Monday, May 7, 2012

A LOOK AT COR!! STRIPS: ANDY'S ANTS


Andy’s Ants belonged to the elite club of COR!! strips that started in the first issue and lasted throughout the entire 4-year run of the paper. It told weekly adventures of a boy named Andy and the army of ants whom he befriended and could converse with.

The first episode in COR!! No. 1

The feature was created and illustrated by Terry Bave who shared his memories about the strip in part 2 the article A Line in Chuckles in the Summer 1986 edition of Golden FUN. Originally the Baves conceived the idea for Whizzer and Chips but it wasn’t developed properly. It involved a boy character with a collection of weird insect pets and was code-named Ivan’s Insects. The idea had been sparked off by the fact that one of Baves’ young “fans” collected all kinds of creepy crawlies. After some thought they altered the basic idea and came up with Andy’s Ants which involved a lad with an army of pet ants. The Baves wrote the initial script, Terry Bave then roughed-out an introduction page and submitted it to Bob Paynter for consideration. The editor liked the idea very much and gave Terry Bave the go-ahead for the artwork. The feature was approved for the new comic with IPC script writers supplying the weekly scripts. Andy’s Ants proved very popular with COR!! readers. The illustrator reminisced that the feature was a great fun to draw, especially when the script called for a large number of ants to appear. I remember reading somewhere that Bob Paynter was particularly fond of large numbers of ants and often told art assistants to add more of them to the original artwork.

From COR!! issue dated 26th August, 1972 (No. 117)

The strip was a black-and white one-pager but starting from issue 143 quite a few of the episodes were in full colour. Andy’s Ants also made 4 front cover colour appearances on 14th July 1973, 29th September 1973, 2nd February 1974 and 6th April 1974 (issue Nos. 163, 174, 192 and 201).

The strip was revived as a new series Adam and his Ants in WOW! comic in the early 80s.

From COR!! dated 23rd March, 1974 (No. 199)

8 comments:

  1. Dez Skinn mentions the addition of extra ants in his comment on this post http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/40-year-flashback-cor-no1.html Have you spotted the strip featuring the naughty ants?

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  2. I read both the post and the comment before I started my research. I looked very carefully at every episode but found nothing of the kind...

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  3. There was a later strip in another Fleetway comic (can't remember which one) drawn by Sid Burgon called Adam's Ants, which was similar to Andy's Ants. Although that was of course based on the singer Adam Ant.

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  4. Yes, I've mentioned it in the last paragraph of the post... :)

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  5. Dahm I missed that! Whoops.. sorry :D

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  6. I think the issue with the naughty ants is the one dated 11 September 1971. I'd post a scan here if I could, but maybe the blogger has that issue anyway...

    kiwijohn

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    1. Thanks for the hint. I will double-check!

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    2. I checked that issue and no, there are no naughty ants there. They are eating crumbs of cake in the last panel, that's all... I even checked with a magnifying glass :)

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