PANTO PRANKS (1949)

Earlier I showed a copy of Panto Playtime Comic that had been published in 1948. Here's the follow-up, that was published a year later in 1949. 

Panto Pranks had the same publisher as its predecessor, (The Hotspur Publishing Co. Ltd. of Manchester) but was a slicker affair. Although only having eight pages, it was printed entirely in bottle green ink throughout (with orange spot colour on four pages) in the more expensive photogravure method (like Eagle, TV21, early issues of Wham! etc). 

The entire comic was completely designed, written, and drawn by Denis Gifford, a comics all-rounder long before most of us were born. Some of the gags were a bit creaky even for 1949, and the connection to pantomimes somewhat tenuous in places, but it's still an interesting example of the post-war British independent comic. (And unlike most of today's indie comics, this would have been sold in newsagents, back when such retailers were eager to satisfy the demands of kids thirsty for comics.) Here are a few strips from this one-off comic...

PANTO PLAYTIME COMIC (1948)

Well, it's the right time of year (Oh no it's not! Oh yes it is!) so I thought I'd dig this comic out of my collection. Panto Playtime Comic was one of the numerous British independent comics published after the war. It had just eight pages on cheap paper, with hasty spot colour on four, and was the size of an American comic. It was published by The Hotspur Publishing Co. Ltd, Gloucester Street, Manchester and was a one-off. 

The artist on all of the humour strips was Alan Fraser, who had a simple and very distinctive style. His artwork and the somewhat surreal stories remind me a little of Nigel Auchterlounie's work on The Numskulls in the present day Beano.

The comic featured one adventure strip, Dexter Lee, drawn in a basic style by an anonymous artist. The strange thing was, the same story was also told in text form on the same page as Crime in the Haunted Manor. Whilst it was common in British comics then to have text beneath each panel telling the story, this parallel storytelling method seems a bit baffling and unnecessary. The strip is a much more condensed version of the story, so it actually works better as a prose tale. 

There was also a different Pantomime theme comic by the same publisher a year later, which I'll show in my next posting.