The Family Trees Of Comic Superstars

Whilst flicking through an issue of The Best Of Whizzer and Chips Monthly I found an overused idea of a family tree. This one was Fuss Pot's family tree, and was illustrated by Norman Mansbridge.

This led to me to look for more and, as I said above, this theme was used time and time again in almost every comic you can name. Here's yet another example, a Billy Whizz strip from 1968 (although this is actually "what if Billy was alive in..." and not a family tree, but it still works).

And finally, here's Benny Bones' family tree, in which it is Benny's teacher is doing the talking.

There are many, many more of course and I haven't the room or time to scan them all, but I'm sure if you browse through a few comics it won't take you long to find another example of one of the most overused ideas in comics!

And of course, there's also the literal Family Trees, which I covered here:

http://www.wackycomics.com/2013/09/family-trees.html

Whoopee #500!

Not too long ago I chanced upon no other than issue #500 of Whoopee, a landmark issue for a comic that sadly by this point was slowly drifting towards its untimely demise. Number 500, which doubled up as the fireworks issue, came out dated 5th November 1983 and, as you can see on the image above, cleverly used the number '500' in its logo. The strapline 'Whoopee Celebrates' may have been slightly exaggerated though, as you will soon see.

Moving on inside, and the first mention that this is even a special issue doesn't appear until page nine, where Frankie Stein announces it as part of a competition to win, you guessed it, 500 prizes!

The achievement was mentioned just once more, on the letters page where the solution to the 500-clue crossword that had appeared over the previous four issues took up the bottom half of the page.

But fear not, for I shall not be ending this post without a couple of comic strips, even if they weren't celebrating or even mentioning this landmark issue or, as a matter of fact, fireworks (the only fireworks related things were the mask on the centre spread and the fireworks safety code on the letters page). First up, is Calculator Kid, which I am showing simply because the Charlie's Dad has got to be the owner of the finest moustache in comics! As always Terry Bave illustrates it, and it is followed by Calculator Corner by Jack Edward Oliver.

And finally, I leave you with this - a nice two-page Bumpkin Billionaires strip neatly illustrated by Mike Lacey.

Buster Vs. The Dandy

Occasionally Fleetway mentioned their rivals (The Beano and Dandy mostly) in their comics. I recently found another one from a 1991 issue of Buster. Here in a X-Ray Specs strip Carl the Creep decides not to "waste his time" on The Dandy! And yes - they actually wrote 'Dandy', which surprised me as I'd have expected them, if they were to include it, to call the comic something along the lines of 'Dondy' or 'Dundy'. I don't think D.C Thomson ever retalliated to any of Fleetway's mentions to them, I don't recall ever seeing Buster or Whizzer and Chips mentioned in The Beano or Dandy, but I could be wrong. Anyway, here is the full strip, as illustrated by Mike Lacey.

I covered a similar incident to this one last year, when Bernie Banks accidentally walked into The Beano! Here's a link:

http://www.wackycomics.com/2012/12/bernie-in-beano.html

Cheeky On T.V!

Whilst watching an episode of George and Mildred the other day I noticed that during the church jumble sale Tristram Fourmile (played by Nicholas Bond-Owen) picked up a pile of comics. At first I thought the comics were Whizzer and Chips, but I soon spotted the recognisable 'Cheeky' logo. I now know it to be Cheeky issue three, confirmed by the Skateboard Squad Booklet on the back cover.

Scan from Cheeky Weekly site.

Cheeky appeared on T.V numerous times, and over on the Cheeky Weekly blog Niblet has found quite a few of them including, as I have just discovered and updated this post for, this appearance! But it's here for those of you who didn't see it over on the Cheeky blog.

http://cheekyweekly.blogspot.com

http://cheekyweekly.blogspot.com/2010/08/george-mildred-and-cheeky_18.html

Recommended Reads: Happy Days by Denis Gifford

For me, Happy Days was one of the harder books of Denis Gifford's that I tried to track down, mostly due to the ridiculously expensive postage everybody seemed to charge. However, I finally found one in a reference section of a library and not long after quickly skimming through it I found a copy in a bookshop, standing next to D.C Thomson's 'The Legend Of Lord Snooty And His Pals' from 1998. Naturally, I snapped it up and, regardless of what I say in the title of this post, there isn't an awful lot to read. Well, not by Denis Gifford anyway. Although he does place annotations next to many images of the comics he doesn't write particularly much apart from the introduction at the start of the book.

There is a lot to see in the book though, and all the images (if not all, then 99% for sure) come from Gifford's collection, which as I'm sure many of you know, exceeded 20,000 individual comics by the early 1980's. One particular image that stood out for me is the full colour Autumn Number of Comic Cuts. Although it doesn't mention it in the book, this particular issue is Britain's very first full-colour comic (although the first regular full colour comic would come a few years later and was aptly called The Coloured Comic)!

There's dozens of comics throughout the book, albeit mostly front covers, printed in both full colour and black and white. Jupiter Books originally published it in 1975 although my copy was published in 1988 by Bloomsbury Books (who are now best known for the Harry Potter books, or course). If you can, I'd recommend tracking down a copy of this book, and others by Denis Gifford too - they're all smashing reads!