THE MOONSTERS COVERS OF SPARKY - PART TWO

Here’s the second batch of THE MOONSTERS covers of SPARKY comic. There are ninety of them left, so that’s nine more posts to keep me busy and you guys entertained! This gallery includes as  many as two special issues - Firework and X-mas 1965!

SPARKY MOONSTERS COVERS - PART ONE

Rather than doing the series of guest appearances at Scream Inn in one go, I though it would be more fun to add some variety and start a concurrent gallery of those bright and busy SPARKY Moonsters covers by Bill Ritchie. 

By way of intro, here is the back page of SPARKY No. 1 with The Moonsters advert:

… and the back page of SPARKY No. 2 with the premiere of the strip, explaining how the two main characters found themselves on the Moon and met the funny native folk:

Here are the first five Moonsters covers after the strip was moved from the back page to the front and marked the beginning of the spectacular run of 105 covers:

Come back soon for the second guest appearance at Scream Inn. In fact, it was guest appearance of Scream Inn in a strip from a sister title that made a guest appearance in Shiver and Shake. Am I making sense here? :)

ALMOST THERE WITH MY SPARKY COLLECTION!

I’ll do some bragging today because recently I received a joblot of Sparky comics from 1966 and filled all of my gaps for the year. This means that my mission of collecting a full set of this interesting and scarce title is nearly complete. I am now only one number (No. 620 with the cover date of 4th December, 1976) away from being able to call myself a proud owner of one of the very few full sets that exist out there. I also need a complete copy of issue No. 110 (25th February, 1967) because mine has its centre pages missing.  Do let me know if you have spare copies of Nos. 620 and 110 to sell or swap!

The picture below shows the 4 boxes which hold my Sparky collection. All comics are bagged and boarded, two magazines per bag, one on each side of the board.

To celebrate the achievement, here’s a gallery of some landmark Sparky covers for you to enjoy:

First issue:

First cover with Sparky the character:

First Moonsters cover; they also changed the colour pattern of the logo starting from this issue; Moonsters covers are my favourite ones:

First issue with a new logo; Sparky the character returns to the front cover, ousting Moonsters to the back page:

New logo; first Barney Bulldog cover:

First issue with another new logo:

…and then another new logo:

…and finally the premiere of the last logo (a remarkably uninspired cover design, don't you think?..):

First Mummies cover:

Final issue:

SPARKY 'MOONSTERS' COVERS

SPARKY issue No. 59 with the cover date of 5th March, 1966 is one of the few issues that I still need to complete my set of the title. Someone is offering a copy on eBay this week but I think it is overpriced and postage rate to where I am is outrageous, etc., but that’s not what this post is about… I am glad the seller showed a decent image of the cover, so now I know what's on it.

It looks like Bill Ritchie later used the idea of Moonsters’ brass band for the cover of Sparky annual 1968. Some of the figures are near-identical, don’t you think? Remember to click to see the image full size!

In my opinion the whole series of SPARKY ‘Moonsters’ front page sets is among the best impact covers in British children’s comics. The action-packed, bright single-panel drawings must have been real eye-catchers on the newsstands. I might do a complete series of those covers (more than a hundred of them!) sometime in the future…