The Christmas VALIANT AND TV21 (1973)

No snow on the logo, but Mike Western's Christmassy cover art gives the comic plenty of festive cheer. If you don't know the answer to "Who Is It?" you need to brush up on your pop culture history. 

Inside, Captain Hurricane was doing his bit to wipe out Nazis before indulding himself in Christmas dinner. art by Charles Roylance...

Janus Stark had been going for nearly five years at this point and the stories could be somewhat trite but he remained a popular character. Art by the Solano Lopez studio...

Although Valiant was mainly an adventure comic, it also featured quite a few humour strips during this period. The Swots and the Blots had joined Valiant in 1971 when Smash! had merged into it. A great strip that deserves to be collected. Originally by other hands, Leo Baxendale took over the strip and made it his own in 1969, and was still going strong by this 1973 episode...

The centre pages featured Star Trek, with all new strips exclusive to Valiant drawn by John Stokes. It had been in Valiant since the merger with TV21 in 1971. Although this was the final episode, the TV21 logo continued to be on the comic's masthead for several more months, even though no strips from TV21 remained, and the comic had no strips based on TV shows at all. A shame that the once mighty TV21 should fizzle out in such a way.

Valiant contained reprints at times to save on budget, and Micky the Mimic was a reprint from an early Sixties Buster.

The famous Billy Bunter had joined Valiant in 1963 when Knockout merged into it, and continued to run until the final issue. Art by Reg Parlett...

On the back page, the long running Nutts continued to amuse, with art by Angel Nadal. This strip began in Valiant No.1 in 1962 and lasted until the final issue in 1976, although some were reprint in later years.

Christmas is getting closer! Another festive flashback tomorrow! Which year will we visit next?

Review: MARNEY THE FOX

The weekly comic Buster presented its readers with a good variety of stories over the years, from laugh-out-loud humour strips such as Clever Dick by Leo Baxendale, to gripping adventure serials such as Maxwell Hawke. One strip that had a unique quality of its own was Marney the Fox by Scott Goodall and John Stokes than ran in the weekly from 1974 to 1976. Now, Rebellion have collected the entire series into one quality hardback graphic novel.

Buster was a comic aimed at both boys and girls, although I suspect the majority of its readers were boys. Marney the Fox was unusual in that it was the sort of strip that would typically be considered solely for a girls' comic. The story of an orphaned fox cub, struggling to survive in a hostile environment, is one that provokes an emotional response from readers; something quite different to Buster's usual action-orientated adventure strips. However, that was part of Marney's appeal, - it was different for a Buster strip, and that made a refreshing change. Respect to editor Len Wenn on taking the risk.

The quality of the script and artwork helped of course. Scott Goodall was one of the best comics writers of the 1970s, producing tightly written, compelling scripts that hooked the readers week after week. John Stokes was the perfect choice of artist, depicting the Devon countryside in wonderful detail, and making Marney a truly sympathetic creature. 

It has to be said though that Marney the Fox did provoke a divided reaction. Some readers loved it as their favourite strip, while others hated it, but response was balanced. In the end, it only ran for two years, but perhaps that was enough. Any longer and the strip could have become stale (as many long-running series did). 

Rebellion's collection of Marney the Fox gives us the entire series within hardback covers (with a new cover and introduction by John Stokes). It's Rebellion's best book yet of their Treasury of British Comics series and should appeal to old and young alike. (Unless they're foxhunters or farmers, in which case they might have a different opinion on the wandering cub.) Animal lovers and children will love it though, as will fans of quality comics art, making the book a fine present for Christmas. 

You can order it directly from the publisher here:
https://shop.2000ad.com/catalogue/RCA-H0003

BUSTER AND COR!! - First merged issue (1974)

At fifteen years old in 1974 I was going through my "British comics are just for kids" phase and didn't really appreciate what a good comic the merged Buster and Cor!! was. At the time, I was beginning to "grow out" of humour comics and stopped buying Buster shortly after. 

In truth, Buster and Cor!! was a solid comic with some great talent working on it. At 15, I was too old for it of course, but in retrospect, looking at it from a creative viewpoint, it was one of the best comics around at that time. Let's take a look at a few of the strips from this first merged issue...

One of the significant things about this issue is that the Buster strip itself saw a change of artist from Angel Nadal to Reg Parlett (who also drew the front cover). I'd grown up with Nadal's version and wasn't too keen on the change, but it can't be denied that Parlett was ideally suited to the strip and its fast paced slapstick situations...

The merger also saw some new strips starting that week that hadn't been seen in either Buster or Cor!! before. One of which was Snooper, by the always-wonderful Leo Baxendale...

Whenever comics merged, it was always a concern that some favourites would be pushed out. Thankfully, Ken Reid's excellent Faceache strip had proved popular to survive. (A collection of Faceache strips will be published by Rebellion in November.)

Another new strip was Marney the Fox, written by Scott Goodall and drawn by John Stokes. It was rare for strips in Buster to tug on the emotions as much as Marney did but it made for compelling reading. (Marney the Fox is another collection coming from Rebellion this year, and the one I'm looking forward to the most.)

Val's Vanishing Cream was one of the strips that had transferred over from Cor!! and was drawn by Mike Lacey. A typical IPC humour strip in that it featured a kid with a gimmick. That could restrict the humour somewhat but this is a good episode...

This issue gave the comic the opportunity to fill in new readers with the backstory of Fishboy before he embarked on a new adventure. A kind of British equivalent to Aquaman, this is another strip by Scott Goodall and John Stokes that deserves collecting.

There was a lot of good material in this issue and this was just a sample of pages. Rebellion now own a lot of classic material ripe for reprinting so I hope that readers support the Treasury of British Comics books so that we see more!
https://treasuryofbritishcomics.com

Marney cover and logo design

I showed John Stokes' cover artwork to Marney the Fox a few months ago, and now here's how it'll appear complete with logo and credits. As you can see, Rebellion are using the original logo from the comics, cleaned up and adapted to suit. Quite right too, as it's a smashing design. 

For those of you who missed previous posts about it, Marney the Fox was a strip that ran in Buster weekly in the 1970s about a lonely fox on the run, avoiding the dangers of predators of the four legged and two legged kind. This is the book I'm looking forward to most out of Rebellion's Treasury of British Comics line. 

You can pre-order Marney the Fox from Amazon now by clicking here.

You can read a sample strip of Marney the Fox here:
http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/more-about-marney-fox.html

More about Marney the Fox...

The news that was announced the other day (see here) that Rebellion are to publish one book every month reprinting classic comic strips has been warmly welcomed by UK comic fans. However, although everyone is eager to see it, Marney the Fox appears to be the one that's an unknown strip to some. 

Just to cover the basics; Marney the Fox appeared in Buster weekly from the issue dated 22nd June 1974 to 11th September 1976. This fictional story of a wandering fox cub was written by Scott Goodall and illustrated by John Stokes. The artwork was absolutely superb and many consider it to be amongst Stokes' best work. (The artist himself regards it as some of his best too.) 

One thing that made Marney the Fox exceptional is that, unlike most other Buster adventure strips, it played up the emotional content. In that respect it was written more like a story for the girls' comics, as opposed to something like Von Hoffman's Invasion (also in Buster) that was very action orientated. It's an interesting technique to build up the emotional aspects because it enables the reader to sympathise with the character and become more involved in the story. With the technique Goodall used, the readers were privy to Marney's inner thoughts, again a style much used in girls' comics. 

Marney the Fox must have achieved a good response from Buster's readers for it to run for two years. I'm very pleased that it's being collected in book form at last. 

Looking through the issue of Buster and Cor!! that I scanned these pages from got me wondering what other strips might be suitable for reprinting. We already know that Ken Reid's Faceache is coming in December of course, but what for further in the future? (By the way, the Faceache in this particular issue wasn't by Ken Reid but was written by Dez Skinn and drawn by Keith Robson.)

Leo Baxendale's Snooper was a funny strip, but I'm not sure if it's strong enough to carry a book on its own. It'd be good to see it as part of an anthology though...

Clever Dick, also by Baxendale originally, might work as a stand alone book I think. It had a long run (1970 to 1982) so a selection of the best strips would be good.

I quite like Sammy Brewster's Secret Ski-Board Squad, mainly for the artwork by Joe Colquhoun. This ran for three years (1973 to 76) so there's more than enough to fill a book. Kids on motorised skateboards might appeal to today's readers perhaps? I dunno. Objectively, I think there are a lot more strips that are likely to be reprinted before this one, but Joe Colquhoun's art is always worth revisiting. 

That's just speculation of course. Focusing back on this year, we have plenty to look forward to from the first launches in Rebellion's Treasury of British Comics line. One-Eyed Jack! The Leopard of Lime Street! The Dracula Files! Marney the Fox! Misty Book 2! Faceache! All well worth supporting!

Faceache, Marney, Leopardboy, One-Eyed Jack... coming back!

Marney the Fox © Rebellion A/S. Art by John Stokes.

I've known about this for a while but was sworn to secrecy, but now the news is out there. Rebellion have announced which classic Fleetway strips they're bringing back to print this year, and they're all glorious. The collective name for the books is The Treasury of British Comics...

You already knew about One-Eyed Jack by John Wagner and John Cooper, but today Rebellion have announced that other books will include:

Misty Book 2: The Sentinels and End of the Line. 

The Leopard from Lime Street drawn by Mike Western and Eric Bradbury.

Marney the Fox: the wonderful adventure strip from Buster by Scott Goodall and John Stokes. 

...and... just drink in this great news...

Faceache by Ken Reid, from Jet and Buster. 

Are you excited yet? For more info, check out this link:
http://www.thebookseller.com/news/2000-ad-revive-childrens-comics-70s-and-80s-496121


UPDATE 28/2/17: Comics journalist Heidi MacDonald now has expanded details of the books, and more artwork, on her excellent blog The Beat:
http://www.comicsbeat.com/2000ad-launches-the-treasury-of-british-comics-line-with-classic-brit-comics/