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Friday, December 18, 2015

The Christmas COR!! (1970)

This first festive edition of IPC's Cor!! was packed with Christmas strips from some of the top artists of the time. Under the nicely decorated logo, the Gus Gorilla strip was by Alf Saporito. Anthropomorphous animal strips were a bit passé by 1970 but Gus maintained his position throughout the four year run of the comic. 

On page 2 of this 32 page comic, with art by Mike Lacey, Whacky was a strip about a kid fated to meet corporal punishment every week. Thankfully, such practices in school died out a few decades ago. In fact it wasn't that common even in 1970. I'm glad to say I was never whacked at school, and very few of my fellow pupils were. 

The great Reg Parlett had a number of strips in Cor!! but I've just chosen Freddie Fang to show here today. Top cartooning from a master of his art.

That week's episode of the Kid Chameleon serial sensibly didn't divert into a Christmas theme for the sake of it. However, with full colour art by Joe Colquhoun it's too good to ignore...


The other adventure serial in Cor!! at the time was Robby Hood and his One Man Band. Artwork by Ron Turner. This one did employ a festive theme.


A strip by another favourite artist of mine; Graham Allen (who was the original artist of The Nervs for Smash!) drawing Spoilsport...

On the back page, another popular Cor!! character; Teacher's Pet, drawn by Norman Mansbridge...

There's a few more old Christmas comics to show before the 25th so come back soon! 

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lew
Thanks for all the great memories of Christmas comics

10/- in my pocket and all those annuals...Victor ? Hotspur ? Where would I slap down that brown note ? Was I lucky enough to receive an annual and reduce the options

Best to you and your readers

Hedley in Detroit...still reading...The Victor

Peter Gray said...

It is nice seeing the adventure strip in colour..and very well done too the colours..

Of course it could only work in colour!!

Lew Stringer said...

Thanks Hedley, Peter. More Christmas issues to come this weekend!

Anonymous said...

It was a great issue for sure. I struck that issue a few years ago at what is now my regular comics haunt in the Sunshine Coast. My copy had the added bonus of a local price tag (10 cents.) Once I'm back from my trip to Sydney, I might do a post about it.

Raven said...

The Cor!! of 1970 was really something special. I've always felt Saporito's Gus Gorilla was rather underrated - to my eyes it made for really distinctive covers, with the colour really enhancing them.

A 26th December date, so it came out just a few days before Christmas, which I think was a big part of the appeal of such festive issues (the present Beano Christmas Special coming out in October, a while before Halloween, seems so wrong - though I suppose the old annuals used to). There's still something so uplifting about snow-tipped title letters ...

Lew Stringer said...

Annuals come out in July now, Raven. August/September used to be the publication date. I suppose the Beano Christmas Special came out early to hopefully reach more potential buyers. The regular Christmas issue only came out last week though.

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