Classic characters return to The Dandy

Cover by Jamie Smart. Good innit?

This week's issue of The Dandy (out now) sees the return of two classic strips given a modern makeover. Heralded with a topline on the cover, Beryl the Peril makes her triumphant comeback drawn by the brilliant Steve Bright. 

Beryl was originally a star of The Topper of course, but joined The Dandy after The Topper folded years ago. Now she's back again, with a redesign to her outfit (no outdated gymslip anymore) but retaining the familiar Peril face. Steve Bright even applies a style to the strip similar to that of the great Davy Law (Beryl's original artist) which should please even the grumpiest critics. 

Printed off-register in my copy but STILL looks great!

Another old Dandy strip making its return this week is Bully Beef and Chips. The original debuted on the back page of the comic in 1967 drawn by James Hughes, and the new version is by Wayne Thompson who has given the characters a modern revamp. Beefy's fringe and their outfits remain the same but the characters are more exaggerated. It works for me, and hopefully today's readers will take to it too. 

You know he's gonna pay for that. It's comic Karma.

What this proves I think is that The Dandy has such a rich history of characters that most of them could be revamped to some extent or other for a modern audience. However it's good to see the comic still generates brand new characters as well, and strips such as Jamie Smart's Mega-Lo Maniacs (seen on the cover of this week's issue) and Alexander Matthews' Nuke Noodle are excellent. I'm currently drawing a brand new character too, who will hopefully debut in the summer. More on that at a later date.

The Dandy No.3582, £1.99 from newsagents, supermarkets, airports etc.  

This week in 1937: The Jolly Comic

Movie star Will Hay on the cover by Bertie Brown

Whit Week fell on this week in 1937 and here's the copy of The Jolly Comic (renamed The Jolly Whitsun Comic for one issue) that was on sale exactly 75 years ago.

In those days before Holiday Specials, Amalgamated Press celebrated by having theme issues such as this, with a special new title logo illustrated for the occasion. The cover strip, Will Hay, The Master of Mirth, and the Boys of St.Michael's, was drawn by Bertie Brown. The plot, of a depressed man finding cheer, has been used several times over the years. (The final Weary Willie and Tired Tim in Chips in 1953 dealt with a similar plot, as did a Desperate Dan strip in 1960 if I recall correctly.)

The Jolly Comic was in the traditional A.P. format of 8 tabloid pages, printed on coloured paper (pink, for this title). The contents were a 50/50 split of strips and text stories, which meant that pages two and three looked like this...

Let's take a closer look at Yung Chang, a Chinese boy detective inspired by the popularity of Charlie Chan...

The centre pages were a lively display of four comic strips, including Popeye by Elzie Segar. Yes, British comics were running American reprint alongside home-grown strips long before Odhams combined Marvel strips with UK material in Smash!

Here's a closer view of the Popeye strip...

Tramps were a common theme in UK comics back then and here's one that's mobile, - Happy Mike, The Tramp on a Bike! Brilliant title! Uncredited, as was company policy back then, but my guess is it's by John Jukes...

Pages six and seven featured more text stories...

Finally, on the back page, the adventure serial The Captain, The Kid, and the Cook. The artwork was by Roy Wilson, easily proving he could do "straight" illustration as well as humour work. Wilson was A.P.'s top artist at this time and it's easy to see why. What's intriguing is that the Cook is drawn in a partly humourous style, even though he's not particularly being the comic relief character here. (Perhaps he behaved more comically in other episodes.) For me, this makes Cookie look like he's wandered in from a different page, which adds an extra surreal enjoyment to the strip.

The Jolly Comic ran from 1935 to 1939 with just 250 issues. It was one of the comics that fell victim to the paper shortages of World War 2, merging into Comic Cuts. The issue shown here (No.123) is from halfway through its run during the period when Amalgamated Press dominated the newsagents with their tabloid titles. Several months after this issue was published, A.P.'s complacency would be rocked by the arrival of The Dandy, and British comics would enter a new era of fun!

Worlds End: The Riders on the Storm

 This is a book I've been intending to plug for a while now so I'd like to start by apologising to its author Tim Perkins for the delay. Tim has put his heart and soul into this book and it deserves as much recognition as possible.

Worlds End Volume 1 - The Riders on the Storm is an impressive 88 page large format hardback graphic novel from Tim's company Wizards Keep Publishing. Tim has been a comics professional for almost 30 years, having worked on diverse titles such as Transformers, Doctor Who, ThunderCats and Triffik! A few years ago he took the brave step of setting up his own company to self publish books, prints and related merchandise and Worlds End Volume 1 is the first major publication from the company. 

I should confess that normally I wouldn't touch fantasy books with a ten foot wizard's staff but I'm glad I purchased this as I thoroughly enjoyed it. Tim has really packed the book not only with a 52 page full colour comic strip but also with over 25 pages of bonus material; character sketches and profiles, creator profiles, extra illustrations and so on. In all good fantasy story traditions the book leads off with a map of the world of Gaeyrth, and I'm sure you'll be as amused as I was to find lands named after various familiar comic creator names such as K'rby, Brry K'tsyn, P'Crg Rssull, Ploogg, and even one which made my day, - L'Strgor.  A land free of trolls I hope.

The story itself has the expected fantasy elements of an old wizard, his young familiar (named Geek) and a battle against evil forces but what I liked was that Tim had mashed in SF elements with the fantasy. The big bad are an invading alien army intent on aqua-forming the planet, and this has enabled Tim to really go to town on the designs of the invaders and their technology. 

One of Tim's many influences is Jack Kirby and, although the King's artistic style isn't readily apparent in Tim's, what has carried over is Kirby's sense of spectacle and impact. Kirby had the ability to blow the reader's mind with the turn of a page and that's something that happens in Worlds End too. Just as the story begins to relax a bit Tim throws in a fantastic landscape or a new alien design to impress us.

The only downside of the book, for me, was that it's a continued story. Admittedly the words 'Volume 1' on the cover should have clued me in but as this is an all-ages book that is hoping to reach a new generation of readers (along with regular comic readers) I'd have thought a more self-contained story might have helped. Then again, I can't wait to read Worlds End Volume 2 - A Hard Reign's Gonna Fall, so what do I know? I'm sold on the sequel already.

For the price of £15.99 this is a great value book and Tim makes it work as a story that should appeal from anyone from 7 to 70. This is the sort of graphic novel that should be in every school library across the UK really, and certainly deserves to be supported by the UK comics community. 

Worlds End Volume 1 - The Riders on the Storm by Tim Perkins. Foreword by Bryan Talbot. Introduction by John Ridgway. 88 pages. Full colour hardback. An all-original British comic book, well written and illustrated and full of timeless adventure with top class production qualities. To order your copy, visit the Wizards Keep website here: 
http://www.wizards-keep.com/   

Pete's Pimple in Buster... before the merger

Remember the blog post I did a while back about how Tom Thug once appeared in Whizzer and Chips to promote Oink? Well, I've just found an issue of Buster I'd forgotten about which guest-starred Pete and his Pimple as part of the same promotion. 

Buster issue dated 26th March 1988 featured a half page Pete and his Pimple strip I was commissioned to do, which makes this my first Buster strip. (How could I have forgotten?) Not only did they let a then-relative-newcomer like me loose in the pages of this fine, well established comic but I even got to co-star Buster himself in the story, - although as you can see, I didn't show him a lot of respect! 

As most comic readers of the time know, the promotion sadly had little effect on Oink's falling sales (no thanks to WH Smith top-shelving it well away from other comics) and Oink! actually merged into Buster later that same year, bringing Pete and his Pimple into the comic on a regular basis. 

Art by Tom Paterson. Colours by John Burns.

Interestingly, although I was able to do a full on gross strip for the advert above, editor Allen Cummings didn't want any pimple pus bursts seen in the regular Pete and his Pimple strip when it became a fixture in Buster. I think it took the edge off the strip but I completely agreed with Allen's point as such gross humour was fine for Oink! but not suited to the tone of Buster. 

As it turned out, Pete only had a run of six months or so in Buster. Whilst Oink's older readers had voted it one of their favourites, Buster's younger audience didn't really go for it. (Well, what seven year old can relate to zits?) 

On the other hand, Tom Thug, which had also transferred from Oink, shot up the Buster popularity charts. I guess kids of all ages always like to see the bully become the butt of the jokes, and long may it be so.

Comicscape No.3 out now - and it's free!

Chris Smillie has just made the latest issue of his comics news and reviews fanzine Comicscape available to download, and it won't cost you a penny.

The 48 page full colour issue is full of up-to-date news snippets on comics and related media and short articles and reviews of American and British comics. There's a passionate item by Chris asking why comic shops don't stock mainstream UK comics, although to be fair some do. (Nostalgia & Comics in Birmingham for example, have been stocking The Dandy for months.)

The layout of Comicscape is basic and I felt it might help if the central gutter was a bit wider. It's unfair to nitpick though as Chris is doing this for free and for our benefit. It reminds me of the fanzines of old, and I mean that in a complimentary way. Doing blogs is one thing (and very easy thanks to the Blogger templates) but it's good to see an actual comic fanzine again so full marks to Chris for producing it. There's even a brand new UK comic hero, Kid Tiger, making his debut exclusively in this issue.

Here's the rundown for the issue from Chris himself:

Reviews, news, and views for May 2012. Top news stories include big successes for Marvel in their comic arc AvX and spectacular box-office smash, Avengers Assemble. 2000AD announces a partnership with IDW, whilst bringing back the Dark Judges to the weekly. Meanwhile, DC re-introduces Earth-2, as Image reveal the demise of Jack Staff.
• In Tales That Astonished, we go back to the epic Legion of Superheroes: The Great Darkness Saga.
• This Day In Comics sees resurrection central from May 1982
• In Versus, it’s Wolverine against your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man
• The Old and The New pits Defenders #4 from 1973 against Defenders #4 from 2012
• Post-apocalyptic BBC drama Threads is the Flick That Time Forgot
• New comic strip, Kid Tiger, begins.

You can read Comicscape No.3 online at: 
http://issuu.com/starscape/docs/comicscape3


http://www.myebook.com/index.php?option=ebook&id=126914


Or download the PDF from:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/chris-smillie/comicscape-may-2012/ebook/product-20111260.html


http://free.yudu.com/item/details/520943/ComicScape-May-2012


http://comics.drivethrustuff.com/product/102110/ComicScape-%233


(The Lulu link worked best for me as a download. The others seemed a bit slow to load when I tried.) 


You can visit Chris' website at:
http://StarscapeOnline.com
and his Facebook page is:
http://www.facebook.com/starscapecomic