One can’t help noticing that the editors of BUSTER believed
in introducing major changes every five years and had a fixation on years ending
with a zero and a five. 1990 saw another logo change that happened to be the
last in the paper’s life and is also my least favourite one. The cover of the
first Christmas issue of the nineties looks like Mike Lacey’s, all the later
ones are by Jimmy Hansen.
Buster
became a fortnightly in 1995 (remember what I said about years ending with
zeros and fives?):
The last Christmas episode was a sad reprint
of the story from the 1992 Christmas edition of the paper. It was also the
penultimate issue of BUSTER.
My next couple of festive posts will be dedicated to
Christmas episodes of a long-running character in BUSTER whose name starts with
an “F”. Can you guess who?
ReplyDeleteof course Faceache...;0)what a great idea for a post..
Say what you like about Buster in the 1990s (not nearly as good as in the 1980s), but it was MY era for Buster, so it'll always have that going for it.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to Faceachey goodness, I can remember a few of his festive episodes!
Being an outsider (someone who hasn’t and doesn’t live in the UK) I don’t have MY era of the comic because I saw my first issue of Buster only four or five years ago :)
DeleteFrom the current perspective as a grown-up fan and collector MY favourite era spans from the 60 to mid/late 70s… I have to admit I'm not so keen on the later decades.
Wow! You've collected almost every issue of Buster in just 4/5 years! That's impressive!
ReplyDeleteI've a few Christmas Faceache strips, although sometimes they aren't that festive, it just involves Snipe wearing a Santa beard. Looking forwards to see more!
Collecting the near full set of Buster took me some time and dedication. Picking up three or four large collections along the way helped a lot. From what I’ve been reading on your blog and on Comics UK forum, I get an impression you have a full set of Whizzer and Chips, or am I wrong? I wonder how long it took you to put it together?
DeleteBuster had around 2000 issues, so collecting all those is amazing! Especially since the early issues are so hard to find!
DeleteI've been collecting Whizzer and Chips for over 5 years, and have quite a few missing from the early - mid 70's, but otherwise it's a pretty good collection! My proudest moment was when I completed collecting all of 1969!
There are about 1,100 issues in total, and I have around 700 - 800 of them! So only about 400 to go!
Jimmy Hansen and Mike Lacey did have similar styles back then but all of those covers are definitely by Jimmy.
DeleteThanks for the correction, Lew. I did have doubts about the first one and I'm still not 100 per cent sure that Mike Lacey had nothing to do with it...
ReplyDeleteNo, Mike never drew Buster. It went straight to Jimmy when Tom went to DCT.
ReplyDeleteI think Mike had retired by the time that Whizzer and Chips moved to 24-pages and colour printing, never mind cancelled some months later. Jimmy's work definitely takes after Mike's style, but that's it.
Don't ask me who drew X Ray Specs in the early 1990s!
OK, so that's final then - that first Christmas cover of the 90s is by Jim Hansen.
DeleteMike Lacey must have still been a contributor in Buster in the early 90s though - remember his self-portrait and answers to the questions in Buster in Novemer 1990? He was in carge of X-Ray Specs and Sid's Snake at that time, that's for sure :)