BUSTER BITES The DUST...

The cover reminds me of myself when my old schools were demolished

BUSTER comic made it just over halfway into its 40th year before being cancelled, but truth to tell, it had been ailing for some time.  Featuring mainly reprints, published fortnightly, and with no continued adventure strips to entice the readers back each issue, it's surprising that it wasn't cancelled sooner.  (It obviously must've been making a small profit, or at least not losing money.) 

Long-time editor ALLEN CUMMINGS did his best, but he was hampered by a next-to-nothing budget which reflected a lack of investment by the publishers, EGMONT, in the title's future (to say nothing of a lack of interest on the part of readers), so the comic's demise was virtually inevitable.  He only learned of plans for cancellation though, when he returned from holiday to find an email informing him of the publication's impending fate.

He soldiered on like a trouper, but in the final dark days of December 1999, the last ish of what had once been one of Britain's finest and most popular comic weeklies hit the newsagents' shelves and breathed its last.  I was happy to see a reprint of a strip which I'd lettered, thereby ensuring my presence in the very last issue, but it was a small consolation in the face of Buster's disappearance after an almost 40 year span. 

Surprisingly, it announced the fact that it was the last issue on its cover, but maybe that's because there were no other survivors to be merged into.  Top marks must go to the very last page, in which a tongue-in-cheek send-up of regular characters made some startling revelations.  They should obviously be regarded as 'imaginary' scenarios, as the characters will live on forever in our memories just as we knew them, and will never die (or burst).

Did you buy Buster?  Any recollections of the comic and the times in which you purchased it will be most welcome to fellow Criv-ites, I'm sure.  

I'd lettered this strip some years before - perhaps for NIPPER

"What if?" - BUSTER style

CHRISTMAS? BAH! HUMBUG(S)...!

Copyright REBELLION

Having recently shown you the covers to all seven Annuals bearing the name of WHAM! (plus another two combined with POW! ), I thought you might appreciate seeing the inside of the very first one (for 1966).  And what better strip to show you than one which fits right in with the start of the year, what with all that snow and ice on view?  Okay, these conditions haven't quite happened yet in my neck of the woods, but they're bound to soon (hopefully).

Looking back, it seems that all the Christmases and New Years of my boyhood were like this.  It may have been only in the comics, but so powerful is the image that it leaks out into the reality of the time as well - at least in the mystic bands of memory.  The two pages reproduced here don't seem to me to have been drawn by the regular weekly artist, but they do full justice to the characters nonetheless.  Often a strip could look all the poorer for not being drawn by its usual illustrator, but that isn't the case here.

The HUMBUGS were reprinted in the revamped SMASH! in 1969 under the name of The TERRIBLE TWINS, and I was so pleased to see the familiar characters again that I don't think I even noticed the strip had been retitled until much later.  Or could it simply be that by the time the pair resurfaced, I had forgotten what they were originally called?  It's not impossible, even for one with such a mighty memory as I.

I recall one of the weekly strips referring to the FANTASTIC FOUR, which was appearing in Wham! comic at the time.  BRUV dressed up in a MICHELIN MAN costume and played at being The THING, and SIS merely hid behind a fence or a lamppost and pretended to be invisible.  Of course, it was easy to ignore that The Thing was supposed to be orange-skinned when the comic was in black and white, but had it been in colour, a mention could simply have been included of Bruv painting the costume in the requisite hue.  (Yes, I know - I worry about such things too much.)

Anyway, that's perhaps too much spiel for a mere two pages, but hopefully you'll enjoy them despite that.

(Incidentally, I suspect that the lettering is by TOM FRAME, who later worked on 2000 A.D.'s JUDGE DREDD.)