Ken Reid's DARE-A-DAY DAVY (1967 / 68)

The first Davy strip from Pow! No.1, 21st January 1967.

Ken Reid really excelled himself at Odhams in the 1960s. Frankie Stein and Jasper the Grasper for Wham!, Queen of the Seas and, later, The Nervs for Smash! - and for the back page of Pow! he delighted us with Dare-A-Day Davy. 

Davy was perhaps the most subversive of Ken's Odhams strips. A reader-participation strip, where kids were encouraged to send in their "dares" for a cash reward if used. (Only a pound, but that went a long way in the sixtes!) The dares often backfired on Davy, usually causing him great suffering and pain. This was illustrated child cruelty for comic effect, but in Ken Reid's expert hands it became one of the most manic and funny strips of the decade. Besides, it was only a comic strip, and no one really got hurt unless they accidentally stabbed their finger on Pow's protruding staples that were rarely laid flat in the centre pages. (Pow! was a cheap-looking comic but rich on laughs and adventure, featuring a mix of new humour and adventure strips alongside reprints from Marvel comics.)

Dare-A-Day Davy ran throughout the length of Pow's run, from issue 1 in January 1967 to the final issue, No.86, in September 1968. Here's a few examples...

Restricted to a half page for POW! No.5 but still crammed with craziness.

Brilliant reactions from the crowd in this page from Pow! No.7

Davy's will power makes an appearance in Pow! No.16

Reid continued to develop the Willie Willpower character. Pow! No.17

Davy's inner conflict was depicted as a battle between temptation and conscience. Pow! No.21

Marvel's NICK FURY made an appearance in Pow! No.33. Get it slabbed, Marvelites!

By Pow! No.37, Davy's temptation was shown as a demonic version of himself.

Man-mad Lulu (from The Dolls of St.Dominics strip) guest-starred in Pow! No.39

Davy gets blown up for Bonfire Night. Pow! No.43

I doubt you could show a bullet-riddled pig's carcass in a kids' comic today. Pow! No.56

Davy later moved inside the comic, away from off-register colour. Pow! No.68

The final Davy strip from Pow! No.86

Dare-A-Day Day never did return to weekly comics from his journey into space, but a few years later, IPC introduced a sanitised lookalike called Challenge Charlie in brand new stories in Valiant. Superbly drawn by Frank McDiarmid but with none of the explicit comedy violence of the Pow! version. 

POW! ANNUAL Cover gallery

As I did the Wham! Annual cover gallery the other day I thought I'd run one on Pow! annuals too, as they dovetail into each other at the end. 

Pow! was launched as a weekly comic in January 1967 and production must have started on an annual very early as the Pow! Annual 1968 was published in September '67. The cover above is by Graham Allen. Contents included various funnies from Pow! plus a complete one-off adventure strip and reprints from Amazing Spider-Man No.1 and the first Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD story from Strange Tales. As those Marvel strips had already been reprinted in the weekly a few months before, it seemed an odd choice. I must admit it put me off wanting the book, but I finally bought it on eBay a few years ago. 

Opening the book presented us with a nice spread drawn by Stan McMurtry. Unlike the Wham! Annual spreads, it didn't continue from the cover but I thought it was worthy of inclusion here anyway. 

A year later, the Pow! Annual 1969 displayed a cover by Gordon Hogg, plus a Spider-Man in an awkward pose because it had been taken out of context (and redrawn) and a Sgt.Fury vignette by Jack Kirby.

The battle that had begun on the cover continued inside, also by Gordon Hogg. Despite the appearance of The Cloak here, the strips in the annuals featuring the super-spy were not by his creator Mike Higgs. Instead, they were quite poor efforts, and Mike wasn't even asked to contribute.

With the Pow! Annual 1970 the humour aspect had gone from the cover, replaced by a copy of a Steve Ditko Spider-Man pose. Curiously, many of the interior strips featured characters from Smash!, presumably because Pow! had merged into Smash! in late 1968. (The Cloak strips this year were slightly improved ghostings of Mike Higgs' style but it would still have been far better to have Mike contribute.) There was clearly a budget cut though, with just over 50% of the content being Marvel reprint.

An unexpected revamp with Pow! Annual 1971 bringing all-new, all-different content with brand new British superheroes! Even stranger, they've never appeared anywhere since! (You can read more about that in a previous post here.)

The Pow! Annual 1972 was the book's final solo title and a bit of a mixed bag. I've no idea who did the seemingly rushed cover with the neanderthal and his oddly placed head, but it relates to the Appointment with F.E.A.R. story inside which featured Doctor Morg (last seen in the weekly Pow! serial Experiment X). The rest of the book was a mixture of reprints from old Odhams comics such as Boys World and a few new strips.

A year later, Pow! Annual merged into the Wham! Annual to produce Wham! and Pow! Annual 1973. I've already covered this the other day in my Wham! Annual post but here's the cover again for continuity with the other books in this posting...

...and also the cover once more to the Wham! and Pow! Annual 1974 by Joe Colquhoun...

So there you have it. The book changed completely within just a few years, but it outlived the 86 weekly issues and managed to be a very entertaining read. 

50 Year Flashback: POW! No.1

I've blogged about the first issue of Pow! before, but as this weekend is the comic's 50th anniversary I thought it was worth reposting my article. Pow! was a favourite comic of many of us back then, a lifetime ago, and is still memorable today. 

With its first issue published on Saturday 14th January 1967 Pow! was the third title of what had become known as the 'Power Comics' imprint published by Odhams Press Ltd. It followed Wham! (1964) andr Smash! (1966). Comprising 28 pages, Pow! contained a mixture of Marvel reprint and originated UK humour and adventure strips. Here's a selection of pages from issue one...

Interestingly, the reprints of Spider-Man began with strips from Amazing Spider-Man No.1 and not his full origin from Amazing Fantasy. Story: Stan Lee, Art: Steve Ditko. 

The Dolls of St.Dominics was a traditional British school humour strip in the vein of The Beano's Bash Street Kids featuring anarchic schoolkids. In this case, set in a girls school. Superb artwork by Ron Spencer imitating Leo Baxendale (who never worked for Pow!) but Ron was clearly an accomplished humourist in his own right.

The Python was an adventure serial that ran in the early issues of Pow! Compared to comics published by Fleetway and D.C. Thomson, the adventure strips in Odhams comics could sometimes have a rough and ready feel about them, as this does, but that energy added to their appeal I think. 

Full page ad for the next issue...

News page introducing Pow! This regular news feature ran in all the 'Power Comics'. 

The Group, with art by Mike Brown. Similar in many ways to The Beezer's Banana Bunch but with its own vitality.

Jack Magic, another strip that only ran in the early issues (so probably wasn't too popular with the readers). 

The second Marvel series in the issue was Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, reprinting the first episode from Strange Tales. Story: Stan Lee. Art: Jack Kirby.

Every Power Comic had a spy spoof and Pow's was Wee Willie Haggis, The Spy from Skye. Not a very remarkable character. Mike Higgs' The Cloak, which started in Pow! No.18, would prove to be a more popular parody of the spy genre. 

On the back page was one of the highlights of the comic; Dare-A-Day Davy by the fantastic Ken Reid. 

Like most British comics, Pow's contents shifted and changed a bit as the weeks passed. I felt it was constantly improving but sadly it only lasted for 86 issues, absorbing Wham! along the way and merging into Smash! in late 1968.  Nevertheless it remains a favourite of many of us who grew up on comics of that period. As the strapline on the first cover said, it was "The brand new comic for the new breed of comic fans". That was the thing about the Power Comics; they felt modern and young, and of the moment, unlike some of the the slicker, sometimes stuffier, rival comics from Fleetway and Thomsons. 

The free cardboard gun and ammo.

40 year Flashback: Pow! No.1

The Brand New Comic for the New Breed of Comic Fans - Strap line on the cover of Pow! No.1 published Saturday 14th January 1967.

Forty years ago today, following the success of Wham! and Smash!, Odhams launched the first issue of Pow! across the UK. For the tens of thousands of British kids who bought it, myself included, it was our first exposure to Spider-Man, the lead strip in the new weekly. That's hard to believe today, now that Spidey is the megastar of movies, games, and countless items of merchandise, but back in 1967 that wasn't the case.

Back then, unless one had seen the imported Marvel comics that some newsagents stocked, the Odhams comics provided the perfect introduction to Marvel superheroes. (Although I suspect the main reason for including US reprint was to save Odhams money on originating new material.) Therefore The Incredible Hulk thundered into Smash! in 1966, closely followed by The Fantastic Four in Wham! and (presumably because it had a smaller budget) Pow! featured not only Spider-Man but also Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Like its companion papers, the rest of Pow's contents were a mixture of Beano-style funnies and Valiant-style adventure strips. Alongside the Marvel reprint, this made for an interesting and varied package. (A formula sadly abandoned in the 1970's when IPC segregated adventure and humour comics into their own titles.) The free gift of that first issue was a cardboard gun that shot cardboard pellets; a style of freebie that Odhams excelled in.

Looking at Pow! No.1 today, forty years later, it's clear that design-wise it's not as slick as the magazines of the 21st Century, but its strips had an energy and anti-authoritarian irreverence mainly lacking in modern comics. In the St.Trinians inspired Dolls of St.Dominics schoolgirls throw their teacher into the river and, tooled up with daggers, mallets, and axes, chase the errand boy out of school with cries of "Lynch him! Get the oil boiling!". Whilst in the kid-gang strip The Group the kids use a springed-boot device to kick a policeman in the face (but he gets his revenge by beating them up in the woods).

All that sounds shockingly irresponsible and violent in text like that, but in strip form it was presented as a slapstick cartoon. As far as I'm aware there was never any calls for Pow! to be banned as back then parents understood that kids could differentiate between cartoon violence and the real thing. In fact, such slapstick cruelty was frequent in the Odhams comics and it certainly never inspired my friends or myself (who read them) to imitate the acts.

Other strips in Pow! No.1 worthy of note include the start of the adventure serial The Python. (Pilots crash in the Bay of Bengal and encounter a giant robot python, which they later take control of. It's like Mytek the Mighty but with a mechanical snake instead of a mechanical gorilla!)

As he was busy on other comics, Pow! contained no work by Leo Baxendale, but artists such as Mike Brown on The Group ghosted his style well enough. However, the standout strip of the issue, and the main reason Pow! is still collectible, is the back-page strip, Dare-A-Day Davy, illustrated by the marvellous Ken Reid. The plot was simple; Davy cannot resist any dare, and this always lands him into trouble. As the weeks progressed, and the readers were invited to send in their outrageous dares (for the prize of... a pound!) the strip became even more manic and violent, showing Ken Reid's artwork at its most outrageous, and funniest.

Like any new comic, Pow! had some clunkers in there too: Jack Magic (13th Century magician's apprentice finds himself in modern times), and Wee Willie Haggis (Scottish version of Eagle-Eye from Wham!). Neither appealed to me much, and presumably didn't appeal to many readers as they were eventually dropped and replaced by much more memorable strips... but that's a story for another blog later this week.

POW! and WHAM! - First merged issue (1968)

The merging of Pow! and Wham! in January 1968 was a clear indication that all was not well with the Odhams line of 'Power Comics'. Other mergers would follow and by the end of the year only Smash! would remain out of the five titles. A sad state of affairs for a much-loved line of comics but they continued to deliver the goods right up until the end.

The merged Pow! and Wham! actually resulted in a fairly strong line-up. Here are examples from the 32 pages of that first issue (No.53, retaining Pow's numbering)...

Pages two and three served as a great introduction to the strips, bringing new readers up to speed...

Reprints of Spider-Man had proved to be Pow's most popular strip so naturally that continued in the merger. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko at their finest...

Georgie's Germs was one of the handful of strips to survive from Wham! and fitted into Pow! perfectly. Art by Cyril Price...

After Spider-Man the second most popular strip in Pow! was Mike Higgs' The Cloak. A fantastic humour-adventure spy/fantasy serial in Mike's distinctive style. I've never met any fan of Pow! who didn't like the strip, and it's easy to see why from this excellent spread. Anything could happen in The Cloak strip!

Horror/sci-fi serial Experiment X featured in the centre pages. That logo is one of my favourites. Very eerie.

Pow! often reprinted some of the complete five page sci-fi strips from Marvel's early sixties Tales of Suspense, Strange Tales and the like, resized into two page stories. This issue gave us The Little Green Man by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko...

The ad for the next issue promoted the free stickers. Remember those? 

Sammy Shrink by Terry Bave was another survivor from Wham! Although perhaps one of the more conservative strips in 'Power Comics' Sammy Shrink proved very popular and was even revived for a much longer run years later in the IPC funnies. 

This first merge issue also saw the start of a brand new adventure thriller; The Two Faces of Janus. A gripping but somewhat daft tale about a man wrongly accused of a crime just because he looks evil due to a curse. Francisco Fuentes was the artist of the strip but I'm not sure he drew this opening episode as it appears to be signed "Ayhau". 

The Tiddlers and The Dolls was an unusual merging of two strips into one! The Tiddlers from Wham! joined Pow's The Dolls of St. Dominics for a weekly battle of the sexes. Art by Mike Lacey... 

Reprints of The Fantastic Four also came over from Wham! into the merged comic. Script by Stan Lee, art by Jack Kirby. (For some reason, Odhams deleted the credits on the Marvel reprints. Probably because it wasn't a tradition in British comics to run credit boxes at the time.)

On the back page, the brilliant Dare-A-Day Davy, another Pow! favourite, by the fantastic Ken Reid...

So there you have it. A good comic full of variety, and a favourite of many in the sixties. Evidently not too many though, as it only lasted another 36 weeks or so before merging into Smash! but while it was around it was a memorable comic!