CRACKER No.1 (1975)

Two weeks after the final issue of Buzz was published, D.C. Thomson launched a comic that was clearly intended as a replacement. Cracker No.1 arrived on Saturday 11th January 1975, complete with 'Squeeze and Squeak' free gift. (This was basically two balloons with a tiny squeaker attached between them. Squeeze the smaller balloon, and the air passing through caused the squeak.)

As we saw in my previous post, Buzz was a 16 page tabloid comic. Perhaps realising that tabloid comics were going out of favour, Thomsons made Cracker an A4 size comic, like Beano, Dandy, and Sparky. However, Cracker had 32 pages, more than any other Thomson humour comic of the time, presumably to compete with IPC's 32 page funnies. 

Cracker's host was 'Sammy', a somewhat ugly and unpleasant looking kid that I couldn't imagine any reader identifying with. While it made a refreshing change to IPC's rather bland looking characters such as Sid or Toy Boy, 'Sammy' looked like he'd seen and done unspeakable evil. 

Cracker had a lively content of strips, including a couple of adventure serials. Stories featuring castaways had been a popular theme in UK comics for decades, and Castaways on Planet Doom featured a family mysteriously transported to another world. It also featured the most powerful binoculars in the universe apparently...

Billy the Kid and Pongo was pretty much Cracker's version of Dennis and Gnasher, even to the point of it being drawn by Gordon Bell, who had ghosted Dennis the Menace lots of times.

The centre four pages of Cracker were the Schooldaze section, featuring school-based strips. The centrespread featured The Headhunters, which was basically a continuation of Skookum Skool from the defunct Buzz, featuring the same class. Art by Ken Harrison... 

Kid gangs using a shed as their gang hut had been used in The Beezer's Banana Bunch and Pow's The Group, and Cracker had Curly's Commandos with the same premise. Art by Barrie Appleby...

The other adventure strip in the comic was indeed a cracker; Iron Hand, wonderfully illustrated by Paddy Brennan, one of Thomson's best artists...

Cracker included a few comedy feature pages too, such as this one on the back page...

Sadly, the 1970s were unstable times for British comics and Cracker only managed 87 weekly issues before merging into The Beezer in 1976. 

Firework comics: THE BEANO (1966)

I thought I'd already blogged about this issue years ago but apparently not, so here we go with a bonus addition to my retrospective of firework-themed comics. My apologies for the tattyness of this 1966 Beano. It's one I had before I started looking after comics properly so the cover became a bit damaged back in the sixties. Still, it looks like Biffo's banger blew off a chunk of the cover so I'm claiming it's art, mate. Artwork by Dudley Watkins.

I kept this issue as it meant a lot to me. Fifty years ago, when I was seven years old and had this comic, my mum was in hospital for a serious operation so my dad and I went to live with my grandad and my aunt for a couple of weeks. Fortunately my mum made a complete recovery and lived for another 47 years after that, but I still vividly remember reading this issue at my grandad's house and having fireworks in his back yard. I asked my dad to send a rocket over towards the hospital side of town, hoping my mum would see it. (She didn't of course, but she told me she did when I visited her to cheer me up.) Precious memories of people all gone now, sadly.

Anyway, back to this issue, which is why you're here. Several fireworks-themed stories appeared that week in 1966, such as this Billy Whizz story. Art by Billy's original artist, Malcolm Judge...

The Bash Street Kids story that week was a delight, with a bizarre instance of them sharing the same dream! Art by David Sutherland...

On the back page in those days before he graduated to the front cover, Dennis the Menace, drawn by Gordon Bell doing a fill-in for Davy Law...

I hope you've enjoyed this year's selection of fireworks comics. Wishing you a happy and safe November 5th! 

Christmas Comics: SPARKY (1973)

Sparky No.466, dated 22nd December 1973 kicked off with a marvelous wraparound cover drawn by Bill Ritchie. 

Turn the page, and there's The Sparky People, a great strip set in the Sparky office. (Although as far as I know, none of the characters were based on actual people.) Art by Jim Petrie...

Sparky had its own distinct style, often wittier and more modern than The Dandy and The Beano at the time. Here's the Christmas episode of the popular L Cars with art by Bill Hill...

Snip and Snap had a very distinct art style that I liked. It was drawn by Mike Green, who later went on to do Weedy Willy for Oink!...

Ali's Baba made good use of spot colour by having the guardian angel Ali only appear in red line. Art by Malcolm Judge...

By 1973 Puss an' Boots had proven so popular with the readers that they now occupied the full colour centre pages. Not bad for a strip that began as a half pager in black and white. Artwork by the excellent John Geering...

Dreamy Daniel was about a boy with a vivid imagination, very much a forerunner to Les Pretend from The Beano. Art by Gordon Bell...

Where will the Blimey-Timey Time Machine land next? Find out soon!

Gordon Bell 1934 - 2014

Spoofer Mc.Graw. SPARKY 404 (Oct,14th 1972)

Sad news just in that the cartoonist Gordon Bell suddenly passed away last week, on February 13th 2014 at the age of 79. 

Gordon Bell's distinctive style will be familiar to the millions of children who read his comic strips over the last few decades. He began working for The Beano in 1958 on a strip called Pom-Pom, but his most fondly remembered characters came later. Who can forget the excellent Spoofer McGraw (He Tells Tall Tales) in Sparky in the late 1960s to early 1970s? Or the pure fun of Pup Parade for The Beano during the same period?

Dreamy Daniel. SPARKY, 1972.

As well as being assigned his own strips to draw, Mr.Bell was often called on to fill-in on other strips. A task he succeeded at admirably. Although The Beano was always uncredited in the 1960s I always noticed when "the other artist" did a fill-in on a particular week and enjoyed his versions of the characters. Here are examples of his work on Dennis the Menace (Beano No.1268, Nov.5th 1966), The Bash Street Kids (Beano 1282, Feb.11th 1967), and Roger the Dodger (Beano 1331, Jan.20th 1968)...

(Incidentally, that Bash Street spread features an early appearance of the pets who would become the Bash Street Dogs and Cats. Take a closer look...)

Gordon Bell's artwork had a very pleasant and amusing quality about it. As Peter Gray said over on his blog, Gordon was excellent at drawing funny facial expressions. His work was always joyful and solidly professional. 

My condolences to Mr.Bell's family and friends at this sad time. 

The Courier has published an obituary with more information on the artist's long career: http://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/obituaries/courier-fax-cartoonist-gordon-bell-1.225836

SPARKY No.372, March 4th 1972

Beano Puppets of the 1960s

As these were mentioned on George Shier's Wacky Comics blog earlier I thought I'd dig them out to show here. From Autumn 1967 through most of 1968 The Beano featured a different character every week in the form of a puppet to cut out. The feature appeared in the centre pages, taking up roughly a quarter of the second Bash Street Kids page. 

I vividly remember that Wilfrid was the first one presented, and I think he was followed in subsequent weeks by the rest of The Bash Street Kids before it moved on to feature other Beano characters. As you can see they had a flexible attitude towards keeping the characters the correct proportion to each other. Puppet Fatty is smaller than Dennis!

I'm pretty sure I cut out every one so I think they're all shown here. (That said, I seem to remember a General Jumbo one too but that appears to be missing.) Please forgive the grotty appearance of some of them. Over the years the glue soaked through the flimsy newsprint and turned brown as glue is wont to do. 

I glued the figures onto card from cereal packets so there's also a nostalgic aspect in looking at the reverse of the puppets where we can see fragments of old Ready Brek and Sugar Smacks boxes from 1967! (Yes, that's Captain Scarlet on the Sugar Smacks box. Various TV characters were featured on those cereal packets over the years, usually promoting the free badge or whatever inside. Back in the days when using free gifts to entice children to eat sugary foods was allowed!)

The artwork for the puppets was mainly by David Sutherland, although the Roger the Dodger, Biffo, and Buster ones are by Gordon Bell. 

Most of the characters are still in The Beano today of course but some such as Lord Snooty's supporting cast are long gone. Interestingly two adventure strips were also represented with Billy the Cat and Danny on a Dolphin. (The Danny puppet lost an arm sometime during the past 46 years unfortunately.)

The idea was to connect the limbs and head to the torso with loops of cotton and manipulate them with another length of cotton. I couldn't be bothered with that and preferred the limbs sewn tightly to their joints so I could play with the puppets as sort of flat cardboard action figures. My mum had the job of sewing them together each week but she didn't mind and as a trained tailoress it was a quick task for her. These puppets have been in an old shoebox for years but I found them last year when I was clearing out my mum's house after she'd passed away.

The book The History of The Beano showed some of the puppets as they appeared before thousands of Beano readers took scissors to them.

Interestingly, The Beano didn't make a fuss in promoting the puppets. There were no cover lines mentioning them as I recall. They just appeared unannounced one week and became a fixture for months afterwards. Then quietly stopped when all the characters had been exhausted. It was a nice idea, and I remember the anticipation every week of wondering who would be featured next. No doubt many readers cut out the puppets just as I did, so the chances of collectors finding undamaged copies from that period must be slim.