WEEKLY OUTPUT – TERRY BAVE

Terry Bave’s page count in IPC comics cover-dated 30th March, 1974 was 7 pages. There was one in COR!!:

… two in Shiver and Shake:

.. two in Whoopee!:

… and two in Whizzer and Chips (my copies are in a bound volume and thus unscannable, so apologies for image quality):

Reg Parlett is next in line...

Images are © Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd

Click on the POWER PACK banner in the right-hand column and get your copy of the POWER PACK OF KEN REID - the deluxe two-volume set of Ken’s strips in WHAM!, SMASH! and POW! comics of the ‘60s.

GUEST APPEARANCES AT SCREAM INN – TOY BOY

Whoopee’s own favorite Toy Boy visited Scream Inn in Whoopee! issue cover-dated August 28th, 1976. As always, two pages of Scream Inn by the ever-excellent Brian Walker are followed by the episode of Toy Boy from that same issue. The artist is of course Terry Bave.

Now there’s only one installment of this series left in the pipeline. Can you guess who the star-guest might be? :) 

Blogger is still treating me poorly because the list of my favourite blogs that used to show on the right-hand side of this page is still missing and I have no idea how to restore it. I tried doing it manually but it still didn’t work. I find it quite annoying as I can’t conveniently visit my friends’ sites whenever I check in here. Any ideas how to fix this??

A LOOK AT MONSTER FUN FEATURES – BADTIME BEDTIME BOOKS – Part THREE

In my first blogpost on Badtime Bedtime Books I suggested that the BBBs can be classified into three periods –the Leo Baxendale period, the ‘grey’ period and the Mike Brown period. 

I’ve already dealt with the work of Leo Baxendale and made a few inroads into the second period because the periods don’t have clear-cut time lines and occasionally overlap, e.g. during the LB period Sherlock Bones in MFC No. 15 was drawn by Tom Paterson, while Ghoul Dilocks and the Three Scares in MFC No. 16 and Dick Twerpin in MFC No. 24 may have very well been the work of Bob Dewar. See the comments to my previous post.

The ‘grey’ period was the time when, trying to cope with Leo Baxendale’s departure from comics, Bob Paynter experimented with other artists. Mr. Baxendale’s last BBB (William the Conk) was in MFC No. 28 (20th December, 1975) so theoretically, the beginning of the ‘grey’ period coincided with the start of the New Year. In his book A VERY FUNNY BUSINESS Mr. Baxendale recalled how Bob Paynter complained to him that other artists were reluctant to take the job because of the amount of work the BBBs involved.

24) The first BBB of 1976 was Dick Twittington by Terry Bave. It appeared in the first issue of the year (MFC No. 30, 3rd January, 1976):

25) The Ghoul and the Pussycat in MFC No. 32 (17th January, 1976) was by Leslie Harding:

26) Gong of Kong in MFC No. 34 (31st January, 1976) looks like the work of Mike Brown but initials ‘RG’ in the last panel suggest differently. Any ideas as to who may have drawn this one? Perhaps the whole story was illustrated by Mike but someone else was asked to draw the last frame and sneaked in the initials? 

MFC issue No. 36 (14th February, 1976) had a BBB pull-out poster, presumably from the hand of Leo Baxendale. You can see the image in the first post of the series HERE.

27) Half-A-Dollar Boy in MFC No. 37 (21st February, 1976) was another quick job by Leslie Harding:

28) Doctor Poo in MFC No. 39 (6th March, 1976). This one has no signature and/or initials, and my two candidates for art credits are Mike Brown and Tom Paterson. I think it looks more like Mike’s work:

From this point all but two of the BBBs were by Mike Brown as confirmed by his signature/initials or the general look and feel of the artwork. Come back soon for the gallery of covers.

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

A LOOK AT MONSTER FUN STRIPS: DRACULASS

Draculass was a daughter of Dracula who came to England from Transylvania to stay with her relatives (Aunt, Uncle and cousin Maisie – all of them perfectly normal people). Draculass was a no-joke vampire – green-faced and sharp-fanged, she fed on human blood and was always on the lookout for unsuspecting victims to prang. Luckily for the victims, Draculass’ bite wasn't lethal and didn’t turn them into vampires, all they needed was a patch of sticking plaster. Nonetheless, the little vampire’s urges didn’t make her very popular amongst the townsfolk of Monsterville, and Maisie was her only friend (possibly because they had an arrangement that Draculass won’t try to prang her cousin). Her fangs always at the ready, every week Draculass schemed to take a bite at a nice neck or two; needless to say, her plots usually backfired. 

Draculass was illustrated by Terry Bave who devoted a couple of passages to the strip in his interview for the Summer 1986 edition of GOLDEN FUN. Mr. Bave recalls he created the character together with his wife Sheila when they had been invited to contribute to the new comic by way of creating a suitable ‘monster’ feature. Initially they thought of Draculadd but then Shiela suggested that a little vampire lass might prove more fun, and by replacing the two D’s with a couple of S’s they arrived at Draculass. Mr. Bave recalled that Draculass proved very popular with MFC readers and even attracted her very own brand of fain mail, “with many a reader (especially girls) exclaiming their sheer delight over the little vampire’s fangs”. In the interview Mr. Bave says: “Obviously, the emphasis was on ‘fun’ and not ‘fear’ so I had to play down the blood-letting aspect of the vampire characteristic. When the script called for an encounter between Draculass and one of her unsuspecting victims, I would first show the little vampire sizeing-up her victim, then with fangs at the ready, then the following frame would show Draculass flying away with a satisfied grin on her face while her perplexed victim would be shown to have acquired a cross-patch of sticking plaster on his or her neck! During my many ‘talks on comics’ with children of varying ages I have always found tremendous enthusiasm for this character.”

Draculass started in MFC No. 1 and continued to the very end without missing a week. The little vampire got her own poster in issue 22 (8th November, 1975) and a cut-out mask in issue No. 34 (31st January, 1976) – you can read about the making of the mask in the same interview of Mr. Bave in the Summer 1986 edition of GOLDEN FUN. The strip survived merger with BUSTER and continued there for another fourteen months until 10th December 1977.