SPORTS THEME IN BRITISH COMICS TO CELEBRATE LONDON OLYMPICS 2012 (FINAL DAY)

I was hoping to close this series of Olympic posts with something appropriately grand and spectacular but couldn’t find suitable examples to show so I’ll go with something else.

Challenge Charlie! was an interesting strip that started in Valiant in the last issue of May 1974 and was illustrated by Frank McDiarmid. Readers were invited to send all sorts of challenges for the unfortunate Charlie who couldn’t resist accepting them, no matter how dangerous or crazy they were. The reader whose challenge was accepted collected a weekly prize of £5. I decided to take a close look at the strip because I was confident I will find some sports-themed episodes – and find I did. I even found more than I was looking for but since the findings have nothing to do with sports or Olympics, I will leave them for another blogpost. Come back tomorrow for more Charlie challenges and a look into the curious origins of a few of them…

From VALIANT dated 24th August, 1974

From VALIANT dated 2nd November, 1974

From VALIANT dated 24th January, 1976

From VALIANT dated 10th July, 1976

From VALIANT dated 14th August, 1976

SPORTS THEME IN BRITISH COMICS TO CELEBRATE LONDON OLYMPICS 2012 (DAY 16)

As the 2012 Summer Olympics are slowly approaching the end, I will use today’s post to show several random strips and tick a few checkboxes in my checklist of Olympics sports that haven’t been illustrated so far in this sports-themed series. The sports in question include basketball, archery, wrestling, dressage and gymnastics. 

From Whoopee! and Shiver and Shake dated 22nd March, 1975

From The Beano No. 794 dated 5th October, 1957

From the Beano No. 787 dated 17th August, 1957

From Whoopee! dated 20th August, 1977

This BEANO cover was the closest illustration to synchronized swimming that I could find; admittedly, not close enough :) ...

SPORTS THEME IN BRITISH COMICS TO CELEBRATE LONDON OLYMPICS 2012 (DAY 15)

Here is the last batch of the Moonsters sports covers from my SPARKY collection. Followed by two busy sets of The Terrors of Tornado Street from early issues of BUSTER.

From BUSTER dated 12th August, 1961

From BUSTER dated 2nd December, 1961

SPORTS THEME IN BRITISH COMICS TO CELEBRATE LONDON OLYMPICS 2012 (DAY 14)

SCHOOL FUN was a short-lived comic in the 80s that ran for just 33 issues before it was merged into BUSTER. What made the comic stand out were the lively wraparound covers, some of which were sports-themed. I don’t know the artist’s name but he did an excellent job drawing them.

SPORTS THEME IN BRITISH COMICS TO CELEBRATE LONDON OLYMPICS 2012 (DAY 13)

How about some school sports antics from the Swots and the Blots? 

From SMASH! dated 5th April, 1969

From SMASH! dated 13th September, 1969

From VALIANT AND SMASH dated 21st April, 1971

SPORTS THEME IN BRITISH COMICS TO CELEBRATE LONDON OLYMPICS 2012 (DAY 12)

With Team GB doing brilliantly at cycling disciplines in the Olympics, let’s take a look at the sport in comics over the years. 

From THE BEANO No. 796 (14th October, 1957)

From GIGGLE dated 24th June, 1967

SPORTS THEME IN BRITISH COMICS TO CELEBRATE LONDON OLYMPICS 2012 (DAY 11)

The Sludgemouth Sloggers was a team of human freaks assembled by the town of Sludgemouth to enter the world-wide ‘What-A-Lark’ competition (the Whacky World Cup for Holiday Resorts) with a noble mission of winning a prize of 50 thousand quid in order to build a dam and save the tourism industry of their town. The team required some special skills to tackle the various stunts and weird sports used in the contest. The strip is not much of a help in illustrating modern Olympic sports but it is another nice example of a story centered around a tough athletic competition with cheering crowds and extensive media coverage. 

But the main reason why I chose to include The Sludgemouth Sloggers in my series of Olympic blogposts is this particular 6-page set. All weekly installments in JET and later the combined BUSTER AND JET were illustrated by Douglas Maxted, but the episode from the rarely-seen 1972 Birthday Book For Boys was by the ever-excellent Joe Colquhoun:

SPORTS THEME IN BRITISH COMICS TO CELEBRATE LONDON OLYMPICS 2012 (DAY 10)

Here are more of those excellent crowded Moonsters sets by Bill Ritchie from the front and back pages of SPARKY.