Comments on Blimey! It's another blog about comics!: 40 Year Flashback: WHIZZER AND CHIPS No.1

Any chance of a scan of the Odd Ball or Minnies Mi...

2009-12-14T13:15:19.794Z

Any chance of a scan of the Odd Ball or Minnies Mixer pages - I've got a feeling I had the first ish, and a peep at those would clinch it..

Isn't about time someone did a best of Whizzer and Chips reprints annual? Be a great Christmas for oldies like us..

Strange thing is, the work was still at Egmont, al...

2009-10-12T12:51:11.058+01:00

Strange thing is, the work was still at Egmont, albeit not in the old comic format, so I wonder if they tried adapting to suit? After Buster I moved on to be a scriptwriter on Sonic the Comic, Lego Adventures, and CiTV TellyTots magazine. Then things like Know-How and Toxic came up where I could draw as well as write again. British comics have always evolved and one has to move with it really. Admittedly there wasn't a great deal of work out there for everyone, so perhaps some found doors closed to them, I don't know.

Quite probably re reprint content - you have the d...

2009-10-11T23:27:48.564+01:00

Quite probably re reprint content - you have the distinct advantage that you can probably check one of the late copies, which I can't! :) In saying that, I could have been fooled by Bunter if I hadn't known Reg Parlett was in his mid-80s and the style hadn't been *so* old!

Jimmy was the very last Fleetway artist to change over to DCT, just as you say, and I would certainly accept that he didn't make that jump until after Buster went 100% reprint, just as I would also accept that with the possible exception of Sid Burgon, most of those who changed probably did wait until the Fleetway work dried up.

Others seem to have simply given up weekly comic work or retired altogether - like Colin Whittock, Martin Baxendale, Norman Mansbridge, Nigel Edwards, Roy Mitchell, Gordon Hill, Tony Hutchings, and finally Jack Oliver - of the above, I only occasionally see Mitch's Christian work and some years ago, Colin's contributions to a police magazine.

I should really add to my earlier contribution that I liked Graham Exton's scripts for Sweeney Toddler, and I learned with interest some years ago that Tom Paterson would be asked to work from Graham's draft layouts in lieu of a typed script from time to time. It's just that Graham's execution in ink was atrocious - we know artists who can write well and writers who can draw well, but Graham was a writer who could design but not realise those designs satisfactorily.

Thanks for the correction Andy. W&C was mostly r...

2009-10-11T20:35:54.365+01:00

Thanks for the correction Andy. W&C was *mostly* reprint at the end though wasn't it?

As I understand it, Fleetway were finding that the work of some of the people you mention simply wasn't as popular as it used to be so the editors didn't put up much of a fight when the artists moved over to Thomsons. One could perhaps put the blame on the scriptwriters for that of course, and perhaps with different strips they would still have been at the top of the polls.

A few of them had already been Thomson artists in the Sixties as you know, so it was a case of them going back to their roots. Apart from Nixon and Walker I'm not sure if the time scale backs up the theory that they all "jumped ship". Surely Jimmy Hansen worked for Buster right up until it went all reprint? Even so, as a freelancer he also worked for other companies, such as Redan on their junior Batman comic, and later for Titan on the Wallace & Gromit monthly.

I bought that comic when I was 8. Lew, I love this...

2009-10-11T20:32:23.803+01:00

I bought that comic when I was 8. Lew, I love this blog even though it makes me sad that all those comics I collected as a nipper (and teenager), I no longer have. Keep up the excellent work.

W&C contained new content right up to the very end...

2009-10-11T14:39:02.108+01:00

W&C contained new content right up to the very end - Terry Bave contributed Odd Ball and Tarman of the Jungle, Jimmy Hansen contributed Sid and Shiner and the Bumpkin Billionaires, and I'm pretty sure from memory that Bobby's Ghoul was in W&C. At the end, the reprint count wasn't actually that much worse than the 21st Century Beano - but I felt thoroughly ripped off when the 24 page W&C cost rather more than 75% of the 32 page Buster.

Truthfully, the end came a few years earlier when DCT poached Bob Nixon and then Tom Paterson. After that it was delaying the inevitable - Graham Exton's artwork on Sweeney Toddler was atrocious, in comparison with his layouts and scripts.

I would make an argument that DCT was just way ahead of the game in obtaining Bob and Tom's services, and printing in full colour rather than solely primary and secondaries.

Simply, Euan Kerr and Morris Heggie had the initiative and the management backing to stay many steps ahead of Fleetway, whose comics became a substantially inferior product - every economy made went to the benefit of DCT as Terry Bave, Brian Walker, Trevor Metcalfe and ultimately Jimmy Hansen jumped ship.

Yes. In those days comics were dated a week ahead....

2009-10-11T13:57:21.933+01:00

Yes. In those days comics were dated a week ahead. Issue 1 definitely came out on Oct.11th.

hm are you sure your dates correct? Cover says 18t...

2009-10-11T13:54:36.269+01:00

hm are you sure your dates correct? Cover says 18th October. Good blog though even if its a week early.

Cheers for that, Lew. That's made my Sunday that h...

2009-10-11T11:23:56.614+01:00

Cheers for that, Lew. That's made my Sunday that has.