One of the most fondly remembered covers for a D.C. Thomson humour comic, this Christmas 1970 issue of Sparky eschewed the usual Barney Bulldog strip to present this cosy festive scene with all the characters carol singing. The artwork was by Vic Neill, the Peter Piper artist of the time. (Peter being the one writing the message in the snow with his pipes.)
There were plenty of Christmas strips inside this 24 page issue. I-Spy didn't have a festive theme but I know so many of you liked this strip (as did I) that it'd be remiss of me to avoid it. Brilliant comedy-adventure material of the type we should see more of in British comics. Artwork by Brian Walker.
Mr.Bubbles was a strip I never really cared for. It seemed too young, even when I was 11, but in retrospect this is a nicely told Christmas tale. I think the artist was Pamela Chapeau at this stage but I'm not too familiar with her work. Can anyone confirm this?
The Sparky People was the comic's brilliant sit-com set in the Sparky office. Although the staff were fictionalised it was an enjoyable strip about the behind-the-scenes antics. Art by Jim Petrie.
L-Cars (the name a spoof on TV's Z-Cars) was another great Sparky strip. The thing about Sparky was that it had its own identity and style of humour. When the Odhams comics ended, I jumped to Sparky as one of the closest equivalents. A genuinely funny comic, and L-Cars was one of its best strips. Art by Bill Hill...
The back page featured Puss and Boots by John Geering. Full of comic violence and frantic situations, it became one of the most popular strips in the comic.
We're nearing ever closer to Christmas, but look out for another festive flashback on this blog on Christmas Eve!
Incidentally, the issue of The Beano that came out that same week in 1970 featured a cover that complimented the Sparky one, with its characters carol singing too. You can see my blog post about it from last year here:
https://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/christmas-comics-beano-1970.html
Here's a few pages from the issue of Buster that was on sale this very week in 1989, kicking off with a cover by Tom Paterson. Note the '32 pages' blurb. This was Fleetway's advantage over DC Thomson at the time, when Beano and Dandy still only had 24 pages.
The Buster strip continued on the back page...
Inside, something a bit different than my two regular pages. Instead of Tom Thug's Skooldayz and Pete and his Pimple being separate strips both characters co-starred in a two page story. Incidentally, the villa shown in panel 7 is based on a tatty dive I stayed at in Kavos the previous year. As for the little character shown coming out of the door, that's one of The Vampire Brats, - a strip I drew that would replace Pete's Pimple a few weeks later.
Jack Oliver was one of the best writer/artists to have graced British comics and he produced a lot of material for Buster over the years. Curiously, when he did Vid Kid it was under his pseudonym as, er, Sue Denim! Nice work. Not so sure about the garish limited colour overlays Fleetway were using back then!
Mike Higgs was a hero of mine when he was writing/drawing The Cloak in Pow! back in 1967 and it was a privilege to work as his assistant for a while in the mid 1980s. By 1989 he'd returned to weekly comics to draw Thundercap and it was great to be in the same comic as him. That was something I could never have imagined happening when I was eight years old reading The Cloak!
That same week saw the publication of the Buster Holiday Special. Here's the cover by Mark Bennigton...
The special had 64 pages, many of which were sadly filled with reprint due to budget cutbacks. To compensate for this, editor Allen Cummings had some characters team up to fit in all the favourites. Being aware of this is why I'd had Tom & Pete in one strip in the weekly and now their holiday adventure continued in the special...
Other team-ups in the Holiday Special included Ricky Rainbow and Chalky drawn by Bob Hill...
Melvyn's Mirror and Nipper drawn by Vic Neill...
...and Mighty Mouth and Weedy Willy drawn by Terry Bave...
(Have to say, it's a shame the other artists didn't design a special team-up logo for their pages but the strips are still great and I bet readers must have been pleasantly surprised by various characters meeting each other.)
I hope you've enjoyed this trip back to 1989. I must admit the 1980s still seem very recent to me, which is one reason I don't cover that decade very often, but if you'd like to see more from that time let me know.
