Frankie Stein Wham Award!

An intresting piece of comic history. Recently sold over at compalcomics.com for £275, with an estimated price of £300 - £350, sadly not quite reaching that.

Here is the auction description:

Lot # 215

Frankie Stein Monster Award by Ken Reid for WHAM! (1960s)
A one-off bust made by Ken Reid for a WHAM! readers competition that apparently did not take place. Entitled 'Frankie's Monster Award' the bust is made from resin and was modelled and painted by Ken with his brother's help. It measures approximately 4 x 4 x 2 ins deep. It is unique
£300-350

Congratulations to the winner of the auction! If you happen to be reading this could you please contact me as I'd love to see some more photo's of the model!

UPDATE:

I recieved an email from Ken Reid's daughter in law Linda, and it turns out Ken didn't actually make it model! It was designed and manufactured by Anthony (his son) and painted by Linda!

The Broons and Oor Wullie - 75 year annual

This is my first of this years annual, I was originally going to buy The Beano and The Dandy, which selebrates Dennis the Menace's 60th birthday, but this one stood out more too me! I suppose it was the fact that I was bored of The beano and The Dandy books always looking the same (except this year it comes with a replica Beano #452), and the Broons and Oor Wullie book fetured pages from The Sunday Post's fun section tht wasn't just Broons and Oor Wullie comic Strip. My favourite by far is this step-by-step drawing guide!

The book also comes with a free Broons 'Cielidh Classics' CD featuring "20 Kilt Swinging Tunes" and a 2012 Oor Wullie Calender.

You can pick this brilliant celebration annual up from any good (and a few bad) bookstores for just £12.99, or you can purchase it off D.C Thomson's website!

http://www.dcthomsonshop.co.uk/Product-The_Broons_and_Oor_Wullie_Gift_Book(20110101)-DCS(2)-BW12(1298).aspx

Gnash!

Another first, and this time it's about Dennis the Menace's hair growing legs - Gnasher! Dennis' creator (David (Davey) Law), got the idea for Dennis whilst watching a play and the original ideas were scrawled on the back of a hankerchief. That was in 1951. It was 17 years on when Dennis got the Abyssinian Wire-Haired Tripe Hound, he picked him up off the street and then took him along to the dog show. However, this wasn't the first time Dennis had owned a dog. His dad was walking one in the park way back in the very first episode on 17th March 1951, and earlier in '68 he picked another dog up off the street, in several different issues! So dogs were a big part of Dennis' world.

Ian gray, the scriptwriter for Dennis the Menace at the time, gave Law the following instructions for drawing Gnasher: 'Draw Dennis the Menace's hair, put a leg at each corner and eyes, nose and teeth at the front'. He did a pretty good job of it as well didn't he!

So here is the first ever comic strip published with Gnasher, which appeared on the back cover of Beano #1363, August 31st 1968.

In the last box 'Dad' send Gnasher off to Pup Parade, where he would appear the following week. Gordon Bell, the artist of Pup Parade, illustrated Gnasher perfectly, and with a bit more of a cartoony face! This story though, as far as I can find, has never been posted up online. So here it is! Enjoy!

Gnasher did not appear alongside Dennis that week. In fact, he didn't appear again until #1370, then vanished until #1377, then #1380, had two consecutive weeks in January 1969, then came back in #1387 and then started appearing every week from #1392, dated March 22nd 1969.

Then, in 1986, Gnasher went missing! After many anxious weeks and campaigns, he returns, the father of six pups. Only one of them is kept - Gnipper. The two later went on to star in their very own comic strip called 'Gnasher and Gnipper'. In a more recent issue Gnasher sets off to find the other pups who are at all four corners of the world, which was illustrated by Tom Paterson. When the Dennis the Menace fan club started, Gnasher had his own section entitled 'Gnashers Fang Club' and even had his very own hairy badge with moving eyes and would quickly become the most popular part of the club. All of the most popular Beano free gifts were based upon Gnasher. Dennis the Menace changed it's title to Dennis the Menace and Gnasher, and remains like that today. From 1977 to 1986 he had his own story called 'Gnashers Tale and more recently one called Gnasher's Bite, which appears on the back page of The Beano every week.

Subscriptions to Strip Magazine now avaliable!

Instead of heading out to one of the few comic shops that actuall sells Strip Magazine, you can now head over to their website and buy a subscription today! Two packages are avaliable to purchase, a 6 month subscription is £14.99 and a 12 month is just £25.99! Bargain! To subscribe just head on over to their website:

http://www.printmediaproductions.com/

and click the package you want to buy on the right hand side!

Frankie Stein arrives!

Wham! was one of five Power Comics created by Odhams Ltd. and was launched on 20th June 1964, lasting 187 issues, until it merged with it's sister comic POW! in January 1968. During it's short life Wham created dozens of incredible stories such as Biff, The Tiddlers, General Nitt and his Barmy Army, Georgie's Germs, Eagle Eye, Pest of the West all of which were amazingly illustrated by such artists as Leo Baxendale, Terry Willers, Gordon Hogg, Artie Jackson and more.

Four isssues into it's run a new story would appear. Frankie Stein was of the magnificent Ken Reid, who decided to follow his love of drawing monsters, aliens and all things weird! Some of the stuff was so ghastly, it was never published in the comic itself and was never even seen until it was eventually published in an underground comic in 1969! The art Ken drew for Odhams was definatly some of his best, whole collections have even been put into books, some of those books reaching sky high prices of over £190 each! Frankie Stein is one of them, and he first came to life inside the covers of Wham issue 4, on page 17, way back in 1964! Although he didn't appear on the cover of that issue, Frankie Stein would later become one of Britain's most popular characters, appearing in many different comics and annuals. He even had two of his own annuals in 1976 and '77, both titled the 'Whoopee Book of Frankie Stein', although by this time Robert Nixon had replaced Reid. Even more collectable are the Frankie Stein holiday specails, which ran for eight years between 1975 and 1982. At the start of the series the comic was priced 25p and by 1980 it had doubled to 50p. Nixon's front cover artwork for the first special sold at auction in 2008 for £378.

So here, for all those Reid fans who haven't seen the first Frankie Stein strip, here it is!

Apologies for my scans been on an angle, it's just that my copy of this comic is in near mint condition so I didn't really want to damage it.