Saturday, January 17, 2015

Blunderbirds (1966)

In the previous post I looked at Thunderbirds comic strips from over the years but there was also a parody strip, Blunderbirds, which ran in Eagle weekly for a short time in 1966. 

Illustrated by the excellent and versatile Brian Lewis, the one page humour strip only lampooned the basics of Thunderbirds rather than being a detailed spoof but it's still worth noting I think. And anything drawn by Brian Lewis is always worth a look.

This example is from Eagle and Boys' World  Vol.17 No.33, dated 13th August 1966, published by Odhams. Click on the image above to see it larger.   

2 comments:

  1. The idea of Blundebirds was created by Ken Reid and he was paid a weekly fee for each episode (for idea only!). The most exciting thing about Blunderbirds (for me) is that Ken also wrote the script and drew the pilot episode of the strip and sent it to B.Bartholomew of Eagle. By coincidence, I spent the last week or so trying, unsuccessfully, to track down the issue of Eagle where the episode was printed but it looks like for some reason the Editor chose not to use it in Vol. 17 in 1966. It is also not one of the two episodes in Eagle 1968 annual, so there is a strong chance that the episode was never used. Ken got paid for it, though. The episode ends with the city of Paris sinking below ground level, so in a way it is similar to the one you have shown.

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  2. Fascinating! I never knew Ken Reid had created it. Too bad that pilot episode wasn't published. Thanks for sharing that info.

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