COR!! HOLIDAY SPECIAL 1983

COR!! Holiday Special 1983, 50 p., 64 pages

Contents: Ivor Lott and Tony Broke (3 new episodes illustrated and signed by Crocker), Val’s Vanishing Cream (3 Mike Lacey reprints), Night Mare (3 reprints from old COR!! weeklies), Tease Break (2 instalments), Football Madd (3 reprints from old COR!! weeklies), Benny Bendo, Gus-On Holiday gags, Tomboy (2 reprints + one new in full colour), Yong MacDonald and his Farm (illustrated by Ron Turner), Donovan’s Dad (two new episodes by Terry Bave in full colour + one more in b/w), Chalky (reprint of an old episode from a COR!! weekly), Teacher’s Pet (2 reprints), Jasper the Grasper (a new story by Les Barton), Whacky (Mike Lacey reprint), Jelly Baby (3 reprints), Percy Puffer (reprint), Gus-Back Home gags, Hire A Horror (in colour), The Gasworks Gang (a new 4-pager by Frank McDiarmid + 1 reprint from an old COR!! weekly), Jeannie’s Genie (reprint), The Slimms (reprint), Jack Pott, Fiends and Neighbours (a new 3-pager), Gus, Gus Gags, Tell-Tale Tess (reprint).

This was the last COR!! Holiday Special. It was quite remarkable that the Specials lasted so long after the paper folded in 1974.

I may be imagining things, but I get an impression that whoever was responsible for compiling this last edition, he thought it appropriate to include a large number of old reprints of the various strips from the weeklies, some of which had been out of print for more than a decade since their original appearance in COR!!: the long forgotten original episodes of Tell-Tale Tess, Jeannie’s Genie and Percy Puffer from the old weeklies appeared alongside with strips that were reprinted on a regular basis.

That said, the Special was another successful combination of reprints and some high-quality new material: Terry Bave drew a couple of new sets of Donovan’s Dad, Crocker contributed three brand new sets of Ivor Lott and Tony Broke, Ron Turner illustrated another nice episode of Young MacDonald and Frank MacDiarmid drew and signed a new set of the Gasworks Gang’s antics:

Les Barton contributed three pages of Jasper the Grasper’s miserly adventures:

The episode of Fiends and Neighbours was by a new artist whose name is unknown to me:

And with this I’ll close the last chapter of COR!! Holiday Specials. You can go through the whole COR!! specials sequence by clicking here or by choosing the COR!! Holiday Specials label in the column on the right.