I
will take a short break from MONSTER FUN COMIC and share this curious find
which I came across a few days ago:
Stating
the obvious, this is a picture of the front cover of COR!! Annual 1987, or to be more precise - the original artwork for the book. It was offered by Compal Comic Book Auctions in their
2010 Winter catalogue and went for £194. The piece was described as follows: Cor!! Annual front cover original artwork
(1987) drawn and signed by Robert Nixon. Starring Ivor Lott and Tony Broke.
Poster colour on board. 18 x 13 ins.
What’s
so curious about it? – you might ask. Well, if any of you followed my COR!!
series on this blog, you may recall that the last COR!! Annual came out in 1985 for the X-mas of 1986.
It
turns out Fleetway had plans to
publish one more COR!! Annual but then something made them reconsider. This finished cover with text and even the company logo suggests the book must have been
cancelled when it was in an advanced stage of production, perhaps they’d even made a ‘dummy’.
Check
out the promotional flyer that came with November 29th editions of
BUSTER and WHIZZER AND CHIPS in 1986. I get an impression that the awkward empty
spaces with text may have been originally intended for the annuals that were
scrapped at the last moment and COR!! Annual 1987 appears to be one of them.
Note how COR!!’s Ivor Lott and Tony Broke are still amongst the crowd of characters
at the bottom of the centrespread:
And
since we are on the subject of COR!!, I invite you revisit the opening article of my COR!! series HERE because I have recently updated it with some cracking
images of the free gift that came with COR!! No. 1 back in 1970.
Great to see what might have been - sad to see what wasn't. Annuals are usually prepared many months in advance, so presumably the content was all ready 'to go'. Wonder what happened to it. Probably used in different annuals the next year.
ReplyDeleteI remember this going on sale - what a lovely cover!
ReplyDeleteI love seeing this and a great cover by Robert a well...
ReplyDeletewell spotted about the advert and the spaces..
I wanted proof that the Annual was indeed never produced so I had to find that promotional flyer to be sure before composing this post :)
DeleteWhat do you think the other two annuals in the other spaces were, if any? Shiver and Shake and Wow perhaps?
ReplyDeleteJackpot Annual 1987 is also a possibility. All the other humour titles ended the year before.
DeleteDo you own Buster annual 1988 nook it has Franks story of Ivor and Tony with the snowballing tank so it must of been for this annual But got moved to Buster! Naybe you could do a post on it! If you need a scan let me know by email..
ReplyDelete