Desperate Dan needs no introduction, as he is probably Britain's most famous strong man! Originally from the first Dandy in 1937, the he-man has survived almost 75 years in the comic and remains, according to the latest survey, the most popular character in the comic today! But he isn't the only super human to have appeared in comics, and here's a few more!
The Dandy's sister comic The Beano has had a few through it's time, and currently stars Bananaman! - a little boy who turns into a super-strong nit whenever he eats a banana! In a recent post I wrote about Danger - Len at Work, but the comics most succesful has to go to Pansy Potter! Pansy began in issue #21 (The first christmas issue!) and instead a being a muscly man, like most other characters, she was a young girl! I'm not too sure, but I think this may have been drawn by Jimmy Clark.
Going even further back than The Beano and The Dandy (although this character did in fact feature in The Beano), we arrive at Adventure comic! Illustrated by Dudley Watkins, Strang the Terrible was rather similar to Morgyn the Mighty, who appeared in Beano #1. Desbite being known as 'Terrible', Strang was the hero, always helping others out of unfortunate adventures!
Even the annuals had special super-strong characters made up for them. Young Ben is a text story from the 1968 Sparky annual, and I'm fairly certain that this is just a one off story.
Thomson weren't the only ones to use the idea, Fleetway would use the theme, but in several different ways! First up is Scared Stiff Sam. He certainly is strong, you can tell just by looking at him, but unlike the others Sam is afraid of anything and everything!
Another take was Frankie Stein! Half human, half monster, Frankie would cause more damage than a tornado, which involved everything from destroying his house to bringing home Big Ben tower to set his watch! Here he is destroying a brick wall for the 1977 annual, illustrated by Robert Nixon!
Gal Capone was a short lived strip from Whoopee, but she is, like Pansy Potter, another example of a female strongman! It was a very good strip too, except that maybe her arms are a little too big!
The Big One was an experiment comic that lasted for only 19 issues (more info on it here), and inside was a strip entitled Tough Tex. Because this comic is all reprint (except for Big One himself), Tough Tex originally appeared in The Comet, a comic from the 1950's. (Thanks to Clive Huckstepp for confirming this.)
And of course some still live on today, with Jamie Smart doing an excellent job on Desperate Dan and Wayne Thompson on Bananaman (and John Geering's reprints in the Beano)!
The Beano comic that went on sale 62 years ago this week is a very significant issue in the comics history. Issue #405, dated 22nd April 1950, sold almost two million copies - making it the highest selling issue to date! The exact number is 1,974,072! Yet despite this, I've only ever seen one up for sale - which is the copy you see above that I purchased from eBay.
The cover star is Biffo the Bear, who took over from Big Eggo two years earlier, and was to last there for several decades, before Dennis the Menace took over in 1974! Big Eggo can still be seen on the cover though, up on the left hand side of the logo! In this issue the nation's favourite bear wants to capture a frog to keep as a pet, and ends up winning a coconut! As always it was drawn By Dudley Watkins, who signed his work as D.D.W. (his middle name was Dexter). He was one of the few artists to be able to sign his work, but now of course they all can! Dudley didn't always sign his Biffo stories as D.D.W though, in Biffo's first ever cover story (on issue #327) he signed it simply as 'Dudley Watkins'.
In the early years of The Beano, and other comics as well from around the 1920's - 1950's, there were several comic strips on one page. There is only one page like this in this issue, but often in comics it was common, and a centre spread was used for as many as 10 strips! This page has 3 stories, all of which began in the very first Beano from 1938! Have - A - Go Joe at the top, followed by Maxy's Taxi and The Magic Lollipops!
Text stories were common in comics, and sometimes appeared more than actual strips themselves! By the '50's they were losing out though, and by the '60's the were all gone (although The Phoenix has a text feature every week, which is mostly sections from newly released novels). In this comic there are two text stories - Deep-Sea Danny's Iron Fish and shown here The Boy With The Wonder Horse. As you can see, the second page was shared with a strip cartoon called Little Dead-Eye Dick, a kid who has a gun! Definatly something that wouldn't be allowed today.
Deep-Sea Danny's Iron Fish also shared a page with a short comic strip. This one is a suprisingly Desperate Dan like character - DANGER! Len at Work!
Strip cartoons with text underneath the panels were also a common feature, sometimes speech bubbles wouldn't be included so to understand the story you've got to read the text underneath, or simply guess! One thing I love about these strips is that the story can be so much different between what is said in the speech bubbles and what is said underneath! Again, there are two examples in this issue, The Runaway Robinsons and The Daring Deeds of Sinbad The Sailor, seen below.
The back page starred the incredibly popular Pansy Potter, who by this time had become Pansy Potter in Wonderland! This time Pansy tries to win a slap up feed by awakening the princess, but ends up knocking herself out - a rare event for somebody of such strength!
Even though the sales may not be as impressive as they were back in 1950, the Beano is still selling around 40,000 copies a week!
