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 Tom Williams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tom Williams. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

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.

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

A LOOK AT MONSTER FUN STRIPS: MEANIE MCGENIE




Meanie McGenie was a funny little strip about a mean kilt-wearing highlander genie known by the name of Meanie McGenie. Like all genies, he lived in a magic oriental lamp and emerged from it when someone rubbed on it. What made Meanie McGenie different from his kind was that he hated being disturbed and would only grant one wish. Furthermore, Meanie McGenie annoyed his “customers” by always finding a cheap way to fulfil their wishes and thus lived up to his name. It is no surprise that the folks who found the lamp didn’t hesitate to toss it away for someone else to find (and get disappointed) in the next episode.

From MFC No. 70. Art by Mike Lacey

The modest 17-episode run of Meanie McGenie started in MFC No. 2. The strip then disappeared for nearly 6 months and was re-introduced in issue 27 but failed to keep a regular schedule and ended in issue 70. Here is the list of MFC issues where Meanie Mcgenie can be found: 2, 27, 28, 30-33, 35, 38, 40, 43, 47, 53, 59, 64 and 70. All the episodes were 1/2 page long.

From MFC No. 61. Art by Mike Lacey

12 episodes of Meanie McGenie were illustrated by Mike Lacey. Tom Williams drew the episodes in issues No. 38 and 43, and the sets in Nos. 40, 59 and 64 were by yet another artist whose name I don’t know. Here are examples of Tom Williams’ and the other artist’s work:



Friday, May 2, 2014

A LOOK AT MONSTER FUN STRIPS: CREATURE TEACHER




After the success of Bash Street Kids in the BEANO, every self-respecting UK children’s comic had to have a strip that was based on a conflict between an unruly class and a teacher. In MFC it was Creature Teacher. Meet Class 3X of Massacre Street School in Monsterville:


The pupils of Class 3X (Blotchy (3X spokesman), Tich, Disaster Doris, Podger, Litterbug Len, Greasy Gus, Evil Steve, Dangerous Dan and others) gave their teachers a really hard time:


The situation seemed desperate and called for some drastic measures. This is how the story started in MFC No. 1:



Creature Teacher stood out from all other school mayhem comedy strips because in MFC the Master was a grisly monster – a real creature of a teacher so scary and ruthless that he (it?) was able to control Class 3X and bring them to heel. Created in a lab with the formula invented by Science Master Mr. Fume, Creature Teacher had a ghastly spongy body that could expand or contract at will, scrunge into any shape and form, sprout any number of limbs and tentacles and melt into a great sickening mass of purple-green gunge (it was a b/w strip but that's how Class 3X described it). Check out a few of CT’s transformations:


Creature Teacher’s hulking, wobbly, throbbly, bulky body was wrapped in padlocked chains to prevent it from spilling out. The walking-talking nightmare had hairy, scaley, fishy fingers and yukky, pongy feet with warts and things like that… His only horrible great bulging, beady, bloodshot eye which could stretch away from his body earned him the nick-name of Eagle-Eye.


Creature Teacher’s only weaknesses were that he couldn’t stand being tickled, and he needed his monthly bath in monster tonic (Mr. Fume’s special formula for the creation and sustenance of Creature Teacher) to restore his ghastly strength and powers. He fed on fungi and other slimy stuff and was probably the greatest monster in MFC. Thanks to Creature Teacher’s super-power to manipulate his body, he was always in the right shape to deal with Class X, subdue the little horrors and handle their endless booby traps, pranks and cunning schemes to do away with the dreaded Master.


Creature Teacher ran in MFC issues 1 – 73 and missed issue 69. Save for three occasions, the weekly episodes were self-contained stories. By coincidence, all three serialised stories were sport-themed: football match against Highbrow Hall in issues 20 – 21, training for school sports in issues 33 to 35 and the annual cricket match against Highbrow Grammar in issues 54 – 55. 

Creature Teacher was a two-pager except in the first edition where it was three pages long, and in No. 31 where the story occupied only one page but the issue had a poster of Creature Teacher. The monstrous instructor made a front-cover appearance in MFC No. 12. The regular artist was Tom Williams whose drawings were so detailed that IPC’s newsprint machines sometimes failed to do them justice. 


Frank McDiarmid stepped in for the regular artist in MFC issue 64. Here is a sample frame from that episode:


Creature Teacher didn’t survive the merger of MFC with BUSTER and was not given a proper ending in the last issue of the paper, but it lived on as a regular feature in MONSTER FUN annuals, so we’ll be seeing more of Creature Teacher’s antics on KAZOOP!! in due course.