The New Year LOOK-IN (1972)

There's time for one final post this year so here are a few pages from the issue of Look-In dated 1st January 1972 (published at the end of 1971). Look-In had proved to be the big hit of 1971 when it was launched. I always preferred rival comic Countdown (also launched that year) but Look-In had its own distinct style and I can understand why it was so popular. 

The cover is by Arnaldo Putzu, who contributed many painted covers for the comic over the years. You'll notice it's issue No.1. Look-In renumbered itself at the start of every year, presumably to entice new readers. It didn't seem to do it any harm.

Inside, Leslie Crowther tries to keep up his New Year's Resolution in Crowrther In Trouble, drawn by Tom Kerr...

This issue featured three pages of horoscopes for the TV stars of the day. One of whom has definitely fallen from grace in recent times. Here's one of the pages...

The Please Sir! strip now featured the less distinctive class of 'Four C', as the original cast of 'Five C' had left to spin off into their own TV series. Artwork by Graham Allen, who until a few years earlier had been drawing The Nervs for Smash!

Follyfoot had no connection to a New Year theme but I couldn't resist showing artwork by Mike Noble...

The aforementioned class of 'Five C' had left school to star in their own TV show The Fenn Street Gang, so Look-In featured a strip based on that too. Artwork by Tom Kerr...

Even On the Buses had its own strip. Artwork by Harry North...

Subtitled 'The Junior TV Times', Look-In always featured selected highlights of ITV schedules for the week, focusing on the times children would be watching TV. Most of these regional TV stations have merged into others now...

Here's the schedules the right way up so you don't have to tip your computer on its side. ;-) 

The back page of that issue featured a teaser for an Apollo badge offer that was coming in the following issue. Did any of you have these badges? 

All that remains to be said is to wish you all a Happy New Year again and thank you for following this blog. Whatever you're doing this evening, have an enjoyable time!

Christmas Comics: LOOK-IN (1971)

Kicking off a short series of festive blog posts, here are a few pages from the first Christmas issue of Look-In, dated 25th December 1971. (Click on images to see them larger.) Dubbed the 'Junior TV Times', Look-In was published by Independent Television Publications Ltd (as was the TV Times then) and featured strips based on popular ITV shows. The wraparound cover above is by Arnaldo Putzu, who was the comic's regular cover artist and an illustrator of film posters of the day.

The comic's 24 pages contained a variety of humour and adventure strips but it's only the humour strips I'm showing here as the adventure serials didn't have a festive theme. First up, here's Crowther in Trouble, featuring ex-BBC Crackerjack star Leslie Crowther, drawn by the prolific Tom Kerr...

Please Sir! was a popular comedy series and to me seemed to be a mixture of the movie To Sir With Love and The Beano's Bash Street Kids! The strip in Look-In was drawn by the versatile Graham Allen...

A spin-off from Please Sir! was the TV series The Fenn Street Gang, about Class 5C's adventures after leaving school, featuring the actors who could no longer convincingly play 15 year olds. Artwork for the strip by that man Tom Kerr again, a familiar artist of seventies comics...

The strip version of On the Buses was drawn by Harry North, an excellent artist, although Olive's reaction to being blasted in the face by a shower in the last panel seems oddly static. 

Look-In also carried several feature pages. Curious as to what was on TV back then? Here's a selection of ITV highlights for Christmas 1971. I seem to remember watching the Mike and Bernie Winters All Star Christmas Comedy Carnival which contained new mini-episodes of various comedy series (a bit like Children In Need does now). 

More festive fun soon! 

This week in 1972: LOOK-IN

Look-In was one of the success stories of 1970s British comics. Published by Independent Television Publications Ltd, it was sub titled 'The Junior TV Times' (and TV Times was also published by the same company back then). Edited by Alan Fennel, who had previously edited the hugely successful TV Century 21, the ITP comic had its own style, combining features on ITV stars and programmes alongside comic strip versions of popular family shows. Look-In later began featuring popstar pin-ups and features, which proved very successful, but in its early days was very much a TV orientated magazine.

Here are a few pages from issue No.11 (Look-In renumbered itself every January) that went on sale this day in 1972. The cover is by Mike Noble, who had been the original artist on the Timeslip strip (although the interior strip in this issue was by another artist).

Inside, Harry North's On The Buses strip avoided the sexist jokes of the TV series, and went for more of a slapstick approach more suited to the comic's young readership.

Catweazle was a very popular children's TV show at the time, so it was only natural the man-out-of-time would appear in Look-In. Artwork by Gerry Embleton.

When he was working on TV21, Mike Noble had illustrated numerous science fiction pages for Fireball XL5, Zero X, Captain Scarlet, and Star Trek, so it was probably a welcome change for him to illustrate the down to Earth saga of Follyfoot...

Being 'The Junior TV Times', Look-In also contained interviews and articles on TV stars. Here's a brief question and answer session with Mike MacKenzie (Tarot in Ace of Wands) and a feature on Diana Rigg...

The Fenn Street Gang was a spin-off from London Weekend Television's Please Sir! and ran in Look-In as a comedy serial illustrated by Tom Kerr...

Part of Look-In's unique appeal was that as a publication associated with ITV it was allowed to publish regional ITV listings. Although being a children's publication it only focused on teatime to early evening. 

Robert Harbin's 15 minute programmes Origami had amazed a lot of kids back then so a regular feature in Look-In was essential.

Priced at 5p, Look-In was more expensive than most of its rival comics, but it packed a lot of variety into its 28 glossy pages and proved to be a big hit with kids for many years. 

This week in 1978: TARGET

  
In newsagents this week in 1978 was the first issue of Polystyle's new adventure weekly, Target. Unlike the company's previous titles Countdown and TV Action, this comic was far from a slick publication. Printed on newsprint with only 20 pages, Target looked cheap but was quite expensive at 10p, when most other adventure titles were no more than 8p.

Clearly, Polystyle were hoping to attract readers of its defunct TV Action title as Target carried the topline "Your NEW TV Action paper". Perhaps this was a misstep because drawing comparisons between the two comics only highlighted how poor the new comic was. The production was low budget and its use of flat solid colours was limiting and made things even worse. The comic looked very shoddy on the stands next to 2000AD, Tiger, Look-In and the like.

There had been a boy's magazine called Target just a few years earlier published by the New English Library. (See here for my blog post about it.) However in the case of this new venture, the comic took its name from a British TV detective show of the time starring Patrick Mower, and the Target strip itself appeared inside. Unfortunately the basic artwork wasn't very dynamic and the heavy colours did it no favours.

Kojak starred in the centre pages in a black and white strip drawn by Jon Davis. You'll notice that the strip is quite brutal in places for a British comic and I think Polystyle were trying to reflect both the changing tastes of television and hoping that Target could be their version of IPC's Action or DC Thomson's Bullet. I don't think it really succeeded.

Cannon was a reprint from TV Action and featured artwork by Martin Asbury...

The Charlie's Angels strip was quite odd. With the T&A on display it seemed to be trying to be a cheesecake strip but the artwork was so sketchy and loose that it didn't work. 

The free gift in issue one was a motorbike poster...

The strip that worked best for me was Hazell, drawn by Harry North. Amongst other things North had been the artist for the On The Buses strip in Look-In but with Hazell, North was indulging in gritty crime drama. As usual he turned in a superb job. Here's the three pages of episode one...

Judging from the skimpy outfits worn by the women in the strip I'm guessing that Polystyle were aiming Target at a slightly older reader than other adventure comics of the time. Sadly it seemed that Target didn't catch on with any age group and after just 18 or 19 weeks it merged into TV Comic.