Big Comic Fortnightly Holiday Special 1994

Big Comic Fortnightly had begun in June 1988, and the first special came out that same year, although as Big Comic Fortnightly was similar to a holiday special anyway it's tricky to spot the difference at first glance - even the covers were similar. The only real difference was the page count and price; the first one had 135 pages for 95p, quite an increase from 52 pages for 35p. The covers improved with the 1992 special when Terry Bave was given the cover, and he produced some lovely full-page illustrations. The last one, the one I'm looking at here, came out in 1994. Big Comic Fortnightly was in its final months by now; it would fold in January 1995 under the name Big Comic Monthly. This special was £1.35 for 104 pages, and with exception to the front cover it was entirely reprints. It had come out in May 1994 and was in the stores for several months, here's the first advert for it, from a May edition of Buster:

The following year Big Comic Fortnightly, along with the Best of Monthly comics, were all merged together to produce The BVC, or The Big Value Comic, to give it its full name. That meant that instead of another Big Comic Fortnightly special it was replaced by a BVC special in the summer of 1995, of which only one was produced, as BVC was a failure. Oddly enough, the BVC special was more expensive and had fewer pages - £1.45 for 100 pages. I don't own the BVC special, in fact I've never actually seen an issue of BVC for sale (and I have been looking), so here's the cover taken from the ComicsUK cover gallery:

Of course, despite being entirely reprints there is still some good stuff in this special, and here's a few pages to round the post off.

Big Comic Fortnightly

Information on Fleetway's Big Comic Fortnightly seems rather difficult to find, so I've decided to write a brief summary of the information I know. Big Comic Fortnightly began with the first issue dated 11th/24th June 1988, and was a complete reprint comic using strips from Buster, Whizzer and Chips and Whoopee. As the title suggest, it was on sale for two weeks and every issue boasted 52 pages for 35p - a bargain! The price rose steadily over time from 35p to 40p, and then again to 45p, by 1991 it cost 50p, in 1993 it cost 55p and then a year later it cost 70p!

Occasionally Big Comic came with a free gift such as a badge or a balloon (as advertised above), but these were a rare treat. The first issue didn't come with a gift, unusual for a new Fleetway comic.

Most sources seem to say that Big Comic Fortnightly folded in 1994 but this isn't true, it actually changed to Big Comic Monthly in 1995. I believe there is only one issue of Big Comic Monthly, numbered #170 (to continue on with Big Comic Fortnightly's numbering), before it was replaced by BVC. Unfortunately my copy of Big Comic Monthly has had a sticker placed over the price, but I think it says £1.20. Big Comic Monthly did almost double its page count to 100 though, so the price wasn't too ridiculous.

Big Comic Fortnightly was popular enough to have a series of annuals and summer specials produced. The first of these was the 1987 annual, released for Christmas 1986. The annuals ran from 1987 to 1994, I used to have a full set of these but they got lost when I moved to New Zealand and now all I have managed to replace is the final one. The summer specials ran from 1988 to 1994. The first four had front covers very similar to the fortnightly comic but the last three had lovely full-colour illustrations by Terry Bave.

The Five Greats - No. 5 - Reg Parlett

Well, here it is at long last - the final part of The Five Greats (sorry about the wait folks)! And for number five, I have chosen Reg Parlett, not only becuase he produced so many thousands of pages of work, but has a very individual style - just like the other 4 greats!

Reg was born in 1904 in London and came from a family of artists.  His brother George and father Harry both scribbled profesionally at some point in their lives.

Reprinted in Big Comic Monthly

His first work appeared in 1926 inside a comic caled Merry and Bright, which was launched on 22nd October 1910 and lasted quite a number of years ending on 19th January 1935.

Later on he moved to more popular comics produced by  both Amalagamted Press and of course, Fleetway! Perhaps his most famous work is for Buster comic, where he drew Buster himself every week for over 10 years! In 1984, to celebrate Reg's 80th birthday, Buster delivered a huge cake in person to this fantastic artist! Five years later, Big Comic Fortnightly also had a celebration issue, celebrating his 85th!

Sadly, Red passed away on 18th November 1991, leaving behind a treasure trove of excellent comics!

Big Comic Book 1994

Fleetway, the proud producers of piles of succesful comic titles including Whizzer and Chips, Buster and Whoopee, continued making annuals for comics years after the comics themselves had long ceased weekly publications. For example - Cor! ended it's weekly comics in 1974 but the annuals continued well up until 1986! However, for some reason unknown to me, the company stopped producing any annuals after the 1994 ones had being released (even though Buster hadn't ended, as that would last up until 2000).

Big Comic never had a weekly comic, although it did have Big Comic Fortnightly - which later became Big Comic Monthly. Big Comic Fortnightly had 52 pages, whereas Big Comic Monthly had 100. After that had ended, Fleetway released the BVC (which stands for 'Big Value Comic'), which was a replacement to Big Comic Monthly, The Best of Whizzer and Chips, Buster and Whoopee. It was launched in April 1995 (the month after all 'The Best Of's' ended), and finished 7 months later in November of the same year. Instead of monthly like the comics it took after, the BVC came out fortnightly.

Even if BVC was just too late to have an annual, Big Comic did. The first book was dated 1987, but the 1994 one was the first to have a brand new cover illustration, and was the second to have a full-colour cover! (I used to own all the annuals, but sadly all but one got lost when I moved to New Zealand from the U.K.)

For £4.99 you got 223 pages of pure comics and jokes, including everything from classic favourites such as Lazy Bones, Sid's Snake and Bookworm, to less known characters such as Shrimp, Tub and Nobby and his Hobbies. Of course, it was all reprints, but whoever was putting it together didn't have a small choice, with over 30 years of weeklies to go through!

You may have noticed the 'World' stamp on the front cover (and the one below on the spine), and that's because the book was published by World International Publishing Limited. Strangely enough, this is an Egmont company (Egmont bought the rights to all Fleetway humour comics from 1950+), and yet the material is still copyright to Fleetway Editions Ltd.!! (And let's not forget that the book was printed in Italy!) Mind boggling stuff, so lets just overlook that for now.

It's a shame that Fleetway sold all the rights for their material to Egmont because if they hadn't maybe, just maybe, Buster would still be with us. And apart from a few specials from a two or three years back, Egmont aren't doing anything with, or letting anybody use, their 40 years + worth of stuff!

I feel I may have wandered off the subject a bit, so here's a few pages from the book to make up for it!