HAVING FUN ON EBAY

After quite a long while, I spent some time on eBay tonight.

Beano No. 1242 is the only one I don’t have from 1966. It is the famous ‘Eric Clapton’ number that appears to be in very high demand among fans. The copy offered by the seller was described as Very Good, so I knew it wasn’t going to go cheaply, but the winning bid of £101.55 was nearly £10 more than I was prepared to offer this time… I know I will get my copy one day; in the meantime, here are the covers from the auction site, front and back:

Another seller had quite a selection of good-looking copies of WHAM! in batches of 10 issues or so. These stirred little interest on eBay tonight and went for less than a pound per issue! Quite a contrast to the prices that I paid in the process of collecting my complete run a few years ago, but that’s eBay for you… Someone got himself some good bargains!

SWEENY'S A WINNER!

Sweeny Toddler, the demonic baby who brought lots of fun to generations of children in the UK over a number of decades, first appeared in SHIVER AND SHAKE in 1973. I covered the SHIVER AND SHAKE period of the strip in an old post HERE.

This time let’s retrace Sweeny’s path from SHIVER AND SHAKE to the new comic with the clumsy title of WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER & SHAKE.

WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER & SHAKE was 32 pages thick at the time. It seems like a lot of space to fill, but Whoopee! had a strong lineup of characters as it were, and it had to accommodate quite a few refugees from SHIVER AND SHAKE who were too popular to be discontinued with the demise of their home comic (Frankie Stein, Scream Inn and a few others), so re-arrangements were inevitable and competition was tough.

Sweeny Toddler didn’t make a straightforward leap to the new comic – it had to prove its strength by participating in a poll. The Editor selected 8 strips and invited readers to vote in a Pick-A-Strip competition. Most of the entrants were either WHOOPEE!’s own (presumably less successful) features – Pop Snorer, Little Miss Muffit, Snap Happy and The Upper Crusts and the Lazy Loafers, or those from SHIVER AND SHAKE - The Desert Fox, Grimly Feendish and Sweeny Toddler. This is what Sweeny’s entry looked like in WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER & SHAKE cover-dated 23rd November, 1974:

Results were announced in the issue cover-dated 22nd March, 1975:

… and Sweeny Toddler proudly returned to the spotlight a week later in the Easter issue of WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER AND SHAKE cover-dated 29th March, 1975:

It would have been interesting to see the vote count. Perhaps it was a close call for Sweeny? Was there a chance that he would have faded into oblivion, had the runner-up received a few more votes in its favour?.. 

All Images 2016 © Egmont UK Ltd.  All rights reserved. Used with permission.

THE WHAM! EASTERS OF FRANKIE STEIN

Let’s take a look at all three Easter episodes of Frankie Stein in WHAM! comic. Those from 1965 and 1967 editions were by Ken Reid while the one in the middle (1966) was by someone else because Ken was too busy with The Queen of the Seas at the time and had to give up drawing Frankie Stein temporarily. Which is a pity because the period when Ken was substituted by another artist coincided with Frankie’s days at Madam McAbre’s Academy for Frustrated Freaks (or Monster Manor) inhabited by fiendish characters of all sorts. One can only imagine how brilliant the episodes would have been, had they been illustrated by Frankie Stein’s original artist.

Happy Easter! 

MAXWELL HAWKE STORIES IN BUSTER ANNUALS

It’s not often that I blog about adventure strips but this time I’ll do exactly that. Maxwell Hawke was a popular ghost hunter series that ran in BUSTER for six years from 29 October, 1960 till 3 September, 1966. As far as I know, Maxwell Hawke was also reprinted in other countries, Spain in particular, and there are quite a few people who still have fond memories of the series.

The Maxwell Hawke saga consisted of 29 serialised tales in the weekly comics, details can be found in the paper version of BUSTER Index 1960 – 1995 compiled by Ray Moore and Steve Holland, as well as on BUSTER comic website HERE.

BUSTER index mentions that Maxwell Hawke also appeared in BUSTER annuals 1962 – 1967 but does not provide any details, so I decided to fill the gap and make the index of the stories complete.

Here goes the list, followed by photos of the first page of each of the 6 original stories. Photos are the best I can show here because the binding of those BUSTER annuals makes them completely unsuitable for scanning without damaging the fragile books…

Buster Book 1962 The Black Monk, 10 pages

Buster Book 1963 The Ghost of Glenghoul Castle, 10 pages

Buster Book 1964 Maxwell Hawke and the Phantom Swordsman, 8 pages

Buster Book 1965 Maxwell Hawke and the Ice Demons, 8 pages

Buster Book 1966 Maxwell Hawke and the Ghosts of Blackstone, 8 pages

Buster Book 1967 Maxwell Hawke in the Haunted School, 9 pages