D.C. Thomson launched a new weekly comic 35 years ago, when Spike No.1 arrived in newsagents on Friday 14th January 1983. Although Thomsons had attempted a few tougher styled boys' comics with Warlord, Bullet and Crunch a few years earlier, this new comic was playing it comparatively safe and was more of a mixture of traditional comics like Victor and Buddy. That said, Spike did have its own style and felt more casual than its companion comics, helped considerably by the comic's mascot, Spike himself.
Under a nicely designed logo, the cover of issue 1 featured two proven methods to hook the reader; an exciting announcement that the comic contained a free gift, and the opening panels of the lead strip, Iron Barr (art by Mike White). The perceived wisdom at the time was that if a reader picked up a comic to read the cover strip, you were almost guaranteed a sale. Whether this worked in practice was debatable, as Spike only lasted for 67 weeks before merging into Champ.
Inside, the comic contained a nice variety of adventure strips, including sci-fi hero Starhawk (who had previously starred in Crunch) fighting the Powerbeast. (Art by Terry Patrick.)
A D.C. Thomson boys' comic wouldn't be complete without a war story, and Spike gave us The Ghost in the Cockpit (art by Gordon Livingstone)...
The main draw of Spike started in the centre pages. The Man in Black told the story of a mysterious, seemingly ageless athlete with extraordinary strength and stamina. The clues to the man's identity were revealed over the weeks that followed, eventually identifying him as William Wilson, the Wonder Athlete who had appeared in Thomson story paper The Wizard many years earlier, and in The Hornet in the 1960s. His revival in Spike acted as a sequel to those earlier stories but was also a retelling, using updated scripts as I recall. The artist of the strip was a Wilson too; Neville Wilson...
The Bleak Street Bunch was a traditional school strip, but with a contemporary setting. Art by Peter Foster...
Ticker Tait, the Man with a Time Bomb in his Heart, was also drawn by the very-busy Neville Wilson, and was the spy thriller of the comic's line up...
Spike also featured a few articles, a text story, plus a strip featuring Spike himself, drawn by Brian Walker...
On the back page of the 36 page first issue was an ad for future issues and the free gifts to come!
...and if you wondered what the Ghostly Glow Badge in issue 4 looked like, here it is...
...and yes, it did glow in the dark!
Spike was a very enjoyable, well produced comic but sadly it arrived at a time when traditional adventure comics were on their way out. Had it been launched in the 1960s it might have stood a better chance, but not in 1983 when it faced so much rivalry from comics based on toys and tv shows. The comics industry was changing and publishers soon found they had to adapt to survive.
All of the images in this post are my own scans and photographs, but I'm indebted to Jeremy Briggs at Down the Tubes for his excellent article on Spike which you'll find here: http://downthetubes.net/?page_id=25672 which enabled me to identify the artists.
Some Christmas comics had promising covers but didn't deliver much in festive stories inside, so I thought I'd group a few together in one post. We start with the Christmas issue of Diana from 1970, above. I don't know who the illustrator is (can anyone help?) but it's a fantastic piece of artwork.
Inside, the only Christmas themed strip was a humour one; Up-To-Date Kate. Looks like the artwork of Michael Barratt to me.
On the back page, another festive strip; Rosie Red Riding Hood.
A few years later, the issue of The Wizard dated December 25th 1976 promised a "ghostly tale for Christmas".
Inside, the story the cover related to, The Lightning Tree, actually had no festive element, but telling a ghost story was an old Christmas tradition so it was quite appropriate.
The back page of that issue of The Wizard was certainly festive, with the Christmas Crackers feature illustrated by Andrew Christine (later to draw the popular newspaper strips Beau Peep and A Man Called Horace).
Three years later, the 1979 Christmas issue of 2000AD and Tornado sported a Carlos Ezquerra cover...
Seven stories in that issue, but only one relating to the season: Tharg's Christmas Tale, again drawn by Ezquerra...
In 1982 the Christmas issue of Buddy featured Billy the Cat in a Santa outfit, delivering presents. Despite this, none of the interior pages had a festive theme. By the way, if you're thinking the "great news" announcement heralded a merger you'd be mistaken. It referred to Buddy getting a new look and a couple of new stories with the next issue.
A year later, the 24th December 1983 issue of Spike featured Charlie 'Iron' Barr dressed as Santa but there was little in the way of festive cheer inside. (I'll be taking a look at other issues of this comic soon.)
Christmas Day is fast approaching but there's a few more old Christmas comics to feature yet. Look out for another post soon!
