welcome and enjoy!

Hi and welcome to my blog about comics from other people’s childhood! It is dedicated primarily to British humour comics of the 60s and 70s. The reason they are not from my childhood is simply because I didn’t live in the UK back then (nor do I live there now). I knew next to nothing about them until fairly recently but since then I’ve developed a strong liking for the medium and amassed a large collection, including a number of complete or near complete sets. My intention is to use this blog as a channel for sharing my humble knowledge about different titles, favourite characters and creators as I slowly research my collection.

QUICK TIP: this blog is a sequence of posts covering one particular comic at a time. The sequence follows a certain logic, so for maximum results it is recommended that the blog is read from the oldest post up.

Copyright of all images and quotations used here is with their respective owners. Any such copyrighted material is used exclusively for educational purposes and will be removed at first notice. All other text copyright Irmantas P.



Showing posts with label Stan McMurtry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stan McMurtry. Show all posts

Thursday, October 8, 2015

STAN MCMURTRY'S TAKE ON BUSTER



While looking through my collection of BUSTER from the 60s, I found two occasions when the strip was illustrated by Stan McMurtry:






Monday, June 17, 2013

A LOOK AT SHIVER & SHAKE STRIPS: GHOULDILOCKS



Ghouldilocks was one of the four ‘Super fun features’ to join SHIVER AND SHAKE lineup from the issue dated August 4th, 1973 (alongside Charlie Williams, Wizards Anonymous and Grimly Feendish). In the advertisement a week before her premiere in SHIVER AND SHAKE she was introduced as Shivers own little ‘ghoul’:


Ghouldilocks, aka Ghouldi, was a girl spook who could go through things like walls, people’s bodies, etc. and had a detachable head (after Shiver the ghost, Suffering Sam of Scream Inn and Sir Headley Deadly of Horrornation Street, she was the fourth character in Shiver and Shake who could juggle her head around). Towards the end of the run she also developed the ability to turn invisible at will. Ghouldi’s adventures usually involved playing tricks on people who mistreated her, or dealing with bullies and crooks. I liked how a UK Comics forum member once described her as ‘The Minnie the Minx of the afterlife”. 




The strip ran in Shiver and Shake issues 22 – 67 (August 4, 1973 - June 15, 1974, except in No. 54 dated March 16, 1974) and was part of SHIVER section. At first Ghouldilocks had a permanent slot on page 8 after Scream Inn; later on it got transferred to the back of the paper and appeared regularly on page 30 (overleaf of Horrornation Street). The artist was the excellent Stan McMurtry.




Ghouldilocks originally appeared in the late sixties in JAG comic where it enjoyed a short run of only 18 weeks from October 19th, 1968 until the last tabloid-sized JAG dated Feb. 15th, 1969 and was also illustrated by Stan McMurtry. The second series in SHIVER AND SHAKE used the original masthead and reprinted 5 episodes of the JAG run (the reprints were in Shiver and Shake issues 22, 23, 24, 25 and 46).


Tuesday, July 24, 2012

A LOOK AT COR!! STRIPS: MY FAVOURITE ENTRIES IN THE COR-MEDY CHOICE FEATURE


In response to Peter’s request, below are full versions of my personal favourite entries in the first series of COR-medy Choice competition. 

As I have written in my reply to Peter's comment, had I had an opportunity to cast my vote, I would have been in the minority: I’d have been interested to see more of Sheik Oleg. I find the absurdity of this first episode quite amusing and wonder what would have followed. IMHO, Professor Potty, Fun-Time Machine and Snappy Sam were quite robust ideas with development potential. 

Of course, this is all from my current perspective as an adult; kids probably saw things differently. Seeing that Val’s Vanishing Cream and The Pipes of Stan got the majority of the votes, I find it a bit surprising how children wanted to see more of “kids-with-gimmicks” – type strips, despite having so many of them already in the pages of COR!! as well as other companion and rival comics.





Monday, July 23, 2012

A LOOK AT COR! STRIPS: COR-MEDY CHOICE, FIRST SERIES


COR-Medy Choice feature was introduced in the issue dated 21st April, 1973 (No. 151) to give readers an opportunity of selecting a new fun-series from ten brand new comedy ideas presented over a period of ten weeks. Here is how the idea was packaged in the header and the footer of the weekly instalments:



Here are brief synopses and the opening panels of all ten entries:

The Fun-Time Machine, 2 pages, 21st April, 1973, issue No. 151: Boy and girl use a Fun-Time Machine invented by their Grandfather. They travel to Roman times and find themselves in the middle of a Roman arena facing a gladiator. They cause mayhem in the arena and return home safely. Illustrated by by Les Barton:


Scarey Crow, 2 pages, 28th April, 1973, issue No. 152: A crow is sick and tired of people trying to scare his kind with scarecrows, etc., so he decides to give humans a taste of their own medicine. His first attempt fails but he declares he is not done scaring humans yet... Illustrated by Terry Bave:


Seymore Son of Tarzan, 2 pages, 5th May, 1973, issue No. 153: Seymore who is a fat bald kid tries to build a new do-it-yourself tree house together with his assistants – a dumb-looking ape Cyril and an exotic animal that most probably is a wild boar; the effort involves a series of accidents and ends in destruction of the tree house and the tree. Illustrated by Stan McMurtry:


Val's Vanishing Cream, 2 pages, 12th May, 1973 , issue No. 154: Val finds a jar of vanishing cream in the bag of old cosmetics that her Mom asks her to pop in the bin. Val uses it well: she makes the teacher’s cane vanish and class is over without a single caning. Illustrated by Mike Lacey:


Snappy Sam and Flash Harry, 2 pages, 19th May, 1973, issue No. 155:  Snappy Sammy and Flash Harry are cameramen working for two competing papers – Morning Piffle and Daily Bilge. Sammy is a bespectacled kid and Harry is an evil grown-up who plays tricks on his rival and interferes with his job; in this episode they both have an assignment to take some pictures of a famous football player. Illustrated by Graham Allen:


Sheik Oleg, 2 pages, 26th May, 1973, issue No. 156: Sheik Oleg is a fat and short bloke who walks around with a pet – a strange rodent. He buys an old camel from Cyril Swindle (used camels salesman who looks a lot like Grimly Feendish) so that he can ride home in style; the camel immediately goes missing  and Sheik Oleg goes looking for it in a rubbish dump. He then takes the ponging camel to a camel wash but gets scrubbed himself instead. Illustrated by Stan McMurtry:


My Old Man's A Junkman, 2 pages, 2nd June, 1973, issue No. 157: Dusty Binn, Rag and Bone merchant, and his son Rusty live at the end of the posh Ritzy Avenue and run a scrap business to the great dissatisfaction of their wealthy neighbours. I don't know who the illustrator was. Any suggestions, please?


Professor Potty and Son, 2 pages, 9th June, 1973, issue No. 158: Professor Potty is a crazy scientist (who looks a lot like an older and bald version of Valiant’s Billy Bunter) tries to prove that well-accepted theories are wrong. In this episode he challenges two theories: the one that elephants don’t forget, and the one that sound vibrations can shatter things. Illustrated by Les Barton:


Doctor Quackpot, 1 page, 16th June, 1973, issue No. 159: A tale about a daft doctor who receives weird patients. In this episode the patient is a guy with a cowboy hat only he is not a cowboy. He uses the hat to cover his hair because he suffers from multiple dandruff. The whole room gets filled up with dandruff in a few moments and Dr. Quackpot calls his mate Vet for assistance. The Vet who appears to be just as daft brings penguins along so that they can enjoy themselves in the “snow”… Illustrated by Tony Goffe:


The Pipes of Stan, 1 page, 23rd June, 1973, issue No. 160: Stan has a pipe which turns people to stone while the second blow brings them back to their selves and so forth any number of times. This again looks like the work of Tony Goffe to me:


Voting coupon was included in COR!! issue dated 30th June, 1973 (No. 161), alongside with a recap of all 10 competition entries:


Results of the vote and the winner were announced in COR!! issue dated 18th August, 1973 (No. 168):