Patrick
sent me a few more adventures of Fudge that he found in his attic. I was
particularly fascinated by the latest one I have seen so far – Fudge and the Magic Book. Adventure No.
26 is 678 panels long. It ran in The
Manchester Evening News between Jan. 25th 1960 and Oct. 22nd 1960, so Ken drew it at the same time as Jonah
for the Beano, and his style differs
considerably from that of the early Fudge tales. The plot is also quite surreal
and very Reid. I will try to cover it in this blogpost.
I’ll
start with a few opening strips to give you an idea of the general premise, and
to illustrate my point about Ken’s style:
The
crowd of dreadful creatures made Hoppity’s house uninhabitable, so he confronted
his Aunt demanding that she undid her spell. Being a blundering humbug, she
said the wrong words, and instead of making the weirdies return into the book where they belonged, she turned
herself and her nephew into illustrations. Moreover, her spell transformed
Speck into an enormous egg! Fudge was
faced with a challenge of turning his friend back into a tree elf. A whisper
coming from Aunt Wilhelmina’s magic cupboard prompted him to try incubation.
This involved traveling to a place called Imaginatia.
Check out this panel:
My
readers probably know where I live, and we who come from small nations often
get quite excited when we see our countries mentioned in an unexpected context,
so I was chuffed by that in Ken’s tale!
A
bookworm by the name of Wilberforce Wizdom explained to Fudge and Speck that
Imaginatia existed only in the mind, and in order to get there, they simply had
to imagine they were there. This did the trick…
Their
first quest in Imaginatia was to find a creature known as H.B.E.E. (Hard Boiled
Egg Eater), use his incubator to hatch the egg and free Speck. Searching for H.B.E.E.,
they met a few inhabitants of Imaginatia, some of them helpful, others not so
much, including an Imaginatian:
trees
of the Nonsense Wood:
Brolly
Bird:
and
H.B.E.E.’s manservant:
…
until they finally made the acquaintance of H.B.E.E. himself:
There
was a reason why Hard Boiled Egg Eater carried this name – his diet consisted
solely of eggs. He had eaten all the eggs in the Nonsense Wood and was starving
because there were no more birds left there. A servant named H.B.E.B. – Hard
Boiled Egg Boiler, was about to boil Speck…
…but
Fudge outsmarted the silly creatures:
When
the egg hatched, H.B.E.E. realised that Speck was nothing like H.B.E.L. (Hard
Boiled Egg Layer) and threatened to have the two elves steam-roasted and thrown
to his cousin – the Bugle Nosed Beef-Eater who lived in Poppycock Canyon. The
two ran for freedom into the Nonsense Wood and continued their journey in
search for a Two-toed Twale. They needed to acquire his toenail to undo Aunt Wilhelmina’s
spell.
Following
the directions given to them by Hippopotapuffer, another weird inhabitant of Imaginatia,
they soon arrived at the house of the Two-toed Twale and were stopped by
Twale’s personal bodyguard:
Private
Pykan wasn’t much of a guard, and the elves quickly smoked the Two-toed Twale out
of his bunker:
The
creature was mean and uncooperative. He refused to let them clip his toenail, turned
himself invisible and ran off.
Fudge
and Speck got some help from Bartholomew Blusterblast who lent Fudge his magical spectacles which allowed to see invisible
things, such as wind or the two-toed Twale turned invisible.
Following
in the creature’s footsteps, they ran into Manx Pussypillar, another crazy
Imaginatian, who was in the process of growing a Grow-fasticus Lofticus – a
Cream and Kipper Tree for his lunch:
Fudge saw Twale from the top of the
freshly grown giant tree and the elves finally got what they wanted from the daft creature who though he was being smart. They clipped his golden toe nail
without him even realising:
The mission was completed, and it was time for the elves to leave Imaginatia. After
running into trouble with a nasty wind:
…they
made a brief stop at Bartholomew Blusterblast’s Wind Observatory to return his
magic spectacles. Finally they were ready to go home, but finding their way back
to the World of Reality turned out to be very challenging indeed.
This
is where Ken’s story turns even more surreal and absurd but I will take a break here because this post is far too long as it is... Part two will follow soon.
And if you are a fan of Ken Reid, click on the POWER PACK banner in the
right-hand column and get your copy of the POWER PACK OF KEN REID - the deluxe
two-volume set of Ken’s strips in WHAM!, SMASH! and POW! comics of the ‘60s.