Smash! (comics)

Smash!
The cover of the Smash! annual 1969
Publication information
Publisher	International Publishing Corporation (IPC)
Schedule	Weekly
Format	Ongoing series
Publication date	February 1966 – April 1971
No. of issues	257
Creative team
Written by	Various including Stan Lee, Al Plastino
Artist(s)	Various including Jack Kirby, Bill Everett, Wally Wood, Whitney Ellsworth, Leo Baxendale, Ken Reid, Mike Higgs, Mike Brown, Geoff Campion, Eric Bradbury, Solano Lopez, John Stokes
Editor(s)	Alfred Wallace (Alf), Albert Cosser (Cos)

Smash! was a weekly British comic book, published in London by Odhams Press Ltd from 64 Long Acre and subsequently by IPC Magazines Ltd from (initially) 189 High Holborn and (latterly) Fleetway House in nearby Farringdon Street.

It ran for 257 issues, between 5th February 1966 and 3rd April 1971 (although, due to strikes and industrial disputes, publication was not continuous during that period). It then merged into Valiant. But the Smash! Annual continued to appear every year: the final Annual, cover-dated 1976, was published in October 1975.

Up until 1969, Smash! featured a mixture of American superhero strips alongside British humour and adventure strips. Thereafter, it featured only British strips.

During 1967 and 1968 Smash! was part of Odhams' Power Comics line, absorbing its sister titles Pow! on 14th September 1968 (issue 137), and Fantastic on 2nd November 1968 (issue 144). As Pow! and Fantastic had themselves already merged with Wham! and Terrific respectively, Smash! became the last survivor of the Power Comics lineup.

As with all the Power Comics, Smash! included black-and-white reprints of superhero strips originally published in America by Marvel Comics and DC Comics. The last of these, the Fantastic Four, ended with issue 162 in March 1969.

Smash! was sized 9.75" x 12" (#1-162) and 9.25" x 12" (#163-257), and had a four-colour cover and black-and-white interior.

Smash was owned by IPC, the International Publishing Corporation, a company formed in 1963 by Cecil Harmsworth King, chairman of the Daily Mirror and Sunday Pictorial (later the Sunday Mirror), through a series of corporate mergers. All the comics owned by it were published by one or other of the subsidiary companies brought together to form IPC, including Fleetway Publications Ltd and Odhams Press Ltd.