YOU 'MUST OF' NOT HEARD ME SAY 'MUST HAVE' PROPERLY...

" 'Must of' will get you 200 lines!"

THERE NOW FOLLOWS A PUBLIC

INFORMATION ANNOUNCEMENT:

I've just been reading the comments sections of various other blogs, and it astounds and disappoints me in equal measure to see the way in which the English language is mangled by some commenters.  It's sadly all too common to see sentences like "...it must of had an effect" thrown cavalierly around by those unaware or unashamed of their ignorance.  "Must have" is the correct English, contracted as "must've".  What is wrong with these people?  Having asked the question, let me now answer it. 

They've obviously misheard "must've" as "must of" and ignorantly perpetuate their aural error in everything they write or say.  Say?  Yeah, because I now actually hear people say "must of", both in real life and on television programmes.  I'm not putting up with it anymore - it's "must've", not "must of", so stop writing it, stop saying it, stop spreading it.  It's wrong, it's ignorant, and it's annoying - so take a telling or the Language Police will be around to your house to tell you personally.  Comprende?

(And that goes for could've, should've and would've as well!)

Somebody turn off  the light - I've got a headache.

WOTTA BEEZER! DUDLEY D. WATKINS & BILL RITCHIE COMIC STRIPS...

Images copyright D.C. THOMSON & Co., Ltd

Take a luverly DUDLEY DEXTER WATKINS cover, add a

couple of interior GINGER strips - and then tack on an awful head

shot by another artist to one of them to almost ruin  the page.  Ugh!

What was DCT thinking?  At least they avoided the same mistake on

the second strip.  The BEEZER Annual for 1969 is in full colour

and is a nice little package, sure enough.  And only 8/6. 

The two pages below are unusual for D.C. THOMSON -

a team-up, starring SMIFFY and BABY CROCKETT - two

usually separate strips, but both regularly drawn by artist  BILL

RITCHIE.  Baby also appeared in the nursery comic BIMBO,

and then LITTLE STAR, which replaced Bimbo in 1972.

Regarding Smiffy, I remember finding a DCT adventure

comic (HOTSPUR or VICTOR) in a hedge on the way home

from school one day in 1964 or '65.  It was open at a Smiffy page

and that was the first time I recall seeing Bill Ritchie's style, which

made an impression on me.  Can anyone confirm that Smiffy did

appear in one of the adventure comics?  Perhaps it was only a

one-off, but I'm pretty sure that I did see it.

Anyway,  read on, MacDuff!

NEW EAGLE ANNUAL COVER GALLERY...

Copyright relevant owner

The new EAGLE was launched on March 20th 1982 (cover-dated 27th) and the Annual (for 1983) must've been prepared pretty much around the same time as early issues of the weekly, for it to be on sale in shops by August or September of that same year.  The original Eagle comic had 24 Annuals (not counting numerous related spin-offs) released throughout the '50s and into the '70s (though the comic was merged with LION in 1969, a mere nine issues short of its 1000th issue), but the new version could only manage ten, plus two DAN DARE books, four years apart.

So, that's a dozen books in all for the resurrected title, which is enough of an excuse for me to do a cover gallery featuring them on this blog.  In the 1990s, the term 'Annual' came to be regarded as old-fashioned for a while, and various companies started to refer to them as 'Yearbooks' in an attempt to appear up-to-date and 'with it'.  It didn't last for long and the old name eventually reasserted itself, much to the delight of traditionalists like myself.

Some of these cover images are a bit lacklustre in my opinion, but the ever-dependable IAN KENNEDY produced some good ones, and one or two of the others aren't too bad.  In its latter stages, the new Eagle became a monthly, featuring mainly reprinted material (with the exception of the Dan Dare strip), and limped to a sad end in 1994.  However, the Annuals had predeceased it three years earlier.  Will we ever see the like of Eagle again, or does it belong in the past, a relic of the time in which it was produced?

I'm sure you'll let me know what you think.