welcome and enjoy!

Hi and welcome to my blog about comics from other people’s childhood! It is dedicated primarily to British humour comics of the 60s and 70s. The reason they are not from my childhood is simply because I didn’t live in the UK back then (nor do I live there now). I knew next to nothing about them until fairly recently but since then I’ve developed a strong liking for the medium and amassed a large collection, including a number of complete or near complete sets. My intention is to use this blog as a channel for sharing my humble knowledge about different titles, favourite characters and creators as I slowly research my collection.

QUICK TIP: this blog is a sequence of posts covering one particular comic at a time. The sequence follows a certain logic, so for maximum results it is recommended that the blog is read from the oldest post up.

Copyright of all images and quotations used here is with their respective owners. Any such copyrighted material is used exclusively for educational purposes and will be removed at first notice. All other text copyright Irmantas P.



Friday, December 13, 2013

ARTIST SELF-PORTRAITS (Part 12)



I will wrap-up the Artist Self-Portraits series  (for now) with a selection of pages of The DANDY’s Smasher from the brush of the ever-excellent Brian Walker. I don’t know of any other UK comics artist who made so many appearances as an active character in his own strip. The first example that I spotted is in the Dandy No. 2370 cover-dated 25th April, 1987:


My collection of the Dandy has a large gap from the end of July 1988 till the first issue of 1990 but then continues without a break until the middle of 1994 (as a result of my effort to collect full sets two brilliant strips by Tom Paterson - The Laughing Planet and Hyde and Shriek). 

Brian Walker made one appearance in Smasher in 1990 (issue No. 2528), together with the Dandy Editor Morris Heggie :


… followed by as many as three in 1991 (issue Nos. 2577, 2602, 2607):


… followed by two in 1992 (issue Nos. 2628, 2642):


… and just one in 1993 (issue No. 2672):


Although I have very few issues of the Dandy from the later years and Brian Walker doesn’t appear in them, I believe he didn’t stop drawing himself in, as confirmed by this episode of Smasher from The Dandy Summer Special 1996: 


1996 DANDY SUMMER SPECIAL also sports this bright back cover with caricatures of the Dandy editor Morris Heggie. Not a self-portrait but still a nice piece to include in this series. I've got no idea who drew it though.



5 comments:

  1. Steve Bright drew Morris. Morris's hair is no longer red, though!

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    1. 15+ years can do things to the colour of one’s hair…

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  2. That one where Smasher visits Brian's house is one of my all-time favourite strips!

    I'm fairly sure I've got one more Smasher with Brian appearing in it, I'll have a look around to see if I can scan it for you...

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    1. I like that eposide as well. Also the one with Desperate Dan. It would be great if you could find another example :)

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    2. Found it, but Brian doesn't feature - it's just Smasher visiting the Dandy editor and his secretary. It's still a fun story though.

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