BUSTER & THE BIG ONE - 1965 ISSUE - PART ONE...

Buster's Diary: Art by Angel Nadal.  Images copyright relevant owner

Sometimes I'm astounded by my generosity.  I mean, who else would bestow upon his loyal readers a complete, 1965 issue of BUSTER & The BIG ONE?  Some other blogs might be content to tease their members with one or two panels from a page, or a couple of pages at most, but I believe in occasionally going the whole hog and presenting the complete issue, adverts and all.  (No, don't thank me - that's what I'm here for.)

The Big One came out on October 10th, 1964 (cover-dated 17th) and only lasted for nineteen issues before it was merged with Buster.  Some sources claim that The ASTOUNDING ADVENTURES Of CHARLIE PEACE started in the short-lived comic, but he actually first appeared in a special preview in VALIANT the week before beginning his regular spot in Buster Capp's popular publication.  I understand, though, that some of his strips were reprinted in The Big One during its brief run.

This is the first instalment in a three-part series.  Hopefully, you'll find something interesting in the contents - or perhaps even revive a few half- forgotten memories from your childhood.  For Part Two, click here.

Maxwell Hawke: Art by Eric Bradbury

Our Great Grandpa: Art by Trevor Metcalfe

Whacko with Claude & Cuthbert: Art by James Malcom

Son of Sherlock: Art by Stan McMurty or Graham Allen

Toys of Doom: Art by Solano Lopez

The Astounding Adventures of Charlie Peace: Art by Tom Kerr

WOW! FANTASTIC COVER GALLERY PART TEN...

Images copyright MARVEL COMICS

Presenting yet another phantasmagorical panoply of Power-packed pictorial delights - I give you FANTASTIC #s 55-60, published by ODHAMS PRESS back in the late '60s.  I could wax eloquent all day about these MARVEL masterpieces, but it wouldn't be fair to hold you back from passing your peepers over the pop-art productions which follow.  So let's not waste another second - dive right in, the water's lovely.  

KID ROBSON'S A TV? NO - KID ROBSON'S ON TV...

              

Here's your genial and handsome host in a television appearance from 1998, on a show called UNDER THE HAMMER.  (And there's doubtless a few people who wish that I were - literally.)  There's an interesting little story to this (I trust), which is why I thought I'd illustrate it with the actual clip.  I don't know where GRAMPIAN TV got my name, but they contacted me about doing an interview on the subject of comics, to which I readily agreed.

On the actual day, about six or seven people turned up - but upon seeing my room, exclaimed "It's an Aladdin's cave!  Forget comics, we'll do a feature on toys!"  Whoever would have thought so many people were required to film one person talking?  There was a cameraman, soundman, interviewer, director, producer, lighting man, etc.  The director and the producer sat in my back room, watching events on a monitor, and the rest all packed into my front room while I held court, so to speak.

Altogether, they were here for about two hours or so, but guess what?  When the programme was broadcast several months later, my moment of glory only lasted under three minutes - if.  That means (assuming ANDY WARHOL was correct) I'm still owed about another twelve and a bit minutes of fame - and I aim to collect!

TRIFFIK? I HARDLY THINK SO...

Copyright relevant owner.  (Will they have the guts to admit to it?)

Take a look at the above abomination - TRIFFIK!, from 1992.  If a worse comic than this ever saw the light of day, then thankfully I don't remember ever seeing it.  From the amateurish, awkward masthead to the sub-standard, awful balloon lettering, almost everything about this comic was wrong.  Even the handful of strips that were quite well drawn suffered from being poorly lettered and surrounded by other strips which must have been scrawled by drunken chimps with a burnt match during a break-out from the zoo.

I duly contacted the editor, who had no previous experience working in comics, and suggested that the lettering needed to be improved.  (I wasn't looking for work, being quite busy with my regular assignments in 1992.)  His response?  "I like it the way it is!"  I even sent him a detailed colour 'rough' of a new logo, based on the old one, but bolder, brighter and better.  His response? "Roughs are no good - I can't envision the finished result.  You need to show me why yours is better by doing the proper, finished article."  (Despite the quotes, I'm paraphrasing his comments from memory.)  So, an editor with no ability, no vision and no clue.  Don't get  me wrong - he was a nice enough bloke, but he was never cut out for comics in a professional capacity.

I understand that the comic only lasted for twelve issues - which was about a dozen too many in my humble estimation.  I never bought another one as I had plenty toilet paper at the time and had no need for more.  It remains an object lesson on how not to do a comic.

You'd think a certain Dundee-based publication currently having circulation problems would have learned a valuable lesson from the sad but inevitable fate of Triffik!, eh?  H'mm, apparently not.  What is it they say?  "Those who don't learn from history, are doomed to repeat it."  Let's all hope it doesn't turn out to be the case.

SUPERMAN'S 'BIT On The SIDE' - FAVOURITE COMICS Of The PAST - (PART NINE)...

Copyright DC COMICS

If my powers of recollection are still functioning properly after a period of forty-two years, I first bought the above GIANT SUPERMAN issue in 1970 while on holiday in the Scottish seaside resort of Rothesay.  However, my main recollection of it is, I suppose, from some weeks later, when I was off ill from school one day, being sustained (as was usual in such circumstances) by tomato soup and American Cream Soda.

Let us now, in memory's mystic band, return to an earlier age - when your humble host was but an eleven year old lad with forever in front of him, and pleasure unparallelled could be had from a few comics scattered over a bedspread - as though they were treasures undreamt off that even the brightest bauble could never hope to match.

I remember the picture below having a strange, tingly, effect on my youthful mind (and other areas) as I lay in bed on that pleasant morning over forty years ago.  I pretended it was SUSAN STORM in civvies, and entertained 'romantic' fantasies that would've doubtless brought a blush to the cheeks of many a spinsterly aunt had they been capable of seeing the workings of a seemingly innocent child's mind. Looking at it now, my first thought is "Wow, wotta bod!"  Why haven't I ever met a real woman with curves like that?  (Yeah, I know - I really do need to get out more.  I'll make it a resolution.)   

 

Anyway, hastening past my youthful yearnings as quickly as possible, let's take a look at the rest of the contents.  First up is SUPERMAN'S LOST BROTHER, which I not only associate with that day off school, but also with the garden of our holiday home where I'd first read it some weeks earlier.  Tell you what - I'm going to linger by the above picture for a little while longer, so just go on ahead by yourselves.  I'll join you at the end of the post.

   

Ah, so there you are - hope you haven't been waiting long.  With any luck, our whistle-stop tour through the above images has rekindled a few warm memories of your own associated with this comic from yesteryear.  When I think of it, we really had it made back then, didn't we?  Collectors' item classics for a mere florin - or 'two bob bit' in the parlance of the day.  Nowadays, this would be a softcover book priced at between ten and fifteen quid.  No wonder people call them 'the good old days' - they were!

'KINKY SEX' - TWO WORDS DESIGNED TO ENSURE THAT THIS POST GETS LOADS OF HITS...

From TV Comic Annual 1977.  Art by Bill Titcombe

First of all, there's no kinky sex in this post.  It's a bare-faced subterfuge to lure people into visiting my blog and thus increase my hits.  There's no naked pictures of CHRISTOPHER REEVE, nor any other kind of pervy content that certain people (going by the search keywords they use) seem to be interested in.  Not that I want to attract seriously dodgy geezers and their decidedly 'iffy' interests as regular visitors to my site, but as an experiment, I thought I'd test how much my hits increase by using the words 'kinky sex' in the title.

So, sorry to disappoint all you perverts out there.  If, however, you've dropped in here by mistake, can I interest you in reading a comic?  Go on - you know you want to. 

From TV Comic Annual 1977.  Art by Bill Titcombe

I WAS KIDNAPPED ON TREASURE ISLAND...

A million years ago, in 1966 or '67, my older brother and myself each received a Christmas present of a book from a literature-loving aunt and uncle.  My brother got KIDNAPPED (and I often wished he would be), and I was given TREASURE ISLAND, both written by R. L. STEVENSON.  I can't remember whether I read it at the time or not, but I did so ten years later and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Well, strictly speaking, that's not quite true.  You see, the one I read wasn't the original festive gift from years before (which had disappeared into limbo at some indeterminate stage), but a replacement I bought a decade later from a local bookshop on recognizing the cover and being instantly transported back in time to my childhood.

The cover reminded me of the back garden of the house I'd lived in when I received my earlier printing of this classic.  That was likely because of the garden having a wooden fence similar to that shown on the dustjacket, although ours was held together by wire.  To this day, whenever I look at that illustration, in my mind's eye I'm once again gazing through my old bedroom window at the garden below.

The back garden from my bedroom window

Anyway, to bore you with further tedious and unnecessary detail, unlike my original copy, the replacement carried no dustjacket.  The cover was just like an annual, applied straight onto the boards.  When I revisited the house nigh on twenty years after leaving it, one of several items I took with me (to 'reconnect' to my past, as it were) was the replacement edition of Treasure Island.  So now the book not only reminds me of my former home, it's actually been in it.

  

Two years ago, in the OXFAM shop in Glasgow's Byres Road, I managed to re-obtain a dustjacketed edition published in the same year as my original book.  It sits alongside my brother's copy of Kidnapped (which, happily, survived).  However, whether it's the '60s or '70s version, there's just something about that cover which sings to me of an earlier, more innocent time so many years ago.

DO YOU BELIEVE IN GHOSTS, MR. BLUNDEN?

Long ago and far away, in a time and place which now seem to have existed only in dreams, I read a book called The GHOSTS, by ANTONIA BARBER.  I was around eleven or twelve at the time, and I enjoyed it so much that, an hour or so later, after returning home from a trip to the shops with my family, I read it all over again.

Contrary to what the title suggests, the book isn't really about ghosts, it's about time travel.  Not in a science-fiction way though, but rather in a kind of mystical, magical fashion, which isn't explained in any detail.  A couple of years after reading it, a film version was released, called The AMAZING Mr. BLUNDEN, starring LAURENCE NAISMITH and LYNNE FREDERICK. (To say nothing of the usual complement of stalwarts from the British acting community, like JAMES VILLIERS, DIANA DORS and MADELINE SMITH, to name but a few.)

The book was set in what was then present-day 1969, with two children travelling 100 years back in time to save two other children who had perished in a house fire.  However, for some reason, LIONEL JEFFRIES, the screenwriter and director, set it in 1918 instead.  It's not a bad little movie, and is well-worth watching for the delightful performances of James Villiers and other members of the cast, though I was slightly disappointed to find that some dialogue in the book which had made me laugh out loud was absent.

I find it interesting that the film was in production around the time I was reading the novel on which it was based, although I didn't get to see it 'til about thirteen or fourteen years later.  (About half my life away at the time.)  However, I remember seeing the trailer on television back at the end of 1972 and instantly recognising, despite the different name, the source of this new cinematic production.  Also, the book had only been written about two years before filming began, so full marks to Lionel Jeffries for recognising its potential straight off the mark.

There's a passage in the book where one of the children, in the present day, is exploring the burnt-out country house that she experienced 100 years in the past (when it was still in its glory), and she recognises some of the items lying around the now deserted and dilapidated rooms.  Here is what it says:

Old clothes, old clocks, old toys, old books, which had once been swept along on the strong current of everyday life, now lay in corners like the tide-wrack along the beach, serving only to show where life had been.

All these things had been cherished once for their beauty or their usefulness, or just for the warm familiarity of their presence.  Now they were cast aside and forgotten.

As someone who has spent over half his life in re-acquiring once-cherished treasures that had fallen victim to time, there's something about the phrase "the warm familiarity of their presence" that really resonates with me.  Its an extremely comforting feeling being surrounded by the familiar, because then the past doesn't seem so very far away and, consequently, the illusion can be maintained for a little longer that the end of life's journey isn't quite so near as is actually the case.

So, if you haven't already done so, read the book and see the movie - and may all your 'ghosts' be familiar ones.

DICK MILLINGTON'S MIGHTY MOTH...

Cover art possibly by Bill Titcombe.  Cover characters copyright relevant and respective owners

The earliest comics character I can recall is MIGHTY MOTH, from the long-running TV COMIC (which lasted for nearly 34 years from 1950 to '84).  Artist DICK MILLINGTON was responsible for bringing the cloth-chomping mite to life, and it was because his distinctive style made such an impression on me when I first saw it in a 1962 or '63 TV Comic Holiday Special that I recognised it a year or two later on becoming aware of the weekly periodical.  (I hadn't actually remembered the name of the comic or the character - it was the look of the diminutive Lepidopteran and the style he was drawn in that rang a bell in the depths of memory's belfry.)

Anyway, having self-indulgently refreshed my recollections of bygone days, the cover at the top of this post is from the 1977 TV Comic Annual, purchased at the end of '76.  I thought I'd share one of the fondly-recalled comics celebrities of my boyhood with all you fellow fans in Bloggerland, so feast your eyes on the accompanying two-page Mighty Moth strip from that very annual.

   

The MAN From KRYPTON - PART EIGHT Of FAVOURITE COMICS Of The PAST...

Images copyright DC COMICS

SUPERMAN #233 was a real revelation back in 1971.  At long last readers were treated to intelligent storytelling of a kind not often seen in the comic mags of NATIONAL PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS (nowadays officially known as DC COMICS).  And what's interesting is that all of the more ridiculous elements of Superman's back-story were consigned to oblivion (or, at least, limbo) without the aid of a cosmos-shattering 'crisis' or the kind of 'rebooting' recently witnessed in the pages of DC's 'The New 52'.

No, anything considered silly or juvenile that might have detracted from the MAN Of STEEL's evolution into a more 'believable' type of character was dealt with by the radical approach of - are you ready for this? - simply ignoring it and not referring to it anymore.  (KRYPTO was dismissed as being "off exploring in space" and was simply never seen nor heard from again.)  What might be regarded as immature concepts preventing The MAN Of TOMORROW being taken seriously, such as BIZARRO, Mr. MXYZPTLYK, The FORTRESS Of SOLITUDE (at least for a while), and, by implication, the ridiculous LEGION Of SUPER-PETS, such as (are you ready for this?) STREAKY The SUPER-CAT, COMET The SUPER-HORSE, and BEPPO The SUPER-MONKEY, simply disappeared - and without requiring a 12 issue maxi-series to explain it. 

This novel approach meant that any long-time fans who wished to believe the more ludicrous ingredients of Superman's continuity could do so, without those now-absent aspects turning off potential new readers who'd be certain to consider them infantile in the extreme.  Of course, there are limits to how realistically you can portray the fantastic (can a super-powered alien ever truly be regarded as 'believable' in the strictest sense?), but readers, especially in the '70s, were more inclined to accept an incredible premise if it was presented in a recognizably-realistic context that wasn't patently absurd from the get-go.

Step forward DENNY O'NEIL, who for an all-too-brief nine issues, presented us with a tour-de-force of how The MAN from KRYPTON should be written. Superman's power levels were drastically reduced; suddenly it was never certain that he would always triumph - at least, not with the seeming ease with which he once had.  He became a much more interesting and compelling character, and one that would surely be able to hold his own amongst the more 'socially relevant' tales that were coming forth from the stables of both DC and MARVEL.

However, it's true to say that some of these changes had already started to happen before this landmark issue, but this was the mag which cemented the new direction in the last son of Krypton's comics career.  Gone at a stroke was the tired and predictable scenario of Supes being threatened by Kryptonite yet again, an all too-common (and boring) occurrence in years gone by.  (Yawn!)  Now he was free of his green-hued nemesis (and all its multi-coloured varieties) and could face fresh, new and nail-biting dangers where the resolution wasn't quite so obvious and set in stone.  And the superbly sublime artwork of the dream-team supreme, CURT SWAN and MURPHY ANDERSON, was never better. 

Unfortunately, reader response to The Amazing New Adventures of Superman didn't seem as positive as had been anticipated, and this factor, along with O'Neil's self-confessed lack of affinity for the character, meant that this ground-breaking new direction ended after only nine issues.  (O'Neil wrote a couple more issues - #s 244 & 253 - but they were unconnected to the series which had preceded them.)  However, what a bold and exciting nine issues they'd been.  For those not fortunate to have been around at the time, you can now savour these cataclysmic chapters in KAL-EL's career in the hardback volume entitled DC COMICS CLASSICS LIBRARY - SUPERMAN: KRYPTONITE NEVERMORE - available at your local comicbook store.  (Update: A superior version was published several years later.)

(ISBN: 978-1-4012-2085-3)

   

And, for all those completists out there, below is the cover to the issue itself, scanned from my own personal copy of the original comic (as are the internal pages above).