Lady Penelope No.42 (1966)

Lady Penelope was a pretty cool character for a puppet, and her comic equally so. Take a look at the cover to Lady Penelope No.42 above, dated November 5th 1966. Its companion comic TV21 often played around with its own logo but never to this extent. A gigantic Lady P logo dominates the cover, even dispensing with the comic's full title that week. (The words 'Lady Penelope' usually ran alongside the logo in the left hand corner.) I don't recall any other comic being as experimental with its cover as this in the 1960s. Also, when you consider that this comic was the size of a tabloid newspaper you can imagine how eye catching it must have been. 

For its target audience of young girls, Lady Penelope must have seemed like the most modern and 'with it' comic they'd ever seen. Its contents were pretty groovy too. On pages 2 and 3, was a strip featuring The Monkees drawn by Tom Kerr. The artist's work was as superb as ever but what's interesting here is that he added little items to the strip in the way that Bill Elder had with Mad a decade earlier. Note for example the UFO in panel three, and the man hanging from the panel border in panel seven. 

Lost In Space was a popular TV show at the time about the Robinson family trapped on a distant planet. Lady Penelope had a Space Family Robinson strip but this had no relation to the TV series. It was instead based on the American Gold Key comics, but with brand new stories for the UK drawn by John Burns. 

The Lady Penelope strip itself ran across the centrespread in the sort of glorious full colour only achievable by the expensive photogravure printing of the time. Artwork by Frank Langford.

The comic certainly employed some top class talent. Ron Embleton delivered fine work as the illustrator of The Man from UNCLE...

There were also a few humour strips in the comic. The excellent Bill Titcombe drawing Bewitched...

The Beverly Hillbillies. (I'm unsure of the artist. Paul Trevillion perhaps?)

Perils of Parker, drawn by Peter Ford...

There was also a prose serial, All the King's Men, featuring an ancestor of Penelope. Art by John Canning...

On the back page, Marina from Stingray had her own series. Nicely illustrated by Rab Hamilton...

The rest of the 20 page comic was taken up with reader participation features and suchlike. I thought you might like to see a couple of adverts from this issue too, which reflect the times. First is an ad for a Sugar Puffs promotion where girls could buy 'Julie... the fashion doll with everything' for 21/- (One pound and 5p). Turns out that 'everything' included stockings and suspenders for the doll. Guaranteed to turn the head of any Action Man. 

The other full page ad was for a variety of Century 21 toys. No doubt worth quite a bit on the collector's market today. 

As you can see, Lady Penelope was quite an impressive comic with some great artwork. Too bad that most of us lads back then were too embarrassed to be seen with a girls comic! If you want to read about its history, check out the brilliant Technodelic website here:
http://www.technodelic.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Upload03/LadyPenelope02.htm