Knockout Annual 1978

Let's head back to the Christmas day of 1977, and all over the country kids would be waking up to find a bright, cheery Knockout annual wrapped up under the tree, stuffed into a stocking or hidden in their pillowslips.

Although there were no full colour pages inside, IPC did their best to make the annual as bright and colourful as possible, with pages printed in red, orange, yellow, blue and even green ink! There isn't a single page in the book that doesn't have some colour on it. 

The weekly comic had run from 1971 to 1973, so by the time this came out there hadn't been a weekly issue for almost four and a half years, so I'd doubt that there were very many of the original readers still buying or receiving the annual. Still, the characters were as popular as ever, and Knockout had famously created Joker and Fuss Pott, two characters who would survive for several decades to follow. 

The 144 pages that made up this annual were composed of a healthy mixture of jokes puzzles and comic strips. The strips were drawn by some fantastic artists, such as Terry Bave, Barrie Appleby and Tom Williams. Sadly, Mike Lacey didn't draw any stories inside, even though he was a key artist on Knockout, illustrating The Super Seven. Still, he did draw and sign the cover, so we do see some of his wonderful art!

This would have been a fantastic present to recieve on Christmas morning, although it was by no means the only annual of 1978; there were dozens of others that parents could have selected. Here is just some of the competition...

By the way, if you are wondering why most copies of this annual have the date '1978' written on them and mine doesn't, it's because this copy was made without one so that it could be sold overseas at a later date. Whether or not it actually was, I can't say.

The spine from my annual, also missing the date.

Another copy of the same annual, this one including the date.

I've shown a similar example of a missing date here:

http://www.wackycomics.com/2011/12/whats-date.html

And some copies of Buster that are missing their prices here (scroll down a bit):

http://www.wackycomics.com/2011/10/cheeky-annual-1980.html

This Week In... 2011 - The Beano

Time for a second 'This Week In' post for the week, this time we head back just one year to see how much The Beano has changed over the past 12 months! Although this issue is dated 26th November, people would have been getting their copies by now if they subscribed.

Inside, things are different. Dennis the Menace's parents still looked old (I'm not a huge fan of the new look parents) and was still drawn by Barrie Appleby, and the contents page looked very dull and boring compared to the bottom one which appeared in The Beano a few weeks ago.

By the way, if you are rummaging through your comics and want something to look at, compare the contents pages in Beano #3659 and #3660! Yep - they're exactly the same!

Further on in the comic and, even six months before, the comic was still building up to the Olympic Games, with an advertisement comic strip called Wenlock and Mandeville, illustrated by Nigel Parkinson. 

Fred's Bed was still in his original form, illustrated by David Sutherland. In this strip Fred travels to a military base and ends up in a comic crossover - going to school at Bash Street!

At the time The Beano was running a reprint series of two different classic strips. The first was Number 13 Beano Street, illustrated by John Geering...

...And the second was The Germs, illustrated by David Sutherland.

The Beano has changed rather a lot over the past year, who knows where it will head in 2013. If the recent revamp is anything to go by, it looks like the comic will only be improving!

ARRRRRR!!!!!!! Pirates of the Caribeano!

Surprisingly, I enjoyed this weeks Beano MORE than the Dandy (for the first time since the Dandy revamp)! Maybe it was Barrie Appleby's amazing Dennis the Menace artwork, or Ken H. Harrison's Minnie the Minx (with the striped background, or even the 50's "As the bell rings stories"! Another enjoyable bit is a whole page of Gnasher! A bit like Gnasher's Tale, Gnasher bit(e) shows a story from his point of view, and this week with quite a funny ending! An amazing way to finish off the comic. I enjoyed all of these, but of course, a brilliant comic always has a down-side.

First of all, I didn't quite understand the Ratz story, but never mind. The artwork was good. Also, with the Bash street Kids pullout, it isn't a pull-out. It just isnt. Just because you've got readers drawings on page 15 and jokes on page 18, does not make it a pull-out. It's been on the centre pages for years and so technically it's always been a pull-out. Freds foul facts (which I find is ok) and Roger's Dodge Diary (possibly a modern day version of Roger's Dodge Clinic) aren't going down well with the readers. Maybe Sterling will replace them with something else, maybe even a new character! Who knows? On the other hand this weeks Dandy was good, but some parts were boring and pointless. Ok, so Kid Cops, Justin Beaver and George vs Dragon were good, I found that the Supervision Song contest voting cards and Eurovision Wrong contest were boooooooring! Bananaman wasn't brilliant this week either.

I think I'll just leave it at that.

Ok, I'm going to start blogging normally again as from my next blog, which will be a review on The Beano 3D Annual.