It's time to return to Sun comic in the second part of looking at it's constantly changing style. Last time we left off at #101 and as we can see below only a small number of issues later Alfred the Great had vanished from the cover. This is #130, but he had gone by at least #112.
Here's a strip from inside that issue, called The Alley Cat.
Only weeks later had he being christened "Ollie", and appeared on the front cover, under the new title of Ollie: Our Playful Puss!
He was replaced all too soon though by Moko: The Mischievous Monkey, who appeared in full colour! This version was the first time Sun had ever had a full colour cover. Below is the cover to #164, one of Moko's earliest appearances (but not his first).
Ollie still appeared on the cover though - the back cover. Except they made the back cover look like the front cover, which is a little confusing.
This was sorted out by #165.
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| Back cover to #165. |
And, after changing to one full-page image of Billy the Kid, and then him on a red background, it stayed that way for five years until 1957.
It then went down in quality to a black, white and red colour again, before folding for good. I don't have any of these later issues and the only images I could find were these, the photo from Ebay Australia and the scan from Denis Gifford's International Book Of Comics.
This was the last change for Sun and it folded in 1959, never gaining popularity throughout the country, and not even been sold in a lot of it! Hopefully you've enjoyed a look at this interesting comic, which just couldn't sit still for long without having a facelift. You can read the first part of this post here:
http://www.wackycomics.com/2013/08/the-changing-face-of-sun-part-1.html
3 comments:
It's interesting to note that both the Sun Weekly and Comet (both originally owned by J. B. Allen before being bought by the Amalgamated Press) were seemingly only available in New Zealand (check the notices on the bottom of the last page in the later issues).
It seems to me that Gordon and Gotch Australia never sold these in Australia (unless someone can prove me wrong) :?
I'm surprised it reached New Zealand as it (apparently) didn't reach the north of England!
lol, check out the free gift advertised on that last cover! It's only a triangle shaped banger! Beano and Dandy both gave away the same thing in that era and slightly later, with different designs obviously.
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