MONSTER FUN ANNUAL 1980, PART TWO

I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that Barrie Appleby was not available to contribute to MONSTER FUN Annual 1980 and the strips which would have been drawn by him were given to another artist (or other artists) to illustrate. I can’t decide whether it was Joe McCaffrey or Reg Parlett, or maybe both of them on different strips. Or perhaps it was Barrie Appleby all along, imitating Reg Parlett?

They include both sets of Terror TV. The first one featured The Multi-Horror Swap Shock! show and the other one – All Creatures Big and Small. Here it is in full:

Two episodes of Teddy Scare also fall within the category:

  

… as do both episodes of Tom Thumbscrew:

… as does Brainy and His Monster Maker. One of the two episodes is called Brainy’s Monster Maker. I can see traces of Barrie Appleby, Reg Parlett/Joe McCaffrey and even Frank McDiarmid in this one, here it is in full:

So, who do you think illustrated these?

The Annual contains a fair share or reprints, including the second Badtime Bedtime Book (Robinson Gruesome by Leo Baxendale) from the second issue of Monster Fun Comic weekly. The reprint is twice the size of the original BBB and is printed in b/w:

Now for the highlights, which, for me, are the strips from the hand of Mike Brown. I believe he was responsible for three in this Annual, although none were signed. A Christmas Phanto-Mime is first in line and the only one I have some doubts about regarding artwork credits. I tend to think it is by Mike Brown, but drawn a few years earlier when he was just starting to work on Badtime Bedtime Books in MONSTER FUN COMIC. See for yourselves and let me know what you think:

Alfie’s Alphabet is a hilarious one-off:

And finally, here is the indispensable new Badtime Bedtime Story – Aladdin - a mad combination of the oriental tale, Star Wars and whatnot. There's even the artist's self-portrait on page two. Enjoy!

All Images 2015 © Egmont UK Ltd.  All rights reserved. Used with permission.

MONSTER FUN ANNUAL 1979, PART TWO

My previous post ended with a page-count of strips illustrated by Tom Williams and Barrie Appleby whom the editor kept really busy when preparing this 1979 MONSTER FUN Annual. Barrie Appleby was the unchallenged champion because out of the 19 pages by the runner up Tom Williams, two were most probably reprints (Ghost Town from WHIZZER AND CHIPS), and three formed part of 2-page spot-the-difference puzzles. Here is one pair, if you feel like playing the game (click on the image to enlarge):

Mr. Williams also drew both episodes of X-Ray Specs. In the first Ray is in the mood of playing dirty tricks on other kids and his X-ray specs come very handy until Mummy of the Mummy’s Boy strip puts an end to his antics. It is a nice example of characters from different strips crossing-over:

In the second episode Ray takes a boring job at the packing department of a big store during the Christmas rush. He amuses himself by using his X-ray specs to see what’s inside the parcels and exposes a fraudster who steals gifts from the boxes.

It is good to see the return of Creature Teacher after a break in the previous MF Annual.  In this story Class3X give Teach some nasty Christmas presents. He gets his own back on them by treating Class3X to cardboard sandwiches, plaster cakes and wax fruits from the drama cupboard before inviting them for a real Christmas meal in the dining room:

Barrie Appleby’s contribution (which amounted to whopping 20 pages of new material) was two episodes of Brainy and His Monster Maker:

… an episode of Teddy Scare:

… an episode of Major Jump in which Major Jump and Cosmo scheme to catch the Wild Jorkonorkus. What they don’t realise is that the mission hardly calls for human cunning because the monster is all in for mince pies, jellies and telly that they offer at the monster menagerie but his eagerness to fall into the various traps set by Major Jump and his assistant backfire on the pair. The 4-page story is a sequence of four short episodes, the last one ending with the willing captive getting happily captured. Here is one:

Barrie Appleby was also the man behind the episode of Terror TV which proudly presented everybody’s favourite talent-show Horror-Tunity Shocks starring Hughie Goran. In the first part of the show the first two sponsors introduce the Wobbles and the Baskervilles, and here is Part Two:

Last but not least of Mr. Appleby’s contributions in this 1979 MONSTER FUN Annual is this 6-page story of Tom Thumbscrew (or rather two 3-page stories presented in a sequence):

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

A LOOK AT MONSTER FUN STRIPS: TERROR TV

Terror TV pull-out poster from MFC No. 60

Terror TV was 'the channel of chills’ run by the gloomy skeleton Magnus Murkysome (named after TV presenter Magnus Magnusson, who presented the BBC's Mastermind – thanks to Raven for this piece of info!) and his team of telly fiends. The channel broadcast from an eerie castle which sat on hilltop in the middle of a normal suburban neighbourhood.

Advertisement in MFC No. 49 the week before the premiere

The arrival of Terror TV was celebrated by putting the strip on the cover for two consecutive weeks and moving Gums inside for a while. Here is the first episode as it appeared in MONSTER FUN COMIC issue No. 50:

It is common knowledge that the rise of television was one of the factors which affected comics industry and the last frame of the first episode got me thinking perhaps scaring readers away from their TVs so that they had more time to read comics was one of the script-writer’s ideas...

The strip about the TV channel with a mission to terrify its viewers offered weekly monstrous parodies of popular TV shows. Initially it ‘monstrified’ generic shows without naming them specifically, e.g. a quiz show, a programme for gardeners, a spooky cooky programme, etc. Terror TV was the darkest strip in MFC and I suspect some of those early episodes might have looked really chilling to the young reader:

Terror TV also lampooned real TV shows. I managed to identify a few but not all of them because I didn’t watch British TV in the seventies. Below is the complete list of Terror TV shows from the MFC run of the strip, some with their real-life equivalents noted in red. UPDATE: Raven and Uncle Jesse have identified quite a few more for me, they are marked in blue:

* Quiz Show

* Programme for Gardeners (probably the BBC's Gardeners World)

* That was Your Life (This Is Your Life)

* Grave News at Ten (ITV's nightly News at Ten)

* Chill-a-Minute Competition “Shock of the Week”

* Celebrity Scares (Celebrity Squares)

* Horrorday ’76 (programme about holidays) (The BBC's Holiday '76) 

* General Horrorspital (General Hospital)

* Spooky Cooky Programme with the Galloping Ghoulmet (The Galloping Gourmet - ITV weekday afternoon cookery programme)

* Advertisement + Tasting Competition

* Sports Fright with Ghoulman (Sportsnight With Coleman - BBC series with David Coleman)

* Supercronic Pop Show (Supersonic - ITV children's pop show with Mike Mansfield)

* Terror TV Football Competition “Ghoul of the Month” (Goal of the Month - a feature in BBC1's football series Match of the Day)

* Doctor Whooooo (Doctor Who). Here is the complete episode:

* Blow Peter Up (Blue Peter - long-running BBC children's magazine series; started in the late 1950s and still going)

* A Day at the Races

* The Ghoulies (The Goodies). Here is the episode in full:

* Whooooo Do You Booo! – programme of impersonations starring Brute Force (Bruce Forsyth, perhaps?), K.O.Jack, Jerry Wigan (Who Do You Do - ITV's comedy impressionist series)

* Horror-Tunity Shocks! (Opportunity Knocks)

* TV Cops with Throbak the Zombie Cop (Kojak), Scareski and Lurch (Starsky and Hutch), the Headless Marshall MacGhoul (Marshall McCloud from McCloud) and Frank Furter – the fattest freak in TV Detectivedom (Frank Cannon from Cannon)
* Hag-Pie with Susan Shrieks (Magpie with host Susan Stranks)

Can you identify the few remaining shows?

The two-pager ran in MFC issues 50 – 73 and didn’t miss a single week. Initially the illustrator was Ian Knox who signed or initialled the majority of his sets. Barrie Appleby took over starting from issue 67 and continued to the end of the series in MFC. His version of Terror TV was more cartoony and certainly not as depressing and frightening as Ian Knox’s. The strip received a pull-out poster in MFC No. 60 (31st July, 1976). After MONSTER FUN COMIC folded, Terror TV was transferred to the combined BUSTER AND MONSTER FUN where it shrunk to a single page and was drawn by Barrie Appleby. The BUSTER run of Terror TV expired on 18th February 1978.

Terror TV completes the series of reviews of the strips ‘proper’ which appeared in MONSTER FUN COMIC. I am not done with the weeklies yet: there are quite a few interesting things remaining, including the famous Badtime Bedtime Books, before I move on to MONSTER FUN Holiday Specials and Annuals.