This is part two of my detailed look at MONSTER FUN ANNUAL 1978. You can read the first part in the previous post HERE.
Ian Knox illustrated and signed the three-page set of Terror TV lampooning Top of the Pops with Tony Blackout (= Tony Blackburn) as host. Here we meet some performers who are now almost forgotten:
... and some stars who are still big today:
Both two-pagers of Ticklish Allsorts with
Les Barton artwork were in the best tradition of Monster Fun Comic weeklies.
Here is one:
The book had another story of Terry and the ‘Dactyl,
the second one after 1977 Annual. In it Terry Briggs and his pet – the great
flying prehistoric reptile – descend from their home in Inca
gold city high on a plateau to recover the gold plate which they accidentally
dropped down. Down on the ground, they confront a ruthless gang of bearded desperado
raiders and liberate Argentine doctor senorita Isabella Mendez whom they have
kidnapped for ransom. The gorgeous good doctor rewards the lad with the gold
plate given to her as a gift by the natives, and Terry and the ‘dactyl return
to the safety of their home on the great plateau. The best thing about the
story is that the illustrator had sneaked in his signature in one of the panels
which helped me identify him as Giorgio Giorgetti. This means that I can now confirm
the name of the artist who illustrated quite a few adventure strips in IPC
comics, including The Ghostly Galleon in SHIVER AND SHAKE and most importantly Rat Trap in COR!!
 |
| Panel with the artist's signature |
The Annual had one more adventure thriller called The
Menace of Formula X. It first appeared in COR!! weeklies and all 20
pages of the original story were reprinted the Annual. I covered it in detail HERE a couple of years ago.
Other reprints included the usual selection of Hot
Rod, Stoneage Brit Ancient Nit and The Robot Maker, all
re-arranged into two-pagers and some coloured-in. With the two installments of The Robot Maker in this
Annual, the number of reprints of the strip in MFC publications summed up to 19
which meant that the stock of original episodes from the COR!! run in 1970 was
now exhausted.
The most exciting thing about this Annual is that it has
two Badtime Bedtime Books. Both are classic BBBs in everything except that they aren’t pull-outs.
The Story of Traffic Island by Robert Loony Stevedore is presented by none other than Leonard Rottingsocks
– ‘office boy, wit, and prehistoric chip buttie collector’, whatever this
means. The Traffic Island is actually a plot of lush greenery inside a busy traffic
roundabout. Little Jim Ladd is sent there to fetch
the Mayor’s hat that was blown off and landed there. He meets two weird inhabitants
of the island – the poor Ben Gooni who was accidentally left behind when the
road was built, and the evil Long Gone Silver who was ‘deported’ by the Mayor
and now wears Mayor’s hat in revenge. Jim is a smart lad: not only does he recover
the hat but he also helps Ben Gooni break free from the island.
The story was
interrupted a few times by promotional intermissions featuring the loony Dr.
Bonce, 'noted brain surgeon and twit':
I don’t know the name of the artist but he was not nearly as good as Mike Brown who drew the second BBB - the absolutely brilliant Badtime
Bedtime Annual Story Starchy and Butch. Here it is
in full:
All Images 2014 © Egmont UK
Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with
permission.
