welcome and enjoy!

Hi and welcome to my blog about comics from other people’s childhood! It is dedicated primarily to British humour comics of the 60s and 70s. The reason they are not from my childhood is simply because I didn’t live in the UK back then (nor do I live there now). I knew next to nothing about them until fairly recently but since then I’ve developed a strong liking for the medium and amassed a large collection, including a number of complete or near complete sets. My intention is to use this blog as a channel for sharing my humble knowledge about different titles, favourite characters and creators as I slowly research my collection.

QUICK TIP: this blog is a sequence of posts covering one particular comic at a time. The sequence follows a certain logic, so for maximum results it is recommended that the blog is read from the oldest post up.

Copyright of all images and quotations used here is with their respective owners. Any such copyrighted material is used exclusively for educational purposes and will be removed at first notice. All other text copyright Irmantas P.



Wednesday, January 8, 2020

WHOOPEE! GIFTS AND PULL OUTS OFFERED IN 1974





















WHOOPEE! is my favourite IPC comic, and covering it in the same manner as I did COR!!, SHIVER AND SHAKE and MONSTER FUN is still on my to-do list, but given the long run of the paper (567 weekly issues), I will have to postpone it until I have more time. 

Last year I made a few inroads into WHOOPEE! territory by covering Scared-Stiff Sam, and doing a short series on cut-out Xmas labels and cards. In one of the posts I mentioned I might do a year-by-year overview of the various pull-outs and freebies that came with the paper, so let’s start with 1974 – the first year of WHOOPEE!


No. 1 came out for the week of 1st March, 1974 (there was no date on the cover, as you can see above). It came with the free gift of Super Squirt Ring that looked like this:




I suspect a similar gift also came with JACKPOT No. 2 in 1979:


WHOOPEE! No. 2 came with 4 gifts - when you bought the paper, you could get a Joke Spider, a Joke Soap, a Joke Nail or a Joke Biscuit.   


Here’s what the Joke Bar of Soap looked like:


The copy in my collection comes with the Joke Chocolate Biscuit, still sealed in its original packaging:


Finally, WHOOPEE! No. 3 had a Super Set of 36 SPOOKY Snap Cards.


The cards are still uncut in my copy of the issue, so probably worth a zillion today :) :



No. 10 came with a free Lone Ranger Mask. Lone Ranger was a cowboy strip printed in full colour on the centrespread, and looked somewhat out of place in the paper. 


Here’s how the free gift looked:



Nos. 11, 12, 13 and 14 had the WHOOPEE! QUIZ BOOK – the first of the many pull out booklets to follow:


The idea was to pull out the centre pages from the staples, cut them along dotted line and fold them in half to make an eight-page booklet. Once collected from all 4 issues, the booklet was 32-pages thick! Readers were encouraged to have fun answering the various questions, but as it wasn’t a competition, they were not asked to send their answers to the magazine to enter for a prize. All answers were provided in part 4. Here’s a random selection of pages – some were in coulour, some were not:






Starting from No. 24 (17th August, 1974) WHOOPEE! changed its format to a larger size, keeping its 40 pages for the time being. No pull-outs or freebies were offered to mark the occasion.

The next pull-out booklet (the last one for 1974) – or rather the first part of the booklet was in No. 32 to celebrate the merger of SHIVER AND SHAKE into WHOOPEE!, and it was appropriately named after the big SHIVER AND SHAKE star who was Frankie Stein. 


The 4-part Frankie Stein’s Mini Monster Comic was printed in WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER & SHAKE issue Nos. 32 to 35 (12th October – 2nd November 1974), and once composed together formed another 32-page booklet. 


It featured Evil Eye, The Ghost’s Revenge, The Hand, Hire-A-Horror, etc. but most importantly it had a new 5-page story of Frankie Stein by Robert Nixon - here’s a taste: 


…and two Mini-Monsters by Ken Reid – the last ones he drew for the Creepy Creations feature in SHIVER AND SHAKE, but as the paper was cancelled, the editors decided to use them in this minibooklet. Here’s one:


WHOOPEE! editors came up with an idea to see 1974 off with a giant three-part super poster of Frankie Stein:


Part 1 of the poster came with the issue of 14th December, 1974 (No. 41), and part 2 – with the next issue cover dated 21st Dec., 1974 (No. 42). Then things went wrong because IPC printers went on strike and WHOOPEE! missed what would have been its first Xmas number. The paper didn’t come out until 18th January of next year and, as a result, part 3 of the 'Super Poster' wasn’t published as planned. Readers must have been disappointed because all they got was this:


IPC made it up to the fans next year, but let’s leave this for another post in which I will cover WHOOPEE! pull-outs of 1975.

Characters are © Rebellion Publishing Ltd


And while you’re here, I would like to remind you that although 2019 is over, my promotion for the POWER PACK OF KEN REID is not. Get your copies of the books and BONUS FREE PRINTS on eBay or from my online shop HERE!




Friday, January 3, 2020

SERIALISED FACEACHE STORIES – PART 17: THE SNOW BEAST



The first Faceache story arc of 1980 was three weeks long and was printed in BUSTER issues cover-dated 1st, 8th and 15th March, 1980.

Mr. Snipe’s class are off to the moors to photograph animals’ footprints. Faceache has an idea to scrunge into all sorts of whacky creatures and fool Mr. Snipe by taking snapshots of his own footprints. 


All goes well until Faceache comes across something strange:


…He follows the tracks to try to get a photograph of the creature. Suddenly a fiendish monstrosity comes charging a Faceache...


It turns out that the monster is an electronic robot operated by a kid: 


Faceache tries to comfort the sobbing lad by volunteering to stand-in for his robot till the filming is over. He demonstrates his scrunging talent to the boy who runs away screaming: 


Faceache has always fancied himself as an actor, so he decides he’ll find the film set and act as the Snow Beast. He walks on to the set without even realising it. He spots some kid and asks him about the whereabouts of the film unit: 


It turns out that it is not a kid but a dummy stuffed with TNT. According to the script, it is to send the fiendish creature to its doom. Film director detonates the bomb and Faceache goes flying into the air with a boom:


…A week later he sees himself on screen and finds it very surprising because he didn’t realise he was being filmed...

 

Characters are © Rebellion Publishing Ltd

I am celebrating Ken's 100th birthday by offering free prints of his original artwork with every purchase of THE POWER PACK books! Press here and claim your copies now!


Friday, December 27, 2019

THE MOONSTERS ON SPARKY BACK COVERS – PART 3


Here are the next eleven SPARKY back covers featuring The Moonsters by Bill Ritchie. Click on the images to enlarge.

SPARKY No. 34 was the last issue before the strip was moved to the front cover of the comic, where it remained for 105 weeks. You can find the complete 12-part gallery of those front covers under Moonsters Covers Gallery label in the column on the right. 











Images are © D.C.Thomson & Co. Ltd.

Tuesday, December 24, 2019

WHOOPEE! 1978 CUT-OUT X-MAS CARDS – PART TWO



Here is the second batch of 1978 WHOOPEE! pull-out X-mas cards. Merry Christmas!





Characters are © Rebellion Publishing Ltd

I am celebrating the 100th birthday of KEN REID by offering free prints of his original artwork with every purchase of THE POWER PACK books! Press here and claim your copies now!