The arrival of Cor!! was advertised in other IPC comics of the time, such as Whizzer and Chips, Buster, Smash! and even Scorcher. The campaign began in the issues with the cover date of May 23rd, 1970. They carried a half-page teaser to wet readers‘ appetites, urging them to watch out next week for more exciting news.
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| Cor!! teaser in Buster dated May 23rd, 1970 |
The news came a week later in the form of a 4-page pull out in which Gus Gorilla announced that the super new laughter weekly was due to be out next week.
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| Cor!! promotional flyer in Whizzer and Chips dated May 30th, 1970. |
A week later most companion comics came with another 4-page flyer – “COR!! OUT TODAY” proclaimed the sign on the front of the pull out. Centre pages showed a number of characters from the new comic and invited readers to guess their names by choosing from the list.
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| Cor!! No. 1 promotional flyer in Whizzer and Chips dated June 6th, 1970 |
The launch of Cor!! coincided with a rough period for some IPC comics because their publishing schedules were disrupted by industrial action. It affected Buster, Smash! and Valiant that all came out with a double cover date of June 6th/13th, 1970. In effect this meant that there were no issues on 13th June and no ads for the second issue of Cor!! were published.
Scorcher wasn’t affected by the action and the issue of June 13th, 1970 had a full-page ad of Cor!! issue No. 2; so did Whizzer and Chips, but the ad was only ½ page in size.
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| Cor!! No. 2 ad page in Scorcher dated 13th June, 1970 |
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| Cor!! No. 2 ad in Whizzer and Chips dated June 13th, 1970 |
Next week things came back to normal, and Cor!! issue No. 3 was presented with a full page ad in all companion comics.
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| Cor!! No. 3 ad in Buster dated June 20th, 1970 |
The promotional campaign ended a week later with a half-page ad urging readers to place their regular order now.
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| Cor!! ad in Buster dated June 27th, 1970 |
Valiant appears to have run a somewhat scaled-down advertising campaign of Cor!! There was no teaser in the issue dated May 23rd, nor there was anything in the week preceding the premiere (although there is certainly a possibility that the pull-out was removed from my copy of Valiant, can anyone confirm please?). The double-dated issue of June 6th/13th, 1970 was different from other IPC comics of that week in the sense that it only had a single-page ad of Cor!! No. 1 rather than the full 4-page flyer as in other comics.
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| Cor!! No. 1 ad in Valiant dated June 6th/13th, 1970 |
Fantastic research on this blog, I'm very impressed.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the reduced advertising of Cor!! in Valiant was because IPC felt the older readership of Valiant were unlikely to be tempted by a comic aimed at younger readers.