It was the Sixties, man!

The Cloak ©Mike Higgs

For the next issue of Comic Scene (out later this month) I've written a brief history of Pow! comic. I supplied a bunch of images too, but sadly this one wasn't used which is a shame. No worries though, because Blimey! readers now get to see it anyway. It's a fantastic panel from The Cloak by Mike Higgs, where the titular hero and Lady Shady engage in a clash of magic spells with the villain The Warlock. 

This is the sort of scene that made Pow! stand out from "ordinary" British comics of the day and was a big influence on my Combat Colin strip years later. Mike's artistry here is great, and so contemporary for the era. Mike always liked hand-lettering his own sound effects too (another thing that influenced me) and he went to town on this panel! 

The Cloak always delivered the unexpected. A spy strip that could include monsters, witchcraft, space travel, or anything! For many of us this was one of the best strips of the 1960s!