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:

A LOOK AT MONSTER FUN STRIPS: KID KONG

As we know from the introductory three-pager, Kid Kong was ‘the biggest gorilla in the World and son of the famous King Kong’. He was an exhibit and an attraction of a travelling fun fair. Tired of being mistreated and called names, Kid Kong broke free, barged into a department store, donned a special outsize school uniform (a jacket and a cap but no pants) and went to wander the town. He soon found himself in the front yard of Granny Smith – an elderly lady who’d lived alone since her boy went to sea. The old but energetic lady was short sighted and hard of hearing, so she took the giant ape for an overgrown boy and did not hesitate to offer him shelter, food and protection. The law and the fun-fair manager stood no chance against the agile Granny. Here is the first episode in full. Kid Kong’s banana-addiction was obvious from the very start:

There were several recurring ‘supporting’ characters in the early episodes; they were Miss Peabody the snooping neighbour, Mr. Snodgrass the man from the Council, Spike the trouble-making kid from the neighbourhood whom Granny considered a bad influence on her ‘boy’, and Doctor Payne who taught Kid Kong to peel his ‘nanas in order to avoid stomach problems. The primary storyline, however, was focused on Kid and Granny Smith. Kid Kong was a brute and a glutton who didn’t know his own strength, so in this regard he was like Frankie Stein. Differently from Frankie, Kid was fully aware he was unlike people around him. He was quick to realise when he did wrong and admit his guilt. His dietary focus was solely on bananas. Unlike Prof. Cube, Granny Smith was a loving grand-mother who took very good care of her adopted ‘child’ and was very protective of him – townsfolk soon realised they should think twice before calling Kid Kong a gorilla or any such name in Granny Smith’s presence. She didn't seem to be bothered with the thoughtless destruction that Kid Kong wrought regularly on her cottage, and she would always be prepared to go the extra mile to supply Kid with ‘nanas or keep him happy and satisfied.

In the early episodes comedy derived from Gran’s short-sightedness, Kid’s size and strength, his silliness or his attitude to humans. The latter episodes were quite funny in a clever way and I’ll return to them later on. From the very start, however, there was hardly an episode where bananas weren’t mentioned in one way or another.

As weeks went by, Kid’s appetite for ‘nanas increasingly became the recurrent theme and the most common source of comedy. Usually, weekly instalments told about Kid’s and/or Granny’s efforts to get hold of some of the favourite food; a number of stories didn’t have the quest for bananas as the main line but they still ended with Kid or Granny receiving a prize or reward in the form of the fruit. The writers must have realised that overexploiting the banana theme was a sure way to make the strip boring and repetitive, so it’s good they spiced it up by giving the theme an occasional weird twist (for example, in issue 23 Kid Kong visited a psychologist for an intelligence test, and in issue 56 Granny decided to cure Kid Kong’s banana addiction and made him join Bananas Anonymous), changing the setting (for example, in issue 63 the two took a trip to London and in issue 72 they went on an expedition to the Himalayas to visit Kid Kong’s cousin – Abominable Snowman), or using some fresh ideas from time to time, such as in this episode from issue 64:

If you sit down to read all Kid Kong strips in one go like I did when preparing to write this post, one of the things you are bound to notice is a certain inconsistency in the way Kid speaks. There are episodes where he barely utters a word and restricts himself to grunting and pantomime; in the majority of the episodes he uses a kind of pidgin-English, uttering short phrases such as ‘Kid hungry’ or ‘me hungry’ rather than ‘I am hungry’; in a few episodes, though, he is fluent and well-expressed. Check out an example that happens to be one of the clever episodes mentioned earlier.

There was one episode where Kid shared his thoughts on human language:

Kid Kong didn’t miss a single issue. He was obviously intended to become THE star of Monster Fun Comic, so initially Kid Kong was the first strip you’d find upon opening the paper. Starting from No. 35 it was moved further inside and was given a more-or-less regular slot on pages 8 and 9.  All but 4 episodes were two pages long (the three-pagers were in Nos. 1, 13, 18 and 32). The three-pager in No. 13 is quite peculiar because the first few panels contained a brief summary of the very first episode. My guess is that it may have been drawn for MF Annual 1976 before the plans to publish one were abandoned. Here it is in full:

As was often the case in UK children’s comics, characters from other MFC strips made the odd guest appearance in Kid Kong. In issue 38 Brainy and his Monster Maker saved Kid from starvation when supplies of bananas were halted due to a dock strike in Jamaica:

… and in issue 45 X-Ray Specs helped Kid make amends for the damage he caused at the garden fete:

Frankie Stein sneaked in his comment in the last panel of the set in issue 34 (in that episode Kid Kong repelled an alien attack on Earth):

In episode 33 Granny wanted to teach Kid not to be greedy and told him to share his bananas with others. The episode is quite unique because although it wasn’t unusual for artists to sign their sets or even include their self-portraits, it is the only instance that I can recall when a character addressed his creator by name:

Robert Nixon was the regular artist of Kid Kong throughout the run of MFC, except towards the very end when he was briefly substituted by Les Barton (in issues 68 and 70) and Jim Watson in No. 69. Both signed their sets. Jim Watson tried to imitate Mr. Nixon’s style:

…while Les Barton didn’t bother:

… OK, maybe just a little bit:

In his interview for the Winter 1981 edition of Golden Fun Mr. Nixon said that Kid Kong was one of the characters he designed. He recalls that Bob Paynter telephoned him with an idea of what he wanted to see. Mr. Nixon did preliminary drawings and sent them off to him for approval. The artist recalls doing Kid Kong a bit too big at first and later toning him down. His vision of Kid and Granny was the one that was always used. When speaking about his favourite characters, Mr. Nixon said he’d put Kid Kong virtually on equal par with Frankie Stein which was his all-time favourite (as of the time of the interview in the early eighties).

Being the big star of the comic, Kid Kong made several front cover appearances (issues 1, 4, 7, 13, 18, 21 and 29). Here are a couple of examples; you can find more in my yearly overviews of the comic HERE and HERE:

Kid Kong got as many as two pull-out posters (in issues 8 and 57 – you can see both in my yearly reviews of MFC in the earlier posts). He was also selected to promote a competition in issue 31 (someone boobed there by naming him King Kong rather than Kid Kong...):

Kid Kong easily survived merger with BUSTER in 1976 and continued there for another five years until 30th January 1982. He was also a regular character in all Monster Fun Annuals so expect to hear more of him when I take a look at them in due course.

The MFC run of Kid Kong had many excellent sets, I have shown quite a few and mentioned many more in this article. If you’d like to see a particular one out of those mentioned or perhaps one you remember from the days when you were reading the comic, let me know and I will put it up in my next post.