Friday 18 June 2021

TRYING FOR COMIC IMPROVEMENTS? DON'T BUSTER GUT (UPDATED)...

Copyright REBELLION

Several days ago, on eBay, I bought a Buster badge that was given away as a free gift with the weekly periodical back in 1983.  Then I happened to see the issue (from another seller) that one of these badges would've been attached to and decided to buy that too.  Rather fancifully, I find myself wondering what the possibilities are that the badge is the actual one that belonged to this particular comic before they were separated all those years ago.  Unlikely I know, but not entirely impossible, eh?  Anyone else ever ponder things like that, or am I the only nutter who does so?

Seller's photo - before

Anyway, the cover was unavoidably marked where the clear tape once held the badge in place, so I decided to do something about it to improve its appearance.  I chose to go for a minimal 'touch-up' and retain an indication of where the tape had been, rather than attempt to completely disguise the remnants of its residence, and I'm fairly pleased with the result.  I may decide to do a more thorough job in the future, but for the moment I'll leave it as it is.  The picture above is the 'before', the one below is the 'after'.  Didn't I do well-ish?!

My photo - after

On the subject of badges, although I've never been a wearer of them, I have quite a nice collection of comics-related examples (and others), which I may get around to featuring on the blog one day.  One is the Buster Club badge from the '60s, which puts paid to the mistaken assertion a couple or so years back by the writer of an article in ComicScene (is it still on the go?) that Buster weekly never had a club.  All together now - "Oh yes it did!"

The two photos side-by-side - courtesy of a screengrab

STOP PRESS +++ STOP PRESS +++ STOP PRESS +++ STOP PRESS !!!!

Nah, I wasn't completely happy with it, so I re-did it.  The red is slightly darker than the original, but I've often seen various issues of the same comic with one or more colours darker than others, so it's not going to bother me too much.  I've still to retouch the logo's black outline in places, but I'll do that at my leisure.  Cop a gander at my latest effort below.

2 comments:

Terranova47 said...

Nice restoration. I read Buster when it first began in 1960. At school we formed two groups in the playground, one The Snigs the other The Dinkles which was based on a comic strip in Buster. I think we played 20 a side soccer as a result.

It was always strange that Buster didn't appear in his dad's strip in the Daily Mirror.

Kid said...

Actually he DID, T47 - on one of Buster's anniversaries a picture of him was added to an Andy Capp strip in a newspaper. (It's on the blog somewhere.) I think the whole 'son of Andy Capp' thing was done without Reg's approval, so the connection was relatively short lived.



Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...