The fourth blog in this series of Christmas covers begins with a Mike Western cover to Valiant from 1965. Mike was the regular cover artist on the comic for over a decade and produced some fantastic work over that time. A couple more Valiant covers will be featured in blogs to come.
The Eagle cover from 1989 is by Keith Watson, one of the Dan Dare artists of the original Eagle who returned to the character for a short while on the relaunched edition in the Eighties.
A TV Comic cover from December 1980. The cover strip is still by Bill Titcombe, who by this time had been drawing Tom and Jerry for over ten years.
The Christmas edition of Pow! hails from 1967, being the only festive issue of that short-lived comic. It spotlights that week's Pow Short Story, an irregular series of one-off strips that ran in the comic. Sometimes such Short Stories would use Marvel reprint from Tales to Astonish and suchlike but other times, as in this instance, the stories would be brand new.
The 1986 Christmas issue of Oink! is the first seasonal edition of that comic. The rather conservative news trade of the time considered it too offensive for the children's comics section and it was banished to the top shelf for most of its run.
The Christmas 1973 edition of Lion and Thunder is another lively festive cover by Geoff Campion. (The cover to the 1971 edition, also by Campion, can be seen in Part 1 of this series of blogs.)
Today's selection concludes with the 1979 Christmas Special of Viz. This was actually the very first edition of Viz comic, produced by Chris and Simon Donald long before it became the million-selling hit it evolved into years later.
More Christmas covers to come in a few days time!
1 comment:
It's great to see these covers up on the net to remind everyone just how good these comics were.
I checked out the latest Dandy Extreme today (dated until 24th Dec). It was bagged with a huge free gift, which obscured most of the cover. I can't tell if this issue had a festive cover, but I kind of doubt it.
I picked up the Christmas edition of Viz too - fantastic cover, which reminded me, curiously, of old Ally Sloper Christmas Numbers. It's fitting that Ally Sloper was there at the beginning..and was for adult readers and now Viz produces a cover which appears to be a modern day equivalent..and it too is for adults.
Long may this festive tradition continue!
Keep up the good work, Lew
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