ALMOST THERE WITH MY SPARKY COLLECTION!

I’ll do some bragging today because recently I received a joblot of Sparky comics from 1966 and filled all of my gaps for the year. This means that my mission of collecting a full set of this interesting and scarce title is nearly complete. I am now only one number (No. 620 with the cover date of 4th December, 1976) away from being able to call myself a proud owner of one of the very few full sets that exist out there. I also need a complete copy of issue No. 110 (25th February, 1967) because mine has its centre pages missing.  Do let me know if you have spare copies of Nos. 620 and 110 to sell or swap!

The picture below shows the 4 boxes which hold my Sparky collection. All comics are bagged and boarded, two magazines per bag, one on each side of the board.

To celebrate the achievement, here’s a gallery of some landmark Sparky covers for you to enjoy:

First issue:

First cover with Sparky the character:

First Moonsters cover; they also changed the colour pattern of the logo starting from this issue; Moonsters covers are my favourite ones:

First issue with a new logo; Sparky the character returns to the front cover, ousting Moonsters to the back page:

New logo; first Barney Bulldog cover:

First issue with another new logo:

…and then another new logo:

…and finally the premiere of the last logo (a remarkably uninspired cover design, don't you think?..):

First Mummies cover:

Final issue:

HAVING FUN ON EBAY

After quite a long while, I spent some time on eBay tonight.

Beano No. 1242 is the only one I don’t have from 1966. It is the famous ‘Eric Clapton’ number that appears to be in very high demand among fans. The copy offered by the seller was described as Very Good, so I knew it wasn’t going to go cheaply, but the winning bid of £101.55 was nearly £10 more than I was prepared to offer this time… I know I will get my copy one day; in the meantime, here are the covers from the auction site, front and back:

Another seller had quite a selection of good-looking copies of WHAM! in batches of 10 issues or so. These stirred little interest on eBay tonight and went for less than a pound per issue! Quite a contrast to the prices that I paid in the process of collecting my complete run a few years ago, but that’s eBay for you… Someone got himself some good bargains!

SWEENY'S A WINNER!

Sweeny Toddler, the demonic baby who brought lots of fun to generations of children in the UK over a number of decades, first appeared in SHIVER AND SHAKE in 1973. I covered the SHIVER AND SHAKE period of the strip in an old post HERE.

This time let’s retrace Sweeny’s path from SHIVER AND SHAKE to the new comic with the clumsy title of WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER & SHAKE.

WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER & SHAKE was 32 pages thick at the time. It seems like a lot of space to fill, but Whoopee! had a strong lineup of characters as it were, and it had to accommodate quite a few refugees from SHIVER AND SHAKE who were too popular to be discontinued with the demise of their home comic (Frankie Stein, Scream Inn and a few others), so re-arrangements were inevitable and competition was tough.

Sweeny Toddler didn’t make a straightforward leap to the new comic – it had to prove its strength by participating in a poll. The Editor selected 8 strips and invited readers to vote in a Pick-A-Strip competition. Most of the entrants were either WHOOPEE!’s own (presumably less successful) features – Pop Snorer, Little Miss Muffit, Snap Happy and The Upper Crusts and the Lazy Loafers, or those from SHIVER AND SHAKE - The Desert Fox, Grimly Feendish and Sweeny Toddler. This is what Sweeny’s entry looked like in WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER & SHAKE cover-dated 23rd November, 1974:

Results were announced in the issue cover-dated 22nd March, 1975:

… and Sweeny Toddler proudly returned to the spotlight a week later in the Easter issue of WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER AND SHAKE cover-dated 29th March, 1975:

It would have been interesting to see the vote count. Perhaps it was a close call for Sweeny? Was there a chance that he would have faded into oblivion, had the runner-up received a few more votes in its favour?.. 

All Images 2016 © Egmont UK Ltd.  All rights reserved. Used with permission.

THE WHAM! EASTERS OF FRANKIE STEIN

Let’s take a look at all three Easter episodes of Frankie Stein in WHAM! comic. Those from 1965 and 1967 editions were by Ken Reid while the one in the middle (1966) was by someone else because Ken was too busy with The Queen of the Seas at the time and had to give up drawing Frankie Stein temporarily. Which is a pity because the period when Ken was substituted by another artist coincided with Frankie’s days at Madam McAbre’s Academy for Frustrated Freaks (or Monster Manor) inhabited by fiendish characters of all sorts. One can only imagine how brilliant the episodes would have been, had they been illustrated by Frankie Stein’s original artist.

Happy Easter!