Despite the constant rain and gloomy grey skies currently above Auckland I thought I'd take a look at another summer special of the past, this time the Topper Summer Special from 1986. It's got a nice, bright, lively front cover that leads on to a comic strip over on the back page.
For their 52 pennies readers got 32 pages, with no less than 16 of them in bright full-colour. One of those pages is Jimmy Jinx and What He Thinks, illustrated by Gordon Bell.
Next up is a two-page Beryl the Peril strip by, I believe, John Dallas, in which Beryl makes her own entertainment - much to the annoyance of her dad.
Here's a very nicely drawn page about nature's weather forecasts. This seems to be more suited for the pages of the 1950's Eagle than it does The Topper but none-the-less it is a very nice set. Unfortunately I don't know who the artist is.
The final strip I'll be showing is this two-page Send For Kelly story, as it features a traditional summer holiday trip to Blackpool.
Overall it's quite a good special, with a nice mixture of humour and adventure strips, jokes and activities it is the perfect bundle for a long car journey. Despite The Topper starting in 1953 this is only the fourth Topper summer special - the first one didn't appear until as late as 1983.
2 comments:
These oversize Summer Specials really did have something 'special' about them. Even the new Beano and Dandy Specials on sale at the moment aren't quite so impressive.
They sure are nice - I'll show some more over the coming weeks.
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