ANTHROPOMORPHIC STRIPS BY LEO BAXENDALE

Looking through my Beanos, I came across a curious example of Kat and Kanary in issue No. 770 (20 April, 1957). The curious thing about it is that the illustrator was Leo Baxendale, who to the best of my knowledge didn’t draw many anthropomorphic strips. In this case, Leo’s style is easily recognizable, don’t you think?

It is less obvious in the next episode from The Beano No. 771 – the last one by Leo before the strip was assigned to another artist:

I then found out that Leo drew another strip with animal protagonists, and it was The Katts in Knockout (second series). It ran in the first 14 issues of the comic starting from 12th June, 1971, but as it turns out, Leo only drew a few of the episodes. I stand to be corrected, but in my opinion his Katts appeared in 5 issues:

The rest were by Mike Lacey, weren’t they?:

 

Characters are © Rebellion Publishing Ltd

BEANO, DANDY and TOPPER THIS WEEK in 1953

How about a gallery of the front covers of a few of the comics on newsstands this week all those years ago in 1953? The Topper was of course nearly twice the size of the other two. They are all brilliant as far as I am concerned :)

Images are © D.C.Thomson & Co. Ltd.

WHOOPEE! PULL-OUTS IN 1979 – PART TWO

As I said in my previous post where I covered the first seven months of 1979, WHOPPEE! was particularly generous with its pull-outs in that year. Let us resume the overview starting from the months of August and September, when the comic surprised its readers with a further six posters in the issues of 11th, 18th and 25th August and then 8th, 15th and 29th of September: 

The approach of the Bonfire Night of 1979 was marked with Gunpowder Plot cut-out game in the four issues of 6th, 13th, 20th and 27th October. 

The first three had the board and some cards:

...while the fourth had more cards and the rules how to play the game:

The next issue cover dated 3rd November, 1979 came with Guy Fawkes’ cut-out mask, drawn by Brian Walker, who had already contributed two of those in the Firework issues of 1977 and 1978, with quite a few more still to come in the eighties:

The 1979 poster spree concluded in the issues of 10th November, 24th November and 1st December, bringing the total of WHOOPEE! character posters offered in the course of the year to a whopping eleven:

The next three issues (8th, 15th and 22nd December) ran a series of twenty Xmas labels. 

I showed them in two of my posts at the end of last year, so here are just a few examples to refresh your memory:

Finally, the 1979 Xmas issue of WHOOPEE! came with the Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey pull-out game on the centrespread:

Characters are © Rebellion Publishing Ltd 

And while you’re here, I would like to remind you that my promotion for the POWER PACK OF KEN REID is still on. Get your copies of the books and BONUS FREE PRINTS on eBay or from my online shop HERE!