1979 COR!! Comic
Annual. £1.10, 144 pages,
Here is a summary of the contents: Jack
Pott’s Jackpot game, Football Madd (1 new episode by Les Barton + 2 reprints from old COR!! weeklies), Helpful Hettie, Nightmare
(new episode by Les Barton), Tomboy (3
episodes), Fiends and Neighbours (2
new episodes by Les Barton, both signed + 1 reprint from an old COR!! weekly), Tease Break feature (2 instalments), Ivor Lott and Tony Broke (6 reprints and
1 new episode), Teacher’s Pet (2
episodes), Jack Pott (2 episodes), Benny Bendo! (2 episodes), The Slimms (2 episodes + The Slimms Weight For it Game), The Gasworks Gang (4 reprints), Jelly Baby (2 episodes), Hire A Horror (5 reprints and 1 new
episode), Whacky (5 episodes), Spotter, Jasper the Grasper (two original episodes, one by Les Barton and
one by John Geering), Donovan’s Dad,
Swopper Stan, Tricky Dicky (2 episodes), Football Quiz (by Les Barton), Wilfred the World’s Worst Wizard, Football Funnies (by Les
Barton), Xmas Word puzzle, Val’s Vanishing
Cream (2 episodes), Chalky, Patch-Eye Hooker, Mike’s Magic Mould,
Gus Gorilla (3 episodes), "The Stairs” … A
Silly Story, The Way-Out West jokes (by Jack Clayton), Willy
Worry (2 episodes).
The annual was the first one that had no ‘proper’ colour pages but
was probably still advertised as a full-colour book because all of its pages were
presented in three-colours (save for a few pages that had no white or no
black).
Two episodes of Tomboy were signed by Jim Watson:
The annual contained two new Jasper the Grasper stories: a two-pager
by Les Barton (shown below in its entirety) and a 6-pager by John Geering (illustrated
below with one panel):
The one-off The Stairs... A Silly Story, doesn't really qualify as a comic strip and is poorly drawn but here it is anyway:
Jack Clayton contributed two nice pages of Wild West jokes:
What I like best about this annual is that it has as many as two
original episodes of Fiends and Neighbours by Les Barton
whose style suits the strip very well indeed. The level of detail suggests that
the artist enjoyed drawing it. Editors must have liked Mr. Barton’s version because the two sets were the first out of many episodes of Fiends and Neighbours illustrated by Les
Barton in subsequent COR!! holiday specials and annuals. Here is one of the two stories from the annual:
Ah yes, of all the annuals I received (not necessarily at the time they were published), this one resonates most of all. It was because of this annual that I distinctly remember feeling a chill of expectation when I learned that Jackpot was going to reprint Fiends & Neighbours in mid-1981 . I knew it’d be special, and I was right. It’s very likely the huge lolly on the cover helps to embed this annual so fondly in my memory – there were quite a few of those cropping up regularly in real life too!
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