COR!! Books of Gags 1976 and 1977 were published as soft-cover annuals. Both volumes had
bright colour covers and black and white interior pages, 128 of them each, printed
on rough pulp paper. The 1976 edition cost 75 p. A year later the second
edition cost 85 p
The content was a mixture of cartoons, teasers, puzzles and jokes.
Cartoons occupied most of the space. I am not sure as to what age group(s) the books
were targeted at: although part of the content was children-oriented, the vast
majority of cartoons wouldn’t have looked out of place in a regular humour
publication for grown-ups. There is barely any connection to the comic and the reasons
for using COR!! logo and Gus’ face on the covers are a mystery to me.
It is interesting to note that nearly all cartoons were signed by
artists – Whittock, Stewart, Mortimer, Leon, Rali, Cav, Chic, Baxter, Ken Pyne,
David Downe, Brian Platt and others. Most of the names or pseudonyms say
nothing to me, but three contributors were well-familiar to readers of COR!!
publications. I am referring to Crocker, Terry Bave and Sid Burgon.
From the first part of Terry Bave’s auto-biography published in
the Winter 1985 edition of GOLDEN FUN fanzine we know that he did quite a lot
of cartooning before taking up a career in comics. Judging from the drawing
style and the signature, some of Mr. Bave’s cartoons in COR!! Books of Gags
(especially in the first one) may very well be from his pre-comics cartooning
days. Here are some examples to illustrate my point:
Terry Bave signed the gags with his real name but Sid Burgon used the pen-name SWAB. My impression is that SWAB was the biggest contributor in both books. Sid Burgon’s cartooning style was different from the one he used in comics, but it is still recognisable if you take a good look. Here are some examples:
Crocker was the second biggest contributor after SWAB. Same as
Burgon’s, Crocker’s cartooning style was different from his comics work. I doubt
I’d be able to identify him as the artist if the cartoons weren’t signed:
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This
is officially my last blogpost on COR!!
I have now also updated my earlier posts dedicated to The Gasworks Gang, Jasper the Grasper and Fiends and Neighbours by adding details about appearances of the strips outside of
COR!! weeklies.
