It's a new month so I'm back and with the recent news of the 2000AD summer special (or Sci-Fi Special as they call it) coming out I thought I'd use it as an excuse to dive into my collection of summer specials and take a look at one here. The one I've decided to go with is none other than the 1992 Whoopee Holiday Special. As far as I am aware, this is the last of the Whoopee holiday specials. It cost £1.10 and, excluding the cover and the related strip, is completely reprint. That related strip is the Sweeny Toddler strip on the inside of the front cover.
For their £1.10 readers were treated to a beautiful (come on, that Jimmy Hansen cover is amazing) photogravure comic, 64 waxy pages, half of those pages in full-colour. I'm glad that Fleetway didn't give the whole comic full-colour; their attempt at full-colour on the recently folded Whizzer and Chips and Buster was, quite frankly, awful, and would have probably used the same stiff paper - I really like the paper they have used and the colouring is splendid.
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| The colouring in the Whoopee special, compared to the original. As you can see, it is far brighter and I think it looks a lot better. |
Even with the return of the 2000AD special this year I don't think the summer special will ever really return; they simply don't feel... "special" anymore, in comparison to the full-colour comics. And with overseas holidays becoming more and more popular as they get cheaper it's harder to for publishers to get them seen, no longer can they be sold at the newsagents of various British seaside towns. It's a shame as they really were fantastic, and I will probably be looking at a few more over the coming months.
15 comments:
This Whoopee Special may also be the rarest of them all – I’ve been trying to get hold of a copy for a few years now and never even seen it once on eBay…
It certainly must be rare because I don't think I've ever seen it. Brilliant cover sure enough, so I think I'd remember it if it was in my collection.
Saw a copy of the last ever Dandy summer special last week, will have to look out for it again looked quite good. Mike,
I remember towards the dying days of Summer Specials, the Beano started doing "Bumper Value Packs" containing four different titles in a plastic bag - varying combinations of Comic Libraries, Classics From The Comics and Beano Superstars.
Now THAT was good holiday reading, lasting a whole six-hour car journey most of the time.
Hope anyone can help me, I purchased the Dandy last ever summer special today, when I got home to read it I found it was printed last year, so my question is did it come out last year, if so why is it out on the shelves now? thanks for any help. Mike,
It did come out last year, yep - it's probable that it didn't sell out, so they just kept it on the shelves. I know in my shop we've still got the last ever editions of Nuts and the Daily Post on the shelves, someone's bound to want them.
Thanks Two headed boy, just after I posted that I found a post George did last year on it, but as the old saying goes if you don't know ask, that's why these blogs work well, thanks again, Mike.
hello mate. any idea when the 2000ad special comes out?
thanks
Gobshyte
Release date is 6th August, priced £3.50 for six complete stories, 52 pages.
Lew Stringer wrote a blog post on it here:
http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.nz/2014/05/return-of-summer-special.html
G'day George, a little bit off topic, but I'm having problems loading your site, and I think it's the same problem I had with my blog site, the related posts plugin. I had to remove the plugin. Anyone else having problems with this?
What exactly isn't loading Bruce, the whole site? I'm not too sure what a plugin is to be honest...
What happened was that it would take forever to load and freeze uo, and in the end, you couldn't click the images to make them larger.
I have since fixed it now, as I have gone back to IE and turned compatibility mode on. :)
Managed to get one of these beauties the other week, was on Buy it now so I snapped it up.
Been looking for this for ages to complete my Whoopee specials.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/131188060616
Nice buy anon - like Irmantas and Kid said it must be rare as, besides my own copy, that is the only one I've ever seen! It's a good comic, enjoy it :)
Whoops - just realised that the 2000AD special is out on sale UNTIL the 6th August, Anon.
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