DC Thomson launched The Crunch in January 1979 as an attempt to compete with rival publisher IPC’s 2000AD.
The lead strip was ‘Arena’ in which a corrupt 21st Century government treated those who spoke against it as criminals and sentenced them to fights to the death in an arena. The comic ran for 54 issues before it merged with Hotspur.
Regular strips included:
- Arena – Mark Sabor fought for his life in the 21st century
- Clancy And The Man
- The Hit Man – Hugh Marston killed to order for British Intelligence
- The Kyser Experiment – Dr Kyser performed experiments on a football team to try and make them unbeatable
- The Mantracker – aka bounty hunter Bearpaw Jay
- The Mill Street Mob
- Operation Omega
- Plague 2000 – Brett Cantrell battled to save mankind from annihilation
- Programmed To Kill
- Space Wars
- Starhawk – Sol Rynn was “Starhawk”, protector of the galaxies
- Striker From Nowhere
- The Walking Bombs
- Who Killed Cassidy? – Ross Harper hunted down the assassin of the POTUS