MORE BUSTER COVERS BY BAX

Below are the remaining two Buster covers by Leo Baxendale from 1967, followed by examples of The Cave Kids and The Pirates by Bax from the same period. It appears that the artist also did the lettering throughout the runs of both strips.

By way of a teaser for the next post, I can say that I decided to check if I can find more examples of cap-less Buster. Come back soon to see some results of my quest. In the meantime, here’s an image of Buster-less cap from 1985:

BUSTER COVERS BY LEO BAXENDALE

The Spanish artist Angel Nadal was responsible for the vast majority of BUSTER covers in the period from 1962 till 1974. The few exceptions included six episodes of Buster's Diary by Leo Baxendale in 1967 (the issues cover-dated 6th May, 15th July, 5th Aug, 26th Aug, 23rd Sept and 21st Oct).

My speculation is that the Editor wanted to have insurance in case Nadal’s artwork didn’t arrive on time in the post from Barcelona, so he asked Leo Baxendale to draw some and kept them “in reserve”. Here are some of the covers. I prefer Nadal’s version of Buster’s Diary. 

ACCIDENTAL RUDENESS

I recently received a small joblot of the Beano from the mid-fifties and found this early episode of When The Bell Rings in issue No. 630:

I decided to show it because of something I spotted in the first panel:

I remember reading somewhere that publishers had an internal directive warning against the use of certain innocent words in comics because they tended to look rude when printed, and ‘flick’ appears to have been one of them. It seems that in this case DCT realised it before it was too late but they were more careful when reprinting the episode in the Dandy Beano Magic Moments book nearly 40 years later:

All Images 2015 © DC Thomson, Ltd.  All rights reserved.

REPRINTS IN MONSTER FUN COMIC

MONSTER FUN COMIC wasn’t big on reprints but it still included a few that probably served as space fillers when artists failed to deliver their weekly strips on time.

The Robot Maker was a short-lived strip in the early issues of COR!! illustrated by Frank McDiarmid in his version of Ken Reid’s style. Only one episode was reprinted in MFC No. 47 where it substituted Teddy Scare which failed to appear that week.

Stoneage Brit Ancient Nit was another reprint from COR!! It made a surprise one-off appearance in MFC No. 40 where it was introduced as a Fave Funster from the Holiday Special:

The same goes for Sam’s Spook: the caption above the first episode of the strip in MFC suggests that many readers wrote in asking to see more of the strip after it was (re)printed in the first MFC Holiday Special. The original run of Sam’s Spook appeared in SMASH! in 1970 - 1971 where it was illustrated by Leo Baxendale. Reprints of Sam’s Spook can be found in MFC issues 21, 22, 23, 24, 27, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 38 and 46. Originally it was a b/w strip but two episodes in MFC Nos. 24 and 34 were couloured in:

Hairy only made one appearance in MFC No. 7. I am unsure if it was a reprint and if it was one, I don’t know where from. Can anyone help?

All Images 2014 © Egmont UK Ltd.  All rights reserved. Used with permission.