A LOOK AT COR!! STRIPS: DR. WHAT AND HIS TIME CLOCK

Dr. What and his Time Clock was a comedy version of BBC’s Doctor Who. It was strange tale that appeared in just two COR!! publications but had quite an impressive page count nonetheless.

The strip premiered in the second COR!! Summer Special (the one published in 1972) and was 19 pages long. Dr. What invented a time clock, a time machine in effect. Dr. What could set the clock to any year and when the alarm went off, he was transported to the past or the future. In the first episode he visited 1664 and nearly prevented Isaac Newton from formulating his theory of gravitation because Dr. What caught the apple as it was about to fall on the scientist’s head. His next trip was to the future and the year was 2072. Dr. What accidentally got on a space bus and ended up on the Moon. There he discovered that the Moon was inhabited by Mooniks (some of whom were Moonatics), law and order was guarded by Policemoons, while the government was led by Prime Moonister. He fell off the Moon’s End and was taken prisoner by Martians who thought he was a spy. He got rescued by a Plutonian Pilot from the Planet Pluto. They escaped from Mars in the Plutonian’s flying cup but it took a direct hit from Martian anti-flying cup fire. Dr. What travelled back in time to 1972. From there he transported himself to the year 1026 where he met King Canute and then Neptune. He decided he’d had enough when he was invited to join Danish army on its way to conquer Norway. Dr. What was about to use the time clock and make his escape but the Danish general suspected he was a Norwegian spy trying to activate some secret Norwegian weapon and threw him overboard. Dr. What had to wrestle giant marine creatures to get his clock back. Finally, Dr. What saw a shore that he believed to be good old British soil. To his disappointment, he found himself in Calais. He accidentally set his clock off and ended up in 1789 when the French Revolution was still on. Dr. What tried his hand at being the Scarlet Pimpernel and nearly got himself guillotined. He managed to time-clock himself back to 1972 and lost his clock just before reaching the White Cliffs but promised to invent another one. 

Here are two sample pages from COR!! Summer Special 1972:

Dr. What was given a break of a year and reappeared in COR!! Annual 1974 as another 12-page epic. The daft inventor shows up at the Patents Office to patent his invention but the clerk doesn’t think much of it. Here are the the first two pages:

Offshore radio stations were officially outlawed in the UK 

in the late 60s. This confirms that the strip is a reprint.

Dr. What decides to go to the year 1492 - Columbus’ times. After a lot of trouble that he gets from a sword fish and a giant gorilla he spends a short time on board Santa Maria but is thrown overboard for knocking Christopher Columbus out with a mop. He reaches the shore and beats Columbus at the discovery of America. Dr. What becomes the Great Whiter than White Chief of Red Indians who also take him for a weather man. Things get complicated when Dr. What is unable to stop the rain and Red Indians decide to scalp him. Dr. What uses his time clock again to travel to America of the 20th century where he finds himself in the company of entrepreneurial Luke Backwards, chairman of Coyote County’s historical reference library. Here is how the story ends:

Dr. What also made a brief appearance in one of the two episodes of Jasper the Grasper in the 1974 annual illustrated by Trevor Metcalfe:

I am guessing that the three blokes behind the Gasworks Gang 

in the top right corner of the last panel may be 

portraits of IPC artists or editors. 

Does anyone know who they might be?  
UPDATE: Peter Gray has answered this for me in his comment: 
of course, they are the Goodies!

Something about reproduction quality and the way Dr. What stories are structured suggests the strip may be a reprint but if that’s the case, I don’t know where from. The name of the artist who illustrated the two long episodes of Dr. What and his Time Clock in COR!! Summer Special 1972 and COR!! Comic Annual 1974 is unknown to me but the artwork isn’t very impressive, IMHO.

A LOOK AT COR!! STRIPS: SUPER SPOOK

This is the first post in the series dedicated to features that only appeared in COR!! annuals and holiday specials.

Let me start with SUPER SPOOK - a superhero tale that appeared in three COR!! annuals, one story in each. It was about a mighty muscular miner Jeremiah Smith who was crushed to death in a mine beneath a mountain during Gold Rush while trying to save other people. His selfless courage and bravery were rewarded by the gift of eternal life and supernatural powers such as flying. He travelled the World wearing a silly skin-tight costume and doing good deeds as the invisible Super Spook. The illustrator was probably Ron Turner (I am sure about the last story, not so much about the first two).

The first story was a six-pager in COR!! annual 1975. It started with an intro that told readers about Jeremiah Smith who was one of the best and the biggest miners during Gold Rush in Canada in the year 1896. The blond-haired giant of a man was known and loved by everyone, especially children. Sadly, he perished in a crumbling cavern sacrificing himself in order to save villagers during a terrible storm that caused Yellowrock mountain to collapse. Jeremiah Smith finally broke free from under the mountain into the modern world. Miner of old, now an invisible ghost, Jeremiah Smith, aka Super Spook, saw much that he did not understand – National Junior Racing Car Championships, for example. In this first adventure after his return he helped Gary Johnson win the Championships and taught the rich foul-player Jack Schneider a lesson. Here is a taste:

The second story was 8 pages long and appeared in COR!! annual 1976. Once again, readers were given a quick reminder about the origins of Super Spook and his dedication to helping people (those in the right, that is). In this episode Super Spook helps a bunch of kids who call themselves Dirty Hands Gang catch Simple Simon Snell and solve the robbery of the local bank. Here are the last two pages of the episode:

The third and last story appeared two years later in COR!! Annual 1978 and was an eight-pager. Quite unusually for a British comic story, this episode came with a splash panel in the vein of American comics:

In this episode Super Spook, righter of wrongs, ghostly guardian of peace and justice, is on the side of Ginger Thomas and other proprietors of a little family fairground who are bullied by villainous Vic Finesilver and his black leather cronies. The thugs want the fairground to move in order to have all the business to themselves. Super Spook uses his special sleep suggestion and plants an idea of resistance in Ginger Thomas’ brain. The villains stand no chance and loose their business in the end. Here are two pages of the story:

ARTIST SELF-PORTRAITS (PART 6)

Quite a motley instalment today as I put all the remaining bits and bobs of artist self-portraits in a single blogpost. I’ll start off with another episode of Meet the Artists feature in Buster that I missed. Thanks to Peter Gray for the heads up:

Niblet who is another friend of KAZOOP!! alerted me about this self-portrait of David Mostyn in Whoopee! dated 29th January, 1983:

The other day I was checking my Shiver and Shake collection for something else and came across an episode of Frankie Stein in which Professor Cube had an idea he could get rid of his dreaded son by taking over the duties of the Shiver artist. This makes the tied-up bloke in the panel below Robert Nixon. The Shiver and Shake issue in question is dated 5th January, 1974:

In August 1984 Buster celebrated Reg Parlett’s eightieth birthday with a special story on front and back covers. Reg Parlett appears in the last panel surrounded by a crowd of his characters. I wonder who’s that Comics Historian in the second row of the second page?

I’ll close the series for now with a couple of Ken Reid self-portraits that were shown in the BBC Four series about the history of British comics. The images were used to illustrate the period when Mr. Reid suffered a nervous break-down though over-exhaustion and was unable to draw for many months: