January of 1969 saw big changes for D.C. Thomson's Sparky. It had been gradually evolving from the somewhat old fashioned comic it had started out as into something more contemporary and offbeat. The biggest change came with its cover star Sparky, an outdated racist caricature, finally packing his bags and vacating the comic with issue No.211 (although head shots of him would still be seen on the letters pages for a while after)...
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| Art by Ron Spencer. |
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| Art by Bill Ritchie. |
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| Art by Mike Lacey. |
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| Art by Geoff Campion. |
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| Art by Joe Colquhoun. |
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| Art by John Gillatt. |
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| Art by Yvonne Hutton. |
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| Art by Frank Hampson studio. |
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| Art by Geoff Campion. |
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| Cover taken from Comic Vine website. |
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| Art by Mick Anglo. |
(All covers scanned from my collection except for Sally which is from the Comic Vine website. Sparky is ©D.C. Thomson, Tiger, Jag, Smash!, Sally, Lion, Whizzer and Chips, and TV21 are ©Rebellion Publishing, Superman is ©DC Comics.)
15 comments:
Great post Lew, I will really miss these when you close Blimey. You summed up 1969 in comics brilliantly there Lew and like yourself 69 was a special year for me and can actually recall picking up the new look Smash and Tiger with almost crystal clear clarity. I had totally forgotten about the Sparky reboot until your recent posts and the fact I used to pick this comic up. 69 was also the year I started to pick up US comics with my pocket money (as opposed to reading my big brothers comics).
I missed the Sparky revamp at the time (only bought those two issues shown recently) but I started buying it regularly around April 1969 and then stuck with it for a few years. Sparky had evolved into a great comic.
If there was one phrase to make an avid comic fans heart sink, it was "Great News Folks!" Yeah!? You knew then that your favorite comic had bitten the dust. Yes it was the `junior partner in a new `conjoined` title- but that wouldn't be for long.
I must admit there were times when I was genuinely happy at a merger. The first one I experienced was 'Pow! and Wham!' merging, which I thought made Pow! a stronger comic as Wham! had declined by then. Likewise 'Tiger and Jag'. I didn't think much to TV21 and Joe 90 joining forces though.
Obviously this all happened because 1969 was when I first started reading comics - and quite right too. ��
Haha! It's all your fault, Sid!
Ok, I have to admit that first Sparky cover made me wince. Even in 1969 that must have been seen as a bit wrong.
Agreed. I really don't know what they were thinking. Sparky was a revival of an old 1940s character named Sooty Snowball. He should have stayed in the forties. Images like that had no place in the 1960s, the time of the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King etc.
It's posts like this that make me hope you might change your mind about closing up shop. Really enjoyable. I was just 8 years old when all this was happening. I clearly remember the revamped Smash and loved the free gift. We also read TV21 and Joe 90 in our house. I remember Sparky and it's rather dubious cover star but never thought about it much at the time, being only a nipper. Unbelievable to see in this day and age. But I never really read the comic unless a friend had a copy. Thanks again!
I didnt know what the Sparky character was supposed to be when I first saw him as a kid I had to ask my dad and he asked me not to buy the comic again. I had no idea he was a revival of an old character, I wonder if there was any outcry at the time.
Thanks John, Paul. I'm afraid there'll be no more posts on this blog after the end of this year but I hope to still contribute articles to Comic Scene magazine next year. My other blog at lewstringercomics will continue though.
Back in 1969 was Little Plum 'an outdated racist caricature'?
It wasn't seen that way at the time but society has changed since then and Plum is no longer in the comics.
Another fascinating and enjoyable article Lew and very time consuming to research and compile no doubt! I only started reading comics in the mid-seventies so a few of these titles passed me by, but what struck me most was that even during the.’golden age’ of comics in the late sixties they were still always evolving and never staying still, which in the case of Sparky was obviously a good thing!
Thanks Steve. This article didn't take as much research as some really because I lived through it so went on memory and just scanning the covers. Yep, comics have always evolved. Sometimes not for the better but often it's been a natural reflection of changing times and tastes.
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