Superhero colouring goofs!

I've shown these before in older posts, but I thought it'd be good to repost the images under one topic. Plus it's a very quick way to provide a new post while I'm busy. 

These days, we're used to Panini UK having excellent reprints for their Marvel comics, as they use the same files as the original U.S. printing did. It wasn't like that back in the 1960s, when British companies were supplied with black and white prints they had to colour themselves. Presumably they used the actual American comics for reference... but sometimes they seem to have just guessed what the colours should be, and some pretty wild guesses at that. 

Above, the cover to Smash! No.17, dated 28th May 1966. Seems no one told Odhams that the Hulk had green skin, or that he wasn't wearing a yellow dress, and he certainly didn't wear nail varnish.

Next, Terrific No.20, dated August 26th 1967, with a bare-armed, and bare-legged Captain America! Thor with bare legs too. Enough to give kids nightmares for a week. 

Fantastic Annual 1969 actually has a great cover. It's just a pity they coloured Iron Man's faceplate silver instead of gold, but it stands out well as the centre of this painting so we'll forgive them for that.

Less forgivable is Fantastic Annual 1970, where Thor has a yellow costume and bare legs instead of the all-blue combo we were used to. I'm no prude, but what was Odhams' assumption that everyone had bare legs?

That same year, Pow! Annual 1970 gave us the Fantastic Four with red (instead of blue) outfits, and a grey (instead of orange) Thing...

The Fantastic Four fared badly in other books too, such as in The Fantastic Four Comic Album, with red/yellow outfits, a purple Thing, a blue Human Torch, and a multi-coloured Doctor Doom! But at least he didn't have bare legs.

The Fantastic Four Comic Annual of 1970 got the FF right, but poor Doctor Doom had another garish colour combo...

Finally in this selection (and I've no doubt there were more) DC comics didn't escape unscathed either. The British Super DC monthly (published from 1969 to 1970) carried this advert on its back page for all 14 issues. They almost got Superman's colouring right, but with all the Batman merchandise around, how could anyone get Batman's colour scheme so wrong? 

WHAM! No.1 (1964)

One comic that had eluded me until recently was Wham! No.1. I didn't have it when I was a child, and in later years I always lost out on the bidding for it on eBay... until a few weeks ago, when I won a copy for far less than it usually sells for these days. It's a little tatty at the spine, but it's clean and complete, so I thought I'd show a few pages from it here today.

You probably know how Wham! came about, but if not, here's a recap: in 1964, Odhams Press wanted to produce a rival comic D.C. Thomson's Beano. The editors convinced Leo Baxendale to quit The Beano to develop stories for their new comic, which Leo envisioned as a sort of "Super-Beano" (or Wham! as it became) poaching Thomson's top talent. However, most of Thomson's artists would not leave the security of long-established comics to work on the new rival publication. Although the end result wasn't quite the "Super-Beano" that Leo had hoped for, Wham! still turned out to be a fresh and funny addition to the growing number of weekly comics in the Sixties.

Incredibly, in the first issue of Wham!, Leo Baxendale drew 17 of its 24 pages himself. Four of which were in full colour. Naturally, no one could keep up that tremendous output every week, so following issues saw other artists join the comic to imitate Leo's style on many of the strips. Meanwhile, over at The Beano, other artists were also imitating Leo's style on the strips he'd left (such as Minnie the Minx and The Bash Street Kids). As the 1960s moved on, Leo became the most imitated humour artist in the business, and elements of his popular style are still evident in comics today. 

Back to that first issue of Wham!, published Monday 15th June 1964, here's the strip that greeted readers as the opened the comic; General Nitt and his Barmy Army...

The Wacks was one strip that was swiftly taken over by another artist (Gordon Hogg) but for issue 1, Leo drew it himself...

The Tiddlers was very much Wham's version of The Bash Street Kids, but the twist was that teacher (Super Sir) was as wild as the kids. Sadly, this idea was dropped later, with Super Sir replaced by a teacher in conflict with the pupils. 

The centre pages gave us the first episode of Eagle-Eye, Junior Spy, a spoof of the popular spy genre of the time. The most important part of the strip though was its introduction of the baddie, Grimly Feendish, who would eclipse Eagle-Eye in popularity and go on to have his own long-running strip in Smash! (as well as a song about him years later by The Damned).

Another strip of note was Georgie's Germs, a gross version of The Beezer's Numskulls, that saw dirty kid Georgie having to deal with various ailments every week. This was another strip that other artists took over, but Leo set it off to a great start. 

With issue 4, Ken Reid joined the comic, bringing us Frankie Stein (see here) and Wham! became more manic than ever. It may not have been the "Super-Beano" that Leo had hoped for, but Wham! still turned out to be a great comic, with a cheeky, anarchic attitude, and still very fondly remembered by many. It inspired Odhams to launch companion comics for it, and soon we had Smash!, Pow!, Fantastic and Terrific, collectively known as the "Power Comics" that helped make the Sixties a great time to be a child.

You can read about the first issues of those other comics here:

https://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/50-year-flashback-smash-no1.html


https://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/50-year-flashback-pow-no1.html


https://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/fantastic-50th.html


https://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/50-year-flashback-terrific-no1-1967.html

EAGLE promoting POW! in 1967

In my previous post the other day (click here) I showed a few pages from Pow! No.1 on the 50th anniversary of the comic. To follow up, here's how Pow! was promoted back in January 1967 in the pages of its companion comic Eagle. 

The irony is that when Hulton were publishing it in the 1950s, Eagle had been initially created as an alternative to American comic imports, and now here it was, published by Odhams, promoting comics that featured reprints of American comic strips. Even Eagle couldn't escape the fact that British kids loved American pop culture.

50 Year Flashback: SMASH! No.1

Half a Century ago this week Odhams Press launched the second title in what would soon collectively be known as their 'Power Comics' weeklies. I enjoyed all of them but Smash! was the clear winner for me, with its content being a great balance of humour, adventure, and Marvel reprint. 

The Marvel material wouldn't actually begin until issue 16 (when The Hulk arrived) but the contents of issue 1 were still a great line up. Here's what Smash No.1 contained...

Page 1: Cover by Leo Baxendale promoting the free gift.
Pages 2/3: Ronnie Rich. Art by Gordon Hogg.
Pages 4/5: The Ghost Patrol. Art by Gerry Embleton. (Reprint of The Phantom Patrol from Swift.)
Pages 6/7: Bad Penny by Leo Baxendale.
Pages 8: Percy's Pets. Art by Stan McMurtry.
Pages 9: Ad for Smash! No.2. Art possibly by Ron Spencer.
Pages 10/11: Brian's Brain. Art by Bert Vandeput.
Pages 12/13: Space Jinx. Art by Brian Lewis.
Pages 14/15: The Nervs. Art by Graham Allen.
Pages 16/17: Queen of the Seas by Ken Reid.
Page 18: The Tellybugs. Art by George Parlett.
Page 19: Mister Knowall actvity/puzzle page.
Pages 20/21: The Swots and the Blots. Art possibly by Ron Spencer.
Pages 22/23: Charlie's Choice. Art by Brian Lewis.
Page 24 (back page): Grimly Feendish by Leo Baxendale.

As you can see, Smash! had quite a collection of top artists of the day. As time went on, artists would be changed around or replaced but Smash! always had some quality people working on its pages. To correct a few myths: Leo Baxendale never drew The Swots and the Blots until 1969, the year he totally revamped the strip for the second series of Smash! published by IPC. Nor did he ever draw The Nervs, which was mainly by Graham Allen and later by Ken Reid. 

Anyway, enough from me. Here's a selection of pages from that very first issue of 50 years ago. One of the best comics of the 1960s....

Swots and Blots. Art possibly by Ron Spencer.

Charlie's Choice. Art: Brian Lewis.

Finally, here's the house ad for Smash! No.1 that appeared in that week's issue of Wham!

ZIP (1958)

Zip is a comic that seems quite rare. I'd heard of it but had never seen a copy until this issue turned up on eBay last week for a reasonable price. It was a tabloid sized weekly published by Odhams and ran for 92 issues from 1958 to 1959 before merging into Swift. Apparently Zip was a replacement for Mickey Mouse Weekly after Odhams lost the rights to the Disney strips. (Source: http://ukcomics.wikia.com/wiki/Zip )

The tone of the comic is quite young and seems pitched as a bridge between nursery comics and traditional humour and adventure weeklies. The cover strip is Skippy, The Boy Who Lives in a Barrel by Robert McGillivray. (I'm pretty sure he was the artist who drew The Mighty Smiths and Fairs Please for Tiger in 1969/70.)

The plot of Skippy isn't clear, but he seems to be on the run from the authorities. In which case, perhaps having a postal address to his hideout (and his name above the door) might not have been his wisest decision.

A strip that I'm sure will interest most UK comic fans is Strongbow the Mighty, illustrated by the great Ron Embleton (who gets to sign his art).

Over the page, the humour short The Pond People. There's something familiar about the art style but I can't place who drew it.

On the facing page, another adventure strip that should be of interest; Wells Fargo by Don Lawrence, several years before he'd illustrate The Trigan Empire.

The centrespread of Zip followed the old British comics tradition of being a sort of patchwork quilt design of short strips.

Kiki the Boy Clown wasn't anywhere near as scary as he appeared on the free Kiki mask given away with that issue.

The Brainy B's seems very much in the style of the Famous Five books and the Children's Film Foundation movies of the time. Art by Redvers Blake. 

This issue also featured a competition, with the prize being a flight to Scotland. It didn't explain how readers who lived North of the border could benefit, but perhaps another issue gave them the opportunity to fly to London? (Or was Zip only sold in England?)

Billy Brave, the almost obligatory school strip, was nicely illustrated by Tony Weare...

On the back page, another boy living in a tree house; Robin Alone. Artist unknown.

Zip seems quite a gentle comic but with good art and plenty of variety to its content. I hope you've enjoyed this brief look through one issue.      

Ken Reid, Genius

  
I'm sure that most people reading this blog will regard Ken Reid as one of the greatest comic artists that ever lived. In fact I can't imagine anyone not respecting his talents. To me, he was the best humour artist this country ever produced, and is ever likely to produce. Some people may say that today's comics aren't a patch on his work but neither was most of the material in yesterday's comics. Ken Reid was always head and shoulders above the crowd.

Although his work on Fudge, Jonah, and Faceache is rightly respected for the comic masterpieces they are I think his best strips were for Odhams in the 1960s. That's when he really let loose with his ability for comic horror. Here's just a handful of his many pages produced for the company. This is the stuff many of us grew up on, and as you can see we were really spoiled. British comic humour at its best. In a better Britain there would be volumes of Ken Reid Archives to buy. Sadly, there is nothing.

SMASH! No.36  8th October 1966

WHAM! No.122  15th October 1966

POW! No.10  25th March 1967

SMASH! No.156  25th January 1969

  

One of Ken's funniest episodes of The Nervs.

You can see some of Ken Reid's earlier work on a thread currently running on the Comics UK forum.