FOOTBALL THEME IN BRITISH HUMOUR COMICS TO CELEBRATE EURO 2012 (DAY 7)

Sparky issue No. 16 had football theme on both covers to mark the 1965 FA Cup Final which took place on 1st May 1965 at Wembley and was contested between Liverpool and Leeds United. The back cover of that issue had a nice Moonsters episode by Bill Ritchie with lots of characters and action. But of course no one did those crowded sets better than Leo Baxendale. The Eagle Spy Doomsday School episode with Grimly Feendish is from WHAM! issue No. 37 (27th February, 1965). Isn’t it beautiful? 

A LOOK AT COR!! STRIPS: DANGER MOUSE

The next COR!! strip in the row is again in the reprint territory. Danger Mouse was a traditional cat and mouse slapstick action feature with a superhero/secret agent twist. It was reprinted from SMASH! (Odhams series) where it appeared under the same name. Sometimes a half-pager and sometimes a one-pager, it gives an impression of a space-filler and its semi-regular appearances make the impression even stronger: the first episode was in issue with the cover date of 8th May, 1971 (No. 49) and the last in the one dated 8th April, 1972 (No. 97) but the total number of episodes was only 23. Artist unknown.

From COR!! issue dated 29th January, 1972 (No. 87)

From COR!! issue dated 8th April, 1972 (No. 97)

FOOTBALL THEME IN BRITISH HUMOUR COMICS TO CELEBRATE EURO 2012 (DAY 6)

Just one football strip today and it is an episode of Scared-Stiff Sam from an early issue of Whoopee! (7th December, 1974). I happen to have both pages of Mike Lacey's original artwork for this set so make sure you scroll down for some close-up scans.

FOOTBALL THEME IN BRITISH HUMOUR COMICS TO CELEBRATE EURO 2012 (DAY 5)

Yesterday’s match between England and France in the Ukraine ended in a draw but France didn’t get so lucky when Mudchester United challenged them for the European Cup in this episode of Manager Matt from Scorcher by Ken Reid. Mudchester United also tackled two or three other teams during their 1971 tour of Europe but I’ll save those episodes for later – perhaps the teams will meet in EURO 2012 later in the tournament...

From Scorcher cover dated 19th June, 1971

Here’s another Beano with a football-themed cover that I managed to find:

I just love those scrumptious BUSTER football covers by Nadal and there’s enough of them to last until the end of the month!

A LOOK AT COR!! STRIPS: THE CHUMPIONS

The Chumpions. Two boys and a girl meet a Tibetan Lama and give him a fruit and a nut. He rewards them with great powers: the girl (Dot) can now stretch like a piece of string and access objects that otherwise can’t be reached, the tall lean boy (Lofty) has magnetic powers – handy for removing metal objects (e.g. guns) from other people’s possession, and the fat boy (Tubby) can turn into a rubber ball and become a means of travelling long and short distances or crossing obstacles. They are now the Chupmions whose mission is to help other people in trouble. They take all sorts of missions – from saving an absent-minded Einstein look-alike professor from evil machinegun-wielding crooks to mowing a football pitch when the mower is broken. They would defeat a gang of evil spies speaking with a German accent in one episode and go looking for a little girl’s missing kitten in the next. 

The Chumpions meet the loopy Lama in every single episode (or he sometimes contacts them via telepathic television) and he is always lost looking for his way to Tibet. He is lost in more ways than one: he sometimes wonders if he did right in making them the Chumpions. The monk's favourite treat are yak-butter sandwiches and doesn’t fail to mention this in each episode. 

From COR!! issue dated 20th February, 1971 (No. 38)

Apparently, the strip wasn’t faring well with the readers because it got quite a lot of negative feedback in the Postbag section. Nonetheless, the black and white strip occupied two full pages and enjoyed quite a long run from 9th January to 25th December, 1971 (issue Nos. 32 - 82). 

In the last episode members of a mountain climbing expedition invite the Lama to travel to Tibet as their guide. Before leaving, the Lama takes away the children’s powers because they are fed up with chumpioning and yearn to be ordinary kids again. Illustrated by an artist whom I can’t identify. Any ideas please?

From COR!! issue dated 5th June, 1971 (No. 53)

FOOTBALL THEME IN BRITISH HUMOUR COMICS TO CELEBRATE EURO 2012 (DAY 4)

Match of the Week appeared on the centrespread in Shiver and Shake and depicted weekly fixtures between all sorts of weird opponents, such as Aristocrats vs Peasants, British Navy vs German U-Boats, Explorers vs Jungle Plants, Moonmen vs Spacemen, etc. Here are a couple of samples, the first one illustrated by Leo Baxendale and the second one by Mike Lacey who drew most of the episodes.

From Shiver and Shake issue dated 17th March 1973 (No. 2)

From Shiver and Shake dated 28th April, 1973 (No. 8)

Here is another old Buster cover (number eight) with a football theme. It offers a couple of glimpses of Buster’s infamous Dad Andy Capp:

FOOTBALL THEME IN BRITISH HUMOUR COMICS TO CELEBRATE EURO 2012 (DAY 3)

Angel Nadal drew a lot of football-themed Buster covers. Here is a nice sample:

Sub was one of the eight humour series in SCORCHER by Ken Reid from 1970 until 1974. The sample below is from the period when his Odhams career had ended and his work for IPC Magazines was limited to football strips in SCORCHER, until he started drawing Faceache in JET in the spring of 1971.

From Scorcher dated 7th March, 1970

I managed to find very few issues of The BEANO with football-themed covers, here is one by Dudley Watkins: