A LOOK AT MONSTER FUN STRIPS: THE INVISIBLE MONSTER

Portrait of the Invisible Monster on front cover of MFC No. 8

The Invisible Monster was a part-serialised humour strip. Its short 19-week run consisted of four ‘chapters’: 

Chapter one – introductory episode in MFC No. 1;

Chapter two – the Invisible Monster meets Tich and together they are on the run from the authorities (MFC issues 2 – 10);

Chapter three – the Invisible Monster stays with Tich’s family in London (non-serialised episodes in MFC issues 11 – 17);

Chapter four – Tich takes the Invisible Monster out of London and the story reaches a satisfactory conclusion (MFC issues 18 and 19).

Here is a summary of the story: the Invisible Monster emerged from the sea one dark night and made headlines nationwide when he picked up a lighthouse and used it as a torch as he walked to London.

Tich heard about the Invisible Monster on the radio while camping with his pal, right before the giant showed up at their campsite and burned his foot on the campfire. Tich came to his aid, offered him some bandages and befriended the mystery talking giant.

The police and the army are after the invisible menace and the bandaged giant foot makes him easy to spot. Tich and his new friend spend the next few episodes running away from pursuers.

The Army have tied the Invisible Monster to a train in his sleep

In issue 8 the Invisible Monster Task Force (I.M.5) send Colonel Crumpet – the most famous big-game hunter in the World, on the mission of catching the IM. Colonel Crumpet dopes the monster with a fake giant lollipop and then lures him into Monster Cavern, but to no avail – the luck is always on the side of Tich and the IM; they finally make it to London where the Invisible Monster has a show-down with another monster whom Colonel Crumpet and I.M.5 retrieved from the Monster Cavern and brought to the city believing it was the IM.

The Invisible Monster bashes his oponent with Nelson's Column

The next few non-serialised episodes show the IM’s antics during his stay with Tich and his parents in London, spiced-up with the odd attempt of I.M.5 to capture the giant. Tich realises that London is no longer a safe place for the Invisible Monster so he takes him to Scotland. Tich finds him a secluded lake where the IM meets ‘a female monster’ who gives him a nasty black eye. The black eye spreads all over the Invisible Monster's body and finally makes him visible:

The weekly episodes were two-pagers (except in issues 14 and 17 where they were 1 ½ pages long). All were illustrated and signed by Sid Burgon (except in issue 17 where Terry Bave may have had a hand). The Invisible Monster featured on the cover of MFC issue No. 8.

The strip was tied-in with a participation feature. The invisibility of the main character was a good reason to invite the readers to send-in their drawings of how they pictured the hero of the story and collect cash prizes:

The Invisible Monster prize winning pictures appeared in MFC issues 8 to 19 and were presented in b/w, except in issues 11 and 14 where they were in full colour:

A LOOK AT MONSTER FUN STRIPS: TOM THUMBSCREW

This weird little strip was set in the dark Middle Ages and offered the readers of MONSTER FUN COMIC a weekly helping of dungeon humour. The main character was young Tom Thumbscrew who worked as a torturer in the King’s caste; the title of the strip tells us he was the torturer’s apprentice but actually he was the master of the dungeon and answered directly to the King.

Tom wasn’t much of a torturer: he tended to side with the prisoners and was generally on friendly terms with them. He spent more time playing cards with the captives than actually trying to make them ‘talk’ and tormenting them with his branding irons, stretching rack and iron maiden. Sometimes he even helped them escape. There were usually at least two or three prisoners chained to the wall of the dungeon but they seemed to be quite happy in Tom’s custody. The young torturer did his job only when the King imperatively commanded him to, and even then he preferred soft methods, such as feather tickling, telling lame jokes, making a dirty robber wash, telling the offender to eat both of the apples he has pinched or shaving off a guy’s hair and beard to dissuade him from escaping because he knew the guy preferred not to be seen like that in public.

The other regular character of the strip was the King (or Kingy). He was the one who was really violent and always eager to keep Tom busy. Kingy was often worried that Tom wasn’t torturing his prisoners properly so he liked to check on him in the dungeon. The King was a willing participant in the torture sessions and liked to experiment with new methods. The honey-on-buried-prisoner torture must have been his favourite - he tried it as many as four times. Besides, the King liked to entertain his noble guests by inviting them to do some torturing together or watch his prisoners being branded and stretched on the rack. Obviously, the King was the baddie in the strip and often found himself at the receiving end of the various torturing schemes gone wrong.

All this sounds worse than it looked in the strip which was in fact quite jolly and bright. Tom Thumbscrew ran in MFC issues 1 to 73 and missed issue Nos. 14, 24, 48, 51, 56, 58, 62, 70, 71 and 72. The regular artist was Norman Mansbridge who took charge of the strip starting from issue 12. The opening story in MFC No. 1 was by Trevor Metcalfe who would have made an excellent job as the illustrator of the entire run, on par with Norman Mansbridge:

The episodes in MFC Nos. 2 – 11 were by the less-excellent Andy Christine – the illustrator of another concurrent MFC strip Giant Bearhug… GIANT, who signed his sets of Tom Thumbscrew in issues 2 and 4. Here is an example from MFC No. 9: