SERIALISED FACEACHE STORIES – PART THREE: THRASHBOTTOM SLEEPWALKING

It took Ken two months to come up with his next Faceache story arch, this one spanning two weeks, in BUSTER cover dated 6th May and 13th May, 1978.

Little Timothy Twadle receives a food parcel from home. He and Faceache decide to have a midnight feast while all other kids are asleep. Anxious not to wake Mr. Thrashbottom, they tie pillows to their feet... 

...Faceache is heating food tins on the stove; Alfie Skunk starts to snore and they put a clothes peg on his nose. But the snoring noise has already got Thrashbottom out of bed and he’s coming downstairs to check…

Thrashbottom catches the boys red-handed and prepares to thrash them but Faceache runs a couple of scrunges at him and discovers that the Headmaster has been walking in his sleep! Faceache instructs Timothy to keep an eye on the grub while he leads the fool back to bed. All is well until the tinned food explodes on the stove because they forgot to punch holes in the tins before heating...

...This time Thrashbottom comes down wide awake and the boys suffer a thrashing.

Characters are © Rebellion Publishing Ltd

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SERIALISED FACEACHE STORIES – PART TWO: ONE-BOY SURVIVAL COURSE ADVENTURE

The next story arch was the longest of all - it spanned six weeks and can be found in BUSTER issues cover-dated 28th January, 1978 to 4th March, 1978. It is one of the craziest of the lot and is a favourite of mine…

Headmaster sends Faceache for 7 days to Bleak Rock Island on a one-boy survival course. Mr. Snipe gets an assignment to go together. Headmaster leaves the pair on the island without food or drink. The engine and the steering wheel of Mr. Thrashbottom's boat break and he heads for America. Headmaster is the only one who knows that Faceache and Mr. Snipe are all alone on the rock island.

Mr. Snipe only has one can of beans but his tin opener is in the pack that’s left on Headmaster’s boat. Mr. Snipe discards the beans but Fecache picks up the tin… 

Faceache scrunges sharp gnashers and opens the tin; he then scrunges into mouse-size so that he can survive on the beans for weeks. Unable to find Faceache on the island, Mr. Snipe thinks he must have plunged from the cliff to destruction. 

Meanwhile, headmaster’s boat runs out of fuel and he is now helpless and adrift, with nothing to eat but canned custard. A large ship appears on the horizon. It’s a luxury liner with Dad on board. Dad thinks Mr. Thrashbottom is too enjoying life on a long cruise, and sails off, never to be seen again. 

Dad's last ever appearance in the Faceache saga

Mr. Thrashbottom tries to force himself to eat the canned custard but it turns out that Mr. Snipe has stowed the wrong cans aboard because they contain Matron’s Bests Pimple Lotion for Schoolboys.

Starved Mr. Thrashbottom

Mr. Snipe gone potty...

Seven weeks pass; Mr. Snipe and the headmaster are starved, ravenous and barmy, while Faceache has grown fat from eating beans. Headmaster’s boat drifts back to Bleak Rock Island...

Headmaster and Mr. Snipe have turned cannibalistic and threaten to eat each other. Witnessing the frightful sight of their encounter, Faceache scrunges into a monster and makes the two jump into sea. Concerned that they will drown, Faceache saves them and flies them back to the school clinic for medical attention. 

Back at Belmonte, trouble is brewing: an official from the educational authority comes to see how the school is run… 

Inspector Snoop sees that Mr. Snipe's class are like mad beasts in their teacher’s long absence. Meanwhile, Faceache lands in the school grounds with Mr. Snipe and the Headmaster in his claws... 

The two teachers are starved and look like pipe-cleaners, while the unscrunged Faceache resembles a suet dumpling. Inspector canes Mr. Thrashbottom for being incapable of fending for himself on the island while the bright boy thrived on beans.

Headmaster has an idea to regain lost weight feeding his students on porridge for weeks and guzzling all the school grub himself. Fed up with porridge, Faceache frightens the school cook, who then mishandles the porridge dispenser and gets himself plastered in oatmeal. 

The cook rushes to Mr. Thrashbottom to report a monster in the dining hall but gets fired for wasting tons of porridge... 

With no more porridge left, Headmaster has no choice but to feed kids on what’s left of his grub.

Characters are © Rebellion Publishing Ltd

Click on the POWER PACK banner in the right-hand column and get your copy of the POWER PACK OF KEN REID - the deluxe two-volume set of Ken’s strips in WHAM!, SMASH! and POW! comics of the ‘60s.

SERIALISED FACEACHE STORIES – PART ONE: FACEACHE FINDS HIMSELF AT BELMONTE

Broadly speaking, the whole Faceache saga consisted of two long periods – the first 292 episodes showed Faceache in his home environment in and around the village of Puddleditch, with Faceache’s Dad (first seen in episode 13 (24 July 1971)) as the second main character. The second period (episodes 293 – 695) depicted Faceache’s antics at Belmonte School for Uncontrollable Young Whelps where the lad was looked after by Mr. Albert Thrashbottom (Headmaster) and Mr. Snipe (Teacher).

All serialised stories that are the topic of this series fall within the second period, and the first one tells readers about how and why Dad committed Faceache to the special education establishment. The two-part story can be found in BUSTER AND MONSTER FUN dated 14 January 1978 and 21 January 1978.

Faceache has a diabolical dream about a headmaster welcoming him at his ghastly establishment. Next morning he’s woken up by Dad who has won £ 75,000 in the pools. 

At last they can go on that World cruise Dad has always dreamed about! Faceache is delighted because now they can live permanently in a posh hotel. Dad realises that because of Faceache’s scrunging hobby they’ll get kicked out of hotels all over the Globe, and announces that Faceache’s future home will be Belmonte... 

Faceache thinks it is the name of a posh hotel. In fact, it is Belmonte School for Uncontrollable Young Whelps. Dad is off, leaving Faceache in the iron hands of Mr. Albert Thrashbottom.

In the second part of this story Faceache scrunges into a Fangy-Faced Floogoe-Bug and tries to follow his Dad driving off in a taxi, but suffers an accident involving an airplane...

Mr. Snipe canes him for breaking the school motto – “Cleanliness and Truth”

Characters are © Rebellion Publishing Ltd

Click on the POWER PACK banner in the right-hand column and get your copy of the POWER PACK OF KEN REID - the deluxe two-volume set of Ken’s strips in WHAM!, SMASH! and POW! comics of the ‘60s.

SERIALISED STORIES OF FACEACHE BY KEN REID

Faceache was Ken Reid’s longest running strip that began in the first issue of JET cover-dated 1 May 1971, and ended nearly 17 years later in BUSTER, cover-dated 14 March 1987. After Ken’s death the strip was continued by others, but I am talking about the run illustrated by the original artist only.

In the period between 1971 and 1987 Ken Reid drew as many as 695 pages of Faceache’s adventures in the weekly comics. The majority were self-contained stories, but some tales continued for two weeks or more, and I plan to start a long string of posts covering every single one of them, with synopsis of the plot, illustrated with a few panels from each. The stories were between 2 and as many as 6 weeks in length, and I have counted 34 of them, the first one starting in BUSTER AND MONSTER FUN of 14 Jan., 1978, and the last one (34th) ending in BUSTER AND JACKPOT of 26 June 1982. Come back soon for the first one!

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