Huckleberry Hound Weekly

Capitalising on the very popular TV cartoons produced by Hanna-Barbera, Huckleberry Hound Weekly ran from 1961 to 1967. Published by City Magazines of London, the 16 page tabloid was printed photogravure in a style and format that City would also use for TV21. 

Huck himself starred in his own strip on the covers (see above) and the contents featured various other Hanna-Barbera characters of the time such as Augie Doggy...

...Loopy De Loop...

...Quick Draw McGraw...

...The Flinstones...

...and Yogi Bear... 

The strips seem mostly to be edited reprints from the American comics published by Gold Key, although I suspect some were brand new ones originated in the UK. 

Yogi Bear also had his own comic (actually called Yogi Bear's Own) which ran from 1962 to 1964 and then merged into Huckleberry Hound Weekly.

I suspect the fortunes of Huck's comic were not so good by the mid-sixties as by 1966 it had shrunk to traditional comic size and put its price up by a penny. Here's the covers to the issue dated April 23rd 1966. This is definitely a home grown strip, complete with British bobby in the final panel. I don't know who the artist is but it's somewhat rough around the edges and short on background detail...

The strips inside were of a similar reduced quality during this period...

By 1967 City were no longer publishing Huckleberry Hound Weekly and it had been taken over by Robert Hayward and Sons of Manchester. The comic returned to tabloid size but was no longer glossy. With Huck no longer as popular as he was, the covers now featured a jumble of character shots and copy in a bid to attract new readers. A huge 'TV' icon was added above the logo to grab the attention of the telly-obsessed generation. Any long standing fan of Huck would be disappointed by now though as some issues didn't actually feature a Huckleberry Hound story!

Adding some adventure to the lineup, Jonny Quest had been included. I presume these were reformatted from American comics...

Stars from new cartoon shows arrived, such as The Impossibles. (Although if I remember correctly, The Impossibles wasn't on TV in every region at the time.)

With the issue dated April 17th 1967, Space Ghost made his debut. Based on the Hanna-Barbera cartoon of course but I suspect the publisher was also trying to get the attention of the growing readership of superhero comics. (Fantastic and Terrific had launched around this time too.)

The Space Ghost strip bumped Yogi Bear from the centre pages. Notice anything odd about the strip? Yep, they made a hash of the colour, giving the scaly aliens pink skin and our heroes green skin! It looks like the printer transposed the red and blue overlays, but the mistake was repeated the following week so it seems deliberate.

At least they remembered to include a Huckleberry Hound strip that week, but sadly by now it was reprinting old covers. Several other pages seem to be reprints from a few years earlier too.

It won't surprise you to hear that the comic folded a few months later, which was a shame. Huckleberry Hound Weekly started out as a very nicely produced comic but after a few years the quality dropped considerably. Still, it managed to reach 308 issues in total which wasn't a bad run by any means.