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):
Quality stuff, Irmy. You can't go wrong with Reg Parlett and Robert Nixon.
ReplyDeleteEvil Eye always gave me a bit of an uneasy feeling... Perhaps being described as "Evil" was a bit of a give away there. Creepy Car though, always loved that one. I like how in a lot of the strips, everyone seems to regard him as an accepted part of everyday life - "Bah, it's that Creepy Car again" and so on.
ReplyDeletethe final Ghostly-go-round page appeared in the final pre-merge with Cheeky issue of Whoopee! dated 2/2/1980. I have that issue, but I cannot find it at the moment.
ReplyDeleteGhostly Go Round was a precursor to the Merry-Go-Round feature which began in 1980 after the merger with Cheeky. True, it wasn’t the same as having the same consistent core set of strips week after week, but it beat the spots off losing old friends to make way for the Cheeky newcomers.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if readers really did lose interest in the horror comedy genre, so much as the industry maybe started to grow less comfortable with those areas, as ideas about what was suitable for children's entertainment started to change as the '80s hit in.
ReplyDeleteAll strong strips. Hard to see children becoming less interested in these or this kind of subject matter - but there definitely seemed to be a turning away from the more abrasive horror type characters and from "morbid" subject matter in the following decade.
I'm looking for a old Fun Fear strip where a kid looks for a ride and finds his way to the pottery wheel and the monster in charge of it molds him into a vase.
ReplyDelete