the same type of paper, likely using the same presses Marvel used for its superhero books at the time.
I haven’t thumbed through this magazine in years — it’s currently in storage — but I remember being sadly underwhelmed by its content when I bought this copy off eBay about a decade ago. I recall thinking that the printing technology did not reproduce photos very well, which did not lend itself to splashy, colorful video game ads or screenshots. Perhaps partly because of this, the mag only lasted seven issues.
The Internet Archive currently hosts scans of all seven issues of Blip.
Discussion Topic of the Week: Have you ever read any comics (strips or books) based on video games? What are your favorites?
April 20th, 2015 at 6:03 pm
I remember that and being shocked it was a whole 1.00! That was most of my comic money! That meant I could either get GI Joe or Starwars! The humanity of it all! Actually it was pretty dull since we mostly played the games it talked about on the 2600 and it dealt with just the cabinet games if I remember correctly.
April 20th, 2015 at 11:21 pm
Atari Force.
April 21st, 2015 at 12:26 pm
Thank You for the Internet Archive link! I wanted to try and find scans before I finished reading the article.
I read the Legend of Zelda manga and the Nintendo Power Zelda comics.
May 17th, 2015 at 7:56 pm
More relevant than his Little House connection, was that he was the star of “Whiz Kids”. One of those shows that I tried so hard to watch, but seemed to always be preempted for something else. Same thing that happened to “Auto Man” during the 84 winter olympics.