MONSTER FUN COMIC SUMMER SPECIAL 1976

The second and the last MONSTER FUN COMIC Summer Special came out for the Summer holidays of 1976, it had 64 pages and cost 25 p.

Contents: Frankie Stein’s “Wish You Were Here” Postcards (3 pages, including one in full colour on back page, all by Jim Crocker), Kid Kong (two episodes – a 3-pager and 2-pager, both by Robert Nixon), Martha’s Monster Make-Up (a 2-pager by Frank McDiarmid), Stoneage Brit Ancient Nit (6 pages of reprints from COR!!, including two in full colour), The Robot Maker (6 pages of reprints from COR!!, including two in full colour, artwork by Frank McDiarmid), Brainy and His Monster Maker (a 2-pager), Sam’s Son (a 2-pager by Robert Nixon), Hot Rod (3 pages of reprints from WHIZZER AND CHIPS, artwork by Alf Saporito), Penalty Point (spot-the-difference puzzle with a panel from Hire A Horror or Rent A Ghost by Reg Parlett), Dough Nut and Rusty (a 2-pager by someone, possibly Jim Crocker, ghosting Trevor Metcalfe), Swing Along With Kong (spot-the-difference puzzle with a panel from an episode in the weekly by Robert Nixon), X-Ray Specs (a 3-pager), Mummy’s Boy (a 2-pager by Norman Mansbridge), You Gotta Laugh! (2 pages of gags by Mike Lacey), Freaky Farm (a 2-pager by Les Barton), Teddy Scare (a 2-pager in colour on the centerspread by the regular artist), Clean up With Teach (spot-the-difference puzzle with a panel from the weekly, artwork by Tom Williams), Draculass (a 2-pager by Terry Bave), Well, What do You Know! (2 pages of jokes by Mike Lacey), The Little Monsters (one page by Jim Crocker), Monsters from an Unknown Planet feature (3 pages), Art’s Gallery (a 2-pager), Meanie McGenie (1 page), Creature Teacher (a 4-pager by Tom Williams), Film Funny Feature (1 page), Gums (a 2-pager by Artie Jackson).

The lavish front cover by Bob Nixon promised an exciting episode of Gums inside. Disappointingly, it was only a rushed two-pager tucked away towards the end of the paper.

Some of the other MFC stars got a better treatment. As could be expected, there was quite a lot of Kid Kong. Robert Nixon illustrated two stories. In the first one Kid tries to find a way to cool down on a hot day at the seaside and in the other one he has a very intense craving for ‘nanas:

In Creature Teacher the teach takes Class3X on their summer outing to an old castle where the little horrors find temporary shelter behind thick medieval walls. This time it takes the teach quite an effort to subdue Class3X: first he transforms himself into a mechanical digger to fill the moat, then turns into a battering ram to smash through the gates and finally grows a shell to protect himself against artillery fire. Class3X end up in the chamber of little horrors in the dungeons. Artwork by Tom Williams.

X-Ray Specs was also given the privilege of a 3-pager but was illustrated by someone else rather than the regular artist. I get an impression he was undecided whom he wanted to ghost – Terry Bave or Mike Lacey:

In the 2-page episode of Martha’s Monster Make-Up illustrated by Frank McDiarmid Martha is enjoying herself on the pier and brings her monster make-up with her.

Draculass, the other female MFC star, had some fun biting people’s necks at the swimming pool:

The list of reprint strips was expanded by adding Alf Saporito’s Hot Rod from Whizzer and Chips to the usual pair of Stoneage Brit Ancient Nit and The Robot Maker, both from COR!! A few of the episodes of the latter two were coloured-in. Stoneage Brit looks tolerable in colour but the artwork of Frank McDiarmid is too fine and detailed for added colour in The Robot Maker, IMHO.

The 3-page feature Monsters from an Unknown Planet promoted a new film presented by Miracle Films. The images used in this Summer Special were b/w but the advert says the film was in colour.

For dessert, here are two complete stories. The episode of Freaky Farm was the first one ever by Les Barton who did an excellent job drawing it. Mr. Barton was very good at monsters.

Sam’s Son is a strip I don’t remember seeing elsewhere. Another one-off experiment, perhaps?

Earlier in this post I said this was the last MFC Holiday Special but the truth is that after MFC was absorbed by BUSTER, starting from 1977 BUSTER was given two Holiday Specials every year: one was BUSTER HOLIDAY SPECIAL and the other one was BUSTER AND MONSTER FUN HOLIDAY SPECIAL. The practice continued for many years: the last edition with the combined title that I have in my collection is from 1994, and there may have been more later on. I will not cover them in this series because I think they are in the BUSTER territory, but I'll show a small selection of covers. Here are some earlier ones:

…and here are a few from the nineties:

All Images 2014 © Egmont UK Ltd.  All rights reserved. Used with permission.

END OF THE YEAR ROUND-UP 2014

Here we are at the turn of the year again, and it is time for me to look back and ponder over the results of 2014 in terms of my UK comics hobby.

This is the last X-mas number of
Sparky that I didn't have and acquired
in 2014

I’ve almost stopped buying things on eBay, mostly because my collection of the titles I am interested in is nearly complete, also because I visit eBay less frequently than I used to. Besides, I am not in the UK and I’ve made a decision as a matter of principle not to buy from sellers who don’t offer international shipping, whatever their reasons might be. I am past the stage when I used to contact them asking would they please ship abroad. If they don’t want my money, I’ll take my business elsewhere.

Looking at my current wants lists, I can see that I’m now stuck at the diabolical figure of 6-6-6: I am missing 6 issues for each of the three remaining titles I am trying to collect complete sets of – BUSTER, GIGGLE and SPARKY. A year ago it was 9 issues of BUSTER, 16 of GIGGLE and as many as 35 of SPARKY. At this rate of filling the gaps, there is a good chance I will complete the sets during 2015!

2014 has been a good year in terms of building my collection of the first decade of PLAYHOUR young children’s comic. I try to concentrate on the period 1958 – 1965 which was the time when the magazine featured Gulliver the Guinea-Pig stories with superb artwork by Philip Mendoza and Gordon Hutchings. A few months ago I bumped into the complete year 1961 going cheap online from an American dealer and bought it without hesitation. It would have been interesting to learn how the PLAYHOURs found themselves on that side of the Atlantic, but the seller wasn’t very talkative, unfortunately. A few days before X-mas I was approached by another Gulliver the Guinea-Pig enthusiast whose collection is in the form of scanned images – not exactly my thing, but still OK until I get hold of hard copies. I helped him fill one or two gaps in his list and he sent me a few of the episodes that I didn’t have. Between the two of us, we are now only 50 or so instalments away from the complete run of this magical series which continued for more than 7 years! Here a is a couple of dramatic Gulliver panels from the late 50s:

... and here's one in the holiday mood from 1960:

A year ago I wrote about how I started a library of bound volumes and mentioned my plans to collect complete runs of THE BEANO and THE DANDY from 1970 until the last newsprint issues in the mid-8os, and have them bound in half-year hardcover volumes. It took me surprisingly little time to build the Beano set, but I am still working on the Dandy. Towards the end of “packaging” the Beanos I realized that the book-binders I was using were equipped to make nice colour covers, not just plain black cloth ones. I am still kicking myself for realizing this so late because those last volumes look so much better. It’s a shame the black covers of the earlier volumes can’t be replaced without damaging the books, so I’ll have to settle for the next best thing which is colour dust jackets and which has been the original plan anyway. 

As regards this blog, you may have noticed that new posts are becoming less frequent. Looking back, when I started Kazoop!! in 2012, it took me less than a year to cover the entire run of COR!! – weeklies, annuals and specials, the lot. 2013 was the year of Shiver and Shake on Kazoop!!, and although Sh&Sh had a much shorter run than COR!!, it took me slightly more than a year to cover the title. The whole of 2014 was not enough for me to close the chapter of MONSTER FUN COMIC and it looks like I will spend the first two months of 2015 writing about the MFC Summer Special (there is only one left) and the rest of MF annuals. Kazoop!! is loosing steam (fellow bloggers know that researching and writing a blog takes a lot of time) and I’ll probably take a break from the regular format of doing comprehensive series of articles on a particular title. I am still considering the monumental quest of reviewing the entire eleven year run of WHOOPEE! but it may take some time before I proceed with it, and even if the WHOOPEE! series never materializes, I believe that one day they will still give me a medal for covering three great UK comics titles and putting together a decent reference resource for anyone who might be interested in them :). That said, I have no intention of neglecting this blog so be sure to drop by in 2015 for lots of British comics goodness, including news about two projects that I am currently involved in, which I will unveil as soon as I am in a position to do so. Here is a little something by way of a “teaser”, albeit not a very straightforward one…

In the meantime, I wish you all a very Happy New Year 2015!