The "Power Comics" line were five titles produced by Odhams Press between 20th June 1964 (when the first issue of Wham! appeared) and 8th March 1969 (the last issue of Smash! to be published by Odhams, though the title would continue as part of the IPC stable). The first two titles in the line were Wham! and Smash!, later joined by Pow!, Fantastic and finally the short lived Terrific. While the first three titles were essentially standard British weekly anthology titles, they did early on begin incorporating some reprint material from the early American Marvel Comics such as Spider-Man, Thor, Iron Man, Dr. Strange, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, the Avengers and the X-Men (as well as the Batman newspaper strip from rival DC Comics), and by the time the final two titles appeared they were almost totally dedicated to the Marvel reprints, albeit still accompanied by some UK originated humour and adventure material (Fantastic and Terrific also featured original pin-ups which were the earliest published work of Marvel artist Barry Windsor Smith). All four of Smash!'s companion titles had disappeared by November 1968 (the line consisted of five titles for just nine months between April 1967 and January 1968) and the transfer from Odhams to IPC marked the end of American material in Smash! The Power Comics attempted (with some success) to replicate the style of the American Marvel Comics by having a trio of editors, Bart, Cos and Alf (Bob Bartholomew, Albert Cosser and Alf Wallace) interact with readers in much the same friendly, chatty manner as Stan Lee had originated at Marvel. The American material was, however, frequently edited to change American spellings and slang terms, and Marvel's credit boxes containing the names of the creators were removed and either left blank or covered with new artwork. For the first few months of the reprints, Marvel were not even acknowledged as the source of the material, and when they finally were, it was by a reader in the letters page!
Following the dissolution of the Power Comics line, Marvel eventually began reprinting their own material in Britain via its newly created Marvel UK imprint from 1972 onwards.
