THE TRUTH ABOUT FRANKIE STEIN MONSTER AWARD

I’m back home after a brief but productive visit in the UK to meet with my mate with whom we are working on an exciting UK comics-related project that we will reveal in due course.

In the meantime, I’d like to share some interesting information which has recently come to my attention.

Those of you who follow Compal Comics online auctions and like Ken Reid might recall the bust of Frankie Stein that they offered a few years ago. Here is how they described the item: Frankie Stein Monster Award by Ken Reid for WHAM! (1960s). A one-off bust made by Ken Reid for a WHAM! readers competition that apparently did not take place. Entitled 'Frankie's Monster Award' the bust is made from resin and was modelled and painted by Ken with his brother's help. It measures approximately 4 x 4 x 2 ins deep. It is unique.

Someone ended up paying £275 for it but would have probably thought twice before bidding, had they known then what I know now. The truth is that the auctioneer had almost everything wrong in the description! The award was in fact offered in Whoopee! in the early 1980s. Here is the cover of the issue and the page announcing the competition:

 

 

The first prize-winners were announced and their contributions printed in the issue of May 1st, 1982:

The competition continued for 22 weeks and ended in the issue of Sept 25th, 1982:

You can do your maths and see that at least 70-100 of Frankie's Monster Awards were handed out to the lucky winners so the gift may be rare but it is certainly not unique.

The auctioneer wasn’t completely wrong when he said it was made by Reid, only it wasn’t Ken Reid. The busts were in fact modeled and cast by Ken’s son Antony and his wife who made some 300 pieces of the award and shipped them to IPC. Unfortunately, the items were fragile and Antony didn’t pack them well enough so quite a few lost their bolts and other bits en route from Manchester to London. Antony still has a few of those left in his basement, here is an image of a coloured sample:

… and a “raw” one:

… and here’s an old photo of a squad of Frankies before it (the squad, not the photo) was off to London:

It is a nice item and I like the fact that it was modeled after Ken Reid’s original diabolical FS of the 60s rather its cuddly reincarnation of the late 70s/early 80s by Robert Nixon, but if you see another one on sale, don’t be misled by claims that it is a unique piece crafted by Ken Reid :)

 

TAMMY NOSTALGIA

Further to the previous post about my very limited exposure to UK comics as a kid, I thought I might also say a few words about the issue of TAMMY that I received together with that WHOOPEE! The scans used in this post are made from a replacement copy that I bought some time ago.

The impression that it made on me wasn’t as deep as that created by the other comic, but I distinctly recall being fascinated by two strips. I remember I was mighty impressed by the artwork on Babe at St. Woods that occupied the first three pages of the comic. I now know the illustrator’s name was Jose Casanovas and IMHO he was an outstanding artist – the quality of his artwork and the level of detail are quite extraordinary. I now know he illustrated numerous features in TAMMY throughout the 70s, also a few in JINTY and JUNE so he was predominantly a girls’ comics artist. Mr. Casanovas also did some sporadic Sci-Fi work in 2000AD and STARLORD and even one horror tale in the short-lived SCREAM!, but that’s another story. Here is the episode of Babe at St. Woods from TAMMY cover-dated 19th March 1977:

The other strip that stuck in my memory was The Dream House – a mystery tale about a family whose members somehow turned into dolls one-by one and were trapped in a huge dolls’ house. All those years later, I wouldn’t mind reading the whole story. Below is the three-pager from the issue that I had as a kid. I wonder who the artist was. Mike White, maybe?

For some reason I also found this adverts page very intriguing:

All Images 2015 © Egmont UK Ltd.  All rights reserved. Used with permission.

A CASE OF WHOOPEE! NOSTALGIA

Many if not all bloggers who write about British comics are driven by nostalgia. I happen to be an exception because as I say in the introduction to this blog above, I didn’t live in the UK as a kid and was almost completely ignorant of the bustling industry that existed in the 70s when I was of the comics reading age. Almost but not entirely because my pen friend Andrew from Shakespeare Middle School in Leeds once sent me two comics – an issue of WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER & SHAKE from 1975 and a TAMMY from 1977. The papers made quite an impression on my 10- or 11-year old self, particularly WHOOPEE! which was at its prime in the mid-70s. I found the idea of being able to follow the adventures of Scared-Stiff Sam, Bumpkin Billionaires, Frankie Stein, Lolly Pop, Ghoul Getters Ltd on a weekly basis mind-boggling, while the possibility to win cash prizes for Scream Inn story ideas or World-Wide Weirdies sketches seemed absolutely staggering to me.

I was on the wrong side of the iron curtain then and asking my parents for a regular subscription was out of question so my acquaintance with British comics was limited to those two examples. Nonetheless, they were partly responsible for my brief and successful career as a freelance humour comics artist 20 or so years down the line, and completely to blame for my UK comics collecting hobby which I took up some 8+ years ago.

I am determined to do a comprehensive and detailed overview of WHOOPEE! on my blog sometime in the future because in my opinion, the combination of the stellar lineup of artists and excellent characters/features objectively makes WHOOPEE! one of the best (if not the best) children’s  comic of the period, and as such it deserves proper coverage and tribute in internetland. A respectable eleven year run makes it quite an ambitious quest but a doable one.

In the meantime, here is the complete issue of WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER & SHAKE dated 22nd February, 1975 – the one that Andrew sent me when I was in school. The copy that I owned as a kid got completely worn because I read and re-read it countless times but I acquired a pristine one a few years ago. See if you can recognise all artists whose work appeared in the comic: