When it came to The CRUNCH...

This week in 1979 D.C. Thomson had a new title on the stands. The Crunch was a more dynamic, more brutal comic than their usual adventure papers and was perhaps their attempt to rival IPC's 2000AD. 

Truth be told, D.C. Thomson had instigated this new breed of dynamic comics for boys when they launched Warlord in 1974 (which in turn inspired IPC to launch Battle, then Action, and 2000AD). The Crunch was just following what Warlord had begun with page designs that led with large splash panels and a tougher tone to the stories compared to veteran papers such as Victor or Tiger.

The lead strip in The Crunch No.1 was Arena, where a corrupt government in the 21st Century condemns anyone who speaks against them as criminals and sentences them to fight to death in an arena. (We're probably getting close to that now.) Written by Dave H. Taylor and drawn by Enrique Alcatena, Arena has recently been collected by Bear Alley Books which you can order here if you want a copy:
http://bearalleybooks.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/arena.html

One of the most popular characters in The Crunch was The Mantracker, AKA Bounty Hunter 'Bearpaw Jay'.

Episode one was pretty violent for a DC Thomson comic, with an innocent bystander being shot in the guts by a bank robber...

Equally violent was the opening episode of The Walking Bombs which began with an impressive centrespread by Denis McLoughlin. One panel showed military leaders being incinerated by a nuclear explosion, followed by the murder of British government officials...

If the threat of the 'Walking Bombs' wasn't nerve-shattering enough, the next story revived the most evil man in history in Hitler Lives! Patrick Wright was the artist of this post-war tale of Hitler surviving WW2...

Could things get any more tense? How's about Who Killed Cassidy? - with the (fictional) American president Jack Cassidy being assassinated! A few pages later, the supposed killer is found hanged, and a conspiracy thriller begins!

I didn't pay The Crunch much attention back in 1979 as I was more into American comics by then. However, I recently bought a complete run of the comic cheaply (it only ran for 54 issues) and was very impressed. It's a great comic! (You can be sure I'll be featuring other issues at a later date.)   

This week in 1969: TIGER AND JAG

It's been a while since I featured Tiger on this blog so here's a quick look at the issue that was on sale from 19th to 25th April 1969. This was the 4th combined issue of Tiger and Jag, with IPC having taken over the Fleetway comics and trimming back the weaker selling titles. The Roy of the Rovers cover is by Yvonne Hutton, whose linework still looks fresh and modern even today. Tragically, Yvonne died in a car accident in the early 1990s. 

The following Skid Solo story is drawn by John Vernon. It's a significant episode because it introduces 'Sparrow' Smith, who became a regular supporting character. (Click on all pages to see them much larger.)

The Nosey half-pager at the end of the Skid Solo story was drawn by Alf Saporito, who a year later became the regular cover artist on Gus Gorilla for Cor!! 

Since its merger with Jag, Tiger had inherited that comic's web offset printing process which was a higher standard of printing, and allowed artists to paint their colour pages instead of relying on the flat colour overlays that the newsprint comics used. Just look at the quality of this full colour Football Family Robinson centrespread by Joe Colquhoun...

Tiger later became an all-sports comic, but in 1969 it still featured a variety of subjects. One such strip was Saber, King of the Jungle, illustrated by the excellent Denis McLoughlin...

Here's a few snippets of some of the other strips in Tiger and Jag that week, starting with Typhoon Tracy drawn by Graham Allen using a less cartoony style than that which he'd used on The Nervs for Smash!

Custer by David Sque...

Black Patch the Wonder Horse by Sandy James...

...and the long-running Johnny Cougar by John Gillatt.

Finally, to add to the flavour of the year 1969, here's a few of the adverts that appeared in that issue, including one of the legendary "Great News, Pals!" announcements for two comics joining forces...

By the way, - you can see more classic ads from other comics in previous posts on this blog. Here's a few links:

http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2007/03/junk-food-and-comics.html

http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2007/03/seventies-nostalgia-adverts-in-comics.html

http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/seventies-nostalgia-more-adverts-from.html

http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/more-ads-from-1970s-comics.html

http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/ads-from-comics-of-1960s.html

http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/advertisements-for-comics-of-past.html

http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2007/03/anti-smoking-strips-of-sixties.html

The Art of Denis McLoughlin

 One of the UK's most renowned adventure comic artists is to be the subject of a high quality book this summer. Published by The Book Palace and scheduled for August, The Art of Denis McLoughlin looks at the work of this superb illustrator who perhaps may be best remembered by most readers of this blog as the artist of Saber, King of the Jungle for Tiger and Fury's Family for Thunder in the early 1970s. However, his career stretched back further than that and McLoughlin was an excellent artist of western strips, most notably for the Buffalo Bill Annuals of the 1950s. 

Here are the details of the upcoming book, from the official website:

Author: David Ashford, edited by Peter Richardson

Artist: Denis McLoughlin

Publisher: Book Palace Books, August 2012

Number of pages: 272

Format: Hard Cover with Dust Wrapper/Jacket; Full Colour illustrations

Size: 9" x 12" (220mm x 297mm)

ISBN: 9781907081088.

Written by David Ashford, one of McLoughlin's close friends, the book celebrates every aspect of the artist's career, from examples of his earliest work whilst still in uniform to his lengthy association with T.V. Boardman, for whom he produced hundreds of dust jackets for their Bloodhound crime series and their yearly best-selling Buffalo Bill Annual.

The Boardman covers are almost unique in British publishing history as no major publisher relied on a single artist to produce so many of their jackets. But tracking down useable examples has proved to be a long and gruelling process. As Peter says: "We needed high quality scans of all the covers we sought and the logistics of having to carry a scanner and computer to spend a day getting under the feet of a McLoughlin devotee, which would have secured us a reasonable number of scans but by no means all the ones I craved gave us pause for thought. Photographing the books would have been quicker, but the results are light years away from a scan. It simply wasn't an option.".

Hooking up with San Francisco-based collector Mark Terry gave fresh impetus to the book as Mark already had a network of contacts with collectors through his facsimile dustjacket business; the finished book will now contain dozens of examples, carefully restored.
The book contains many examples of McLoughlin's comic strips and a biography by David Ashford, as well as behind-the-scenes photos and examples of his original artwork.

The definitive book and biography of Denis McLouglin, packed with full colour images of his art and a complete bibliography.

The book features reproductions from the surviving original artwork, "pulls" in high quality print, never-before-seen photos chronicling the artist's life and page after page of some of the most stunning artwork ever to see print in the 20th century.

The art of Denis McLoughlin is available to pre-order now from The Book Palace:
http://www.bookpalace.com/acatalog/Home_Denis_McLoughlin_230.html#aAODM

Stunning work from the 1956 Buffalo Bill Wild West Annual