For the penultimate blog in this theme let's kick off with a rarely seen Marvelman cover from Christmas 1954. As most comic fans know, Marvelman was created by Mick Anglo after the UK Captain Marvel reprint comic had to cease because the American original had been canceled. Marvelman was more or less a carbon copy of Captain Marvel, but nevertheless had a loyal following. My thanks to reader Dave Whitwell for sending me this scan.
Dave also sent me the scan above; the festive edition of Ally Sloper's Half Holiday from 1890, making it the oldest comic in this series of blogs. From what I've seen, this comic paper always had an edge to its humour, something British comics later lost somewhat. Artwork is by W.F. Thomas and you can read more about Ally Sloper here:
http://lewstringer.blogspot.com/2007/03/115-year-flashback-ally-sloper.html
Over 100 years later, licensed comics were the norm. Egmont's very popular Sonic the Comic always had a bit more depth to its stories than most merchandise-inspired comics though, and a good selection of artists for its 100% British content. This dynamic Christmas 1998 cover is by Richard Elson.
Whist Sonic the Comic was the licensed comic hit of the Nineties, Marvel UK's Transformers was the big seller of the Eighties. This festive 1989 wraparound cover is by Andrew Wildman, just one of the many artists to provide brand new UK content to this title.
For the first five years of publication, Fleetway's Buster was a tabloid sized comic. This issue from 1964 was the last Christmas edition in that large size, and features a lively cover by Nadal.
This Christmas 1972 issue of Valiant is fantastic, summing up Dickens' A Christmas Carol in just four panels! Marvelous artwork as always by Mike Western.
Above, the Christmas Wham! for 1966, with artwork on The Tiddlers strip by Mike Lacey.
The early 21st Century saw Pete Nash use modern technology to the advantage of creating the independent computer generated comic Striker. Sadly, outside of Roy of the Rovers football comics have never had much longevity and Striker was no exception. This issue is from Christmas 2004.
Oink! had a relatively short lifespan too, but still managed to be one of the most memorable and inventive British comics published. This Ian Jackson cover is from Christmas 1987.
As a special Christmas bonus, here's a page that appeared inside that issue of Oink! designed by me. Yes, after 21 years it's your chance to once again cut out and make your very own Skinhead Fairy! Perfect for the top of your tree.
That's all the classic Christmas covers for now. Sorry if your own favourites haven't been included but I hope the diversity and age of the selections have proven popular. This theme isn't quite finished yet though. In Part 10: Christmas covers of today!
Today's selection of Christmas covers begins with the festive Sparky from 1973 and it's a great job drawn by Bill Ritchie. Unusually for a D.C. Thomson comic, it's a wraparound cover. Sparky always had its own identity and was the more experimental of the Thomson "funnies" of the period.
TV21 never really bothered with celebratory Christmas issues, perhaps thinking they were too juvenile. However this 1967 edition (or rather 2067 edition as the cover date would have us believe) did feature a Christmas message and a photo of a Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle on a snowy mountain so that's close enough to be included here.
Girls comics are an area that this blog has tended to neglect, mainly because, like nursery comics, I never read or collected them. As small compensation, here's a couple of Christmas Tammy covers from the Eighties. The first is from 1980 and cover features the popular Bella ballerina strip drawn by John Armstrong. The second cover is from 1983, by veteran Spanish girls’ comic artist Purita Campos. Both covers are taken from the excellent mistycomic.co.uk website, a fan site dedicated to the highly regarded supernatural weekly Misty.
The Nutty cover drawn by John Geering is from 1980, cover featuring Bananaman in his early days. (Note that the character is not only stockier here than he later became, but his colour scheme has a dash of red instead of the basic blue and yellow.)
The Valiant cover from December 1966 features another of its regular speculative articles on future technology. Here, a home under the sea is proposed, complete with a visit from Santa! Over 40 years later and we're still waiting. Artwork by Mike Western, one of Fleetway's finest.
Jimmy Hansen draws a lively party scene for the Christmas Whizzer and Chips from 1989.
Twenty years earlier, another party cover for Smash! from 1969, drawn by Mike Lacey.
Finally in this gallery, the Action Force cover from 1987, one of the Marvel UK weeklies of the time. The split cover features artwork by Jeff Anderson and Simon Coleby on the left, whilst the Combat Colin part on the right is by me!
Next time, the penultimate Christmas Cover gallery!
Britain and the USA aren't the only countries that produce Christmas editions of their comics. I'm not exactly sure how many other countries do, but here's a few festive comics from afar. Starting with the Nemi album for 2002 written and drawn by Lise Myhre, and published in her native Norway. Several of Norway's most popular comic characters such as Pondus and Ernie receive festive editions at Christmas time, in a slim 32 page full colour softback format such as this. (Although since Nemi became a regular monthly comic a few years ago I'm not sure if the character is still awarded a separate Christmas album as well.)
One of Norway's most popular titles, published by Egmont eight times a year, is Herman Hedning by Jonas Darnell. The Christmas 1998 edition is above, which is actually the Swedish edition from where the comic originates. (An identical edition is also published for the Norwegian language.) You'll notice that at that time this 52 page anthology also featured Fingal and Hans Finne, - the Swedish name for my Pete and His Pimple strip. Reprints of this old Oink! strip ran in Herman Hedning for its first year. My Suburban Satanists strip also featured in the comic regularly for several years.
Norway has a tradition of folk tales and one of its most beloved Christmas comics is the annual Tuss og Troll publication. This slim landscape comic is beautifully drawn by another of Norway's top female artists, Solveig Muren Sanden who is now 90 years old and, at least a few years ago, was still drawing comics.
Solveig Muren Sanden is also the artist of Smørbukk, who initially was created as a Norwegian Tintin type of character, although sources on the internet refer to Smørbukk as an anti-hero so I presume he developed somewhat.
Moving to France, and above is the December 1987 edition of Pilote with a rather downbeat cover by "Fred". This adult comic magazine anthology includes some stunning artwork in its 100 pages. The nearest UK equivalent in terms of format (serial strips plus text features on comics) would be our current Judge Dredd Megazine.
Over to Amsterdam for this next batch of covers, starting above with the Christmas 1984 issue of Eppo. The wraparound cover is by Evert Geradts. This 32 page glossy humour / adventure weekly also includes Storm by Don Lawrence, and Colin Wilson artwork on Blueberry.
Another Dutch comic, Kuifje, is their translated version of Belgian weekly Tintin. (Kuifje is pronounced "quiff", hence it being a suitable name for Tintin.) This festive edition is also from 1984 and the cover is by Dany, featuring characters from the strip Roze Bottell.
The same week of December 1984 brings us the wraparound cover to Robbedoes, the Dutch version of Belgian weekly Spirou. (Update: Cover of Spirou also shown, thanks to reader Dave Whitwell.) I'm not sure who drew this cover. You'll have noticed that the humour of these covers is more sophisticated and quiter than those of UK comics. Same goes for the content, which on the whole seems pitched at a slightly older reader than we've come to expect from The Beano or Buster. I'm not totally convinced a European style comic would work in British culture but The DFC seems to be the closest thing to it at present.
Finally, another Dutch weekly, this time from 1987, with popular kid characters Sjors en Sjimmie in their own comic. The cover has no gag, but it's a nice piece of design work.
Next time it's back to the UK for another gallery of British festive covers!
Thanks to those of you who said you enjoyed seeing these old covers. I don't intend running them right up to Christmas, - only a few more blogs on this theme to go, - but there's still some crackers to come, if you'll pardon the pun. Starting off this session is the cover to Knockout from 1971 featuring a host of the comic's characters joining the Full House family for the festive edition. The artwork is, I think, by Joe McCaffery.
The Christmas Beano for 1966 is a wonderful piece by Dudley Watkins who managed to include almost every Christmas comic iconography on one cover: decorated tree, pud, Santa, crackers, pressies, reindeer, mistletoe, holly, turkey, mince pies, snow, and even a robin on a Yuletide log! Incidentally, the reason my name's on the top of the cover isn't due to some weird compulsion to scrawl my name on everything I own, it's because I had The Beano reserved at my local newsagent in the Sixties.
Compare that Beano to The Hornet from the same week in 1966, which, apart from the logo, has no reference to Christmas on its cover at all.
The Jester from 1919, quite expensive at penny ha'penny at a time when most other comics were a third of that price, wasn't very festive either, except for the Harry Coe, The Priceless Old Bean strip on the bottom half of the cover. Artist unknown. Perhaps a more dedicated Christmas issue appeared the week after, which would be dated December 27th?
The Christmas Whoopee! from 1984 is a lively Frankie Stein cover by Robert Nixon, who also designed the special logo for this issue. Nixon clearly relished drawing his Christmas pages as he always decorated them so well.
Alan Davis is the artist for the 1985 festive edition of 2000AD featuring D.R. and Quinch. Some adventure comics such as Countdown or Action didn't bother with Christmas covers, but 2000AD often showed how it could be done without looking too juvenile, - a tradition it upholds to this day.
Cor!! was IPC's second humour comic launch after Whizzer and Chips and this 1970 edition drawn by Alf Saporito was its first Christmas cover. Mike Lacey was the artist who drew the Gus Gorilla head shot though, and no doubt the festive adornments were added by an IPC staff artist.
Finally for this selection, two Playhour covers, both from 1956, kindly sent in by blog reader John Wigmans. Depending on which day of the week Christmas falls, some comics in the past have published two celebratory issues, as is the case here. The sumptous artwork is by Harold McCready and a short article on the artist including scans of his original artwork can be read on Steve Holland's Bear Alley blog at this link:
http://bearalley.blogspot.com/2007/07/harold-mccready.html
Another Christmas cover gallery soon!
Time for another look at Christmas comic covers from the past and this blog I'm focusing on just one title, as we look at the Twelve Dandys of Christmas, a selection of various Dandy issues from the last 70 years. Starting off above with the festive edition from 1940 as Korky the Cat makes a Hitler snowman. Artwork is by Korky's first artist James Crighton and the scan is taken from Christmas Comic Posters, a book written by the late Denis Gifford in 1991.
Next up, it's thirty years later and the cover to the Dandy from December 1970. By this time the Korky strip had been taken over by Charles Grigg who produced many splendid covers for the weekly.
Christmas 1974 brings us another Charlie Grigg cover. You'll notice from this selection how often The Dandy's logo changes over the decades!
Christmas 1981 and the cover design hasn't changed much for twenty years, but Charlie Grigg manages to pack in ten panels into a restricted space making the comic look good value for its escalating cover price.
By 1986 Desperate Dan had replaced Korky as the regular cover star. The artwork for this issue, which by now had absorbed Hoot comic, is by Ken Harrison.
Two years later, in 1988, and The Dandy had by now received a bold new look with glossy paper and yet another new logo. Artwork is again by Ken Harrison.
Christmas 1994 and the artwork this time is, I think, by David Parkin.
A nicely decorated 1998 cover by Keith Robson.
The Christmas 2000 cover looks familiar as it's a reprint of the one from 1988! As consolation the interior Desperate Dan reprint, in black and white on its first printing, was coloured for this version.
The Dandy from Christmas 2001 is a busy Ken Harrison production featuring as many of the comic's stars as he could fit in.
By Christmas 2005 The Dandy had undergone a well-publicized revamp with Desperate Dan shunted inside. The Bananaman cover for this issue is by Steve Bright.
Although there was the usual Christmas edition of The Dandy in 2006 (not pictured) D.C. Thomson also produced a Dandy Christmas Special for that year. The cover here features the revamped Desperate Dan, literally square-jawed, by Ken Harrison using a slightly different style.
More Christmas covers soon!
