ADVERT FOR WHAM! NO 1

Joining other bloggers in celebrating 50 years since the first issue of WHAM!, I thought I might add my penny’s worth of trivia by showing the advert for WHAM! No. 1 which I found in EAGLE AND SWIFT with that same cover date (20 June 1964, Vol. 15 No. 25).

There is also an ad in the next week’s issue but it is the same that you can find in WHAM! No. 1, only larger and therefore more impressive (EAGLE was a tabloid sized paper then), check out both versions below:

A LOOK AT MONSTER FUN STRIPS: GUMS

JAWS the blockbuster Hollywood movie was released in 1975. Gums the MFC strip was a clever and funny tie-in with the film and started in MFC No. 35 (7th February, 1976). Check out the famous poster of the movie and the advertisement of Gums in MFC issue No. 34 (the week before its premiere) side-by-side:

The scene was set on the sunny coast of Australia. The strip was about a toothless shark with a set of false choppers and the young Bluey who lived in a coastal town which the beast chose to terrorize. The shark was a dangerous and aggressive predator. The only way to render him harmless was by removing his false teeth – the mission which Bluey took upon himself. That’s the basic idea of this highly successful and long-running IPC strip which originated in MONSTER FUN COMIC.

The early stories were serialized and often spanned a period of two weeks; in the first week Gums usually lost his choppers:

…and won them back a week later, thanks to his own cunning and smartness, or through sheer luck or coincidence:

Bluey prevailed in the majority of the episodes but sometimes the shark got the upper hand. Typically, this involved the use of munition from sunken ships:

I really like the feature and I think it very well deserved to appear in full colour on the front cover for most of its run in MFC issues 35 to 73 (except in Nos. 48, 50, 51, 52, 66 and 67 when it was inside in b/w), besides, more than a half of the two-page sets occupied both front and back covers. Gums got its own poster very early on in issue No. 38 (28th February, 1976). After MFC ended, the strip was transferred to BUSTER and appeared there until 12th May 1984.

Initially the illustrator was Bob Nixon who, according to his own words in the interview for GOLDEN FUN, also designed Gums to the idea suggested by the editor. Mr. Nixon continued to draw the strip until issue 59 when Alf Saporito took over from him on a permanent basis (Alf Saporito’s first episode of Gums was in MFC issue No. 52). It is interesting to note that Mr. Saporito signed a few of the early sets:

Alf Saporito remained in charge of the strip in BUSTER for the rest of the seventies and during the early eighties when he was succeeded by John Geering.

The episode of in MFC No. 71 was illustrated and signed by Les Barton:

A LOOK AT MONSTER FUN STRIPS: TEDDY SCARE

Teddy Scare was the second new strip (alongside Save Our Stan) to be introduced in MFC issue No. 20 (25th October, 1975). This is how the arrival of both new features was advertised in MFC No. 19 the week before:

In the opening episode little Eddie Bailey visited an old curiosity shop run by a strange old man and bought himself a second-hand Teddy Bear:

Eddie soon found out that his Teddy was a toy with a BIG difference because it could transform itself into a live giant-size scary bear. From then on the boy always carried Teddy around and unleashed it on evil-doers, meanies, crooks and bullies by telling the toy to ‘do its stuff’.  Teddy could also activate itself on its own initiative, if it saw a need to do so. With very few exceptions, weekly tales always followed the same pattern: some bully or meanie tried to take advantage of Eddie (or someone else), Teddy came to his aid by ‘doing its stuff’ and scaring the pest into a gibbering snotty wreck. Teddy then transformed back into its old toy-self and the bully often ended up looking foolish in the eyes of others.

Using this simple formula, the feature continued till the last issue of MFC and only missed one week (No. 47). The popularity of Teddy Scare secured it a regular slot on page 2 or 3 starting from issue No. 35. All sets were in b/w except for the episode in issue No. 26 which was in full colour. Teddy Scare got its own pull-out poster in issue No. 40. The first 35 episodes were illustrated by an artist whose name I don’t know (see two examples above). Starting from issue No. 56, Barrie Appleby took over and continued drawing it to the very end. Here are two examples:

The strip survived incorporation of MFC into BUSTER and continued in the combined paper until 10th December 1977. 

Teddy Scare pull-out poster from MFC No. 40

A LOOK AT MONSTER FUN STRIPS: S.O.S. (SAVE OUR STAN)

The saga of Stan Stilton began in MFC issue No. 20. Agent Stan Stilton was an employee of D.R.A.I.N. – Department for Removal of All Internal Nuisances. In the opening episode the daft agent believes he has captured a criminal mastermind, only to find out that his prisoner is in fact the Number One of D.R.A.I.N. Sick and tired of Stilton who is an idiot and a constant source of trouble, Chief decides to get rid of him by sending him on a mission to capture Gruesome Gannet Gunge and his gang of grisly midgets. The elusive World Enemy No. 1 strikes first by abducting Stilton and taking him to his gang’s secret hideout in Gungitrania. The abduction occurs in the middle of a ‘job interview’ for the position of Stilton’s assistant. Moments before Gannet Gunge drives Stan Stilton away in his Gungemobile, the trouble-prone agent hires a young assistant by the name of Charlie Cheddar who proves to be somewhat smarter and luckier than his boss...

This was the beginning of the 20-weeks long action-packed series of hairbreadth escapes and last-minute rescues for Stan Stilton as he repeatedly got in and out of Gannet Gunge’s clutches with the help of Charlie Cheddar and some other very strange aides. The plot developed at breakneck speed, in defiance of the laws of physics and logic, and was often jazzed up with Monty Python–like absurdity and mad intermissions which made S.O.S (Save Our Stan) stand out amongst traditional MFC strips.

Both opposing parties had friends and aides: Gannet Gunge and his midget menacing minions had Gunge’s Mumsy, Jorkins the torturer both of whom lived in Grisly Grange – the ancestral home of the Gunges, and a pack of Gungitranian monsters (croco-dorkles, the dreaded Boogly Woogie and others), while Stan Stilton and Charlie Cheddar had the undercover ally who was a master of disguise, the intrepid messenger parrot, a herd of patriotic British ferrets and last but not least – the readers of MFC. Every single episode of S.O.S (Save Our Stan) ended with a puzzle or a coded message which the readers were challenged to solve or decipher in order to help Stan get out of his weekly scrape. The readers were not expected to send their answers to MFC – the idea was that they solved the puzzles and imagined they were indeed helping the hero who would otherwise be doomed. In the beginning of each weekly instalment the scriptwriter pretended that readers’ essential help was received and well-appreciated, while the evil Gannet Gunge sometimes referred to readers of S.O.S (Save Our Stan) as meddlers.

The story ended when Stan’s young assistant disguised himself as a housemaid and laced the midgets’ tea with Gunge’s monster-making serum. The serum transformed them into monsters who then turned on their former master.

Let us not forget that the real reason why the chiefs of D.R.A.I.N. sent Stan Stilton on the mission was to get rid of the troublesome employee and they certainly didn’t expect the loopy agent to do away with the criminal mastermind. So when Stan phoned in with his "mission accomplished" report and requested transport back to D.R.A.I.N., No. 1 and No. 2 realised their plan had failed. They knocked up this last puzzle and hoped it would take Stan and Charlie years to work through, ‘unless those rotten readers’ helped them out.

Frankie Stein, the Honorary Editor of MFC, saw that Stan Stilton took a well-deserved holiday after MFC No. 39 which contained the finale of this interesting serial. IMHO the b/w two-pagers of S.O.S (Save Our Stan) with its wacky humour and weird puzzles were an excellent ingredient in the MFC package. The artist was Nick Baker who signed nearly all the sets. Starting from No. 28 the episodes of S.O.S (Save Our Stan) came with a double signature HITCH and Nick Baker:

Was Hitch the script writer? Mr. Baker included a few portraits of the artist, the writer and the editor in the strip. I don’t know if these are faithful caricatures or simply generic drawings of people in the professions, but here they are nonetheless:

I am sure I’ve seen the strip reprinted but I can’t remember where. I will update the post with the details when I come across those reprints again.