GHOSTLY GO ROUND FEATURE

Ghostly Go Round was an interesting feature in WHOOPEE! comic. As young readers gradually lost interest in the once-popular horror comedy genre (as confirmed by cancellation of such brilliant WHOOPEE! features as World-Wide Weirdies and Scream Inn/Spooktacular 7) and the Editor needed to clear space for new material, he came up with an idea of bringing four strips under one umbrella and rotating them in sequence. The strips that formed Ghostly Go Round were Evil Eye, Fun-Fear, Creepy Car and ‘Orrible Hole. The feature was launched in the first issue of 1979 and continued for slightly more than a year before all the four strips were put to rest one by one.

Ghostly Go Round required a new logo that could be used with all the 4 strips and the job was given to Ken Reid. He used the idea of Bob Nixon’s original Fun-Fear logo, made it spookier and squeezed the four main characters into the bottom left corner. The result wasn’t so great, IMHO. I think Bob Nixon’s old version was much better. Below are both logos side-by-side.

Here are the first appearances of the 4 strips in the heyday of WHOOPEE! comic. Evil Eye started in the very first issue of the paper:

… followed by Fun-Fear in the issue cover-dated 17 August, 1974:

… then Creepy Car on 12th October later that year (UPDATE: the strip was in fact an immigrant from SHIVER AND SHAKE where it had started nine weeks before the paper folded. The episode shown below is the first one in the combined Whoopee! and Shiver & Shake, hence the recap of the origins):

… and finally ‘Orrible Hole in the first issue of 1975 (cover-dated Jan 18 because the comic missed a few weeks due to industrial action at the junction of 1974/75):

NOT COMICS-RELATED LATE HALLOWEEN POST

A decade or so ago I was into an American horror-rap band from Detroit Insane Clown Posse (a.k.a. ICP). They have a thing about Halloween and usually arrange special annual events in their home city. I have never been to one, but once upon a time I (accidentally) found myself in their show in Orlando, Florida, and it’s an experience I will hardly ever forget. Picture yourself in a mid-sized venue packed with face-painted fans, with hardcore horror rap lyrics blasting super-loud from a massive set of loudspeakers for two hours plus, with gallons upon gallons of ICP trademark cheap pop sprayed at the audience from special cannons and 2-liters of the same product flying at you from the stage…

Check out a fan-made video of one of their Halloween numbers. Mind, you, it contains  explicit lyrics. Comics-related service will resume soon :)

P.S. - Come to think of it, the post is not entirely unrelated to comics: ICP are marketing geniuses, and in 2000 – 2001 they serialised one of their albums The Pendulum as twelve CD singles, each polybagged with a 32-page comic featuring the band.