Maybe I'm A-Maze-d Monday: More fun than a barrel of corgis

Since we can't participate in the London 2012 Olympics of which this blog is the Official Comics Blog, why don't we all participate in an entirely different kind of sporting event for the evening that comes straight to us from our pals in London: a thrilling Captain America maze from the British Marvel Story Book Annual 1967!


"Captain America's Quest" maze from Marvel Story Book Annual 1967 (UK)

Pretty cool, huh? And you don't even need a guy with a baseball bat to hit Nazis over the head like that guy in that movie! ("Thump!")

This British Marvel Story Book Annual is quite a different animal from the American Marvel annuals and even the UK comics annuals that reprint comic stories from US Marvels.


Cover art by R. W. Smethurst

Only it only cost you ten and six! (That's 10 shillings and sixpence.) In post-decimalization Sterling that would have been 52½p: the inflation equivalent of £7.70 ($12.09) today. That's an awful good value for a 100-page hardcover, full-color book. Here's the gorgeous bright endpapers:



The Story Book Annual consists of several brightly illustrated prose stories starring the major Marvel heroes of the sixties (no Avengers, X-Men or Daredevil, but pretty much everybody else), puzzles like the one above, joke pages and informational features...and my favorite feature, a few Marvel board games you can play with dice and markers—use any coins for markers, if you don't have ha'pennys on you. And if you haven't got a ha'penny, then God bless you.

Here's the Sorry-esque Fantastic Four board game where each of the FF must rush back to the Baxter Building (presumably after Johnny has blazed that big "4" in the sky). Do you want to play Back to Headquarters? Sure, we all do!



Just save or drag the two board game images (there's a pair of them, one on the left and one on the right) to your desktop—the original images should each be 700 pixels tall. Print 'em both out separately on heavy paper or card stock (Reed Richards reminds you to make certain you have plenty of ink in your color inkjet cartridges, which apparently he invented), then trim and tape together! Hooray! Hours (or at least a good 45 minutes) of fun and excitement with the Fantastic Four! Play it again and again, and then give yourself an Olympic Medal when you win! Excelsior, true believers!