BUSTER CHRISTMASES. PART ONE – THE SIXTIES

2012 was a good year for me as a collector. I have finished putting together several sets and made some serious inroads into my wants lists for other British comics that I want to have complete runs of. BUSTER happens to be one of them. With only some 20 weekly issues of the title remaining on my wants list, I have all but one Christmas editions of the title so I thought it would be fun to take a look at the four decades of BUSTER Christmases and see how the main character (and the comic itself) developed over the years – from the infancy days as Son of Andy Capp, to childhood and teenage years from the brush of Angel Nadal, to the youth and adult age of Reg Parlett era, to maturity portrayed by Tom Paterson and Jimmy Hansen and finally the feeble old age of reprint.

Let’s start with the 60s and the first Christmas edition – the only one I don’t have a hard copy of. I found the image on George Shiers' blog here. Art by Bill Titcombe.

A year later the illustrator was Hugh McNeill:

1962 was the beginning of Angel Nadal’s era:

BUSTER was a tabloid-sized paper from first issue until the middle of 1965. By Christmas of 1965 the paper had shrunk and become closer to the standard well-familiar format of IPC comics, but still larger than that. It looks like Nadal was substituted by another artist on this one:

With a few exceptions, Nadal contiued drawing Buster for well over a decade until 1974.

 

Come back soon for Buster Christmases of the 70s!

 

COR!! BOOKS OF GAGS

COR!! Books of Gags 1976 and 1977 were published as soft-cover annuals. Both volumes had bright colour covers and black and white interior pages, 128 of them each, printed on rough pulp paper. The 1976 edition cost 75 p. A year later the second edition cost 85 p

The content was a mixture of cartoons, teasers, puzzles and jokes. Cartoons occupied most of the space. I am not sure as to what age group(s) the books were targeted at: although part of the content was children-oriented, the vast majority of cartoons wouldn’t have looked out of place in a regular humour publication for grown-ups. There is barely any connection to the comic and the reasons for using COR!! logo and Gus’ face on the covers are a mystery to me.

 

It is interesting to note that nearly all cartoons were signed by artists – Whittock, Stewart, Mortimer, Leon, Rali, Cav, Chic, Baxter, Ken Pyne, David Downe, Brian Platt and others. Most of the names or pseudonyms say nothing to me, but three contributors were well-familiar to readers of COR!! publications. I am referring to Crocker, Terry Bave and Sid Burgon.

From the first part of Terry Bave’s auto-biography published in the Winter 1985 edition of GOLDEN FUN fanzine we know that he did quite a lot of cartooning before taking up a career in comics. Judging from the drawing style and the signature, some of Mr. Bave’s cartoons in COR!! Books of Gags (especially in the first one) may very well be from his pre-comics cartooning days. Here are some examples to illustrate my point:

Terry Bave signed the gags with his real name but Sid Burgon used the pen-name SWAB. My impression is that SWAB was the biggest contributor in both books. Sid Burgon’s cartooning style was different from the one he used in comics, but it is still recognisable if you take a good look. Here are some examples:

 

Crocker was the second biggest contributor after SWAB. Same as Burgon’s, Crocker’s cartooning style was different from his comics work. I doubt I’d be able to identify him as the artist if the cartoons weren’t signed:

 

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This is officially my last blogpost on COR!!

I have now also updated my earlier posts dedicated to The Gasworks Gang, Jasper the Grasper and Fiends and Neighbours by adding details about appearances of the strips outside of COR!! weeklies.

A LOOK AT COR!! COMIC: THE FEW REMAINING THINGS...

The purpose of this post is to get the last things out of the way so that I can close this series dedicated to COR!! comic and move forward :) 

Smartie Artie is the last remaining strip whose appearances were limited to COR!! annuals. It can be found in 1982 and 1984 COR!! Comic Annuals, two episodes in each. Smartie Artie was a version of Artful Artie from COR!! 1983 Holiday Special. Both strips were illustrated by the same artist, the stories were very simple and so was the art.

Professor Corn’s Daft Dictionary Definitions feature was mentioned briefly in one of my early COR!! posts (1974: A look at the last months of COR!!). I will add that the feature began in COR!! issue with the cover date of 6th October, 1973 (No. 175) and appeared regularly until the last issue of the weekly. Here is a sample from the issue dated 26th January, 1974 (No. 191):

Some of the reprints that ran in COR!! Annuals and Specials also got a brief mention in the earlier posts. Here are full details of their various appearances over the years:

Ug and Tug the Peace Makers was a Wild West comedy strip drawn by Nadal about an Indian kid and a settler kid. The stories were reprinted from Buster where the strip enjoyed a short run in 1965. Ug and Tug reprints appeared in:

1971 COR!! Summer Special (4 episodes)

1972 COR!! Comic Annual (5 episodes)

1972 COR!! Holiday Special (3 episodes)

1973 COR!! Comic Annual (3 episodes)

1974 COR!! Comic Annual (4 episodes)

Aqua Lad – reprints from the early issues of Whizzer and Chips where the strip was illustrated by Terry Bave. Aqua Lad reprints appeared in:

1974 COR!! Holiday Special (3 episodes)

1975 COR!! Comic Annual (3 episodes)

1975 COR!! Holiday Special (1 episode)

1976 COR!! Comic Annual (4 episodes)

Give A Dog a Bone – reprints from the early issues of Whizzer and Chips where the strip was illustrated by Graham Allen. The reprints appeared in:

1974 COR! Holiday Special (4 episodes)

1975 COR!! Comic Annual (2 episodes)

1976 COR!! Comic Annual (4 episodes)

1977 COR!! Comic Annual (6 episodes, one in full colour)

The Spectacular Adventures of Willie Bunk – reprints from the early issues of Whizzer and Chips where the strip was illustrated by the universal Frank McDiarmid. The reprints appeared in:

1974 COR!! Holiday Special (1 episode)

1975 COR!! Comic Annual (4 episodes)

Patch-Eye Hooker – reprints from BUSTER. Ray Moore’s BUSTER index says the story landed in Buster after it absorbed the short-lived GIGGLE comic in 1968. Artist unknown. Reprints of the strip appeared in:

1978 COR!! Comic Annual (2 episodes)

1979 COR!! Comic Annual

1979 COR!! Holiday Special (2 episodes)

1980 COR!! Comic Annual

The last remaining thing is to take a look at COR!! Books of Gags (two were published) which I hope to do very soon