The next Faceache story arc enters the territory of longer stories. ‘Human
Sea Slug’ was 4 weeks long. It appeared in BUSTER
AND MONSTER FUN cover-dated 25 August, 1, 8 and 15 September 1979, and went
like this:
Faceache asks Mr. Snipe for a day out at
Shrimpton-at-Sea. Mr. Snipe approves, as long as Faceache promises not to scare
holiday-makers. Faceache takes a bus and Mr. Snipe follows him in the school
banger to make sure he doesn’t scrunge:
...Faceache spots the spy and scrunges
into an ordinary bloke to get off the coach unrecognised:
Later on the sea front Faceache sees an angler
who is trying to cheat a kid out of his pocket money…
Mr. Snipe turns up looking for Faceache and asks the angler to let
him try his hand at fishing. Mr. Snipe is about to demonstrate real fishing, as
Faceache prepares himself to play his trick on the angler…
The lad leaps out of the sea. Mr. Snipe
recognises Faceache’s striped T-shirt instantly:
…Faceache unscrunges and Mr. Snipe plunges into
a seaweed-infested oil slick in the sea. The terrified angler flees in panic, screaming about a ‘thingie’ that has risen from the deep...
Prof. Krabb, who runs an exhibition of aquatic oddities, immediately sees an opportunity and decides he
could do with the monster in his sideshow. Prof. Krabb and his assistant rush to
the beach. Upon seeing Mr. Snipe emerge from the sea covered with seaweed and
dirt...
... they net him right away, and bonk him with a mallet.
Prof. Krabb puts Mr. Snipe on display as a
Human Sea Slug:
Faceache telephones Mr. Thrashbottom urging him to come to
Shrimpton-on-Sea. Concerned about school’s reputation, the Headmaster arrives
at the exhibition of aquatic oddities to collect Mr. Snipe. Back at school, he orders Mr. Snipe to stay in his room and write out 1,000 times “I
must learn not to dress up as a
human sea slug and lower the dignity of the teaching position”.
Realising he
is now free to scrunge without being spied on, Faceache catches up on his hobby:
Characters are
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For me, the end of this serial brought something almost unheard-of in the history of Ken Reid: disappointment. The final few panels with Faceache scrunging exuberantly, while well-drawn of course, seem rushed. Was Reid ill, perhaps?
ReplyDeleteStephen, Ken wasn't ill at that time, but admittedly, the quality of his work started deteriorating towards the very end of the 70s and in the early 80s...
DeleteRelieved by the news he wasn’t ill; he was ageing, though (aren’t we all?) and was fifty-nine when he drew this serial. When I first read Buster in 1980, I caught the tail end of what we’d call Ken’s classic period. Wouldn’t be long before Faceache’s common pronunciations would stop: “wiv” instead of “with”, “fink” instead of “think”, etc.; it was only later that I found out that these had ever existed. Still, I can’t help but have a soft spot for the “Aero” style logo (that’s a British chocolate bar – Google it to see what I mean!) over the L-shaped logo Faceache started with. Happy memories … to a point.
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