Andy’s
Ants belonged to the elite club of COR!! strips that started in the first issue and lasted
throughout the entire 4-year run of the paper. It told weekly adventures of a
boy named Andy and the army of ants whom he befriended and could converse with.
 |
| The first episode in COR!! No. 1 |
The feature was created and illustrated by Terry Bave
who shared his memories about the strip in part 2 the article A Line in Chuckles in the Summer 1986
edition of Golden FUN. Originally
the Baves conceived the idea for Whizzer
and Chips but it
wasn’t developed properly. It involved a boy character with a collection of
weird insect pets and was code-named Ivan’s
Insects. The idea had been sparked off by the fact that one of Baves’ young
“fans” collected all kinds of creepy crawlies. After some thought they
altered the basic idea and came up with Andy’s
Ants which involved a lad with an army of pet ants. The Baves wrote the
initial script, Terry Bave then roughed-out an introduction page and submitted
it to Bob Paynter for consideration. The editor liked the idea very much and
gave Terry Bave the go-ahead for the artwork. The feature was approved for the
new comic with IPC script writers supplying the weekly scripts. Andy’s Ants
proved very popular with COR!! readers. The illustrator reminisced that the feature was a great fun
to draw, especially when the script called for a large number of ants to
appear. I remember reading somewhere that Bob Paynter was particularly fond of
large numbers of ants and often told art assistants to add more of them to the
original artwork.
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| From COR!! issue dated 26th August, 1972 (No. 117) |
The
strip was a black-and white one-pager but starting from issue 143 quite a few
of the episodes were in full colour. Andy’s Ants also made 4 front cover colour
appearances on 14th July 1973, 29th
September 1973, 2nd February 1974 and 6th April 1974 (issue
Nos. 163, 174, 192 and 201).
The
strip was revived as a new series Adam
and his Ants in WOW!
comic in the early 80s.
 |
| From COR!! dated 23rd March, 1974 (No. 199) |
Dez Skinn mentions the addition of extra ants in his comment on this post http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/40-year-flashback-cor-no1.html Have you spotted the strip featuring the naughty ants?
ReplyDeleteI read both the post and the comment before I started my research. I looked very carefully at every episode but found nothing of the kind...
ReplyDeleteThere was a later strip in another Fleetway comic (can't remember which one) drawn by Sid Burgon called Adam's Ants, which was similar to Andy's Ants. Although that was of course based on the singer Adam Ant.
ReplyDeleteYes, I've mentioned it in the last paragraph of the post... :)
ReplyDeleteDahm I missed that! Whoops.. sorry :D
ReplyDeleteI think the issue with the naughty ants is the one dated 11 September 1971. I'd post a scan here if I could, but maybe the blogger has that issue anyway...
ReplyDeletekiwijohn
Thanks for the hint. I will double-check!
DeleteI checked that issue and no, there are no naughty ants there. They are eating crumbs of cake in the last panel, that's all... I even checked with a magnifying glass :)
Delete