Themes in Comics - Witches, Wizards and Magicians!

A regular theme in British Comics is a guest magician, who was more-often-than-not called Marvo and most certainly sporting a neatly trimmed moustache, tophat and bow-tie. Also on the magic side of things is the wizard, with their mortal enimies the witches. Wizards will always appear wearing a tall pointy hat covered with stars and moons and a matching cloak, with a long white beard somewhere inbetween!

The kids in the above strip obviously don't know the difference between a wizard and a magician! Merlin is clearly dressed as a wizard, wearing the traditional star cloak and hat!

Below is a 4 page strip from the 1984 Cor annual! Entitled Wilfred the World's Worst Wizard, the strip appeared in only a few annuals and was illustrated by Alan Rogers. As with all images on this blog, click on the thumbnail to enlarge.

Just as with all the other Cor! characters Irmantas has written a review of Wilfred over on Kazoop! 

http://kazoop.blogspot.com

Based in the modern day, it was occasionally the kids themselves who were the magicians! One such example is Bewitched Belinda, who appeared in Whizzer and Chips, illustrated by Reg Parlett.

The most common name for a witch is Winnie, and that is the name of the witch who had her very own comic strip in the early issues of Sparky. 

I could go on for ages about this theme, and scan dozens more characters and stories from various different comics, but instead I'll conclude this post with a title box from one of D.C. Thomson's well known boys story papers...