YOU GOTTA HAVE HOPE...

The one and only Bob Hope



October 13th, 1984.  That was the day I fulfilled my long-time ambition of drinking in a pub called The RED LION.  (Okay, it was only a Coke, but it still counted.)  I had always wanted to do so since reading the name in The WIND In The WILLOWS many years earlier, when Mr. TOAD had sauntered into a pub of the selfsame appellation and ended up stealing a motorcar on his departure.

Not that I had the intention of doing anything similar (though I could've nabbed an ashtray as a memento if I'd wanted to) - it's just that there was something about the name that appealed to me.  It conjured up images of old-world charm, of another era when things seemed simpler and more pure.  Ruddy-faced gents crouched 'round a roaring fire, quaffing from flagons of ale held nonchalantly in their weather-beaten hands, as coachmen and travellers, filled and fortified, prepared to embark on the next leg of their journey.

I repeated the feat two or three years later, when I had lunch with the assistant editor of IPC's BUSTER in another Red Lion pub just across from Downing Street in London.  That was still in the future however; for now the heady rush that came from watching JOHN LOWE score the first-ever televised nine-dart finish in history (on another pub's TV later that evening), and then meeting the legendary BOB HOPE an hour or so afterwards, just before commencing his gig at The EDINBURGH PLAYHOUSE.

I met Bob again in 1994 at The GLASGOW ROYAL CONCERT HALL, and had my photograph taken with the great man and his wife.  I have his autograph several times over, on records, books, magazines and photos.  Above is the one he sent me a few weeks before his concert in Edinburgh on that magical and eventful night back in 1984, and below is the photo taken ten years later.

So - hands up all those who've ever drank in a pub called The Red Lion?  H'mm, quite a few of you, eh?  Okay, hands up all those who've met Bob Hope - twice?  (Nope, thought not.)

The STEADY STRANDS Of SUN - PHEW!

 

Art by Neal Adams



The past few days have been of the gloriously warm, sunny, summer kind that we imagine all our childhood summers to have been like, and as I stepped off the train from Glasgow early yesterday evening with The DEADLY HANDS Of KUNG FU #12 in my possession (bought from a back issue shop in the city), my mind drifted back to a similar gloriously warm, sunny, summer late afternoon of 36 years before, when - as a mere freckle-faced teenager - I'd first purchased my original copy of this black and white magazine.

I'd also obtained the very first MONSTER FUN Holiday Special on the same day.  (IPC were quick off the mark with this one, as the weekly publication had only been out for a very short period - a matter of weeks, in fact.)  I remember that it reprinted the initial SAM'S SPOOK strip by LEO BAXENDALE, which first appeared in SMASH! in Jan/Feb of 1971.  It still sported the "starts today" blurb on the top left-hand side of the logo, no doubt the result of an editorial oversight as such blurbs were usually removed from out-of-sequence reprintings.

(NOTE: My memory of this was confirmed when, a week after typing the previous paragraph, I obtained a back issue of this comic also.  I've inserted the cover and Sam strip above.  Click to enlarge.  Interestingly, the page had previously been resized into two for the Smash! Annual for 1975, issued towards the end of '74.)

Art by Rudy Nebres

Back in 1975, a friend was with me when I bought these two publications, at some stage during a day out in Glasgow.  On our return, I accompanied him (still clutching my precious comics) as he visited his sister's in-laws, who resided not too far from the house I'd lived in when Sam's Spook first made his debut, and from which my family had moved only three years before in 1972.  (In fact, their house was the architectural double of my old one, so it was almost like revisiting my former home.)  It's because of this that I associate both these comics with my previous neighbourhood just as much as with my then (and still) current one.  Funny thing, memory, eh?

Art by George Perez, Rico Rival, and The Tribe

I'd bought this ish mainly for The MAN With The GOLDEN GUN cover art and article, having seen (with the same friend) ROGER MOORE's second 007 movie not too long before.  (It had its UK premiere on December 19th 1974, but my local cinema didn't screen it until sometime in '75.)  Reading it again for the first time in nearly 40 years, I was surprised by how much of it I remembered - even down to actual paragraphs.  The mag also had SHANG-CHI, MASTER Of KUNG FU and SONS Of The TIGER, with artwork by RUDY NEBRES and GEORGE PEREZ, plus a BOND pin-up by the great GRAY MORROW.

I often think back fondly to that particular summer day - and many another day from long ago also.  (Perhaps I may even have warm recollections of yesterday in the years to come - I hope I've got at least another 50 ahead of me, optimistic as that may be.)  Little did I then realize that my friendship with the pal I'd known since I was 7 would last barely another six years, but such is life - something to look forward to in blissful ignorance of what might happen, and to look back on in fond reminiscence (hopefully) of what did.

I hope all your summers turn out to be gloriously warm and sunny - even if only in memory.

Art by Gray Morrow