welcome and enjoy!

Hi and welcome to my blog about comics from other people’s childhood! It is dedicated primarily to British humour comics of the 60s and 70s. The reason they are not from my childhood is simply because I didn’t live in the UK back then (nor do I live there now). I knew next to nothing about them until fairly recently but since then I’ve developed a strong liking for the medium and amassed a large collection, including a number of complete or near complete sets. My intention is to use this blog as a channel for sharing my humble knowledge about different titles, favourite characters and creators as I slowly research my collection.

QUICK TIP: this blog is a sequence of posts covering one particular comic at a time. The sequence follows a certain logic, so for maximum results it is recommended that the blog is read from the oldest post up.

Copyright of all images and quotations used here is with their respective owners. Any such copyrighted material is used exclusively for educational purposes and will be removed at first notice. All other text copyright Irmantas P.



Friday, October 2, 2015

CAP-LESS BUSTER





A couple of posts ago I showed a cover of BUSTER by Leo Baxendale in which Buster’s cap flew off – a very unusual occurrence indeed because Buster was famous for never appearing without his trademark accessory. He always kept the lid tight on his head and took extra care not to loose it, whatever the circumstances. Even when he had to wear something else (e.g. a cook’s hat, King’s hat, an army helmet, etc.), he always donned it on top of his green checkered piece of headwear.


It is believed that the only time when Buster was shown cap-less was in the very last issue of the comic (see the image above) but the Baxendale cover confirms this wasn’t the case, so I decided to see if I can find more examples.

So far I have checked the run of BUSTER from the first post-tabloid number (30th Oct., 1965) till the end of 1971, and found two. The first one came up right in the beginning of the run.  Buster made such a fuss about keeping his cap on that I find it surprising it took the scriptwriter so long to come up with a story in which someone played a trick on him. I don't know the name of the artist who drew this one:



The second example is interesting because Nadal made an exception and showed Buster cap-less without any reason at all, just like Baxendale had a couple of years before him. It is the only time that Nadal ignored the rule during the run I’ve checked.



I will check other issues when I have time and report my findings in due course…

Friday, September 25, 2015

MORE BUSTER COVERS BY BAX



Below are the remaining two Buster covers by Leo Baxendale from 1967, followed by examples of The Cave Kids and The Pirates by Bax from the same period. It appears that the artist also did the lettering throughout the runs of both strips.





By way of a teaser for the next post, I can say that I decided to check if I can find more examples of cap-less Buster. Come back soon to see some results of my quest. In the meantime, here’s an image of Buster-less cap from 1985:

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

BUSTER COVERS BY LEO BAXENDALE



The Spanish artist Angel Nadal was responsible for the vast majority of BUSTER covers in the period from 1962 till 1974. The few exceptions included six episodes of Buster's Diary by Leo Baxendale in 1967 (the issues cover-dated 6th May, 15th July, 5th Aug, 26th Aug, 23rd Sept and 21st Oct).

My speculation is that the Editor wanted to have insurance in case Nadal’s artwork didn’t arrive on time in the post from Barcelona, so he asked Leo Baxendale to draw some and kept them “in reserve”. Here are some of the covers. I prefer Nadal’s version of Buster’s Diary. 





Monday, September 14, 2015

BLACK LOGO BEANOS FROM 1954


For a 7-issue stretch, Nos. 631 – 637 inclusive, in 1954 the Beano came with a black title logo. I’ve got no idea what prompted DC Thomson to carry out this brief experiment but the seven issues seem to have some extra appeal to collectors and are more difficult to come by. I have recently received the last missing issue of my “black-title-logo-run” and can now show the complete gallery of the covers. Whatever the colour of the logo, Dudley D. Watkins’ artwork is always nice to see: 











All Images 2015 © DC Thomson, Ltd.  All rights reserved.