Advance Preview: TAMMY AND JINTY SPECIAL

Rebellion are spoiling us with the number of specials they're publishing this year, and the latest is the Tammy and Jinty Special, reviving the 1970s girls' comic, which will be in the shops on Wednesday 26th June.

Featuring a great variety of art styles, the special reboots classic characters for a modern generation and includes new ones too. Rocky of the Rovers (Roy's sister) makes her debut by Rob Williams and Lisa Henke, and The Enigma Variation brings us stunning artwork by DaNi from a script by Grain McEntee. 

The most controversial will probably be Bella of the Bar, with the photo-realistic style of John Armstrong replaced by a more cartoony approach by Venessa Cardinali (script by Rachel Ball). Basically though, this is a Tammy and Jinty for today's readers, and the styles reflect that, so hopefully it'll be appreciated by old and young alike. 

Here's the PR from Rebellion, along with a few preview pages...

• UK, NORTH AMERICA and DIGITAL: 26th June 2019 £4.99/$7.99
• DIAMOND: APR191915
• COVER: LISA HENKE (front) KIT BUSS (back)

In this issue:
JUSTINE, MESSENGER OF JUSTICE: SOME "MINO" TROUBLES by Emma Beeby (w) PJ Holden (a) Dearbhla Kelly (c) Jim Campbell (l)

ROCKY OF THE ROVERS by Rob Williams (w) Lisa Henke (a) john Charles (c) Jim Campbell (l)

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION by Andy W. Clift (w+a) Mike Stock (l)
IN THE COLD DARK by Matt Gibbs (w) VV Glass (a) Mike Stock (l)
MAISIE'S MAGIC EYE by Kate Ashwin (w) Kel McDonald (a) Mike Stock (l)

SPEED DEMONS by Sarah Millman (w+a) Jim Campbell (l)
DUCKFACE by Rachael Smith (w) Yishan Li (a) Jim Campbell (l)
THE ENIGMA VARIATION by Grainne McEntee (w) Dani (a) Jim Campbell (l)

BELLA AT THE BAR by Rachel Ball (w) Vanessa Cardinali (a) Jim Campbell (l)

Available in print from: newsagents and comic book stores via Diamond Available in digital from: 2000 AD webshop and apps for iPad, Android, Windows 10

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On to other matters, as I said the other day, I won't have time at the moment to write the reviews I'd intended to do as I suddenly have a lot of work on with tight deadlines over the next few weeks. That means this blog will be inactive for a short while. Normal service will resume sometime in July. 

You can keep up with my latest work over at my other blog here:
http://lewstringercomics.blogspot.com

COMIC SCENE No.5 out this week

The fifth issue of Comic Scene will be on sale in selected branches of W.H. Smith, McColls, and various comic shops from this week. The 80 page issue features more comic strips than usual with a complete Captain Cosmic adventure, Flintlock, and more, in celebration of it being a 'Summer Special' edition.

Speaking of which, I've written a potted history of UK Summer Specials for the issue, illustrated with classic covers from the past scanned from my personal collection...

Articles by other writers include Spider-Man in the UK...

...Sweeny Toddler...

...and an exclusive on the forthcoming Tammy and Jinty Special, plus lots more!

You can order your copy of Comic Scene No.5 from the following link, or better still, subscribe!
https://getmycomics.com/ComicScene

Cover reveal: TAMMY AND JINTY SPECIAL

Rebellion have today revealed the cover to their upcoming Tammy and Jinty Summer Special which will be published on Wednesday 26th June, with 52 pages for £4.99. 

As you can see, the new cover by Lisa Henke replaces the previously advertised one by Mike Collins. The decision was made to focus on the new character, Rocky of the Rovers, who debuts in her own strip inside. (Mike's art will still appear, albeit as a pin-up.)

The all-new special has a great line-up of talent and some revamps of classic characters along with new ones. Some solid material here, so let's hope it's a success. I'll be previewing the strips here in a couple of weeks but for now here's the list of stories and creatives involved...

• UK, NORTH AMERICA and DIGITAL: 26th June 2019 £4.99/$7.99
• DIAMOND: APR191915
• COVER: LISA HENKE (front) KIT BUSS (back)

In this issue:
JUSTINE, MESSENGER OF JUSTICE: SOME "MINO" TROUBLES by Emma Beeby (w) PJ Holden (a) Dearbhla Kelly (c) Jim Campbell (l)
ROCKY OF THE ROVERS by Rob Williams (w) Lisa Henke (a) john Charles (c) Jim Campbell (l)
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION by Andy W. Clift (w+a) Mike Stock (l)
IN THE COLD DARK by Matt Gibbs (w) VV Glass (a) Mike Stock (l)
MAISIE'S MAGIC EYE by Kate Ashwin (w) Kel McDonald (a) Mike Stock (l)
SPEED DEMONS by Sarah Millman (w+a) Jim Campbell (l)
DUCKFACE by Rachael Smith (w) Yishan Li (a) Jim Campbell (l)
THE ENIGMA VARIATION by Grainne McEntee (w) Dani (a) Jim Campbell (l)
BELLA AT THE BAR by Rachel Ball (w) Vanessa Cardinali (a) Jim Campbell (l)

Available in print from: newsagents and comic book stores via Diamond Available in digital from: 2000 AD webshop and apps for iPad, Android, Windows 10

2000AD summer special cover revealed

Rebellion have just revealed the cover to their 2000AD Sci-Fi Special (or Summer Special if you prefer) that will be in the shops in a few weeks. This year it's an all-woman creative team, and before any misogynists start going on about "Where are the comics that only have male contributors, eh?", - pick any of thousands published over the last 150 years and stop being daft.

Sure, there is a danger of an all-female issue being seen as just having novelty value by some. However, the publicity it will generate could bring those creators more attention perhaps than if they'd just been part of a regular edition. That's not a bad thing in a mostly male-dominated industry. 

Ultimately of course, the comic will be judged on its quality, rather than on the gender of its contributors, but from the names listed I think we're in for a treat.

Here's how the special was announced on social media:

"Check out Tula Lotay's drokking storming cover for the 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special - out 20 June in the UK and 11th July in North America. Order your copy from your local comic book store today, includes work by Babs Tarr, Alex De Campi, Marguerite Sauvage, Emma Beeby, Leah Moore, and many more!"

Tula Lotay's cover is the one you'll see in newsagents on June 20th, but there's also a variant cover by Emily Zeinner that you can order exclusively from the 2000AD shop:
https://shop.2000ad.com/catalogue/SPE1801

Cover reveal: DANDY SUMMER SPECIAL 2018

Here's the cover to this year's Dandy Summer Special, as revealed on the D.C. Thomson website this week. It'll be published on June 13th but you can pre-order it from the publishers themselves:
https://www.dcthomsonshop.co.uk/our-brands/dandy/dandy-summer-special-2018.html

I understand the contents will be entirely all-reprint again, as they have been for the last few years, but it'll be interesting to see what selection of stories have been chosen. 

The cover, by Ken Harrison, is brand new, and in the fine tradition of Summer Specials of old.

The Beano Summer Special is already out, and contains all-new content. It can also be ordered from the publisher.

Beano Summer Special 2018

Art by Nigel Parkinson.

Here's the cover to this year's Beano Summer Activity Special that should be in the shops soon. Once again, it'll have 68 pages and be in the bookazine format with card covers, and include a sheet of free stickers inside.

I've no idea if there'll be a Dandy Summer Special this year, but you can order the Beano edition directly from the D.C. Thomson shop here:
https://www.dcthomsonshop.co.uk/our-brands/the-beano/beano-summer-special-2018.html

Comic Cuts Seaside Holiday Number (from 1923)

Back before the days of the Summer Special, weekly comics had a holiday theme to their regular issues. One of which being Comic Cuts No.1735, dated August 11th 1923, which was re-named for this week as Comic Cuts Seaside Holiday Number. Let's take a quick look at some of the content.

The cover strip was The Adventures of Jolly Tom, the Menagerie Man, and was drawn by Percy Cocking, one of Amalgamated Press' top artists. (He also illustrated Weary Willie and Tired Tim on the cover of Chips at this time, along with many other strips.)

The format of this "special" was exactly the same as any other week; 8 tabloid sized pages in black and white. (The standard format of comics of the time.) There was an equal balance of prose stories and comic strips, with the centre pages featuring lots of short strips. Here are three of them...

Page 7 had a busy layout of humourous stories, cartoons, ads, and the "Orfice Boy" recounting his trip to Margate...

On the back page... an sad reflection of how black people were regarded back then, re-presented here for historical purposes and to help give younger readers an inkling of what they had to put up with. I believe the artist of Comic Cuts Colony was Julius Stafford Baker. I'm sure the intention was just a "bit of fun" with no intended malice but it's still dehumanising a race. I've heard the argument that "everyone was caricatured back then, including white people". No. Not to the extent of the grotesque exaggerations of black characters, as one can see by comparing Comic Cuts Colony to the strip beneath it. In comics back then, white characters had slight exaggerations, whilst non-whites were completely distorted and depicted as almost sub-human (and referred to in racist terms). We need to ensure we never return to those days. 

Here come the 2017 Summer Specials!

Summer Specials for both The Dandy and The Beano will be in the shops soon, but you can pre-order them separately or as a pack from the DC Thomson Shop right now:
https://www.dcthomsonshop.co.uk/our-brands/dandy/the-dandy-80th-birthday-special.html

As in recent years, the Summer Specials are in the 68 page card-cover softback format, rather than the 32 page glossy tabloid size of years ago. This makes sense, as regular comics are glossy these days so a similar-looking Special just wouldn't look very... special. 

The Dandy special features reprints taken from over the course of the comic's run, to celebrate the fact that 2017 marks the 80th anniversary since The Dandy first appeared. 

The Beano Summer Activity Special features new material and includes puzzles and activity pages too. 

Keep a look out for them both in WH Smith and selected shops around 14th June, or order them from the link above.

Grey summer of '69

I can't actually remember if the summer of '69 was grey or blue (a bit of both as usual I suppose) but the title of this post refers to the rather drab advert for the IPC Holiday Specials that appeared that summer. 

As promotions go, it's not that exciting is it? Rather dull layout, dry text, and printed in monochrome, and yet...

...it worked! The announcement did excite us, and we did seek out those wonderful 96 page specials, and they provided us with some great reading over the summer holidays! The advertisement raised our curiosity to find out more, and in that regard it succeeded perfectly. 

Here's the actual covers of three of those Holiday Specials from my collection for you to see them in their full colour glory.

I didn't have the Valiant Summer Special that year but you can see that cover (and more) here:

http://www.comicsuk.co.uk/specials.php?ComicTitleID=212

Dandy and Beano Summer Specials are here!

No doubt they'll be arriving in the shops soon but for now the 2016 Summer Specials for The Dandy and The Beano are available to order directly from the publishers at the D.C. Thomson Shop:
https://www.dcthomsonshop.co.uk/our-brands.html

As in recent years, the Summer Specials are now in the 68 page 'Bookazine' format as opposed to the big 32 page glossy tabloids they used to be decades ago. This makes sense. The weekly Beano is a 36 page glossy these days, so a 'Special' in the same format would hardly be significantly special. There's also the problem of retailers wanting a more uniform size of course. A bigger footprint on the stands would demand a separate display space, and we know how retail giants like to charge for those! 

As far as I know, The Dandy Summer Special will contain reprint again, but The Beano Summer Activity Special will feature new material. I don't have any material in either so your guess is as good as mine at this point. Both feature new covers by Nigel Parkinson.

Anyway, summer's here so make it special with these two comics!

TV Comic Holiday Special 1963

Firstly, my apologies for the poor quality of the cover image above. My second-hand copy of this special is unfortunately coverless so I've used an image from the GCD website which is the best I could find, albeit low resolution. However the rest of the scans are all from my edition. (Click on images to see them much larger.)

The TV Comic Holiday Special 1963 was the second in the series. It had 48 packed pages sized 300mm x 230mm featuring strips and text stories based on tv stars of the day. 

The versatile Bill Titcombe was the artist on a two page Bootsie and Snudge strip. Titcombe would be a regular contributor to the TV Comic weekly over the following years on strips such as Ken Dodd's Diddymen and Tom and Jerry.

A Supercar text story ran across two pages, illustrated with stills from the show.

One of TV Comic's longest running humour strips was Popeye, featuring brand new stories for the UK market. Various artists worked on the strip over the years. In this instance, Chick Henderson, whose style I really like...

Foo Foo was a cartoon that rarely seemed to be on TV in my area, but perhaps it was shown when I was too young to notice. 

Lenny the Lion was a rather camp puppet used by ventriloquist Terry Hall. The strip bares little relation to the stage act (and no Terry) but it's nicely drawn by Bill Mevin...

Apache, a five page Range Rider text story featured some good grey wash artwork by Mike Noble...

The centre-spread featured a full colour Supercar strip by Bill Mevin based on Gerry Anderson's early puppet series. Interesting that the TV Comic version is so dramatic, but when the strip moved to TV21 in 1965 it was treated as light relief.

One of the original, non-TV based strips in the special was Super Nan, who seems to be TV Comic's version of The Beano's Pansy Potter. Art looks like the work of Dick Millington.

There were two Fireball XL5 strips in the special. Here's one of them. Artwork by Neville Main...

Dickie Henderson was a very popular entertainer at the time and had his own comedy show featuring a fictitious family. TV Comic saw The Dickie Henderson Family as ideal strip material, although in the Holiday Special they decided to run it as a text story illustrated with scenes from the show.

The rest of the TV Comic Holiday Special 1963 featured non-TV strips such as Mighty Moth, The Bakers' Dozen, Lochy the Funny Wee Monster, plus second helpings of Foo-Foo, Popeye, and others, along with a few puzzles and games. All in all a decent publication that I'm sure must have been a good holiday treat for many readers. 

Valiant and Smash! Summer Special 1971

Although not as slick or colourful as DC Thomson's Summer Specials, the rival products by IPC in the early 1970s were great value for money. Here's the evidence in the form of the Valiant and Smash! Summer Special published in 1971; 96 pages packed with strips old and new, with a striking cover by the great Mike Western. Let's look at a selection of pages...

Inside, there were extra-length stories of favourites from the weekly, such as a six page strip of His Sporting Lordship. Douglas Maxted was the artist on the weekly strip but specials often used replacement artists and in this case Jack Pamby turned in an excellent job... 

Similarly, on The Ghostly Guardian, regular artist Julio Schiaffino was replaced by Bill Lacey (father of humour artist Mike Lacey)...

One original artist who did draw the Summer Special version of his strip was Ken Reid, producing a nice two page Banger and Masher...

For budgetary reasons the IPC specials contained a lot of reprint, but readers didn't mind if we hadn't seen the stories before. A 1960s Karl the Viking serial from Lion was edited and recycled as a 16 page Erik the Viking epic. Artwork by Don Lawrence...

The specials also stretched out the budget by including features and prose stories. Here's the first page of a one-off story entitled The Radar Men, illustrated by Eric Bradbury...

A new Raven of the Wing six pager was included. I'm not sure of the specific artist but it looks like it may be by the Solano Lopez studio but possibly not by Lopez himself. (The kids in the bottom left hand corner don't look like his style.)

Only 8 of the 96 pages were in colour, two of which were given to The Swots and the Blots. Although the header (taken from the weekly) was by Leo Baxendale the strip itself in this instance was drawn by Les Barton...

The Special concluded with a nice lengthy 18 page Kelly's Eye strip by Solano Lopez. This was a revised reprint from a serial that had run in the weekly in 1964/65.

This edition and numerous other IPC specials provided hours of entertainment in the school holiday periods back then. Over the years the page count reduced from 96 to 80 then to 64... and even down to 48 in some cases, with the cover prices getting higher. That initial period of 96 page Specials certainly provided the best value for money. Happy times!