Wow! It's Christmas (1982)

It's about time to kick-start the festive fun this year so let's do so with none other than the one and only Wow Christmas issue. The front cover was illustrated by Mike Lacey and linked with the two-page Shipwreck School story inside, also illustrated by Mike. Mike is one of my favourite artists so seeing a front cover like this one by him is always a joy to behold.

I've already shown a few Creepy Comix pages and this issue also has one, but with a festive twist. Colin Whittock was the artist for this page.

The Bill and Coo page is absolutely amazing to look at; artist Trevor Metcalfe has done a superb job on it! Trevor is a brilliant artist who is still working today, though sadly not on comic strips but more on basic cartoons for colour in books etc. You can see more of his work at his website: http://www.trevortoons.com.

Nigel Edwards is another fantastic artist and for this special issue produced a lovely festive "When He Was Young" strip. And who better to put in the spotlight this week than Santa Claus himself!

As much as I would love to show you the entire comic here I won't so instead I'll wrap up the post with this full colour Barney's Badges strip illustrated by Terry Bave.

Some Pages From Creepy Comix

Creepy Comix was a fantastic strip about a kid called Davey with a bunch of comics called Creepy Comix, from which the spooky characters would jump out and help Davey get in and out of sticky situations. As you can probably guess there was never an actual issue Creepy Comix made but you may be surprised to discover that pages for them were produced! Yes, they weren't made to appear in Creepy Comix themselves but actually made to appear in Wow. There are various character from various artists, here are just a few of them.

Family Trees

Family Trees is a humorous serial that originated in Wow as part of a (very) minor revamp for the new year of 1983. A letter from the editor in this new years issue read:

"Hi, readers! We promised you exciting things in 1983, and some of them are starting right now! You can enjoy the fun with 'Family Trees' and 'The Upper Crusts and the Lazy Loafers' and discover the opinions of WOW! readers in our new feature 'WOW! Top Ten'! Your friend, The Editor".

And just like that, Family Trees was born. Illustrated by Bob Nixon, the first episode appeared spread out over one and a half pages in Wow #32, dated 8th January 1983. 

They continued in their one and a half page format until Wow merged into Whoopee and they were given two pages. They swiftly became one of Whoopee's prominent features, and soon after were given the centre spread where they appeared in glorious full colour.

A typical centre spread from Whoopee, after the
merger with Wow.

In the 500th issue of Whoopee their origin story was reprinted, apparently because many readers had requested to see the first episode, as they hadn't read Wow and therefore had never seen it. Whether or not this is actually true, or it is because they needed to fill a page I don't know. It's interesting to see that the strip was reduced from one and a half pages to just one, and all the trees are named at the side.

The trees kept walking, forever trying to find somewhere safe where they could plant their roots and live happily ever after. They finally found somewhere in the last issue of Whoopee, in the grounds of a mansion.

And that's the story of Family Trees. If, like me, your favourite era of comics is the 1980's (well, for Fleetway's stuff at least), Wow is definitely a comic worth seeking out.

Fleetway Origins - Barney's Badges

Barney began his adventures with his badges in Wow! issue 1, where he luckily aquired a huge set of old badges, for free, from a mysterious old lady at a jumble sale! Illustrated by Terry Bave, his badges got Barney out of many sticky situations, generally by enlarging or simply living up to their name (heavy rock, for example, became very heavy). 

I thought that Barney's Badges got into some great, and hilarious, adventures, and I thoroughly enjoyed the strip. Sadly, when Wow! merged into Whoopee after just 56 issues, he didn't go with it (despite the fact he had even appeared on the back cover)!

[No Barney or any badges to be seen...]