With the exception of the deliberately rebellious 2000AD, you wouldn't expect a boys' comic from the seventies to be in any way progressive, especially not one with a concept like The Crunch, which launched in 1979 and lasted almost exactly a year. The premise of The Crunch was that all the stories featured in its pages starred tough men of action in dangerous and stressful situations (to which the publication's name is referring). However, there's a few surprises to be found in its pages that you might not expect from a time when bigotry and toxic masculinity were the mainstream.
I've only read the first four issues as I write this, but I'm definitely interested enough to keep going. The stories in these issues are surprisingly varied, considering they all follow the basic premise outlined above. Notably, though, they're all very serious action stories, with no room for levity. The lead feature in each issue is Arena, about a journalist stripped of his citizenship by a fascist UK government and made to fight for his live in an underground gladiatorial arena. It's the other stories that really showcase what's interesting about the comic, though. Hitler Lives! stars a disillusioned Nazi soldier in 1945. He was conscripted, and fought to defend his country, though he hated the insanity of the Nazi regime, and he's long sick of war. Lying about having an urgent message for the fuhrer, he aims to infiltrate Hitler's bunker and assassinate him, only to learn that he's already dead. Almost immediately after this, he's subject to another revelation: that the Hitler who died in that bunker was actually just a body double left to trick the allies! He runs away, hoping to inform the allies of what he's seen, but of course, he's arrested as a Nazi, and when he tries to tell his story, everyone thinks he's gone insane from the stresses of wartime. The Kyser Experiment is the comic's weak link, being a boring story about a soccer team, whos on-staff physician is actually an evil scientist gradually replacing them with mindless clones. The Mantracker tells of the violent adventures of Bearpaw Jay, a Native American ex-soldier who returns home just in time to see he grandad murdered by bank robbers. He spends his life savings on weaponry and becomes a bounty hunter, taking down a new set of crooks each issue. This series is pretty much pure action, and Jay has no mercy or pity for his quarries.
Clancy and the Man is a very seventies TV-style story of two police detectives in the fictional American city of Las Minola. It's another series with a man of colour in one of the lead roles, and the two cops are constantly going undercover to combat gangs, some of whom also happen to be racist. (Something I should mention is a character and series named Ebony, who was printed in later issues of The Crunch. She was not only the first action heroine to have her own strip in a UK boys' comic, but also the first black woman to do the same. And yet she seems to have been totally forgotten. Hopefully the people at Treasury of British Comics will put out a reprint at some point). There's also The Walking Bombs, which sees two British agents investigating a series of mysterious terrorist attacks, and Who Killed Cassidy?, about an American traffic cop who finds himself embroiled in the mysteries and conspiracies surrounding the assassination of a fictional US president (though the whole story is obviously a thinly-veiled reference to JFK). A non-comic feature that's also worthy of note is the unusual letters page. While most comics of the time would have a page where readers could send in letters about the comic itself, usually answered by a fictional "editor" character (most famously, 2000AD's Tharg, who's still at it today!), The Crunch did something a little different. Instead of normal letters, it had a problem page, into which boys could write in asking for advice on school, friendship, romance, and other things they were dealing with, and they'd be answered by some guy named Andy. Andy's advice was almost always something along the lines of "adults know best, so follow the rules and do what they say", but as a concept, it's still something way outside of the norm for a comic aimed at boys, especially one from an era when boys and men were encouraged to keep their problems to themselves.
All in all, The Crunch is an intersting comic. I have no idea how well it sold, but its quick demise seems to have been down to the comic publisher trend of "merging" titles at the drop of a hat to save costs and try to consolidate readerships. Maybe if that hadn't have happened, it would have remained a rival title to 2000AD, the last survivor of that era of British comics? Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised by these first few issues, and I'll definitely be continuing onwards with it.
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