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 The Beano. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Beano. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

WORLD’S NICEST COMPLETE COLLECTION OF THE DANDY AND THE BEANO FROM 1970 - 1988


Some time ago I wrote about my ambition to collect THE BEANO and THE DANDY from the first issues of 1970 till the last newsprint numbers of 1988, and have them bound in half-year hard-cover volumes. Well, the mission has been accomplished and I am now the proud owner of the World’s most nicely packaged complete collection of the two comics from the period :)  

I went for the best condition I could lay my hands on. Many of the comics are in pristine condition and have their pink flyers or free gifts intact, and the bound volume packaging ensures they will remain that way for many years to come. I prefer half-year format to complete years because in the thinner volumes the centre pages of the comics open flat and one can fully appreciate the beauty of strips like The Bash Street Kids and Corporal Clott.

The books have white covers with reproduction of the first issue of the volume on the front and that of the last one on the back. Spines are made of artificial leather. Each volume comes with a dustjacket with reproductions and text on the front, the back and the spine. They look great on the shelf and I can conveniently find any issue that I want in a matter of seconds! 

In the process of collecting these long runs of the two titles, I also picked up a beautifully preserved complete set of HOOT and the first two years of NUTTY, so I had them bound in the same format. 

I will now wait until I have the time to read them all, or until someone reads this post and offers me a lot of money for this massive and unique collection. Don’t be shy to contact me if you have serious thoughts :)




















Monday, September 14, 2015

BLACK LOGO BEANOS FROM 1954


For a 7-issue stretch, Nos. 631 – 637 inclusive, in 1954 the Beano came with a black title logo. I’ve got no idea what prompted DC Thomson to carry out this brief experiment but the seven issues seem to have some extra appeal to collectors and are more difficult to come by. I have recently received the last missing issue of my “black-title-logo-run” and can now show the complete gallery of the covers. Whatever the colour of the logo, Dudley D. Watkins’ artwork is always nice to see: 











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

Thursday, August 20, 2015

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.