Jonah spot-the-difference

When Buddy reprinted Ken Reid's Jonah strip in 1981, there were a few changes made from its original appearance in The Beano. The most obvious one being the change from hand-lettering to machine lettering for most of the dialogue. To my mind, this immediately deadened a lot of the humour. It just didn't "sound" right in such dull looking font. So why did they do it? 

Well, I'd imagine it's because some of the dialogue was rewritten for various reasons best known to them. Compare the two pages here. The original is from 1960. The reprint from 1981. "Cap'n" becomes "Captain", Jonah's "WE'VE HAD IT!" is redone in a quieter less effective size, the German's dialogue changes a bit, and that's just for starters. 

One glaring change is in the caption above the airship. The humour of "...the days of the airship are not finished - YET!" becomes "...the days of the airship are not yet finished". Someone may have thought that was more grammatically correct, but the emphasis on Jonah's impending damage to it has been totally lost. 

Note also, the absence of the dinghy going POP! in panel 7 of the Buddy reprint. The implication in the original was presumably that the crew met a watery grave. None of that downbeat stuff for the reprint! Sheesh. The black humour of Ken Reid's work was what made it popular!

Anyway, compare the pages and you'll no doubt find other changes too. It also happened in other weeks throughout the reprint run. Perhaps one day, they might reprint Jonah complete and uncensored in a nice book, but I'm not getting my hopes up. 

Jonah, - Plug's Uncle!

I'll keep it brief as I should be at the drawing board but I thought some of you would be interested in hearing that the seafaring calamity known as Jonah has a guest-starring role in this week's Bash Street Kids story in The Beano... as Plug's uncle! 

There's certainly a bit of a family resemblance with the teeth, but is this the first time it's been mentioned? Curiously, the old Beano character Jinx was said to be Jonah's sister, so I guess that makes her Plug's aunt! 

The Bash Street Kids is written by Stu Munro and drawn by Dave Sutherland (who has now been drawing the strip for 52 years!).

For the few of you unfamiliar with Jonah, it was one of The Beano's greatest strips of the 1950s, illustrated by the brilliant Ken Reid. Here's a couple of classic examples of some of the best British comics work to have seen print.

From The Beano No.852, dated november 15th 1958...

From The Beano No.928, dated April 20th 1960...