JAWS the blockbuster Hollywood movie was released in 1975. Gums the MFC strip was a clever and funny tie-in with the film and started in MFC No. 35 (7th February, 1976). Check out the famous poster of the movie and the advertisement of Gums in MFC issue No. 34 (the week before its premiere) side-by-side:
The scene was set on the sunny coast of Australia. The strip was
about a toothless shark with a set of false choppers and the young Bluey who
lived in a coastal town which the beast chose to terrorize. The shark was a
dangerous and aggressive predator. The only way to render him harmless was by
removing his false teeth – the mission which Bluey took upon himself. That’s
the basic idea of this highly successful and long-running IPC strip which
originated in MONSTER FUN COMIC.
The early stories were serialized and often spanned a period of two
weeks; in the first week Gums usually lost his choppers:
…and won them back a week later, thanks to his own cunning
and smartness, or through sheer luck or coincidence:
Bluey prevailed in the majority of the episodes but sometimes the shark
got the upper hand. Typically, this involved the use of munition from sunken
ships:
I really like the feature and I think it very well deserved to appear in
full colour on the front cover for most of its run in MFC issues 35 to 73
(except in Nos. 48, 50, 51, 52, 66 and 67 when it was inside in b/w), besides, more
than a half of the two-page sets occupied both front and back covers. Gums got its own poster very early on
in issue No. 38 (28th February, 1976). After MFC ended, the strip was
transferred to BUSTER and appeared there until 12th
May 1984.
Initially the illustrator was Bob Nixon who, according to his own words
in the interview for GOLDEN FUN, also designed Gums to the idea suggested
by the editor. Mr. Nixon continued to draw the strip until issue 59 when Alf
Saporito took over from him on a permanent basis (Alf Saporito’s first episode
of Gums
was in MFC issue No. 52). It is interesting to note that Mr. Saporito signed a
few of the early sets:
Alf Saporito remained in charge of the strip in BUSTER for the rest of the
seventies and during the early eighties when he was succeeded by John Geering.
The episode of in MFC No. 71 was illustrated and signed by Les Barton:
The other artists did good, but Bob Nixon is a hard act to follow.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment, Kid, I thought nobody was reading this blog anymore... :))
DeleteI'm sure it's well-appreciated, Irmantas. One of the very best-researched, informative and entertaining blogs out there. (But that's enough about MINE - let's now talk about YOURS.) I'm joking of course - it's Kazoop I'm referring to.
ReplyDeleteThose lively Robert Nixon Gums cover strips were so exciting at the time - this was the kind of thing that put IPC humour comics way ahead of the competition in '76. The later Alf Saporito version is good in its own right, but the original Robert Nixon incarnation was very special.
ReplyDeleteThink something's going wrong somewhere - Blogger used to tell me whenever you had a new article up, but it hasn't told me anything since your Little Monsters post. Might be something going on there?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, just dropped in today to find LOADS of new stuff, including something about Gums, a favourite of mine, yes! Remember that one episode where Gums was shrunk somehow, and Bluey ate him? Can't remember how it ended, but it was an odd twist on the usual format of Gums, that's for sure.
It appears blogger has been treating be badly recently but I have no clue what the poroblem is. I know in the past the blog was sometimes not updating itself on blogs of other people who had me in their lists. Kid told me that my pairs of images aren't showing in one line (although I can see them sitting nicely one opposite each other), and now your news about blogger not telling you about my new articles! I have noticed a slump in my view count over the recent weeks.
DeleteAs regards that shrinking episode, you are probably referring to the one in issue No. 68 in which Gums decided not to eat anything just in case it was one of Bluey's baits and soon starved himself to the point when he grew too weak to carry his false teeth. He got them back in the next issue of course!
Might be worth raising the issue in the forums then? There's probably other people having the same problems.
DeleteBack to Gums, I think the one I'm talking about was in Buster - Gums was reduced to goldfish size somehow and Bluey simply dropped him down his throat. Could've been a dream sequence perhaps? I'll try and find it one day.