Déjà vu Dalek

Apologies for the lack of blogs this past week. I've been laid up with the flu' and using the computer soon gives me a migraine. Normal service should be resumed next week.

In the meantime, here's a classic Leo Baxendale cover for the 1965 Firework Issue of Wham! The colours are printed slightly off register (this is how they were on the comic, not a fault of the scan) but you may notice a Dalek amongst the crowd of schoolkids. Leo often added a Dalek or two in the background of his Odhams strips during this period. I'll dig a few more samples out and add them here soon, but this was one I had to hand.

All that fuss the media made recently about a Dalek appearing in The Bash Street Kids in the new BeanoMAX comic eh? Old news for some of us. ;-)

What's most noteworthy about that cover though is that it shows kids armed to the teeth (literally in one case) with fireworks in school of all places. In 1965 such anarchic humour was commonplace in British comics. In the hyper-panic age of today that page would inspire a media outcry, the comic would be withdrawn, and the editor probably sacked! But 40 years ago we knew it was only a drawing.