Friday, December 19, 2014

Christmas Comics: BUSTER (1969)

This was one of my favourite Christmas covers as a child. Firstly, the logo was a different colour than the usual red-on-yellow background design, then it had a large image as opposed to just a full page strip, and thirdly all that snow! It's a simple illustration, but very effective. Artwork by Angel Nadal, who was the regular artist on Buster's Dream-World, with Buster being a sort of backstreet Little Nemo for the duration of the strip.

There were many Christmas themed strips in this issue. Here's just a few of them, starting with an episode of Crabbe's Crusaders, a sort of powerless British X-Men. Art by Carlos Cruz...


Over the page, it's The Twitopians, drawn by Gordon Hogg...

A few pages further on and here's Big Chief Pow Wow by Leo Baxendale...

I was never a fan of Tin Teacher but I know some of you liked it so here he is. Drawn by Peter Davidson...

Finally, The Astounding Adventures of Charlie Peace with art by Jack Pamby. Charlie's exploits usually backfired on him (and the character was an inspiration for my Tom Thug strip years later) but, as it's Christmas, Charlie has a happy ending this week...



I hope you're enjoying this dip into the festive archives. Another one soon! 
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6 comments:

  1. John PittFriday, 19 December 2014 at 13:42:00 GMT

    Certainly am enjoying them, Lew. I'm one of those who did like Tin Teacher and Charlie Peace, of course.
    Right now I have an appointment revisiting Peter Gray's Jellymen post! - What a life, eh?

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  2. Lew StringerFriday, 19 December 2014 at 19:08:00 GMT

    Glad you like it John. I don't know why Tin Teacher never appealed to me. I remember thinking that title panel with the kid held down by TT's metal foot seemed a bit cruel, but it wasn't that which put me off the strip.

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  3. MikeodeeFriday, 19 December 2014 at 21:58:00 GMT

    Charlie Peace is a strip I remembervery well from childhood. Would love tosee this collected...and have a page of the original artwork (have been collecting for 10+ years and never seen a page offered for sale)

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  4. Lew StringerFriday, 19 December 2014 at 22:39:00 GMT

    Charlie Peace ran for ten years so at a rough estimate that's 1,500 pages! It'd be nice to see a selection reprinted in a book though. It had a few artists over the years, including Eric Bradbury, Tom Kerr, and Doug Maxted.

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  5. Peter GrayFriday, 19 December 2014 at 23:24:00 GMT

    Leo was brilliant at doing snow comic pages...always loved his snowmen...

    Glad you like my blog John Pitt...
    The Jellymen should be collected as well in a large book same size as the Beezer was then... ;)

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  6. Lew StringerFriday, 19 December 2014 at 23:37:00 GMT

    If only it could be feasible to do books like that. As time goes on there are less people around who remember those classics unfortunately, so the chances of them being reprinted keep decreasing. Shame.

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