The Tellybugs (1966)

The Tellybugs was published in the early issues of Smash! in 1966, and these examples are taken from the first Smash! Annual 1967 (published in 1966). 

At first glance, The Tellybugs looked a little old fashioned for a relatively hip comic like Smash! but it was perhaps the most relatable strip in the comic. The domestic setting looked very 1960s, which despite what some historians might tell you, was more mundane than the flower-power scenario they paint it as. The dad in The Tellybugs looked and dressed just like most dads of the time, and the television going "wonky" was always a likelihood. I remember a few times when "a valve went" in our old set.

The artwork was by Cyril Price, as I thought, but George Parlett often drew the strip so this may be his work. 

The Odhams "Power Comics" were brilliant for stuff like this. Some might say they were a bit too reckless. There's no way that a children's annual today could feature a story where a character fiddles around with live electronics or throws a bucket of water over a TV set. Even back then it was edgy, but that was part of the appeal of Smash!, Pow! and Wham! They felt a bit dangerous, but at the same time they were actually treating readers with respect. They didn't put any warnings on the strips. They didn't feel they needed to. They respected our intelligence not to imitate scenes from the comics. We'll never see their like again.

The Easter POW! (1968)

The Cloak, by Mike Higgs, was one of my favourite strips of the 1960s so I was over the moon to find myself working as Mike's assistant for a while in the early 1980s. I'm proud that I can call Mike a friend and still see him regularly when we put the world of comics to rights over a pie and a pint. (Not necessarily a pie.) Here's Mike's brilliant Cloak strip on the cover of the Easter edition of Pow! back in 1968. 

The strip continued inside. (The depiction of the natives wouldn't be permissible today but it has to be seen in the context of the times.)

The rest of the issue also had an Easter theme to the humour strips. Here's Ken Reid's incredible work on Dare-A-Day Davy...

The Tiddlers and The Dolls, drawn by Mike Lacey...

Georgie's Germs, drawn by Cyril Price, a veteran artist who had been illustrating comics since the 1930s and was still producing great work in the 1960s...

...and, on the back page, Sammy Shrink by Terry Bave...

Pow! also contained two Marvel reprints (Spider-Man and The Fantastic Four) and a few home-grown adventure strips. You'd be forgiven for thinking that the X-Men never had a strip in Pow!... except for this issue, when an edited version of a strip was used to promote that week's issue of Fantastic...

The 1960s were good days for British weekly comics. As with all things, times change, but the UK comics industry continues to evolve and survive (see my recent article on that here). Happy Easter!

Christmas comics: COMIC CUTS (1947)

Our final destination in the Blimey-Timey-Tour through the Christmas comics of the past sees us land in the year 1947 and the issue of Comic Cuts that was on sale this time back then. It was a time of post-war rationing, and this was reflected both in the flimsy 8 page format and in the strips themselves. There's something very appealing about the orange and black cover though, which makes a change from the more commonly used red spot colour of other comics of the time. The cover strip, Sammy and Shrimpy, was originally by Arthur Martin according to Denis Gifford's reference books, but I'm convinced this one is by Albert Pease.

As always, the centre pages really packed in the laughs with a variety of strips. I usually select a few samples from spreads like this but as it's Christmas I thought I'd show the centre pages in their entirety. (In case you didn't already know, click on the pages, and click again to see them at full size.) I'm not sure who to credit for all of the strips but Big Ben and Little Len is definitely the distinctive work of Bertie Brown...

Here's one of the four text stories from this issue, along with an advert for Mars bars, then promoted as a healthy food! 

On the back page, Pinhead and Pete, and I must warn you that, typical of the era, it's quite racist. The two characters are shown as equals, and as friends, but... aagh, that caricature and the racist language mars an otherwise nice strip. Art by Bertie Brown. The mini-strip at the foot of the page looks like Cyril Price's work to me.

...and that's it for this Christmas! I hope you're enjoyed all of the classic festive strips I've shown you this year. By the way, today (23rd December) is the 10th anniversary of this blog! Yes, on this day back in 2006 I decided to start blogging and you can read that first post at this link:
https://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2006/12/blogs-are-for-egotists.html

Over the past ten years I've written over 2,000 posts, shown thousands of vintage pages, previewed hundreds of new comics. I've also encountered a handful of trolls and sociopaths before realising they were best avoided, but the thousands of comments from decent folk have made blogging worthwhile. My thanks to everyone who has supported Blimey!, including readers, publishers, and fellow creators. 

Where does this blog go next? Well, I never planned to be blogging forever, so I'm taking a few days off to think about it. My main intention for Blimey! was to focus on old comics (and creators) to help prevent them falling into obscurity. Hopefully I've achieved that in some small way. It's likely I'll be blogging less in 2017. I'll still be showing previews of new comics but the vintage stuff may be scaled down a bit in the future as I focus on work and other matters. Don't be too disheartened though. With over 2,000 posts over the past ten years it's likely there's some you've never read (or may have forgotten about) so use the search facility to see if your favourite UK comic or creator has been covered.

I'll be back before the end of the year with previews of my new Beano strips and more, but until then, I wish you a very Merry Christmas! 

Christmas comics: BUSTER (1967)

By 1967, Buster had reduced its size from its original tabloid format down to 32mm x 23mm (the same size as Smash!, Pow! and Wham! were at that point) but this was still larger than most comics. With 36 pages for 7d it was good value, even though only the front cover was in colour. Speaking of which, Angel Nadal provided the cover strip shown here, although I'm not sure if it was him or a staff artist who did the larger picture. 

Inside, we were treated to some nice material by Leo Baxendale, who had quit the Odhams comics a year earlier to freelance for the better-paying Fleetway titles. Here's The Cave Kids, avoiding the anomaly of Christmas in prehistoric times but still cleverly managing to do a seasonal story involving a sledge and snow...

A sledge also features in the Charlie Peace story, drawn by Jack Pamby. It seems bizarre now that one of Buster's longest-running strips was based on a real-life murderer, although for the purposes of the strip, Charlie is just a loveable rogue and bumbling thief. All the same, it was a very strange inclusion in a children's comic...

Andy 'n' Fred was drawn by veteran artist Cyril Price. I've always liked his work. Price also drew many episodes of Georgie's Germs at this time for Wham!

Running across the centre-spread was The Pirates, another strip by Leo Baxendale. Nice work, and a pity it wasn't in full colour.

Attempts at doing British superheroes didn't always meet with success. Thunderbolt the Avenger isn't as well remembered as Billy the Cat or Marvelman, but he had a run of just over two years in Buster...

This Harry Secombe strip from the back of this issue of Buster was actually a reprint from Film Fun, and the artist, Roy Wilson, had passed away two years earlier, but any work by Wilson is worth showing...

I hope you're enjoying these Christmas classics! Click on the images to see them larger. More soon!

The Easter WHAM! (1966)

Wham! was one of the liveliest, funniest comics of the 1960s, - or any decade, come to that. Here's a few pages from issue No.95, dated 9th April 1966, which was the Easter edition for that year. The Tiddlers on the cover was a strip originated by Leo Baxendale, but by this time it was being 'ghosted' by other artists such as Mike Lacey, who drew this one.

The Tiddlers continued on to the back page in black and white...

There were a few strips using the Easter theme inside too, such as General Nitt and his Barmy Army, drawn by Terry Willers...

The Humbugs were later reprinted in IPC's version of Smash! as The Terrible Twins. Here they are under their original name. Again, it's by someone imitating Leo Baxendale's style but I'm not sure who. Possibly Mike Lacey again...

Lastly for this Easter selection, a fantastic two page Georgie's Germs strip very nicely illustrated by Cyril Price...

Were you a reader of Wham! and the other Odhams weeklies? Or are you experiencing them for the first time here? Do you have any thoughts to share about these comics, pro or con? Feel free to comment below...

POW! and WHAM! - First merged issue (1968)

The merging of Pow! and Wham! in January 1968 was a clear indication that all was not well with the Odhams line of 'Power Comics'. Other mergers would follow and by the end of the year only Smash! would remain out of the five titles. A sad state of affairs for a much-loved line of comics but they continued to deliver the goods right up until the end.

The merged Pow! and Wham! actually resulted in a fairly strong line-up. Here are examples from the 32 pages of that first issue (No.53, retaining Pow's numbering)...

Pages two and three served as a great introduction to the strips, bringing new readers up to speed...

Reprints of Spider-Man had proved to be Pow's most popular strip so naturally that continued in the merger. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko at their finest...

Georgie's Germs was one of the handful of strips to survive from Wham! and fitted into Pow! perfectly. Art by Cyril Price...

After Spider-Man the second most popular strip in Pow! was Mike Higgs' The Cloak. A fantastic humour-adventure spy/fantasy serial in Mike's distinctive style. I've never met any fan of Pow! who didn't like the strip, and it's easy to see why from this excellent spread. Anything could happen in The Cloak strip!

Horror/sci-fi serial Experiment X featured in the centre pages. That logo is one of my favourites. Very eerie.

Pow! often reprinted some of the complete five page sci-fi strips from Marvel's early sixties Tales of Suspense, Strange Tales and the like, resized into two page stories. This issue gave us The Little Green Man by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko...

The ad for the next issue promoted the free stickers. Remember those? 

Sammy Shrink by Terry Bave was another survivor from Wham! Although perhaps one of the more conservative strips in 'Power Comics' Sammy Shrink proved very popular and was even revived for a much longer run years later in the IPC funnies. 

This first merge issue also saw the start of a brand new adventure thriller; The Two Faces of Janus. A gripping but somewhat daft tale about a man wrongly accused of a crime just because he looks evil due to a curse. Francisco Fuentes was the artist of the strip but I'm not sure he drew this opening episode as it appears to be signed "Ayhau". 

The Tiddlers and The Dolls was an unusual merging of two strips into one! The Tiddlers from Wham! joined Pow's The Dolls of St. Dominics for a weekly battle of the sexes. Art by Mike Lacey... 

Reprints of The Fantastic Four also came over from Wham! into the merged comic. Script by Stan Lee, art by Jack Kirby. (For some reason, Odhams deleted the credits on the Marvel reprints. Probably because it wasn't a tradition in British comics to run credit boxes at the time.)

On the back page, the brilliant Dare-A-Day Davy, another Pow! favourite, by the fantastic Ken Reid...

So there you have it. A good comic full of variety, and a favourite of many in the sixties. Evidently not too many though, as it only lasted another 36 weeks or so before merging into Smash! but while it was around it was a memorable comic!