A LOOK AT MONSTER FUN STRIPS: DOUGH NUT AND RUSTY + SHORT INTERVIEW WITH TREVOR METCALFE!

Dough Nut and Rusty offered the readers of MFC a glimpse into the future – the scene of the strip was set a quarter of a century ahead of 1975 in the year 2000 (let us ignore the episode in MFC No. 13 which said it was 2075; issue No. 13 contained quite a few odd surprises and deserves a post of its own which I will do near the end of the MFC series).

The Posh family advertised for a butler’s position at the Posh mansion and received two applicants:

Dough Nut was a super modern brand-new shiny robot that spoke with a smooth whirr-sound. He was efficient and expensive (actually, the most expensive robot in the world, according to his own words), equipped with a huge arsenal of labor-saving gadgets and other surprises, such as telescopic/hydraulic hands and legs, a radar scanner, a sonar device, an inbuilt instant fryer, an adverse weather excluder, built-in miniaturizing/giantiser rays, a disintegrator gun, a laser beam, a super-strength fertilizer ray, a photo camera, a video camera, a trick camera, etc. etc.

Rusty was an old bleeping machine from the early seventies (i.e. the times of MFC) and had nothing fancy to offer. He was just a grubby robot with a rusty tin-can for his head, but he was the one with a brain and a heart, plus he had the advantage of first-hand experience and good memory of all the favorite pass-times of both children and grown-ups in the seventies, and it so happened that the Poshes were very fond of the old times they knew so little about.

Rusty was a good-natured little piece of engineering who was genuinely eager to be a good servant to the Poshes and earn his wages to keep himself “in oil”. Dough Nut’s main motivation was to be in the good books of his masters, he was a pompous and egocentric figure, very eager to be praised and appreciated. Dough Nut always saw Rusty’s efforts to serve the masters and as attempts to get into their good books and undermine Dough Nut’s position. That’s why he was always mean to Rusty, calling him names (tin-ribs, tin-brain, tatty tin fool, interfering heap of tin, etc.), trying to show him up and take credit for his good deeds and smart ideas. It wasn’t uncommon for Dough Nut to turn violent on Rusty and smash him to pieces. Needless to say, however, Rusty always came out on top. His knowledge of the past often came in handy because both Sir and the young Sir loved to play long-forgotten games of 1975 (like conkers, cricket, cowboys and Indians, etc.) and eat old-fashioned foods (like fish and chips wrapped in newspaper) that were Rusty’s specialty. Dough Nut also tried his best to oblige but always made a fool of himself because his knowledge of the old times was computer-based and he never got things right.

Dough Nut and Rusty occupied two pages and was illustrated by Trevor Metcalfe (save the odd episode or two when someone else ghosted him). Mr. Metcalfe signed nearly all of the episodes. You can read more about it the short interview with Trevor further down this post.

Both robots can be seen on the front cover of MFC issue No. 2 and they got their own poster in No. 27.

What puzzles me slightly is the connection of the strip with the horror theme because I just can’t see it. Perhaps robots fell into the category of monsters by the standards of those days…

The episode in issue No. 6 featured a well-known media personality whose appearance in a children’s paper looks so inappropriate from today’s perspective…

************************************************************************

I am happy and proud that Trevor Metcalfe is a Member of this blog so I contacted him with a few questions about the strip and his IPC work in general. Here is what he had to say on Dough Nut and Rusty, his drawing speed at the time and IPC policy of not allowing artists to sign their work, or more precisely, how that policy came to an end:

The idea and title was put to me by the managing editor of comics at IPC when he invited me to draw the strip. The editor was Bob Paynter at the time. The concept was a tried and tested formula for story lines, used over many years. Basically, poor kid/rich kid, toff v tough, haves v have nots, posh car v scrap car etc etc. In other words the big shiny robot with all the gizmos versus the tatty small and rusty robot made out of old tin cans, would be a sure-fire winner!  That was the plan anyway.  I don't remember the names of any of the scriptwriters I'm afraid, it's a shame they never got any recognition for their important contribution to comic creation. I enjoyed drawing the strip very much, as I did with all the many strips I worked on over the years.

It took me an eight hour day to draw a finished page of comic strip for an IPC weekly comic, rather less time for annuals and summer specials because there were less frames per page.

I live in Hampshire now, but in about the summer of 1972, I was still living in Guisbrough, Yorkshire, only a couple of streets away from my late dear friend Bob Nixon.  It was at this time that Bob Paynter (Editor) was in nearby Middlesbrough visiting a printing works to arrange for them to print a planned summer special. So Bob Nixon and I spent an hour or so with our jolly editor at the printers with a few beers to follow in a local pub.  It was there, where we cartoonists persuaded Bob to allow us to start signing our work. There was a little resistance to the idea at first, we were told that if we did it, everyone would want to sign their work too. We pointed out that nobody would want to put their name to a bad piece of work and therefor the practice would raise standards. This argument won the day, so my next piece of work, I signed.

That's the first time I've related that story in print!  I've mentioned it verbally to a few folks when asked about it.

Be sure to visit Trevor’s webpage HERE.

A LOOK AT MONSTER FUN STRIPS: MARTHA’S MONSTER MAKE-UP

It appears that creators of Monster Fun Comic wanted as many as possible of their strips and features to have titles starting with the letter ‘M’ (to go with the title of the comic and the monster theme in general). It may be just a coincidence but IMHO Martha’s Monster Make-Up, March of the Mighty Ones, Major Jump, Brainy and his Monster Maker, Master Ugly Mug and Miss Funny Face, not to mention Monster Hits and Invisible Monster, make a lot of M's for a comic with a relatively small number of strips.

Martha’s Monster Make-up was a strip about a girl whose Dad was a caretaker at Mallet Horror Films Studios. He gave her a jar of make-up that he found sweeping one of the dressing rooms. Martha soon realised it was a special “monster” make-up that transformed people’s faces, hair and limbs into something monstrous. Luckily, the effect of the make-up was only temporary and didn’t take long to wear-off. The illustrator of the strip was the excellent Ken Reid who was also drawing Faceache in Buster at the same time. Initially Martha’s face –pulling antics were a lot like Faceache’s in the sister publication. Differently from Faceache whose ‘scrunging’ didn't go beyond his own face and body, Martha’s cream worked on other people too.

Whoever was the writer of Martha’s Monster Make-up, he soon realised that the two features were becoming very similar so he left humans alone and gave the strip a new twist by focusing on objects. A few weeks into the run Martha started using her cream to ‘monstrify’ all kinds of things, including a sculpture, a bicycle, a X-mas tree, a brick wall, a car, an umbrella, a mirror, a piano, a grandfather clock – the list goes on and on. Some of the weirder things she transformed included wallpaper, scaffolding, golf course green and even a sea wave. The reason she did this was to teach meanies and bullies a lesson and have some fun at their expense. Drawing those sour-faced unpleasant types with a bad attitude was one of Ken Reid’s specialties so it was good for Martha that her small jar contained a never-ending supply of the cream. 

Martha’s Monster Make-up started in the first issue and didn’t miss a single week. As I mentioned it before, the illustrator was Ken Reid (who is known to have disliked drawing female characters). Frank McDiarmid stepped in on three occasions in issues 26, 30 and 62, and the episode in No. 15 was drawn by a ghost artist whose name I don’t know but he also substituted Mr. Reid on Faceache in Buster a few times around the same time. The strip was a one-pager and had a prime slot on page 4 and later page 6.

Surprisingly, Martha’s Monster Make-up survived merger with BUSTER. I say surprisingly not because it was a poor strip but because the transfer was at the expense of Faceache that IMHO was better, but was rested nontheless starting from the first combined issue of BUSTER AND MONSTER FUN. Martha’s Monster Make-up continued in the combined paper for nearly 4 months but justice was restored starting from issue dated Feb. 19th, 1977 when Faceache returned by popular demand (as confirmed by the caption under the last episode of Martha's Monster Make-up the week before).

A LOOK AT MONSTER FUN STRIPS: X-RAY SPECS

Ray was as an ordinary boy until a mystery optician (I.Squint) gave him a pair of specs with x-ray vision. From then on he became one of those kids with gimmicks that were so common in IPC comics. The specs were quite a peculiar piece of eyewear – they enabled Ray to see through things – humans, walls, ground, bushes – everything. The specs also worked in reverse: 

… they worked fine even when covered with paint: 

… they granted x-ray vision to anyone who put them on, including animals: 

… and this is what happened if you put them on a camera lens in a TV studio during a live broadcast: 

His magical specs gave Ray the advantage of being able to warn people of looming dangers, help them find lost things, see hidden passages and tunnels, etc. Quite often he put his x-ray vision to good use by helping catch crooks and robbers, expose cheats and teach bullies a lesson. On a few rare occasions he himself was seen cheating or trying to use the x-ray vision for his own ends but his efforts usually backfired.

At first other people didn’t realize Ray had this special talent but soon it became common knowledge among his friends and family. Friends sometimes hated him because the specs made him such a know-all; at the same time, wearing them was quite taxing: x-ray vision could be tiring at times and wouldn’t go away even if Ray took his specs off :

Wearing the specs could also be rather stressful for those who weren’t used to them. The episode below is from issue No. 62:

Monster Fun COMIC was a ‘horror’ paper, so each strip was supposed to have a scary element in it.  In X-Ray Specs it was the skeletons that Ray (and the readers) could see courtesy of x-ray vision. There were two or three nice episodes with real spooks; here is one from issue 57:

Speaking of skeletons, in the episode in MFC No. 7 Ray found a free shaking skeleton in a packet of cornflakes. A similar freebie was offered with the third issue of MFC and from the look of it in the drawing below, the two were exactly the same. It would be interesting to know if a free skeleton was indeed offered by some cornflakes manufacturer at that time.

Free gift offered with MFC No. 3

Free shaking skeleton from a package of cornflakes as seen in MFC No. 7

X-Ray Specs first appeared in MONSTER FUN COMIC No. 1. The strip didn’t miss a single week during the 73-week run of MFC and survived merger with BUSTER where it lasted till the final issue of the comic and nearly made it to the 21st century! The vast majority of the 73 episodes in MFC were illustrated by Mike Lacey; Terry Bave contributed three sets in issues 11, 12 and 13, and five episodes in issues 37 to 41 were drawn by an artist whose name I don’t know. The first episode was only one page long, but starting from MFC No. 2 the strip was given 1 ½ pages and a more-or-less permanent slot on pages 8 – 9 and later 10 – 11. X-Ray Specs must have done very well in the popularity charts because starting from issue 33 it became a two-pager and was moved forward to pages 4 – 5. X-Ray Specs made four front cover appearances in issues 3, 6, 15 and 20. Here is an example:

Incidentally, the idea of Ray scanning through the insides of a comic was re-used in the strip two weeks later (in issue No. 8) when Ray used x-ray vision to read MFC without buying it and Frankie (in his capacity of the Honorary Editor) wasn’t so thrilled about it…

I will finish this post with a complete episode from issue No. 55 which I find rather funny: