A week later, this four page ad appeared in Tiger dated 30th May 1970 (on sale 23rd May), revealing a little more (but not much) about the new comic. (Click on the spread to see it larger.)
A week later, on 30th May 1970, Cor!! was launched and another four page ad appeared in its companion comics. This one from Tiger dated 6th June...
The ads were no more than teasers really, but it was enough to secure Cor!! a stable readership. (Ads appeared on TV too, long gone now perhaps.) Here's the cover of the actual first issue, drawn by Mike Lacey...
You can read more about Cor!! No.1 in a blog post I wrote several years ago...
https://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/40-year-flashback-cor-no1.html
12 comments:
A comic which I wish I read as a child but didn't due to blind loyalty to all things DCT. By the time I had come to my senses, Cor!! had gone.
It was very much IPC's answer to the DC Thomson comics. I enjoyed it at the time but I think the DCT titles were far better.
While I loved “Whizzer & Chips”, “Cor!” just never did it for me - I think that it may have been an early inkling that perhaps advertising wasn’t *always* truthful… (and the mix-it-yourself drink powder was *horrible*…)
I can't remember the taste of it now, but I do remember the similar drinks powder that was in Buster in the mid-1960s which was quite tasty.
My abiding memory of Cor was the free "Gulp" drink, it was indeed as "Jock123" says awful I was expecting it to be like Cremola foam but it was flat and had no real taste just a very weak sugary drink and I remember just throwing it away - for a 10 year old boy to do that in 1970 it had to be bad lol. I quite liked Cor as I recall it has some strong characters like "Ivor Lott and Tony Broke", "Andy's Ants" etc and got it now and then but Buster and Dandy were probably my favourites at this time with a better mix of humour and adventure strips (more so Buster). Still it was nice to see it again Lew after all these years (47 years ago that is scary).
Maybe the drink was five years old? ;)
Even though The Dandy was my all-time humour comic which also happened to be a DCT title, I am not sure that all their humour titles were better than IPC. But if DCT had the quality then IPC had the quantity (page wise).
What I meant was that the Thomson comics were better than Cor!! at that time (1970) but it's all subjective.
Don't really remember the comic but the shouty gorilla is an enduring British comics image. Speaking of which, could there be a more british-titled comic?! Blimey! Surprised at the shortness of its duration given that I'm sure most comic fans of a certain would at least heard of it, if not read it. Didn't either Dave Gibbons or Kevin O'Neill get their first job doing corrections on it? Makes me wonder which comic cast the longest shadow with the shortest run. Starlord perhaps?
Kev had some cartoons in Cor!!. Dave may have contributed, but not sure. He definitely drew some fill-ins on the Twister strip in Buster.
Even though it only ran four years, Cor!! was a success compared to some other IPC comics of the period that only lasted five months. The 1970s were the period when instability started affecting the comics industry and it never really recovered to the standard of its heyday.
I guess SCREAM! was another comic that's fondly remembered, despite only lasting for 15 issues or so.
Would you believe there were some copies of #1 on eBay recently, complete with the free drink-mix?! Maybe it's like those amphoras of Roman wine that they find on the sea-bed that are supposedly still drinkable?!
I wouldn't advise drinking it! (Plus it'd devalue the comic if you did. :))
COR!!Was the comic love of my life I will always remember it and hold it dear to my heart.
I would countdown the days from one Monday to the next and every Monday seemed like an eternity till the paperboy pushed my copy through the letter box.
Gus Gorilla was actually my all time favourite and only once did Gus fail in his endeavours with the closing tag line only once saying "you can't make a monkey out of Gus,oh somebody as!!"
Second was Ivor Lott and Tony Broke and third was The Gasworks Gang."
I totally loved Cor!! And although I also read Whizzer and Chips,Knockout Shiver and Shake,Buster(which I hated when it merged with Cor!!)Monster Fun, Score'n'Roar,Scorcher,ect Cor!! will ALWAYS be my Number One Favourite.
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