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.



Thursday, March 7, 2019

SERIALISED FACEACHE STORIES – PART EIGHT: EXPERIMENT



It has been a while since I last did a post about serialised FACEACHE stories by Ken Reid, so here’s my synopsis of the next one. It continued over three weeks and can be found in BUSTER AND MONSTER FUN issues cover-dated March 17, 24 and 31, 1979. Be warned - there’s quite a lot of scrunging going on in this one! :)

Simpkins Minor is trying to create a new form of life by mixing substances in the school lab. He squirts Faceache with some of his chemicals and Faceache pretends he has started to mutate into a new form of life:


Simpkins runs away from the nauseating beast. At the same time, the experiment appears to have produced a result, and a weird creature begins to emerge from the glass beaker… 


Terrified, Faceache rushes to inform the Headmaster that Simpkins’ chemical mixture has turned into something diabolical. He forgets to unscrunge and the Headmaster bashes him unconscious...


The Headmaster suddenly has an idea that he’d become famous if he can prove to the scientific world that a monstrosity like that could be produced by chemical reaction. The Headmaster goes to the lab to make a note of the formula and is attacked by the real monster…


Faceache regains his consciousness and rushes to the lab where he sees Mr. Thrashbottom being slowly swallowed by the monster. 


Faceache volunteers to save the Headmaster but asks for his permission to scrunge. Panic-stricken, Mr. Thrashbottom grants Faceache carte blanche to scrunge all he wants for as long as he wants any time...


The monster evaporates at the sight of Faceache’s next awful scrunge:


Faceache proceeds to have fun doing wild scrunges, while Mr. Thrashbottom wishes he’d been swallowed instead of granting his permission.


One can’t help noticing that the story echoes with the brilliant two-pager of Faceache by Ken Reid in BUSTER BOOK 1976. Here’s a taste:



Characters are © Rebellion Publishing Ltd


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.


Monday, March 4, 2019

WEEKLY OUTPUT - ROBERT NIXON, THE CHAMPION!



In the Spring of 1974 Rober Nixon was normally drawing 7 pages for COR!!, Shiver & Shake and Whoopee!, but the week when the comics with the cover date of March 30 1974 came out was special, firstly because he stepped in for Ken Reid contributing the Creepy Creation, and secondly because the issue of Shiver and Shake included an 8-page pull-out booklet of Frankie Stein, bringing Robert Nixon’s page count to 16 pages and making him that week’s champion. 

I won’t speculate if he drew all the pages in the space of a week – I don’t even know if a mere mortal would be capable of producing this quantity of quality art in such a short time, but all the pages were printed in the comics of the same week, and that’s a fact :)












Images are © Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd

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.