Early 1970’s children’s comic published in the UK.Produced by the same publishers as TV comic, Countdown was a weekly comic that first appeared with issue 1 on the 20 February 1971. In early issues the pages were numbered in reverse order, with page 1 at the end – a gimmick which was derived from the comic’s title in order to create a “countdown” to the number one every week. This practice ceased at some point prior to it’s relaunch. Another unusual feature of this comic was the one of stories, rather that a continuing strip over several issues, a longer story would be featured, there for each issues contents varied from week to week.

It was to run under the title Countdown for 58 issues, when it was relaunched as TV Action. It finally ended after a total of 132 issues on 25 August 1973.

During its run as “Countdown” it carried strip and text stories from many different TV series including:

Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons
Doctor Who
Fireball XL5
Joe 90
Lady Penelope
The Persuaders!
The Secret Service
Stingray
Thunderbirds
UFO
Zero-X
Strips featured during its “TV Action” period included:

Alias Smith and Jones
Cannon
Dad’s Army
Doctor Who
Hawaii Five-O
Mission Impossible
The Protectors
Tightrope

Approximately two thirds of this comics run exist in this collection as well as Annuals and all will eventually appear upon this site.