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.



Wednesday, December 18, 2013

THE CHRISTMASES OF FRANKIE STEIN - PART TWO



Frankie Stein had quite a long life period for a comics character; weekly strips began in the 4th issue of WHAM! in the summer of 1964 and ended in the last issue of WHOOPEE! in March 1985. That’s almost 21 years, minus the period when he disappeared from the pages of WHAM! in 1967 and was reintroduced in SHIVER AND SHAKE in 1973. For me, the “lifetime” of the friendly monster clearly falls into three periods, each defined by distinctively different quality of the stories and especially the artwork. X-mas episodes are as good an example as any to illustrate this.

The first period is of course the original run in WHAM!  (1964 – 1967) by the unsurpassed Ken Reid. Go to Part One of Frankie Stein Christmases for all four Christmas episodes of that period.

The second period is different but equally good. In 1973 the illustrator’s duties were given to Robert Nixon who remained the main artist of the strip until the very end in 1985. The period lasted from March 1973 (the first issue of SHIVER AND SHAKE) till approximately the end of 1978 and coincided with the time when Mr. Nixon spent more time on his pages and drew first rate detailed sets (increasingly less so towards the end of the period).

In the late seventies and at the turn of the decade Frankie Stein and Prof. Cube mutated into cuddly Smurf-like figures and continued like that throughout the remaining part of the eighties. This third period is my least favourite of the three.

Let’s take a look at Frankie’s Christmases of the second period that was also the time when Mr. Nixon drew some memorable front covers of X-mas editions featuring Frankie Stein:

1973 (SHIVER AND SHAKE):


By the X-mas of 1974 SHIVER AND SHAKE merged into WHOOPEE! By unfortunate coincidence, very soon the new title suffered from what is sometimes referred to as production difficulties and sometimes - as industrial action, and missed three weeks in the end of December 1974 / the beginning of January 1975. Hence no 1974 X-mas number. I have absolutely no doubt it would have been a really excellent one because WHOOPEE! was a first-rate packege in its early years.

1975:



1975 was the year when Frankie also appeared on the cover of the X-mas edition of Monster Fun Comic:



I’ve shown it before, but the gallery of Frankie Stein’s Christmases would be incomplete without this marvellous cover of SHIVER AND SHAKE 1976 Annual. In his interview for GOLDEN FUN (Winter 1981) the artist tells that it took him about a day and a half to draw the cover, which was "a fair amount of time". He used air-brush and it was done from a broad idea sent to him by Bob Paynter.


1976:


1977:


Sunday, December 15, 2013

THE CHRISTMASES OF FRANKIE STEIN - PART ONE



At about this time last year I did a series of Christmas episodes of Faceache – a strip by Ken Reid that started in JET and then enjoyed an impressively long run in the pages of BUSTER. You can revisit the whole series HERE.

This time I’ll do a similar X-mas themed retrospective of another long-running and brilliant strip that also happens to be one of my favourites in UK comics – Frankie Stein.

The character and the strip were created by Mr. Ken Reid and originated in WHAM! nearly half-a-century ago in 1964. I will kick-start this three-part series with all four festive episodes from the pages of WHAM! spanning the years 1964 – 1966 (there was no X-mas episode in 1967, and by the time the Christmas of 1968 arrived the paper had already folded). For me, British humour comics hardly ever got any better than this. Enjoy!

1964:



 1965:


Two-part story in 1966:



Friday, December 13, 2013

ARTIST SELF-PORTRAITS (Part 12)



I will wrap-up the Artist Self-Portraits series  (for now) with a selection of pages of The DANDY’s Smasher from the brush of the ever-excellent Brian Walker. I don’t know of any other UK comics artist who made so many appearances as an active character in his own strip. The first example that I spotted is in the Dandy No. 2370 cover-dated 25th April, 1987:


My collection of the Dandy has a large gap from the end of July 1988 till the first issue of 1990 but then continues without a break until the middle of 1994 (as a result of my effort to collect full sets two brilliant strips by Tom Paterson - The Laughing Planet and Hyde and Shriek). 

Brian Walker made one appearance in Smasher in 1990 (issue No. 2528), together with the Dandy Editor Morris Heggie :


… followed by as many as three in 1991 (issue Nos. 2577, 2602, 2607):


… followed by two in 1992 (issue Nos. 2628, 2642):


… and just one in 1993 (issue No. 2672):


Although I have very few issues of the Dandy from the later years and Brian Walker doesn’t appear in them, I believe he didn’t stop drawing himself in, as confirmed by this episode of Smasher from The Dandy Summer Special 1996: 


1996 DANDY SUMMER SPECIAL also sports this bright back cover with caricatures of the Dandy editor Morris Heggie. Not a self-portrait but still a nice piece to include in this series. I've got no idea who drew it though.