This week in 1971: BUSTER AND JET merge

Concluding my look back at a few comics from this week in 1971, it's also 45 years since IPC's short-lived Jet comic merged into Buster. The first combined issue of Buster and Jet went on sale Saturday 25th September 1971 (the exact same day as the first merged issue of Valiant and TV21 shown in an earlier post here). 

Jet brought several strips to its new home; Von Hoffman's Invasion, The Kids of Stalag 41, The Sludgemouth Sloggers, Bonehead, Bertie Bumpkin, and Faceache. Here's a few of them...

Von Hoffman's Invasion was probably the best of Jet's rather weak adventure strips so it's easy to see why it proved popular enough to survive into Buster. Art by Eric Bradbury...

Bonehead was drawn by the ever-reliable Reg Parlett...

Faceache was of course by Ken Reid, and became the most enduring survivor of Jet's strips, lasting for many years in Buster...

A healthy number of Buster's strips also survived the merger, including the wonderful Clever Dick by Leo Baxendale, and Galaxus drawn by the Solano Lopez studio...

As Rebellion now own the rights to these strips it's hoped that some of them will eventually be collected into trade paperbacks. I'd personally like to see compilations of Clever Dick and Faceache but obviously it all depends on whether Rebellion think there's a big enough market for such books. It's a tough call, and while I'm sure a couple hundred people might buy them the company would need to know there's far more interest than that to make the books worthwhile. 

A look back at JET No.1 (1971)

In the 1970s IPC Magazines were determined to become the dominant force in British comics and produced numerous titles to achieve that aim. Sadly, many were relatively unsuccessful and short-lived, such as the boys adventure weekly Jet which managed just 22 issues.

Launched at the end of April 1971, Jet is perhaps most memorable today for being the comic where Ken Reid's excellent Faceache strip began. However, it's arguable that the fantasy serial Von Hoffman's Invasion was another very notable strip. Here's the first episode, with great artwork by Eric Bradbury...

Jet's 40 pages were a good mixture of adventure and humour strips, with the emphasis on the former. The strips were fairly traditional fare for the time, featuring sport, war, and suchlike. Here's the first page of football strip The Sludgemouth Sloggers by Douglas Maxted, another IPC regular...

Partridge's Patch was a gentle detective story about a rural copper. Art on episode one by Mike Western...

Sergeants Four, by Fred Holmes, featured four stereotypical English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish sergeants in lighthearted war stories.

Paddy McGinty's Goat, taking its name from a song popularised by Val Doonican at the time, featured a shape-shifting alien who spent most of his time as a goat. Not IPC's finest hour...

The full colour centre pages featured a humour strip, with Mike Lacey doing his best Baxendale impersonation drawing The Kids of Stalag 41. (Toni Goffe took over the art with No.2.) Here's Mike's splendid first episode...

Crazy Car Capers was clearly inspired by the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Wacky Races that was on TV at the time. Artwork by Solano Lopez...

Ken Reid's Faceache was the strip that proved to have longevity, continuing into the merged Buster and Jet and remaining a favourite in Buster for many years afterwards. Here's the very first story from Jet No.1. It's evident the page was originally drawn for the narrower IPC size (like Cor!! and Tiger) or someone gave Ken the wrong dimensions. There's been some resizing by an art assistant for Jet's wider page format and it throws the composition off a bit but it's still classic stuff... 

Bertie Bumpkin, by Terry Bave, was the other single page humour strip in Jet. Much of the humour came from Bertie's exaggerated accent and phrases, which were translated in footnotes...

Bala the Briton was a rousing historical/mythological saga in the style of Jason and the Argonauts. I'm unsure of the artist on this. Here's page one of the first four page story...

Other strips included Carno's Cadets, Kester Kidd, Adare's Anglians, and, from issue 2, The Dwarf.

Personally, I never found Jet that inspiring. I had every issue, as I bought just about every new IPC comic back then, but I didn't keep them for long. (I recently purchased this issue again.) Obviously the intended readership didn't care too much for the comic, as it merged into Buster after 22 weeks. It always felt like a diluted version of Valiant to me, (as did Thunder, another short-lived IPC weekly). Apart from Tiger, and to an extent Scorcher, I felt that IPC never really got to grips with boys adventure comics in the 1970s until the new wave of Battle, Action, and 2000AD came along. It took editors with vision, Pat Mills and John Wagner, to bring IPC up to date to reflect a changing culture.    

That said, I know Jet was appreciated by some, and despite any weaknesses in its scripts and direction it did contain some top class artwork. I hope you've enjoyed this glimpse through the the first issue.