Saturday, April 19, 2014

COR!! COR-IOSITY: COR!! COMIC ANNUAL 1987



I will take a short break from MONSTER FUN COMIC and share this curious find which I came across a few days ago:


Stating the obvious, this is a picture of the front cover of COR!! Annual 1987, or to be more precise - the original artwork for the book. It was offered by Compal Comic Book Auctions in their 2010 Winter catalogue and went for £194. The piece was described as follows: Cor!! Annual front cover original artwork (1987) drawn and signed by Robert Nixon. Starring Ivor Lott and Tony Broke. Poster colour on board. 18 x 13 ins.

What’s so curious about it? – you might ask. Well, if any of you followed my COR!! series on this blog, you may recall that the last COR!! Annual came out in 1985 for the X-mas of 1986.

It turns out Fleetway had plans to publish one more COR!! Annual but then something made them reconsider. This finished cover with text and even the company logo suggests the book must have been cancelled when it was in an advanced stage of production, perhaps they’d even made a ‘dummy’.

Check out the promotional flyer that came with November 29th editions of BUSTER and WHIZZER AND CHIPS in 1986. I get an impression that the awkward empty spaces with text may have been originally intended for the annuals that were scrapped at the last moment and COR!! Annual 1987 appears to be one of them. Note how COR!!’s Ivor Lott and Tony Broke are still amongst the crowd of characters at the bottom of the centrespread:


And since we are on the subject of COR!!, I invite you revisit the opening article of my COR!! series HERE because I have recently updated it with some cracking images of the free gift that came with COR!! No. 1 back in 1970.






7 comments:

  1. Great to see what might have been - sad to see what wasn't. Annuals are usually prepared many months in advance, so presumably the content was all ready 'to go'. Wonder what happened to it. Probably used in different annuals the next year.

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  2. I remember this going on sale - what a lovely cover!

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  3. I love seeing this and a great cover by Robert a well...
    well spotted about the advert and the spaces..

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    1. I wanted proof that the Annual was indeed never produced so I had to find that promotional flyer to be sure before composing this post :)

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  4. What do you think the other two annuals in the other spaces were, if any? Shiver and Shake and Wow perhaps?

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    1. Jackpot Annual 1987 is also a possibility. All the other humour titles ended the year before.

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  5. Do you own Buster annual 1988 nook it has Franks story of Ivor and Tony with the snowballing tank so it must of been for this annual But got moved to Buster! Naybe you could do a post on it! If you need a scan let me know by email..

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