FOOTBALL THEME IN BRITISH HUMOUR COMICS TO CELEBRATE EURO 2012 (DAY 5)

Yesterday’s match between England and France in the Ukraine ended in a draw but France didn’t get so lucky when Mudchester United challenged them for the European Cup in this episode of Manager Matt from Scorcher by Ken Reid. Mudchester United also tackled two or three other teams during their 1971 tour of Europe but I’ll save those episodes for later – perhaps the teams will meet in EURO 2012 later in the tournament...

From Scorcher cover dated 19th June, 1971

Here’s another Beano with a football-themed cover that I managed to find:

I just love those scrumptious BUSTER football covers by Nadal and there’s enough of them to last until the end of the month!

A LOOK AT COR!! STRIPS: THE CHUMPIONS

The Chumpions. Two boys and a girl meet a Tibetan Lama and give him a fruit and a nut. He rewards them with great powers: the girl (Dot) can now stretch like a piece of string and access objects that otherwise can’t be reached, the tall lean boy (Lofty) has magnetic powers – handy for removing metal objects (e.g. guns) from other people’s possession, and the fat boy (Tubby) can turn into a rubber ball and become a means of travelling long and short distances or crossing obstacles. They are now the Chupmions whose mission is to help other people in trouble. They take all sorts of missions – from saving an absent-minded Einstein look-alike professor from evil machinegun-wielding crooks to mowing a football pitch when the mower is broken. They would defeat a gang of evil spies speaking with a German accent in one episode and go looking for a little girl’s missing kitten in the next. 

The Chumpions meet the loopy Lama in every single episode (or he sometimes contacts them via telepathic television) and he is always lost looking for his way to Tibet. He is lost in more ways than one: he sometimes wonders if he did right in making them the Chumpions. The monk's favourite treat are yak-butter sandwiches and doesn’t fail to mention this in each episode. 

From COR!! issue dated 20th February, 1971 (No. 38)

Apparently, the strip wasn’t faring well with the readers because it got quite a lot of negative feedback in the Postbag section. Nonetheless, the black and white strip occupied two full pages and enjoyed quite a long run from 9th January to 25th December, 1971 (issue Nos. 32 - 82). 

In the last episode members of a mountain climbing expedition invite the Lama to travel to Tibet as their guide. Before leaving, the Lama takes away the children’s powers because they are fed up with chumpioning and yearn to be ordinary kids again. Illustrated by an artist whom I can’t identify. Any ideas please?

From COR!! issue dated 5th June, 1971 (No. 53)

FOOTBALL THEME IN BRITISH HUMOUR COMICS TO CELEBRATE EURO 2012 (DAY 4)

Match of the Week appeared on the centrespread in Shiver and Shake and depicted weekly fixtures between all sorts of weird opponents, such as Aristocrats vs Peasants, British Navy vs German U-Boats, Explorers vs Jungle Plants, Moonmen vs Spacemen, etc. Here are a couple of samples, the first one illustrated by Leo Baxendale and the second one by Mike Lacey who drew most of the episodes.

From Shiver and Shake issue dated 17th March 1973 (No. 2)

From Shiver and Shake dated 28th April, 1973 (No. 8)

Here is another old Buster cover (number eight) with a football theme. It offers a couple of glimpses of Buster’s infamous Dad Andy Capp:

FOOTBALL THEME IN BRITISH HUMOUR COMICS TO CELEBRATE EURO 2012 (DAY 3)

Angel Nadal drew a lot of football-themed Buster covers. Here is a nice sample:

Sub was one of the eight humour series in SCORCHER by Ken Reid from 1970 until 1974. The sample below is from the period when his Odhams career had ended and his work for IPC Magazines was limited to football strips in SCORCHER, until he started drawing Faceache in JET in the spring of 1971.

From Scorcher dated 7th March, 1970

I managed to find very few issues of The BEANO with football-themed covers, here is one by Dudley Watkins:

A LOOK AT COR!! STRIPS: SPORTING SUE AND HER TRAINER PRUE

Sporting Sue and her Trainer Prue was a strip about an aspiring athlete Sue who was coached by Prue, her unfortunate trainer. The half-pager was a reprint of the Reg Parlett feature from the early years of Buster (1962 – 1963). A total of 14 episodes were reprinted in COR!! from 21st November, 1970 until 8th May, 1971 (issue Nos. 25 – 49). 

From COR!! issue dated 21st November, 1970 (No. 25)

From COR!! issue dated 23rd January, 1971 (No. 34)

FOOTBALL THEME IN BRITISH HUMOUR COMICS TO CELEBRATE EURO 2012 (DAY 2)

From Scorcher cover dated 26th September, 1970

FOOTBALL THEME IN BRITISH HUMOUR COMICS TO CELEBRATE EURO 2012 (DAY 1)

I have planned a series of 24 daily posts from 8th June till 1st July to celebrate EURO 2012. I intend to trawl through my collection of British comics for gems of football-themed humour strips and post them here without much comment, two or three strips a day. I am sure you know there’s plenty to choose from and I hope you’ll enjoy reading them just as much as I enjoy searching for them. 

The football posts will run in parallel with my reviews of COR!! strips and I’ll do my best to make sure that the new theme on Kazoop!! doesn’t interfere with the regular rhythm of one COR!! post every two days.  Enjoy!