Comic Oddities: CANDY (1967)

The last in my occasional series of Comic Oddities brings us to the weirdest one ever. It's hard to believe that the company that gave us the greatest comic of the 1960s in TV Century 21 also gave us the weirdest in Candy in 1967. Like TV21, Candy was a co-production between City Magazines and Gerry Anderson's Century 21 Publishing company. The concept was that as Anderson's puppet series had proved to be so incredibly popular then perhaps a comic featuring life-size mannequin children would also work. Er... maybe not.

Gerry Anderson's puppet series worked because they operated within their own universe, and frankly it was the hi-tech craft, dramatic storylines, and explosions that thrilled all ages, and the puppets had personalities too, thanks to expert modellers and scriptwriters.  With Candy, all that was removed, putting the "puppets" (or in this case life-size dolls) in the real world, in twee stories for the very young. 

If that wasn't creepy enough, Candy (and her brother Andy) were looked after by Mr and Mrs Bearanda... two adult-sized panda dummies.

The results ended up looking very odd, unintentionally disturbing, and more like a comic created by David Lynch than Gerry Anderson. Adding to the weirdness, the comic was printed landscape rather than portrait sized. 

The Candy and Andy photo-strip only took up a few pages in the 20 page comic (thankfully). Other strips were illustrated, and featured popular TV characters of the day such as Tingha and Tucker. art by Eric Kincaid...

...and Topo Gigo...

...and characters from children's literature such as Winnie the Pooh...

...and Bengo, by Tim...

There was even a Thunderbirds comic strip! But... unlike any Thunderbirds strip we were familiar with. Aimed at nursery age children, and with it almost implying that the crafts were alive rather than being piloted. art by Gerry Embleton...

On the back page was Snap, Crackle, and Pop, a strip based on the characters from the boxes of Kellogg's Rice Krispies. This was the only strip in the comic that interested me when I was a child, and I remember being fascinated by the idea of those little characters secretly running around the breakfast table. The art on this is possibly by Eric Kincaid too, according to the ever-reliable Century 21 expert Shaqui Le Vesconte.

There were a few Candy and Andy Annuals. This one is from 1968 for the year 1969. Somehow the lighting and print quality on the annuals made Candy and Andy look more sinister than ever, like plastic versions of Children of the Damned...

Presumably the idea of life-size dolls in photo-strips must have sounded good at some stage but I'm staggered it got past the suggestion phase. There's something very grimy and unpleasant about Candy and Andy's world, from the greasy looking dolls to the grubby looking house they live in. 

I think the publishers must have realised their mistake as later issues of Candy saw it dispense with the dolls and photo-strips and replace them with artwork and friendlier-looking characters. The format became more standard too, getting rid of the landscape shape. Some readers must have liked it though because it ran for 154 issues in total before merging into Jack and Jill in 1969. 

Today, early copies of Candy fetch high prices on eBay, so this weird comic oddity has some interest out there! 

Update: Thanks to Shaqui Le Vesconte for identifying some of the artists.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Review: ANDERSONIC No.25

I loved Saturdays when I was a child because it meant comics day! Sure, comics came out on some other days too (Dandy on Monday, Topper on Wednesday, etc) but most of them were published on Saturday. Plus it wasn't a school day, so even better!

Saturdays in 1971 meant it was the day Countdown was out, my favourite comic of the early Seventies. Basically a rebranded version of TV21, Countdown was the place for comic strip versions of Gerry Anderson shows, plus Doctor Who!

One of the main selling points for Countdown was the UFO strip, which sometimes featured on the covers. And that's my roundabout way of explaining why I like this issue of Andersonic so much. The covers are designed as a perfect homage to Countdown comic, from the logo to the UFO cover strip! 

I don't buy Andersonic very often so I didn't know it carried an ongoing UFO strip. It's superbly crafted by writer Graeme Bassett and artist Richard Farrell and would fit perfectly in a modern-day version of Countdown if such a thing existed. 

The rest of the contents of this slick 44 page A5 size well designed fanzine feature articles relating to various Gerry Anderson shows, and the highlight of the issue is an interesting interview with Joy Cuff, who sculpted many of the Thunderbirds puppets. 

Andersonic is a great read for any aficionado of those classic TV shows. The current issue is No.25 and it, and back issues, can be bought from their website here:
http://andersonic.co.uk/page13.htm

The New Captain Scarlet comic (2005)

With the brand new Thunderbirds Are Go series starting on TV on Saturday 4th April (5pm ITV) I thought it'd be appropriate to look back at a comic based on the previous Gerry Anderson show that was resurrected. In 2005 a new all-CGI version of Captain Scarlet debuted on ITV. Despite being an impressive series with some solid storylines each episode was split into two parts by ITV and buried within some Saturday morning sub-par Tiswas type show. Subsequently it failed to reach all of its potential viewing audience.

Nevertheless, a contract had been agreed with John Brown's company GE Magazines to publish a magazine based on the series so in October 2005, the first issue of Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet appeared in newsagents.

Considering the poor treatment the TV series had suffered it won't surprise you to hear that the magazine didn't fare too well. Only six issues were published. However, I for one felt it was a few notches above the usual licensed titles of recent years and deserved to succeed.

Any editor putting together a licensed comic these days will often have to do their best with limited resources and material. What editor Will Potter did with the New Captain Scarlet mag was to use screen grabs of the TV episodes to produce photo strip adaptations. Depending on the grabs, and the limitations of condensing a 20 minute story into an 11 page strip, the results were varied but on the whole suitably dramatic and engaging. 

The rest of the 28 page issues were taken up with pin ups, character profiles, vehicle data, puzzles and suchlike. The designer of the magazine, Tom Moore, did a very good job with it.

Sadly issue 6 was the final issue and it ended with quite a downbeat message telling the readers that the Mysterons had won! 

As licensed titles go, New Captain Scarlet was one of the better ones of this century so far. While I appreciate that the budget couldn't cover originated comic strips I'd have preferred it if the photo-strips had used screen grabs from different episodes to create new stories (as I'd done with Egmont's CiTV Tellytots mag a few years earlier). Still, Will and his team did a fine job on the mag and the six issues are a nice collectors item for any enthusiast of Gerry Anderson memorabilia.  

By the way, Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet is still available on DVD. Well worth buying if you haven't seen it.

The Gerry Anderson Comic Collection

Last year, Egmont UK published Thunderbirds: The Comic Collection (reviewed here) and now there's a companion volume in their Classic Comics series, The Gerry Anderson Comic Collection which expands to cover other 1960s strips such as Fireball XL5, Stingray, Captain Scarlet, Lady Penelope, Joe 90 and more.

Hardback, 288 pages on top quality paper, it's a hefty book. It has a selection of strips for each series, and begins with three Fireball XL5 serials, including Mike Noble's first work on the strip from the early issues of TV21. The art has been shot from the comics, so the quality depends on how good the reproduction was back then. Most times it's excellent (TV21 was printed Photogravure, the best method available) bar from some slightly off-register pages that were evident in the original comics. However, for some reason one story, (the memorable serial about giant animals and ants invading New York) seems to be over-saturated and too harsh. It's a problem that also befalls the five page Angels story reprinted from Lady Penelope. I'm guessing that in trying to bleach out any browning of the old pages, it also knocked out some finer aspects of the painted art. I don't mean to be too critical, as reproducing artwork for print can be a fiddly task, and more complex than simply scanning something for a blog. I should stress that the majority of the book has very good reproduction and is close to the original printings.

There's a good selection of Frank Bellamy's Thunderbirds strips here too, including the very last ones he did for the combined TV21 and Joe 90 in 1969. Some nice Ron Embleton Stingray pages too, and the first Stingray serial that Ron's brother Gerry Embleton drew.

Lady Penelope is well represented with two serials from 1965 illustrated by Eric Eden. There's also a complete Marina story drawn by Rab Hamilton, from the first 23 issues of Lady Penelope's own comic.

A few Captain Scarlet stories are here too, from 1968 when the strip featured on the cover of TV21, although he book has chosen to omit the TV21 logo. There does seem to be a mistake in crediting both Ron Embleton and Mike Noble on one story which looks entirely like Embleton's work to me. 

The great Mike Noble is well represented with not only his Fireball XL5 strips but also two of his Zero X serials. There's also a short article on the artist's career, as well a spotlight on Frank Bellamy and background information on the original comics.

The book ends with a couple of Joe 90 strips. Unfortunately they're scanned from the colourised 1990s reprints rather than from the original 1969 comic, but that's a minor flaw and it's only a few pages.

Overall, The Gerry Anderson Comic Collection is a worthy addition to the bookshelves of anyone interested in the best of British comics. It's available from November 6th 2014, with a R.R.P. of £25. ISBN 978-1-4052-7266-7

There's also a companion volume released at the same time: Inside the Worlds of Gerry Anderson by Graham Bleathman, which I've reviewed here:
http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/review-inside-worlds-of-gerry-anderson.html

Review: Inside the Worlds of Gerry Anderson

I've known the artist Graham Bleathman since the late 1970s, when we were both doing our individual fanzines. Mine was After Image, and his was The Magazine of Tomorrow. Over the years we've focused on our particular careers, mine in humour comics, and Graham excelling at the art of the cutaway for various publications as well as illustrating numerous covers for The People's Friend. 

Back in the 1990s, Graham provided many double page cutaway paintings for Fleetway's Thunderbirds the Comic, and now Egmont have gathered them into a spectacular hardback collection, Inside the Worlds of Gerry Anderson.

Fortunately Graham still had a lot of the artwork, so the book could be shot from his original boards and the reproduction is excellent. The 128 pages cover the vehicles and locations seen from Fireball XL5 to Joe 90, including superb cutaways of all the Thunderbirds craft, Tracy Island, Cloudbase, Marineville Control Tower, and many more.

The cutaways proved so popular that they went beyond what we saw on TV, and included places and vehicles only seen in the TV21 comic strips, such as Katannia, Capital of Bereznik, the Eastern Block country used as the villains in the strips. We also get to see the inside of a Bereznik Battle Tank! 

Graham based his cutaways on what we know from the TV shows, but of course the level of detail meant that he also had to go further than that, creating mechanics and interiors never seen in the shows or comics. It's all good fun, and the fantastic artwork is worth poring over for hours. 

Inside the Worlds of Gerry Anderson is published by Egmont on November 6th 2014 as part of their Classic Comics range. R.R.P. £17.99. ISBN 978-1-4052-7265-0

A related book, The Gerry Anderson Comic Collection, is also available, which I've reviewed here:
http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/the-gerry-anderson-comic-collection.html

Thunderbirds old and new!

Over on his Down the Tubes blog today, John Freeman shows the latest images of the redesigned Thunderbirds craft for the upcoming new ITV series Thunderbirds Are Go! Looking good so far, with the models fairly close to the original iconic designs. (Except for TB5, but that probably needed updating the most.)

It reminded me that later this year Egmont UK are publishing two books that are sure to appeal to fans of Gerry Anderson shows. 

Gerry Anderson: The Comic Collection will be a 288 page hardback reprinting classic comic strips featuring Stingray, Fireball XL5, Thunderbirds, Marina, Lady Penelope, Captain Scarlet, Zero X, Joe 90 and The Angels. Strips which originally appeared in the 1960s in the weekly comics TV Century 21, Lady Penelope, and Joe 90 Top Secret. Expect to see artwork by Mike Noble, Frank Bellamy, Ron Embleton and other greats.

Inside the World of Gerry Anderson will be a 112 page hardback compiling Graham Bleathman's superb cutaway illustrations of vehicles and craft from various Gerry Anderson shows. The artwork originally appeared in Egmont's Thunderbirds the Comic in the 1990s.

Both books are currently available for pre-order from Amazon.  

Stand By for Action!

More details have emerged regarding the limited edition Supermarionation Blu-Ray box set that Network are producing. You can now pre-order it from the company's website at a specially discounted price until October 20th at the latest. 

You may recall that I recently reported that it would include the return of the much-loved TV21 comic as an all-new specially printed one-off edition as just one of the items in this collection. Here are the full details of this amazing box set from the Network website....

Stand by for action and pre-buy your copy now!

It's the ultimate box set for aficionados of Gerry Anderson's iconic Supermarionation series and it's available to pre-buy right now from networkonair!

Limited to just 2,500 copies, it marries the brand new film, Filmed in Supermarionation, with a selection of key episodes from the Gerry Anderson archive, all painstakingly restored in High Definition for the first time from the original film elements.

A newly expanded and redesigned edition of Stephen La Riviere’s book is also included as well an exclusive one-off TV21 comic, and a wallet of postcards featuring newly created artwork based on the film’s graphics, all presented in a beautifully crafted box.

The complete box set contains:

FILMED IN SUPERMARIONATION - BLU-RAY
Stephen La Rivière brings his acclaimed history of Supermarionation to the big screen, with a mix of newly filmed interviews, rare and unseen archive footage, reconstructions of the Supermarionation techniques - all hosted by Lady Penelope, Parker and Brains. The Blu-ray edition features a wealth of special features including extended interviews and full-length archive material

THIS IS SUPERMARIONATION
Lady Penelope and Parker are our hosts for more than four hours of Supermarionation in action! Beautifully restored, complete episodes are presented in High Definition interspersed with new linking material, rare archive material, original commercial break bumpers (reinstated with actual commercials), trailers and more make for the ultimate celebration.
Episodes included in this set:
• Four Feather Falls: Gunfight on Main Street • Supercar: False Alarm • Fireball XL5: Space City Special • Stingray: Pilot • Thunderbirds: Terror in New York City • Captain Scarlet: The Mysterons • Joe 90: Hi-Jacked • The Secret Service: More Haste, Less Speed

HD21 - THE WORLDS OF GERRY ANDERSON IN HIGH DEFINITION
Two additional Blu-ray discs of restored key episodes spanning every Supermarionation series from Supercar to The Secret Service.
Episodes included in this set:
• Supercar: Crash Landing • Fireball XL5: Planet 46 • Stingray: Plant of Doom • Stingray: Titan Goes Pop • Thunderbirds: Trapped in the Sky • Captain Scarlet: Treble Cross • Joe 90: The Most Special Agent • Supercar: Talisman of Sargon • Fireball XL5: XL5 to H2O • Stingray: Count Down • Thunderbirds: Atlantic Inferno • Captain Scarlet: Winged Assassin • Captain Scarlet: Noose of Ice • The Secret Service: A Case for the BISHOP

FILMED IN SUPERMARIONATION - BOOK
Stephen La Rivère's history of Supermarionation has been newly updated and is presented here in a redesigned, deluxe slipcased edition, featuring scores of rare photographs, many of them previously unpublished.

TV21 - Edition 243

Unique to this box set, we present a brand-new edition of the classic Century 21 comic TV21, taking up where the original series left off. Produced to the same size and specification as the original, this all-new, single issue features newly-commissioned comic strips from original 1960s illustrators including Gerry Embleton and Martin Asbury, alongside the very best in contemporary comic talent. Contributors include Mike Collins, Martin Baines, Lew Stringer and Marvel UK writer John Freeman. This official and special edition is only available as part of this set.

COMMEMORATIVE POSTCARDS
A wallet of A5-sized postcards featuring some of Justin T. Lee’s stylish graphics originally produced for the film and book - available only as part of this box set.

To pre-order your copy of this fantastic box-set go to the Network web page here:

http://networkonair.com/shop/2038-supermarionation-box-set-pre-buy-5027626708146.html