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.



Friday, October 2, 2015

CAP-LESS BUSTER





A couple of posts ago I showed a cover of BUSTER by Leo Baxendale in which Buster’s cap flew off – a very unusual occurrence indeed because Buster was famous for never appearing without his trademark accessory. He always kept the lid tight on his head and took extra care not to loose it, whatever the circumstances. Even when he had to wear something else (e.g. a cook’s hat, King’s hat, an army helmet, etc.), he always donned it on top of his green checkered piece of headwear.


It is believed that the only time when Buster was shown cap-less was in the very last issue of the comic (see the image above) but the Baxendale cover confirms this wasn’t the case, so I decided to see if I can find more examples.

So far I have checked the run of BUSTER from the first post-tabloid number (30th Oct., 1965) till the end of 1971, and found two. The first one came up right in the beginning of the run.  Buster made such a fuss about keeping his cap on that I find it surprising it took the scriptwriter so long to come up with a story in which someone played a trick on him. I don't know the name of the artist who drew this one:



The second example is interesting because Nadal made an exception and showed Buster cap-less without any reason at all, just like Baxendale had a couple of years before him. It is the only time that Nadal ignored the rule during the run I’ve checked.



I will check other issues when I have time and report my findings in due course…

2 comments:

  1. At least when he was capless it was a dream...:)
    It is quite a rule the no cap less Buster..I'm sure when Tom Paterson started he must of messed up...

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  2. Very interesting, Irmy. I take my hat off to you.

    ReplyDelete