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!

Cover story

There's a discussion on Facebook at the moment about this annual cover so I thought I'd expand upon it here. This memorable cover to The Beano Book 1970 was painted by Dave Sutherland, who was the regular cover artist on the Beano annuals at that time (and for many years afterwards). He still draws The Bash Street Kids in The Beano every week of course, and this year will be his 53rd year on the strip!

The interesting thing about this annual cover is that the week the book was published, that week's Beano comic (No.1416, dated September 6th 1969) tied in with it, showing what happened next! A rare British comics crossover. Although the book cover was by Dave Sutherland, the strip on the weekly was by Biffo's regular artist Dudley Watkins. Sadly, by the time this saw print, Mr.Watkins had passed away suddenly the previous month. 

That same issue also carried an ad for the latest Dennis the Menace annual on the back page, with a vague link to that week's Dennis strip drawn by Davey Law. 

Beano bits and bobs from the 1950s

My thanks to Jimmy Tweed again for sending me more comic scans from his collection. There's some fascinating items here that I've certainly never seen before. 

Above is an early appearance of Dennis the Menace gatecrashing Biffo the Bear's cover strip in 1952. We all know that Dennis eventually gained the cover slot in 1974 but back then he was just an interior strip. Considering that Dennis the Menace had only started in The Beano the year before, I'm guessing that this 1952 strip is the first time he'd appeared on the cover. A sign of his immediate popularity perhaps, and a foreshadowing of great things to come! The brilliant Dudley Watkins drew Dennis a bit bulkier than his regular artist Davy Law did, but it's a great strip all the same.

Moving on a few years and here's a 1958 cover with Dennis making another appearance! Again, artwork by Dudley Watkins who drew him closer to the traditional version this time. (Although to be fair, like most comic characters, the design of Dennis did fluctuate a bit even under Davy Law until he settled on a comfortable design.)

As a bonus item, here's a Dennis the Menace strip by Davy Law from the back cover of The Beano from late August 1955, ending with an ad for the very first Dennis the Menace Annual. (Proving that annuals have always been published several months before Christmas, although these days they come out even earlier, in July.) 

An early BEEZER (1956)

Most of us will have grown up with The Beezer comic of the 1960s to 1980s but in its early days it was quite different to the later issues. Here are a few pages from the year of its launch, 1956. Issue No.37, dated September 29th.

Although Ginger was the cover star for the first 33 issues (and would be again later), Pop, Dick and Harry had proven popular enough to be given the treasured cover position every week until 1962. The strip above is by Tom Bannister displaying his excellent skills in depicting physical comedy.

In its early days The Beezer had a good proportion of adventure strips. One of them being The Voyage of The Bushwhacker on page 2. According to Ray Moore's indispensable Beezer index (The Book of The Beezer) the artist was Bill Holroyd. This surprised me as there's barely any similarity to Holroyd's later work for The Dandy on Brassneck, Jack Silver, and Spunky and his Spider etc, but closer inspection does reveal that style emerging.

Fans of Leo Baxendale will know that his style kept developing throughout his career. In this 1956 Banana Bunch page there is very little resemblance to his Badtime Bedtime material of 18 years later but his style evolved gradually.

Westerns were big in the 1950s and The Beezer got in on the act with Lone Wolfe with artwork by Ron Smith. This is the second episode of the series. It's interesting to see a few silent action scenes. Very unusual for a British comic.

Although he was off the cover for a while, Ginger still had a full page inside. Drawn by the late Dudley Watkins with very contemporary images for the fifties, with its wind-up record player, door-to-door brush salesman, and old-style telephone, kettle and lawn mower. For a youngster Ginger was being a bit conservative in his music tastes for 1956 though, preferring Hillbilly music to rock 'n' roll!

The back cover went for an educational theme back then, with a wildlife feature and a cutaway. Presumably this was Thomson's attempt to rival similar features in Hulton's Eagle. 

The early Beezer only had 12 pages but its huge A3 size and bright colour on every page (8 full colour, 4 in red spot colour) still made it look good value for money. It's no wonder it endured a long run of many years!

Christmas 1964: The Dandy Book

Cover by Charles Grigg.

I said in my previous post that this blog would be staying in 1964 for the duration of Christmas and the reason is to have a look back at The Dandy Book that I had on Christmas Day 1964.

This is the earliest Christmas I can remember, and I have very clear, fond memories of receiving this, my very first annual. I was five years old and in my pillowcase was this marvelous book along with other presents such as a Supercar toy (see here) and a Chad Valley See-A-Show (see here). I'd been a regular reader of The Dandy weekly throughout 1964 but to my young eyes this was something really special; a thick hardback book full of my favourite strips. I was immediately hooked!

I couldn't wait to get stuck into the book, and I read the first story in bed before I got up. A one-off adventure strip called Diamond Dick. (No giggling at the back there.) Artwork by Paddy Brennan.

This story of diamond thieves in South Africa fascinated me and I still remember the excitement of reading these two pages with the hero hiding in the crook's car...

Then, a few pages on, suddenly a fantastic double-page spread. What an impact! I'd never seen this technique used in comics before and the great thing was that this book used the two-page spread in several stories as we'll see. 

The book contained all the Dandy regulars plus a few new faces. For years I thought The Beetles was by Leo Baxendale, but it's actually an excellent imitation of Leo's style by Ron Spencer. (George Martin's Sunny Boy on the facing page.)

Another feature that had an impact on me was The Nine Faces of Korky by Charlie Grigg. This 'Nine Faces' idea was used for several characters in this annual and was a uniquely entertaining way to tell a story and to show good cartoon expressions. 

Here's another; The Nine Faces of Desperate Dan, by Dudley Watkins...

The brilliant Ken Reid had several Big Head and Thick Head pages in this annual. Here's one of them, with the pair receiving a battering as usual. Ken was a master of comic violence in strips. And yes, the green spot colour really is that bright in the actual book!

As I said, the double-page spread cropped up in several stories and used very effectively. Here, halfway through a Winker Watson story by Eric Roberts...

Another spread in a Rocket Jock story by Charlie Grigg...

...and at the start of Joe White and the Seven Dwarfs by Bill Holroyd. I remember laughing out loud at this 50 years ago! Holroyd was a fantastic artist (and I understand he was Ken Reid's brother-in-law).

One of the many things I liked about The Dandy back then was that it featured adventure stories as well as humour. One of the most dramatic was The Crimson Ball, a giant indestructible metal ball controlled by a foreign spy (who lived inside it) intent on destroying British aircraft! Art by Jack Glass.

My favourite Dandy adventure strip was The Red Wrecker, - powerful fast growing weeds springing up and destroying anything in their way. In The Dandy Book it was destruction on a grand scale, and Charlie Grigg really outdid himself with this spread...

Time for one more 'Nine Faces' and here's The Nine Faces of Thick Head by Ken Reid...

Finally, on the back cover of the book, a full colour Desperate Dan strip by Dudley Watkins, with a punchline that still amuses me to this day.

All of the scans and photos in this post are taken from that very book I had 50 years ago today. A Christmas of happier and more optimistic times. The lad I was back then could never have imagined he'd be creating strips in The Dandy Annual 2015, and I can hardly believe it myself some days. I hope that some of today's children who are unwrapping their first Dandy Annual today will get similar enjoyment out of it as I did from the one my mum bought me half a century ago. Whether or not they'll be writing about it in 50 years time I'll never know, but I'd like to think so. 

I prepared this post a few days ago, scheduling it to go live on Christmas Day, so if you're reading it on December 25th thanks for dropping by and I hope you're having a good day! Merry Christmas!

A few more festive flashbacks of annuals from long ago, from older blog posts of mine:

Wham Annuals:

http://comiconline24h.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/wham-annual-cover-gallery.html

Smash Annuals:

http://comiconline24h.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/smash-annual-cover-gallery.html

Pow Annuals:

http://comiconline24h.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/pow-annual-cover-gallery.html

Marvel:
http://comiconline24h.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/road-to-marvel-uk-part-2.html

Daleks:

http://comiconline24h.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/happy-birthday-daleks.html

...and going way back, Film Fun:

http://comiconline24h.blogspot.co.uk/2007/12/70-year-flashback-film-fun-annual-1938.html