More from Look-In

As the blog on the early years of Look-In was so popular I've decided to do a follow up, showcasing some more of the great artwork that appeared in the comic in the 1970s.

Freewheelers appears to have had several artists on it throughout its run in the early issues of Look-In. The marvelous example below is from the late great Brian Lewis (Look-In No.10, 1971).


The Fenn Street Gang was a television spin off from the popular Please Sir! series. The strip version was initially drawn by Tom Kerr (below).


Although I was fairly dismissive in my previous blog of the "popstar" focus that Look-In took from late 1972, the comic still continued to feature top comic artists. The following page is an example of John Burns' work on The Tomorrow People from 1974. John of course is still active in the industry today, as a contributor to 2000AD.


That same issue (No.12, 1974, - Look-In renumbered itself at the start of every year) began the Kung Fu strip with artwork by Martin Asbury (who would take over Garth in the Daily Mirror after Frank Bellamy's death).


By 1978 Mike Noble was drawing The Famous Five, embellishing it with a grey wash. Noble is an artist perfectly suited to dynamic action, but these pages below show how he can even make a domestic scene capture the interest of the reader. This is basically a "talking heads" episode but by changing the angles, and with his slick inkline, Noble gives it character and warmth.



How the West Was Won, also from 1978, sees John Burns using a darker, grittier style than readers were used to on his Tomorrow People work. Over the course of Burns' career he's often experimented with different techniques to suit the theme of the story and this savage style was ideal for the Western setting.



The Six Million Dollar Man and its spin-off The Bionic Woman had both been given their own strips in Look-In during the late Seventies. By 1979, with their tv popularity waning, the characters were teamed up in Bionic Action drawn by Ian Gibson. (The artist would go on to greater heights with Robo Hunter and Halo Jones for 2000AD.) There was never a tv series called Bionic Action but the characters had of course co-starred in each other's individual shows on occasion.



I rarely bought Look-In at all during the 1980s as comic strip versions of CHiPS, The Fall Guy, and Haircut One Hundred were not really what I wanted out of a comic (or out of my tv come to that). Perhaps I missed some great strips too though, so I'll be interested to see what the forthcoming book Look-In: The Best of the Eighties throws up. Seeing Magnum and Cannon and Ball on the cover I'm not too hopeful, but if the 1980s was your decade perhaps you'll get a kick out of it.