A LOOK AT MONSTER FUN STRIPS: CREATURE TEACHER

After the success of Bash Street Kids in the BEANO, every self-respecting UK children’s comic had to have a strip that was based on a conflict between an unruly class and a teacher. In MFC it was Creature Teacher. Meet Class 3X of Massacre Street School in Monsterville:

The pupils of Class 3X (Blotchy (3X spokesman), Tich, Disaster Doris, Podger, Litterbug Len, Greasy Gus, Evil Steve, Dangerous Dan and others) gave their teachers a really hard time:

The situation seemed desperate and called for some drastic measures. This is how the story started in MFC No. 1:

Creature Teacher stood out from all other school mayhem comedy strips because in MFC the Master was a grisly monster – a real creature of a teacher so scary and ruthless that he (it?) was able to control Class 3X and bring them to heel. Created in a lab with the formula invented by Science Master Mr. Fume, Creature Teacher had a ghastly spongy body that could expand or contract at will, scrunge into any shape and form, sprout any number of limbs and tentacles and melt into a great sickening mass of purple-green gunge (it was a b/w strip but that's how Class 3X described it). Check out a few of CT’s transformations:

Creature Teacher’s hulking, wobbly, throbbly, bulky body was wrapped in padlocked chains to prevent it from spilling out. The walking-talking nightmare had hairy, scaley, fishy fingers and yukky, pongy feet with warts and things like that… His only horrible great bulging, beady, bloodshot eye which could stretch away from his body earned him the nick-name of Eagle-Eye.

Creature Teacher’s only weaknesses were that he couldn’t stand being tickled, and he needed his monthly bath in monster tonic (Mr. Fume’s special formula for the creation and sustenance of Creature Teacher) to restore his ghastly strength and powers. He fed on fungi and other slimy stuff and was probably the greatest monster in MFC. Thanks to Creature Teacher’s super-power to manipulate his body, he was always in the right shape to deal with Class X, subdue the little horrors and handle their endless booby traps, pranks and cunning schemes to do away with the dreaded Master.

Creature Teacher ran in MFC issues 1 – 73 and missed issue 69. Save for three occasions, the weekly episodes were self-contained stories. By coincidence, all three serialised stories were sport-themed: football match against Highbrow Hall in issues 20 – 21, training for school sports in issues 33 to 35 and the annual cricket match against Highbrow Grammar in issues 54 – 55. 

Creature Teacher was a two-pager except in the first edition where it was three pages long, and in No. 31 where the story occupied only one page but the issue had a poster of Creature Teacher. The monstrous instructor made a front-cover appearance in MFC No. 12. The regular artist was Tom Williams whose drawings were so detailed that IPC’s newsprint machines sometimes failed to do them justice. 

Frank McDiarmid stepped in for the regular artist in MFC issue 64. Here is a sample frame from that episode:

Creature Teacher didn’t survive the merger of MFC with BUSTER and was not given a proper ending in the last issue of the paper, but it lived on as a regular feature in MONSTER FUN annuals, so we’ll be seeing more of Creature Teacher’s antics on KAZOOP!! in due course.

A LOOK AT MONSTER FUN STRIPS: MAJOR JUMP HORROR HUNTER

Next in line is another excellent example of the comedy horror genre. In the introductory episode of Major Jump Horror Hunter in MFC No. 1 we meet Major Jump – owner of a large estate who realises that the only way he can keep it going is by opening it to the public and making it into a monster menagerie. His original idea is to catch and exhibit some big exotic animals, and in Major Jump’s vocabulary ‘monster’ means ‘big’ – at first he doesn’t even believe in real monsters. The Major owns a special flying craft that can go anywhere, now all he needs is a ‘willing lad assistant’. Enter Cosmo Crumpet – a daft bespectacled young man, and his pet Meredith – a real monster creature who looks like a big fat slug. This comes as a shock and a revelation to Major Jump – if monsters do exist, he can make it a real monster menagerie!  Meredith is hired as the keeper of the future monster zoo, while the newly-converted believer in monsters Major Jump sets off on his first monster hunt accompanied by his freshly-employed assistant Cosmo:

This looked like a nice idea for a strip but having read the second episode I was a bit disappointed: Major Jump and Cosmo got a phone call from a Scottish gent who complained there was a monster mouse lurking around his house. They rushed to Scotland and set a monster trap for the creature, only to discover the hard way it was not a giant mouse but a giant moose. The gag was OK, but I thought, oh no, are they going to screw this up by doing another version of Ghoul Getters Ltd, only with monsters instead of ghosts?!. Ghoul Getters Ltd. was a super strip that originated in SHIVER AND SHAKE and continued in the combined WHOOPEE! & SHIVER AND SHAKE, but doing another feature with ghost-/monster-busting as the main theme would be lazy, I thought. I am glad my concerns proved to be wrong. In the comming weeks Major Jump and Cosmo went on many an exciting expedition to faraway lands looking for all kinds of monsters with crazy names such as the 1003 –Eyed Monster, the Australian Elastic-Pouch Kanga-Wanga, the Blundering Backwards Galloper, the Two-Headed Bombay Pompadonkle, the Great Spotty-Nose Twittyclot, the Sneaky Wikiki-Freaki, the Great Polar Elephant Seal, the Terriblosaurus, the Nagasaki Nosher, the Fabulous Foozlum Bird, etc. The hunt involved the use of an arsenal of silly disguises and traps as well as a hypodermic syringe loaded with tranquilizer. Major Jump was usually the one who designed the wacky monster-catching schemes and the poor Cosmo had to do all the tricky work.

Although the schemes frequently misfired and landed the two monster hunters in trouble, the menagerie was soon chock-full of weird creatures. What I like about the strip is that it didn’t become repetitive by focusing on monster-hunting adventures but alternated between the expeditions and daily life at the zoo. Check out a couple of examples below. The one about benefit tourists is my favourite:

In issue 56 Major Jump and Cosmo captured the Horrendous Heeblyjeebie – the ugliest monster of them all. It was so hideous they had to keep its face covered, which prompted the announcement of a one-off participation feature offering five £1 prizes to authors of Heeblyjeebie’s best portraits. It isn’t clear who announced the competition but it looks like it was Major Jump himself. The Horrendous Heeblyjeebie was also seen in the next week’s episode (in MFC No. 57), here are both sets in sequence:

The five best portraits were printed in MFC No. 66 and the lucky winners must have been delighted to discover that for some reason their £1 prizes had been doubled:

It appears that initially the illustrator was Ian Knox, although none of the episodes were signed (as opposed to Terror TV – Ian Knox’s other strip in MFC, of which only a few episodes weren't signed). Starting from issue No. 34 another artist who I believe is Barrie Appleby took over. The one-pager ran in MFC issues 1 – 72 and missed issue Nos. 15, 25, 31, 39, 51, 52, 55, 58, 61 and 65. All sets were in black and white except for the full-colour episode on the back cover of MFC issue No. 67.

All in all, Major Jump Horror Hunter was a witty, well-written and beautifully presented strip but there are two things I find disappointing about it. Firstly – I think it deserved a proper ending (the feature did not make it to the combined BUSTER AND MONSTER FUN and disappeared without a warning after the penultimate MFC edition).  Secondly, I think it would have been great if they had shown the Horrendous Heeblyjeebie’s real face…

Come back soon for a look at the hideous Creature Teacher!