ACCIDENTAL RUDENESS

I recently received a small joblot of the Beano from the mid-fifties and found this early episode of When The Bell Rings in issue No. 630:

I decided to show it because of something I spotted in the first panel:

I remember reading somewhere that publishers had an internal directive warning against the use of certain innocent words in comics because they tended to look rude when printed, and ‘flick’ appears to have been one of them. It seems that in this case DCT realised it before it was too late but they were more careful when reprinting the episode in the Dandy Beano Magic Moments book nearly 40 years later:

All Images 2015 © DC Thomson, Ltd.  All rights reserved.

ATTENTION, SPARKY PEOPLE!

As a special treat, today I offer you a look at Bill Ritchie’s first drafts of what later became front covers of the first two Sparky annuals. I photographed them during a recent visit to my mate Peter whose collection of UK comics, free gifts, original artwork, etc. is by far the biggest in the World.

I’ve placed the paintings side-by-side with the actual covers, spot-the-difference puzzle style. In reality, they are approx. twice the size of the printed versions. Enjoy!

 

AGHHH-IT'S-'IM-JONAH: THE REMAINING TWO EPISODES OF MINI SUB

Below are the remaining two installments of the “Mini Sub” story of Jonah by Ken Reid which ran in the Beano Nos. 985-988. This time I’ll show them exactly as they were printed in June 1961 because as you have seen in the two previous posts, those reprints in Buddy in the eighties were rather awful.

(Remember to click on the images to see them even larger) 

All Images 2015 © DC Thomson, Ltd. 

AGHHH-IT'S-'IM-JONAH: ORIGINALS VS. REPRINTS, PART TWO

Here comes part two of the “Mini-Sub” story of Jonah by Ken Reid, presented in the same way as part one, i.e. in pairs of matching rows from the Beano original (1961) and the reprint in Buddy (1983). This time the reprint was in spot colour because the back cover was reserved for a colour advert.

One doesn’t get to see Ken’s DC Thomson original artwork very often – presumably because DCT took better care of their archive than Odhams/Fleetway/IPC did of theirs. Fortunately, a few pages did find their way out of DCT vaults, and the episode shown above is one of them. Before you ask, I don’t own it. It is a prized item in the collection of my mate Derek who has kindly scanned the page for me. Here is a selection of panels for you to enjoy:

Contrary to what I said in the previous post, the “Mini-Sub” story of Jonah is not a two-part but a four-part story, and I will show the remaining two episodes in the next post.