Meet The Winners

Launched on 5th May 1979, Jackpot was another addition in the long line of IPC comics and, although not well-remembered as a title that particularly stood out, it certainly had its moments. One such moment came about a year and a half into its run, when The Winners arrived in issue #75. As the first panel makes clear, "the Winner family decided to enter every competition going", and the lengths they would go to and the prizes they would win were the winning formula (pardon the pun) for this long running strip. In fact, The Winners proved very popular, surviving Jackpot's merger with Buster in February 1982 and continued, admittedly in reprint form, up until the last issue in 2000. Although The Winners later came to be drawn by Mike Lacey and Jimmy Hansen, this first strip is actually the work of Jimmy Glen.

Summer Special Advertisements

I've been looking at a few summer specials over the past months so today I thought I'd do something slightly different and look at the advertisements for various specials. We start off by heading back to 1980 - the 3rd of May to be precise, and take a look inside that week's issue of Jackpot, which contained this nice ad for that year's Krazy Summer Special.

Come forwards 364 days to the Jackpot dated 2nd May 1981, and you may be surprised to hear that it contains no less than three ads for summer specials! The first two of those, the Buster and Monster Fun and Cor specials, share a page...

...with the ad for the penultimate Frankie Stein special appearing later in the comic.

Moving away from Jackpot let's head back to 1968. On this cover of this July edition of The Beano the cover star, Biffo the Bear, rushes around trying to get that year's special.

There was a similar cover a year later.

And here's a half-page ad for the 1970 Twinkle and Beano specials.

Come forwards to the Whizzer and Chips of '76 and here's an ad for the one and only Vulcan special.

Back (or should that be forwards) to 1980 and we find an ad for that year's Beezer special in the pages of Nutty.

And finally, I'll wrap up this post with a half-page ad for the second Action special, found in Krazy comic dated 2nd July 1977.

Fleetway Firsts - The Park

The Park, or 'The Continuing Story of The Park' as it was originally known, was a fantastic strip that appeared within the pages of Jackpot. Tom Paterson illustrated it and there is so much energy in it that I feel this really is the height of Tom's career (with the possible exception of Sweeny Toddler). "The Park - Its Gates Open Inside" read the strapline on the cover of Jackpot #107, dated 6th June 1981 as readers were introduced to the characters for the first time. Normally a two-pager, the first episode was three pages long, with page one presenting a map of the new park. Parky, who would go on to be the strip's main character, only appeared once in the pioneering episode.

The strip was originally designed as a humorous soap/sitcom, with each story leading on to the following, but over time it became a regular one-off story following Parky's adventures, hence the loss of "the continuing story of" from the title. It is these early strips that I feel are the best, both in art and story. Here's another early episode.

The Park was popular enough to survive Jackpot's merge into Buster, and there it would remain until May 1984. It was cancelled to make way for characters coming over in Buster's amalgamation with School Fun.

A Jackpot Easter (1981)

Yes, it's that time of year again which means we're going to take a look at an Easter themed comic! This time, we head back to 1981 for the slightly Easter themed issue of Jackpot. The strapline promises 'Easter Fun Inside' and it doesn't lie for we do, but not very much of it, as just four of the 21 strips are themed. The first of those four strips is Laser Eraser. For those of you unfamiliar with the strip, Laser Eraser is about a boy named Ernie who has a special laser that can make things disappear and reappear, but what he doesn't know is that he is actually zapping them up to the alien spaceship that dropped the laser, and then bringing them back again. Illustrated by Bob Nixon, Laser Eraser seemed a popular strip in Jackpot and survived the 1982 merge into Buster.

I was expecting 'It's A Nice Life' to be Easter themed but I was wrong, for the second of the four strips comes two pages after that in the form of Milly O'Naire and Penny Less. Along with their counterparts Ivor Lott and Tony Broke (who don't appear in this strip, but do in their own and combined strips), they are amongst the better strips that have a rich vs. poor theme, and, illustrated by Sid Burgon, they four of them proved very popular for many years.

Next up is Sporty, illustrated by John Geering. Sporty is about a lad who is good at all sports, in fact - you name it, he's done it. For an Easter theme I'm sure you can guess what sport he participates in this week.

Finally, the last Easter strip for another year is Sample Simon. Usually Simon will test free samples but this week's strip seems to avoid that, or perhaps he somehow found a free rabbit costume sample? Who knows - anything can happen in the world of comics! I believe the artist might be Mike Green, but I'm not sure.

And that rounds up this Easter post for 2014. All that's left to say is... Happy Easter!

How The Amazing Three Became Amazing!

I've got a couple of posts about Jackpot characters in the pipelines and here's the first one, about a very unusual strip called The Amazing Three. The Amazing three first appeared in Jackpot in the late September/early October of 1979 (I don't know the exact issue number or date). Illustrated by Trevor Metcalfe it was a strip surrounding the adventures of Susan, Craig and Sam who were given magical powers to protect Earth, as you will soon see. Here is a special strip from Jackpot #27 that explains how and why the trio has their superpowers

It is a very unusual strip as superheroes in Britain are scarce, especially those that follow the American style of the good guy always coming out on top. An example of a typical British superhero would be fellow Jackpot character Freddie - the star of Full O' Beans. He often dealt with small situations such as getting the washing done or bringing the shopping home in the rain, never dealing with a terrorist attack or any other equally serious scenario you'd be likely to see in Superman. Here's the strip from this issue, with art by Tom Paterson.

I'm not going to go too in depth about either the Superhero genre in Britain or the difference in British and American humour but I think comparing Full O' Beans to Batman shows that the British sense of humour puts the subject (in this case Freddie) at or below the average person, in ordinary day-to-day situations, whereas in America the subject would generally be above the average person, always with the perfect line to say or whatever. I won't explain in any more detail here but it is definitely an interesting post for another time.

The Christmas Jackpots

Jackpot was a great but short-lived comic that ran from 1979 - 1982. In that time three Christmas issues were produced, the first had (in my opinion) the best cover with artwork by Sid Burgon.

Although not actually the Christmas issue this issue of Jackpot dated 13th December 1980 did have a Christmas theme on it. The Laser Eraser strip inside had nothing to do with the cover. I'm unsure who the artist is here; Robert Nixon illustrated the strip but this cover definitely isn't by him.

The 1980 Christmas cover was again illustrated by Sid Burgon and featured Jack Pott (actually a character originally from Cor and surprisingly not the main character in Jackpot) and Angel from Angel's "Proper" Charlies (a spoof of Charlie's Angles) pulling a cracker.

The final Christmas issue came out in 1981 and had a very similar cover design to the 1980 cover above, with two people, this time pulling a wishbone, surrounded by holly and other Christmas decorations. Robert Nixon replaced Sid Burgon for this final Christmas cover.

Jackpot was a great comic but sadly folded only a few weeks later in January 1982. During it's time it was a fantastic comic though with some interesting features including a 'design the cover' competition, some of which were actually used! But that's all a tale for another time.

Christmas Jackpot Annual

The 1984 jackpot annual has a bit of a festive cover, as did most of Fleetway's annuals that year, this one starring Top of the Class. As you would probably expect with an annual like this, not many of the stories inside had a christmas theme. I found one, and a few with a bit of snow.

The one christmas themed story is this Laser Eraser story. In the first box the tree has a label on it reading 'MR ODDSOCKS', a nice feature! Art by Robert Nixon.

There were quite a few stories that featured snow in them, in Kid King it melts so he replaces it with icing! Here is a 'Little and Large Lenny' strip (the character was probably based upon the comedy show 'Little and Large') , artwork by Artie Jackson.

Another christmas comic coming soon!