In the late 1960s, Polystyle was eager to start a magazine that appealed to a slightly older audience than its de facto television adaptation flagship, TV Comic. Whereas that publication had debuted with "funny animal" comics and adaptations of young childrens' shows like Muffin the Mule, they wanted something to compete with TV Century 21, which had been replete with comics based on Gerry Anderson properties. When that magazine folded, the license to print Gerry Anderson comics became available. Polystyle seized on it, buying not just the right to do new comics, but to reprint what had come before in TV21. SInce shows like Stingray, Thunderbirds, UFO and Fireball XLV all had a kind of space-age theme, a natural title was Countdown. To reinforce the theme, Polystyle unusually numbered the