The saga of
Stan Stilton began in MFC issue No. 20. Agent Stan Stilton was an employee of
D.R.A.I.N. – Department for Removal of
All Internal Nuisances. In the opening episode the daft agent believes he
has captured a criminal mastermind, only to find out that his prisoner is in
fact the Number One of D.R.A.I.N. Sick and tired of Stilton who is an idiot and
a constant source of trouble, Chief decides to get rid of him by sending him on
a mission to capture Gruesome Gannet Gunge and his gang of grisly midgets. The
elusive World Enemy No. 1 strikes first by abducting Stilton and taking him to his
gang’s secret hideout in Gungitrania. The abduction occurs in the middle of a ‘job
interview’ for the position of Stilton’s assistant. Moments before Gannet Gunge
drives Stan Stilton away in his Gungemobile, the trouble-prone agent hires a
young assistant by the name of Charlie Cheddar who proves to be somewhat smarter
and luckier than his boss...
This was the beginning of the 20-weeks long
action-packed series of hairbreadth escapes and last-minute rescues for Stan
Stilton as he repeatedly got in and out of Gannet Gunge’s clutches with the
help of Charlie Cheddar and some other very strange aides. The plot developed
at breakneck speed, in defiance of the laws of physics and logic, and was often
jazzed up with Monty Python–like absurdity and mad intermissions which made S.O.S
(Save Our Stan) stand out amongst traditional MFC strips.
Both
opposing parties had friends and aides: Gannet Gunge and his midget menacing
minions had Gunge’s Mumsy, Jorkins the torturer both of whom lived in Grisly
Grange – the ancestral home of the Gunges, and a pack of Gungitranian monsters
(croco-dorkles, the dreaded Boogly Woogie and others), while Stan Stilton and
Charlie Cheddar had the undercover ally who was a master of disguise, the
intrepid messenger parrot, a herd of patriotic British ferrets and last but not
least – the readers of MFC. Every single episode of S.O.S (Save Our Stan)
ended with a puzzle or a coded message which the readers were challenged to
solve or decipher in order to help Stan get out of his weekly scrape. The
readers were not expected to send their answers to MFC – the idea was that they
solved the puzzles and imagined they were indeed helping the hero who would
otherwise be doomed. In the beginning of each weekly instalment the scriptwriter
pretended that readers’ essential help was received and well-appreciated, while
the evil Gannet Gunge sometimes referred to readers of S.O.S (Save Our Stan) as meddlers.
The story
ended when Stan’s young assistant disguised himself as a housemaid and laced
the midgets’ tea with Gunge’s monster-making serum. The serum transformed them
into monsters who then turned on their former master.
Let us not
forget that the real reason why the chiefs of D.R.A.I.N. sent Stan Stilton on
the mission was to get rid of the troublesome employee and they certainly didn’t expect the loopy
agent to do away with the criminal mastermind. So when Stan phoned in with his "mission accomplished" report and requested transport
back to D.R.A.I.N., No. 1 and No. 2 realised their plan had failed. They knocked up
this last puzzle and hoped it would take Stan and Charlie years to work through,
‘unless those rotten readers’ helped them out.
Frankie Stein, the Honorary Editor of MFC, saw that Stan Stilton took a well-deserved
holiday after MFC No. 39 which contained the finale of
this interesting serial. IMHO the b/w two-pagers of S.O.S (Save Our Stan) with
its wacky humour and weird puzzles were an excellent ingredient in the MFC
package. The artist was Nick Baker who signed nearly all the sets. Starting
from No. 28 the episodes of S.O.S (Save Our Stan) came with a
double signature HITCH and Nick Baker:
Was Hitch
the script writer? Mr. Baker included a few portraits of the artist, the writer
and the editor in the strip. I don’t know if these are faithful caricatures or
simply generic drawings of people in the professions, but here they are
nonetheless:
I am sure
I’ve seen the strip reprinted but I can’t remember where. I will update the
post with the details when I come across those reprints again.
