TV Comic Holiday Special 1963

Firstly, my apologies for the poor quality of the cover image above. My second-hand copy of this special is unfortunately coverless so I've used an image from the GCD website which is the best I could find, albeit low resolution. However the rest of the scans are all from my edition. (Click on images to see them much larger.)

The TV Comic Holiday Special 1963 was the second in the series. It had 48 packed pages sized 300mm x 230mm featuring strips and text stories based on tv stars of the day. 

The versatile Bill Titcombe was the artist on a two page Bootsie and Snudge strip. Titcombe would be a regular contributor to the TV Comic weekly over the following years on strips such as Ken Dodd's Diddymen and Tom and Jerry.

A Supercar text story ran across two pages, illustrated with stills from the show.

One of TV Comic's longest running humour strips was Popeye, featuring brand new stories for the UK market. Various artists worked on the strip over the years. In this instance, Chick Henderson, whose style I really like...

Foo Foo was a cartoon that rarely seemed to be on TV in my area, but perhaps it was shown when I was too young to notice. 

Lenny the Lion was a rather camp puppet used by ventriloquist Terry Hall. The strip bares little relation to the stage act (and no Terry) but it's nicely drawn by Bill Mevin...

Apache, a five page Range Rider text story featured some good grey wash artwork by Mike Noble...

The centre-spread featured a full colour Supercar strip by Bill Mevin based on Gerry Anderson's early puppet series. Interesting that the TV Comic version is so dramatic, but when the strip moved to TV21 in 1965 it was treated as light relief.

One of the original, non-TV based strips in the special was Super Nan, who seems to be TV Comic's version of The Beano's Pansy Potter. Art looks like the work of Dick Millington.

There were two Fireball XL5 strips in the special. Here's one of them. Artwork by Neville Main...

Dickie Henderson was a very popular entertainer at the time and had his own comedy show featuring a fictitious family. TV Comic saw The Dickie Henderson Family as ideal strip material, although in the Holiday Special they decided to run it as a text story illustrated with scenes from the show.

The rest of the TV Comic Holiday Special 1963 featured non-TV strips such as Mighty Moth, The Bakers' Dozen, Lochy the Funny Wee Monster, plus second helpings of Foo-Foo, Popeye, and others, along with a few puzzles and games. All in all a decent publication that I'm sure must have been a good holiday treat for many readers. 

DWM Special Edition preview

Thanks to TARDIS technology (and the generosity of Panini UK) here's a quick preview of the Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition: The Art of Doctor Who that will be in the shops tomorrow! 

Even better than expected, the summer special features a wealth of information and artwork of the history of Doctor Who in comics, annuals, sweet cigarette cards, Target novelizations and more.

There's even a few images shot directly from the artwork which show off the brush strokes as well as the margin notes. Naturally the Doctor's more predominant appearances in titles such as TV Comic and Countdown are covered but it also shows covers to publications such as TV Tornado and Judy which featured the Time Lord. 

Where possible, quotes from the artists involved have been included and there's a new interview with Dave Gibbons on his time drawing the strip for the early issues of Doctor Who Weekly.

Editor Marcus Hearn and his team of writers have been very thorough in researching their subjects. As well as covering the history of the comic strips over the last 51 years there are also features on the DVD sleeve design, fanzine artwork, concept art of the series and much more. 

The 100 page special is an excellent publication packed with information. Essential summer reading for any Doctor Who fan and/or fan of British comics history. 

Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition No.40 - The Art of Doctor Who published Thursday 16th April 2015. £5.99.

Mike Noble in TV Comic

Before his long run illustrating Fireball XL5 and Zero X (plus a few Captain Scarlet stories) for TV21, Mike Noble was a regular artist in TV Comic from 1960 to 1965. Westerns were still very popular at the time and Mike illustrated The Lone Ranger in 1960/61. (Mike had also previously drawn the strip for Express Weekly in 1958 to 1960.) The above example is from TV Comic No.467, dated 26th November 1960.

After The Lone Ranger, Mike was commissioned to draw a similar strip, The Range Rider from 1961 to 1964. This example is from TV Comic No.579 (19th January 1963). It looks as though Mike was experimenting with a different inking technique on this one, with bolder outlines on the characters...

Here's another Range Rider page from TV Comic No.588 (23rd March 1963)...

...and another one from a year later, published in TV Comic No.634...

Personally I prefer his TV21 strips, full of explosive action, marvelously coloured, but it's interesting to see that Mike's early work also had his identifiable dynamism and excellent figure work. Definitely one of the greats, and, as always, my favourite UK adventure strip artist. 

Basil Brush by John Ryan

Here's something I noticed whilst looking through old issues of TV Comic. I've previously shown Basil Brush strips that were drawn by Chas Sinclair (see here) and he's the artist I've always associated with that strip... but he wasn't the only one to draw it. 

The example above is from TV Comic No.847, dated 9th March 1968, predating the Sinclair strips, and is in the distinctive style of John Ryan! As you'll all know, John Ryan was the creator of the strips Captain Pugwash and Harris Tweed for Eagle, and of course Pugwash later became a very popular TV series.

I don't know how many weeks John Ryan drew the Basil Brush strip but Chas Sinclair was definitely the artist a year later when I started buying TV Comic regularly. Dick Millington drew some as well apparently. Anyway, I thought it was an interesting page and worth posting here for fans of John Ryan's work. 

A tribute to John Ryan that I wrote in 2009:
http://comiconline24h.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/john-ryan-1921-2009.html

Dick Millington

I'm sorry to hear that the cartoonist Dick Millington passed away on Wednesday 4th February after an illness. He was 81. Mr.Millington's work will be known to many of us because of his long running Mighty Moth strip in TV Comic. The man vs moth premise of the strip was simple but highly entertaining as every week 'Dad' would concoct a new scheme to get rid of Mighty Moth which would invariably backfire. Yet the heart of the strip was that the characters had a love/hate relationship. Dad needed Moth. Moth needed Dad. 

One of the earliest Mighty Moth strips, from 1959, is shown above. Mr.Millington was also the writer of the popular strip which ran until the end of TV Comic in 1984.

In 1966 Dick Millington became the editor of TV Comic, overseeing a very fondly remembered period for the weekly. He later worked for the Daily Mail on their Guiness Book of Records feature and the I Don't Believe It strip. 

My sincere condolences to the family and friends of Mr.Millington for their sad loss. His distinctive artwork and charmingly funny scripts were truly a joy to read.

More at the Daily Mail website:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2943513/Daily-Mail-cartoonist-Dick-Millington-dies-aged-81.html

His entry at Lambiek:
http://www.lambiek.net/artists/m/millington_dick.htm

Christmas Comics: TV COMIC (1970)

Published on the very same day as the issue of Tiger I showed in the previous post, here's TV Comic No.993, being the Christmas issue for 1970. Tom and Jerry had taken over the cover position in the previous year and remained there for a long run. Artwork by Bill Titcombe, with the story continuing on page 2...

TV Comic featured several strips that were not TV shows and which were created specially for the comic. Mighty Moth was one such strip, enjoying a very long run drawn by Dick Millington...

Catweazle was a popular children's tv show at the time, starring Geoffrey Bayldon. The strip version in TV Comic was illustrated by Bill Lacey, father of humour artist Mike Lacey...

Texas Ted was another strip originated just for TV Comic, and was stylishly drawn by Frank McDiarmid...

Running across the top half of the centre pages at this time was Basil Brush, the popular TV puppet. The strip expanded the theme, setting Basil in his stately home and giving him a butler. Artwork by Chas Sinclair...

The comic often featured newly drawn strips of American cartoon characters. Here's The Bugs Bunny Show, again with art by Bill Titcombe I believe...

This doesn't have a festive theme to the story but I thought you might like to see that week's episode of Doctor Who, drawn by John Canning. Within a few weeks the strip would transfer over to Polystyle's new weekly, Countdown, who would give the Doctor a more sympathetic and sophisticated treatment...

On the back page, Popeye, drawn by Bill Mevin. It could have been easy for TV Comic to reprint the American Popeye strips (and they did, in the Popeye Holiday Specials) but to their credit they originated brand new pages for the weekly. 

The final festive flashback is tomorrow! See you then.