 |
| Advertisement in MFC No. 39 the week before the premiere |
Freaky Farm was a tale about a farm with an evil reputation run by the froight’ning Freaky Farmer – a monstrous humanoid who spoke with the West Country accent and had a hat instead of a head. Everything on Freaky Farm was predisposed against ‘pesky visitors’ and worked to scare them away and off the farm. Everything includes literally everything – from the Freaky Farmer:
… to farm
animals, poultry and crops:
… to
agricultural machinery and appliances:
… to buildings and structures, such as the freaky farmhouse, the barn and even the rocks of the stone
wall:
… to wildlife,
trees and plants growing on the farm:
… to the
farm-hand:
… and of course
the scarecrow:
Every week a
new ignorant trespasser or adventurer would turn up at the unwelcoming Freaky
Farm and the farm community took a concerted effort to make
him/her/it/them run away in shock and terror. Here are two nice representative
examples:
The horror show
put up by the monsters of Freaky Farm never failed to produce
the desired effect on the poor visitor(s), except in the very first issue when
a reader of MONSTER FUN COMIC dropped by:
The 2-page
strip ran in issues 40 to 73 and didn’t miss a single week. In the last frame
of the final episode in MFC No. 73 Freaky Farmer told the readers he was
retiring:
The main
illustrator was Jim Watson who signed the majority of the episodes starting
from No. 49. The first two sets were signed Elphin,
although the first one in No. 40 looks very much like Jim Watson’s work to me.
The episodes which followed in issues 41 – 48 may have been drawn by someone
else but Elphin’s signature in No. 41
makes things quite confusing... Was Elphin
a nom de plume of Jim Watson and it
was him all along, experimenting with different styles before settling on the
one he was satisfied enough to put his signature to?
The
episodes in MFC issues 71 and 72 were drawn and signed by the excellent and
universal Les Barton who IPC editors could always rely upon whenever their main
artists weren’t available:
IMHO, the
strip wasn’t very original or imaginative so it is probably not a big surprise that
it did not make it to the new combined BUSTER AND MONSTER FUN.
Irmantas, some of your pictures which are meant to be sitting side-by-side have ones sitting off to the right and above their partners.
ReplyDeleteThanks for letting me know, Kid. I remember you told me about this in one of your earlier comments as well but the weird thing is they are sitting nicely side by side on my screen and I have no idea why other people see them differently or how to fix it...
DeleteIf your blog's like mine, you should be able to change the size of the visuals. So if the pairs (which sit side-by-side) are on large, change to medium; if on medium, change to small. That should fix the problem.
DeleteI can't help but feel that the samples you've posted contradict your belief that the strip wasn't imaginative, Irmantas!
ReplyDeleteFreaky Farm was yet another Monster Fun hit for me. I like scenarios where innocent people are driven to a state of gibbering delirium by outlandishly nutty creatures, and the artwork was always crazy enough to perfectly portray these derangements of nature.
And the OOO-ARR ... OOER! tag is truly inspired!
Raven, the point I was trying to make was that you could always be sure what to expect when you opened the Freaky Farm page: every week someone would turn up on the Farm and be scared away, so the strip was very predictable in that sense. Now that I come to think of it, the majority of strips in children's comics are predictable, so I do agree I contradict myself in that statement.
DeleteOf course, the idea of interlopers, disbelievers or just plain baddies coming unstuck was extremely common. Those who took wood from Knockout’s ‘Haunted Wood’ were duly warned they’d regret it, and invariably did. Whoopee was replete with those who scoffed that they couldn’t be frightened by what the ‘Fun-Fear’ had to offer and inevitably ended up petrified. The only two in this category I’ve any sympathy for are Alfred and Mildred Jones, who were repeatedly driven to the brink of insanity by the Really-Ghastlys, although after a while they should have had SOME idea what they were in for!
DeleteIn the light of what’s been discussed here, I have come to realize that my problem with the strip is not predictability (which is not a problem at all) but the artist whose style I don’t like very much, although I can’t tell exactly why. Had Freaky Farm been illustrated by, say, Brian Walker I have no doubts I would have declared it one of my favourites in the comic :)
DeleteI think the imagination comes in the many different ways that the regular theme is played out. I really like Jim Watson's artwork on this. It would have had a very different feel if (the excellent) Brian Walker had illustrated it - more Gothic, shadowy, moody, more of a real horror feel. I think the hyper, cartoonish style of Jim Watson ran counter to the unfriendliness of the farm and the intensity of its attacks, which stopped the strip seeming too intense or unpleasant, keeping it light and funny. Just look at that hay making machine you've posted and the fish climbing up the line - brilliant pictures!
DeleteYour comment wraps it up nicely, Raven, and I have to agree that Jim Watson’s style suits the strip rather well.
DeleteI'm not so sure that the Freaky Farmer spoke with a Northern accent. It's more of the 'classic farmer' accent associated with the West Country.
ReplyDeleteYes, definitely West Country (South West England: Somerset, Devon, etc.)
DeleteThanks, folks, I will go ahead and correct it in my post.
DeleteThis strip really creeped me out as a kid...same as creature teacher...it just seem to have a strangeness to me...
ReplyDeletethe farmer having eyes on his hat...everything alive!
I discovered it in Buster and Monster Fun in the 80's..