Sunday, September 16, 2012

Buster's 30th Birthday


Buster turned 30 in 1990, and since the comic was still around back then, a special 30th anniversary issue was launched to celebrate the occasion! Not every character got into the feel of things, but those that did had great strips! However, on the front cover the only thing advertising the special number was the advert on the left of the strip. Buster himself has a street party, and all the characters from his own strip turn up, but Mr. Crabbe is having none of it!



Lew Stringer drew an excellent Tom Thug strip, which starred many of the characters from Buster over the years, including Gums (originally drawn by Robert Nixon), Hedley Deadley (originally drawn by Martin Baxendale) and Faceache (drawn by Ken Reid)!




Specky Hector's Totally Crucial History of Buster Comic very briefly summed up 30 years of the "world's greatest comic". A detailed summary would never fit into just one issue! This page was also reprinted in the final issue of Buster.



The centre pages were taken up by a quiz, one for the modern day reader, and one for a reader of the past (your parents), to see how much has changed in 30 years!



Chalky's strip was a made up history of comics, dating back, of course, to the stoneage - when all comics were carved into extremely thick slabs of stone.


The Winners were entering a cake competition, and make a Buster comic cake. Wheras it looked great, it didn't taste the same...! In the final box, Pa Winner says "Great! Now we've got 30 years to practise for the next one! Heh, Heh!".... oh, if only!


The final strip to celebrate the big event was Terry Bave's Double Trouble, who, for once, agreed with eachother and organised a giant party with all of the Buster characters!


5 comments:

Harry Rickard said...

That was a great read! Thanks George!

I loved Lew's pages he did! Especially that two page Tom Thug story! I can;t help but feel there's a reference to Jonah when Tom says "Argh! It's 'IM!" when he sees Faceache - after all, both were by Ken!

Also love Lew's cameos he's done in it - Gums and Kid Kong both look very impressive! Brilliant ghosting!

Peter Gray said...

Lew's pages are brilliant..and you are right about the Jonah reference..

Lew Stringer should be in The Beano today..he did some super busy poster pages for the comic with loads of super hero kids...

Lew can be very creative at times..

also love Tom's extreem expressions...

George Shiers said...

Defintaly a Ken Reid thing there!

And he should definatly be in The Beano! I doubt Super School would return so maybe its time for a new character?

George Shiers said...

Saying that, Super School was a great strip!

Lew Stringer said...

Thanks folks. I haven't heard from The Beano for ages so it doesn't look as though I'll have anything coming up there anytime soon unfortunately.

I really enjoyed doing that Buster anniversary strip. You're correct, Harry. The "Argh! It's 'IM!" dialogue was a nod to Jonah, just for a bit of fun.

"Lew can be very creative at times.."

Thanks Peter. I wrote all my own Tom Thug scripts, and basically had a free reign so that helped.