THE MOONSTERS COVERS OF SPARKY - PART FOUR

Here is the next batch of SPARKY covers with Peter, Penny and the Moonsters by Bill Ritchie, Nos. 60 – 69 from 1966!

GUEST APPEARANCES AT SCREAM INN – I SPY LOOK-ALIKE

Shiver and Shake merged into Whoopee! in October 1974 and Scream Inn was one of the strips that found its way into the new paper with the clumsy title of Whoopee! and Shiver & Shake. 

The first guest appearance in Scream Inn can be found soon after the merger, in the issue cover-dated 26 October 1974 (No. 34), and it was quite an unusual one indeed. That week’s guest looked a lot like I Spy from SPARKY comic published by DCT. I believe this is one of very few examples in British comics when a character appeared in a rival publication produced by the competitor. Brian Walker illustrated I Spy starting from SPARKY issue No. 300 (17 October 1970), so the inclusion of a look-alike into the episode of Scream Inn in Whoopee! and Shiver & Shake (published by IPC) must have been a cheeky experiment on his part. Here is the episode, followed by the three-page set of I Spy from SPARKY, the first one by Brian Walker.

While we are on the subject of SPARKY’s I Spy and cheeky sneak-ins by Brian Walker, who is that bespectacled bloke in the top right corner of this panel of Scream Inn from Shiver and Shake issue 51 (February 23rd, 1974)?

THE MOONSTERS COVERS OF SPARKY - PART THREE

Time for ten more early Sparky covers with the Moonsters. The first and the last ones in this post are interesting: the first one (No. 50) because it celebrates the New Year, while the last one (No. 59) because Bill Ritchie later re-drew it as the cover of Sparky Book 1968 (see my old post HERE).

ROYAL MAIL BLUNDERS

I’ll add some variety to this blog and write about something else than comics today. The subject of this post is Royal Mail – the service that the vast majority of eBay sellers and other dealers have used over the years to send my comics from the UK to Lithuania where I live.

Generally speaking I have no complaints because only two or three of my packages failed to turn up in the course of nearly a decade. A few of the parcels, however, did quite a bit of travelling before reaching me, so I assume some people have no clue where my country is. Let’s picture two post office employees processing my package at a sorting station somewhere in the UK:

“Look, this one is to Lithuania. Do you know where it is?”

“Sounds exotic, should be Asia.”

“Asia be it, then…”:

I thought asking my sellers to add EUROPE after LITHUANIA in my address would help the post office do a better job. I am sure most of the times the hint was appreciated, but not on this occasion: