THE BALLAD OF HALO AND ME...

When I was a full-time comics contributor a goodly number of years ago, I was up and down to London like a yo-yo.  I recall being given a BUSTER strip (drawn by REG PARLETT) to deliver to The SUNDAY MAIL in Glasgow during a strike, and, on another occasion, I was given a large HALO JONES pin-up to deliver to JOHN McSHANE and the lads from AKA COMICS at the Virginia Galleries, also located in the heart of the city.

This was a gift from artist IAN GIBSON, and as I knew the AKA lads, I was asked if I'd hand it across.  "Nae bother!" as they say, but when I got home, the first thing I did (apart from grabbing some sleep) was to get someone to snap a photo of me with said page, to demonstrate that I was actually considered responsible enough to be entrusted with such an artistic treasure.  As you can't see my face in the photo, I don't suppose any such conclusion can be arrived at, but let's face it - who's going to look at a drawing when my handsome fizzog is on display?  So it worked out for the best in the end.  (He said, modestly.)

Shame the image isn't sharper, but it's a cropped section of a photo taken from the foot of the stairs.  I'll see if I can dig out the actual comic it appeared in and scan it so you can all get a better look.  Trust me, however, the published version didn't even come close to doing full justice to the original art.   

A DOG'S BEST FRIEND...

...is YOGI BEAR, apparently.  Who'da thunk it?  Cute, eh?

HE IS THE LAW...

Copyright REBELLION

One of the things I really liked about the POWER COMICS of the 1960s was that characters in the U.K. produced strips would sometimes refer to the U.S. MARVEL superheroes reprinted in the same pages.  I remember the brother and sister team known as The HUMBUGS (reprinted as The Terrible Twins in SMASH! a few years later, but originally appearing in WHAM!) pretending to be The THING and The INVISIBLE GIRL in one of their tales.  Likewise DON STARR, in an issue of TERRIFIC, wished he had SPIDER-MAN's spider-sense on one occasion.  This helped foster the illusion that, whether they were humour or adventure strips, British or American, they were all the result of ALF, BART & COS and their team of writers and artists on this side of the pond.

IPC/FLEETWAY don't seem to have indulged in this kind of comics integration to the same extent - at least not that I'm aware of - so the above SWEENY TODDLER strip is a nice-but-rare example of when they did.  I'm unaware of who wrote the story, but the artwork is by the irrepressible TOM PATERSON, doing an absolutely 'pitch-perfect' impersonation of LEO BAXENDALE at his very best.  Tom captures his style so well, in fact, that I ofttimes wonder if Leo has ever looked at Tom's work and wondered why he can't remember drawing it.

It's just a shame that nothing is being done with the treasure-chest of IPC/Fleetway comics characters today. They're a neglected asset deserving of positive ex-ploitation, and which would surely be enjoyed by many thousands of would-be comics reading youngsters up and down the length and breadth of the country. 

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Update: Since this post was first published, REBELLION have acquired the rights to ODHAMS, HULTON, and IPC/FLEETWAY characters and have published several great volumes featuring some of the better known and more popular ones - Sweeny Toddler being one of them.  Note that I referred to them as a 'treasure-chest', and that Rebellion publish their collected editions under the TREASURY Of BRITISH COMICS imprint.  Maybe they read this post, eh?