SERIALISED FACEACHE STORIES – PART THIRTEEN: HUMAN SEA SLUG

The next Faceache story arc enters the territory of longer stories. ‘Human Sea Slug’ was 4 weeks long. It appeared in BUSTER AND MONSTER FUN cover-dated 25 August, 1, 8 and 15 September 1979, and went like this:

Faceache asks Mr. Snipe for a day out at Shrimpton-at-Sea. Mr. Snipe approves, as long as Faceache promises not to scare holiday-makers. Faceache takes a bus and Mr. Snipe follows him in the school banger to make sure he doesn’t scrunge: 

...Faceache spots the spy and scrunges into an ordinary bloke to get off the coach unrecognised:

Later on the sea front Faceache sees an angler who is trying to cheat a kid out of his pocket money… 

Mr. Snipe turns up looking for Faceache and asks the angler to let him try his hand at fishing. Mr. Snipe is about to demonstrate real fishing, as Faceache prepares himself to play his trick on the angler… 

The lad leaps out of the sea. Mr. Snipe recognises Faceache’s striped T-shirt instantly: 

…Faceache unscrunges and Mr. Snipe plunges into a seaweed-infested oil slick in the sea. The terrified angler flees in panic, screaming about a ‘thingie’ that has risen from the deep... 

Prof. Krabb, who runs an exhibition of aquatic oddities, immediately sees an opportunity and decides he could do with the monster in his sideshow. Prof. Krabb and his assistant rush to the beach. Upon seeing Mr. Snipe emerge from the sea covered with seaweed and dirt...

... they net him right away, and bonk him with a mallet.

Prof. Krabb puts Mr. Snipe on display as a Human Sea Slug:

Faceache telephones Mr. Thrashbottom urging him to come to Shrimpton-on-Sea. Concerned about school’s reputation, the Headmaster arrives at the exhibition of aquatic oddities to collect Mr. Snipe. Back at school, he orders Mr. Snipe to stay in his room and write out 1,000 times “I must learn not to dress up as a human sea slug and lower the dignity of the teaching position”. 

Realising he is now free to scrunge without being spied on, Faceache catches up on his hobby:

Characters are © Rebellion Publishing Ltd

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GIGGLE – ONE DOWN, THREE MORE TO GO

I rarely visit eBay these days anymore because my collection of UK comics is as complete as I will ever want it to be, but I am still after a few elusive issues of BUSTER, GIGGLE and SPARKY.

A few days ago I crossed one more issue of GIGGLE off my wants list, and although it is not special in any way, I thought I might show its cover and a few inside pages here.

The comic offered a combination of humour and adventure, and had a large share of reprints of strips by UK and European artists, but I believe the pages below were all new (Helpful Hettie was later reprinted in COR!!, but I am unsure if this particular episode was).

At this point I only need GIGGLE issues cover-dated 2 Sept., 11 Nov. and 25 Nov., 1967. I would also buy the issue of 1 July, 1967 because my copy is missing its centre pages.

My wants list of BUSTER consists of the issues cover-dated 31 Dec., 1960, 4 Feb., 1961 and 4 July, 1964.

I am also after SPARKY issue No. 620 (4 Dec., 1976), and would buy a complete copy of No. 110 (25 Feb., 1967).

Please, let me know if you have copies of the above and wish to sell :)

 

  

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THE ORIGINS OF GULLIVER GUINEA-PIG – PART THREE

Here is part three of the article by John Wigmans, a guest-writer on this blog, where he covers the genesis of Gulliver Guinea Pig. Check out the previous posts if you missed the first and second part.

The First Steps of an Unlikely but Very Likeable Hero: Gulliver Guinea-Pig (Part 3)
by John Wigmans

In February, 2018 I wrote this about what I then considered to be the first steps of our brave little hero, Gulliver Guinea-Pig: "As it turns out, Gulliver didn’t start his travels in Playhour dated 24 May 1958 (No. 189). As far as I now know, his real debut was in Tiny Tots dated 17 May 1958 (No. 1298), as part of The New Nursery Rhymes." Luckily I kept my options open as I continued the post: "Unless other information surfaces, Gulliver made his first steps in [...] Tiny Tots dated 17 May 1958, No. 1298." Well, other and more exact information did surface. High time to share these hitherto unknown details.

In September, 2018 I did some additional research in the bound volumes of Tiny Tots which are held by the British Library in London. In this often neglected comic I found, to my surprise, four delightful stories starring Gulliver, three of which I had not seen before (well, two actually: see the list below). All were published as centre-spreads in 'The New Nursery Rhymes’ series, three in May and the last one in July, 1958. The instalment I had assumed was the first-ever appearance of Gulliver (#1298), was in fact the second. By the way: buying the comic with this episode on eBay in November, 2017 led me to write about the first steps of our unlikely but very likeable hero.

To cut a long story short, here is a list of the numbers, titles of the stories and cover dates of the four issues of Tiny Tots featuring Gulliver Guinea-Pig:

#1296, GGP gathers his cherries; dated 3 May 1958:

#1298, GGP is shipwrecked; dated 17 May 1958 (presented on this blog, 15February, 2018)

#1300, GGP in China; dated 31 May 1958

#1305, GGP under the sea; dated 5 July 1958 (reprinted in Harold Hare comic,  4 April, 1964, and presented on this blog, 25 February,2018)

A revision of my earlier statement is now in order: As it turns out, Gulliver didn’t start his travels in Playhour dated 24 May 1958 (No. 189). His real debut was in Tiny Tots dated 3 May 1958 (No. 1296), as part of ‘The New Nursery Rhymes’. This official debut predates his adventures in Playhour by three weeks. But it still remains a mystery to me why Gulliver started his life in Tiny Tots. Was the fate of this comic already sealed in May, 1958? And were the travels of the guinea-pig used to entice young readers (and their parents) to switch over to Playhour, some eight months before the actual demise of Tiny Tots? Perhaps one of the readers of this blog can shed some light on this matter.

Now Irmantas can hopefully start working on a string of blogposts covering the entire run of the strip in Playhour, as he recently let me know. I can only hope he'll start this string with the adventures of our ‘roving world-traveller’ as published in Tiny Tots 1958 and the Tiny Tots Annual for 1959.

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.