Buster by Baxendale

The excellent Kazoop! blog is always worth a visit for fans of British comics and today is a perfect example of that. Blogmaster Irmantas has found the six Buster's Diary strips for the covers of Buster that Leo Baxendale did as fill-ins in 1967 and has posted four of them on his blog today. I was aware of them as they were listed in the Buster Index by Steve Holland and Ray Moore 20 years ago, but I don't think I'd seen them before. 

Usually back then, a fill-in artist would be asked to 'ghost' the regular style but clearly Leo was allowed to do them in his own way with the distinctive style he was using at that time. Great stuff!

Head over to the Kazoop! blog here to see the four covers:
http://kazoop.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/buster-covers-by-leo-baxendale.html

SHIVER AND SHAKE No.1 (1973)

With the success of Whizzer and Chips as a faux 'two in one' comic, IPC tried it again with football adventure comic Score 'n' Roar in 1970 (see here) and once more in 1973 with Shiver and Shake. Neither proved to be anywhere near as popular as Whizzer and Chips but they did contain some worthwhile content. Here's a selection of a few pages from Shiver and Shake No.1, dated 10th March 1973...

The concept of Shiver and Shake was that 20 page Shiver contained funny horror/monster strips and 16 page Shake carried, well, humour strips without a horror theme. The cover (above) was by Mike Lacey, featuring the hosts of each comic, Shiver the ghost and Shake the elephant. 

The first notable thing about Shiver is that it kicked off with a revamp of Frankie Stein, a character last seen in Wham! in 1967 and a few Wham! Annuals that followed. However this version was a more subdued Frankie than Ken Reid's edgy original, and the comedy was much lighter in tone, as was the norm at IPC. Nevertheless, Robert Nixon did a very nice job on the artwork. 

Scream Inn, with distinctive, atmospheric art by Brian Walker, was a superb strip, and was later adapted into a board game! Walker used hatching, cross-hatching and Letratone to great effect here...

Shiver featured one adventure strip, and the prolific Tom Kerr was the ideal choice as illustrator. Who'd Kill Cockney Robin was a mystery serial, with a clue in every episode for the reader to deduce who was trying to kill the title character. 

The character who'd become one of the biggest hits with readers was Sweeny Toddler, who made his debut towards the back of the comic. Created by the wonderful Leo Baxendale...

The back page presented us with something marvelous. The start of a series of monster pin-ups by Ken Reid! Creepy Creations No.1 was The One-Eyed Wonk of Wigan, with readers invited to submit their own ideas for Ken to draw in future editions. 

The 16 page middle section featured Shake No.1, with the cover strip by Mike Lacey. 

Inside Shake, veteran artist Reg Parlett gave us the arrival of Lolly Pop, a character who would outlast the comic and survive in other comics.

On the back page of Shake was Moana Lisa with art by Peter Davidson. 

The first issue of Shiver and Shake took the unusual step of giving readers a choice of four different free gifts. The ploy to get people to buy more than one 
copy convinced me for one, and I went for the trick rubber pencil and the plastic 'chocolate' biscuit. I've mislaid the rubber pencil, but here's a photo of the trick biscuit and the free gift wrappers...

Shiver and Shake lasted for 79 issues before merging into Whoopee! in 1974, but it's still fondly remembered today by collectors. 

More Baxendale Beezer Brilliance

Following on from the previous post about The Banana Bunch, here are a few more pages by Leo Baxendale that appeared in the (undated) Beezer Book that was published in 1963. Above are the superb endpapers from the book, with the characters creating chaos in the Beezer office. It's interesting to see Leo's versions of other artist's characters here.

The Gobbles is an often forgotten strip that Leo drew for the weekly Beezer from 1962 to 1964. Here are the two strips that appeared in The Beezer Book published in 1963...

Leo Baxendale's 'The Banana Bunch'

The Banana Bunch began in The Beezer No.1 way back in 1956 and proved popular enough to continue throughout the comic's run until 1993. The strip has been revived a few times since by various artists and was last seen in The Dandy in 2012 drawn by Nigel Parkinson.

Most of us will probably have grown up with the version drawn by the excellent Bert Hill, but the original artist was Leo Baxendale, who drew it from issue 1 in 1956 until No.438 in 1964. Here's a few examples of Leo's brilliance with the huge full page above from The Beezer No.295 (September 9th 1961).

Now the one from the following week, September 16th 1961...

Finally a couple of full colour pages from The Beezer Book 1964 (published in 1963). 

Truly funny stuff and some of the best material to have appeared in British humour comics. As always, click on the pages to see them much larger.

This week in 1965...

I haven't done one of these for a while, where I look back at several comics from years ago that were published in the same week. Above is my photo of how a newsagents counter may have looked this week exactly 50 years ago when all of these issues were on sale! Half a Century ago! Blimey!

Let's start off with the issue of Valiant that went on sale Saturday 20th February 1965. Cover by Mike Western which looked back on other events of this week in times past...

Inside, the dark, tense artwork of Solano Lopez with the latest Kelly's Eye chapter. These old strips certainly knew how to deliver a great cliffhanger!

As the topline on the cover promised, this issue saw the start of a new adventure with The Wild Wonders, drawn by Mike Western...

A good horror/mystery serial in Valiant at that time was Jack O'Justice, drawn by Tom Kerr... 

That issue also carried a half page ad for that week's Buster and The Big One which featured a free gift...

Monday 22nd February 1965 saw the publication of The Dandy No.1214 with a very amusing Korky the Cat strip drawn by Charlie Grigg...

Inside, Dudley D. Watkins proved what a master comic artist he was with a Desperate Dan strip with 17 panels on one page...

The Smasher was up to mischief as usual, drawn by Hugh Morren. Note the advert at the foot of the page, heralding the start of Greedy Pigg the following week! (Greedy Pigg would replace George Martin's Sunny Boy which ended that week.)

The Dandy carried a regular feature page back then called My Home Town. Humour illustrations by Frank McDiarmid, with the 'straight' artwork by Thomson staff artist Alan Gibson. (Thanks to Ray Moore for correcting me on that.) Note the ads for that week's Bimbo and Diana at the bottom of the page...

The same day saw the publication of Wham! No.37, with a cover by Graham Allen doing his best to 'ghost' Leo Baxendale's style...

This issue of Wham! saw the debut of two new strips. In actuality they were both reprints from Swift. Western serial Johnny Straight by Don Lawrence was a re-lettered reprint of Wells Fargo...

...whilst The Bouncers by Peter Maddocks was also reprinted from Swift.

The rest of Wham! was still all-new though, and worth every penny. Especially with Leo Baxendale's glorious centre-spread strip Eagle Eye: Doomsday School...

This week in 1965 saw the publication of TV21 No.6. (Apologies for my copy having a bit missing from the cover.)

An important issue as it saw Mike Noble's arrival to TV21, taking over the art duties on Fireball XL5...

On the back page, The Daleks were proving to be more devious and cunning than they'd be portrayed in some of their TV appearances. Artwork by Richard Jennings...

Sparky was also on issue No.6 that week. Cover by Ron Spencer. My apologies if anyone is offended by the strip. Presented as it was in different times. Thankfully things have moved on since.

The centre pages featured another adventure with Dreamy Dave and Dozy Dora with artwork by George Ramsbottom. (Thanks to Ray Moore for that info.) One of the weirdest things about this strip was that every week the sleepy siblings shared the same dream! 

On the back page, another nice Moonsters strip by Bill Ritchie...

Just a few examples of the wide variety of strips from the many British comics that were available 50 years ago. It was a great time to be a child!

SMASH! The first 20 covers

When one thinks of the first series of Smash! comic (1966 to 1969) it may be the Batman strip of the covers that comes to mind. However, the comic's front page shifted and changed a bit before the Caped Crusader took up his position. Here's a look at all the issues leading up to that point. 

On February 2nd 1966 Smash! No.1 (above) debuted with a great Leo Baxendale cover promoting the free cardboard gun. The influence of Carl Giles was always evident in Baxendale's work of this period but Leo went in his own direction with it, enhancing his own style and bringing his creativity to every job. And it's incredibly funny too of course. 

Leo Baxendale was called upon to produce similarly manic covers to promote the free gifts in issues 2 and 3...

Issue 4 saw the arrival of The Man From B.U.N.G.L.E. (inspired by TV's Man From U.N.C.L.E.) and another cracking cover by Leo...

The cover to issue 5 was also by Leo Baxendale. Incidentally, the villainous 'Doctor Doom' was suddenly renamed 'Doctor Goole' in later issues to avoid confusion when Odhams started reprinting Marvel material. 

With issue 6, Ron Spencer became the new artist on The Man From B.U.N.G.L.E. doing a pretty good ghosting of Leo's style...

Issue 7, again by Ron Spencer. 

Issue 8, and a slight change, with B.U.N.G.L.E. as two panels this week. More great monsters drawn by Ron Spencer...

Uh-oh, here come the Chinese racial stereotypes on the cover of issue 9...

Issue 10, and an unusual Easter cover, again by Spencer...

Issue 11, again by Spencer...

Issue 12 saw a refreshing change with a split cover between The Man From B.U.N.G.L.E. (drawn by Ron Spencer) and a panel taken from The Legend Testers strip from inside by Jordi Bernet. Note the huge name check for Legend Tester 'Rollo Stones' in an attempt to get fans of The Rolling Stones to pick up the comic...

Issue 13 had a full cover B.U.N.G.L.E. illustration by Spencer again...

...as did issue 14...

Then with issue 15 a drastic change with a striking cover by Jordi Bernet for the latest Legend Testers adventure which was re-named The Trolls of the Under-Earth for that week. (You never knew what to expect in Smash!)

Issue 16 and The Man From B.U.N.G.L.E. was back, but this time drawn by Brian Lewis for one week only. Note that topline, - this key issue is when reprints of The Hulk started and Odhams relationship with Marvel Comics began...

Issue 17 proudly devoted its cover to The Incredible Hulk, reprinting Jack Kirby's cover from Marvel's Incredible Hulk No.1 (even though the story inside reprinted Hulk No.2). Marvel had supplied Odhams with black and white artwork but seem to have forgotten to tell them that the Hulk should have green skin...

Issue 18 saw the final Man From B.U.N.G.L.E. cover. A nice job by Ron Spencer. The character would later return as a comic strip serial inside the comic. 

Issue 19 and Smash! had abandoned its plan to pull in U.N.C.L.E. fans with a spoof, and instead went for the real thing by having an artist draw likenesses of Robert Vaughan and David McCallum on the cover. And why not throw in a likeness of Mick Jagger too, just to attract the pop fans? It was a plug for the Charlie's Choice strip inside but I don't know who drew the cover.

With issue 20 Smash! finally settled on a new cover star who would remain in place for the next couple of years. In a great coup for the comic, Batman had arrived, with Odhams gaining permission to reprint the strip from the American Sunday papers. Inside the comic, the contents had been steadily improving and adding new characters too over the first 20 weeks and now Smash! entered its golden age with a great mixture of home-grown humour and adventure strips plus reprints of Batman and the Hulk! Truly a comic to look forward to every week!

Batman ran on the cover every week (with one exception on No.34) until issue 114 when The Swots and the Blots took over for the rest of the run of the first series of Smash! I'm not going to show the rest of the covers as it'd soon become very tedious but I hope you've enjoyed looking through this selection of the early issues. Click each image to see it in more detail.