WEEKLY OUTPUT – BRIAN WALKER

In this second part of the series covering the weekly output of humour comics artists as reflected in the various IPC comics cover-dated 30 March, 1974, let’s take a look at the pages by the excellent and inimitable Brian Walker. He drew a total of five pages – three can be found in Whoopee! (The Ghost Train) and two in Shiver and Shake (Scream Inn). 

Graham Allen 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.

WEEKLY OUTPUT – FRANK MCDIARMID

After my previous post about the weekly output of Leo Baxendale I thought it would be fun to check how many pages other humour comics artists were producing in the space of one week. I picked a random week of 1974 (March 30th) and pulled all IPC comics with that date – COR!!, Whoopee!, Whizzer and Chips, Shiver & Shake and Valiant. I was disappointed to discover that Buster didn’t come out that week, probably because of a strike. I looked for pages by Mike Lacey, Brian Walker, Frank McDiarmid, Terry Bave, Robert Nixon, Graham Allen and Reg Parlett. It turns out all were at least as productive as Leo Baxendale, while some of them proved to be real drawing machines and surpassed Leo quite considerably!

I will share my findings in the next few blogposts. I’ll start with Frank McDiarmid. He only managed 3 pages that week – a page of Lunchin’ Vulture in Whoopee! and two beautiful pages of The Gasworks Gang in COR!! I am sure he became a lot more productive later on when IPC put him in charge of Cheeky Weekly, but this series is a snapshot of the state of affairs in March 1974. Come back soon to see Brian Walker’s weekly output!

 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.

LEO BAXENDALE'S WEEKLY OUTPUT IN 1956

In the process of posting images of landmark episodes of When the Bell Rings and The Bash Street Kids by Leo Baxendale elsewhere on the web recently, and leafing thought the respective issues of DC Thomson’s comics in my collection, I realized how extraordinarily productive the young Leo was in the mid-50s. At that that point his weekly output amounted to a full page of When The Bell Rings, a half-page of Minnie the Minx, a half-page of Little Plum for THE BEANO, and one full page of The Banana Bunch for THE BEEZER on top of that!

Here are images of all the strips by Leo Baxendale from The Beano and The Beezer, both cover cover-dated February 11th 1956. Assuming that he drew all the pages in just one week, the man is unbeatable!

POWER PACK OF KEN REID reviewed in Australian magazine!

The image above shows the cover of the recent issue of INKSPOT magazine published by the Australian Cartoonists’ Association. It has a review of the POWER PACK OF KEN REID (see below, click to enlarge), written by Nat Karmichael who is Deputy President of the Association and Editor of INKSPOT. Nat was also an early supporter of my crowdfunding campaign last summer, so thank you, Nat!

If any of my readers in Australia or New Zealand are considering buying copies of the books but are put-off by high postage cost, I thought I might let you know I will be visiting the two countries in March, and I could take a couple of sets with me to post from there. I travel light but I won’t be able to bring a lot of copies over, so do not delay to contact me as this is a first come first served offer :)

Nat Karmichael

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.

KEN REID’S CREEPY CREATIONS REPRINT COLLECTION – MORE EXTRAS

I am sure most of you already have your copies of Rebellion’s Creepy Creations reprint collection. I received mine a while ago and I think it is a nice package. It’s great that the collection includes not just the pages from Shiver and Shake weeklies, but also all of the other ‘Creations’ printed in the annuals,  pull-out booklets and even those that Ken Reid drew for a competition in Buster a couple of years down the line. 

I really look forward to Vol 1 of the World-Wide Weirdies because in my opinion Creepy Creations was Ken’s warm-up exercise before really going to town with his next series in Whoopee! 

If you read my intro to the book, you may recall I mentioned Ken’s attempts to get a similar series published in the US. Ken drew quite a few detailed samples for the publisher. It would have been great if some of those could have been included in the book. Check out a couple of the drawings below, in colour. The image of the Monster of Molasses was supplied to me by Julius Howe who owns the original. 

If you think these are scary, wait till you see my next post in a few days’ time… 

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.