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In January 1988, the Beano strip chronicling the adventures of Dennis the Menace's pet pig, Rasher, was retired... and since its replacement was being drawn by the same artist, David Sutherland, there was a rather unusual handover, with The Germs and Ill Will appearing in the last strip before taking over the page completely the week after. (Both strips shared not only an artist, but also a writer…
This is something that has confused me for quite some time . In a speech given on 27 January 1992, George H. W. Bush gives a speech in which he says "we need a nation closer to the Waltons than the Simpsons" . The producers of The Simpsons rush out a response appended to a repeat of "Stark Raving Dad" a few days later , where the family watch the clip on their TV, to which Bart responds "hey,…
The label on the jar has ripped and hangs half off. When she folds the torn piece back into its proper position, the blood drains from your cheeks. You are eating from a jar of Mutant Meatballs! Mutant Meatballs were concocted originally by an apothecary from Throben aligned to a rebellious Prince of Brice. On discovering their effects, they designed a plan of conquest. These potent little balls…
Some scans in this article contain racist caricatures. Shortly after the closure of Buzz , D. C. Thomson decided to have another go at launching a new weekly humour comic for children. It would do things a bit differently from its immediate predecessor: whereas Buzz had been in A3 size, the new comic would be A4, allowing it to boast 32 pages of comics and features. Although it didn't have a…
This is the first of the four maps you use to navigate the Ghastly Kingdom of the Dead in the third GrailQuest gamebook, Gateway of Doom . You start in room 65 , the one with the four secret doors, and will eventually want to make your way over to 80 , where you will find a map showing the remainder of Level I. As you may have noticed, you can't get to 80 without passing through 100 no matter what…
In January 1973, D. C. Thomson launched a new weekly humour comic for children into a market that already looked pretty crowded; they were already producing the Beano , Dandy , Beezer , Topper and Sparky at the time, and to introduce a sixth comic into this mix seems ambitious. Like its stablemates the Beezer and Topper , Buzz was published in A3 size, making it twice the size of many other comics…
The second Lone Wolf gamebook, Fire on the Water , is quite heavy on setting up the series' lore, and features an expansive plot where Lone Wolf must travel halfway across the Lastlands to retrieve the fabled Sommerswerd. Perhaps because of this, there are a few moments where it seems to struggle to fit everything into 350 sections. During one sequence, you travel by coach to Port Bax, with five…
Snip and Snap , D. C. Thomson's original duo of postman-pillorying dogs, enjoyed a stint in the Sparky for just shy of two years, from October 1972 to August 1974. As you may have immediately guessed from other posts I've done on this subject recently , for a brief spell beginning in the summer of 1999, the twosome were dusted off, colourised and reprinted in the Dandy as the Red Hot Chilli Dogs :
This is the very first edition of The Haunted Wood , a strip which appeared in Fleetway's Knockout across its two-year run from June 1971 to June 1973. Like some other Fleetway strips of the time, it does not appear to have had a terribly consistent artist; some sources say this first strip was the work of Reg Parlett, other strips were apparently by Sid Burgon, and other editions have artists who…
This is a very early example of Ali's Baba , a strip which appeared in D. C. Thomson's Sparky from January 1970 up until the comic's end in July 1977; it was drawn by Malcolm "Mal" Judge, better known for D. C. stablemates such as The Numskulls and Billy Whizz . This particular strip is taken from the Sparky Book 1971 ; the Christmas books were usually finished at least a year before publication,…
In March 1983, the very third Fighting Fantasy gamebook, The Forest of Doom , was published in the UK. I'm aware it's a story I've told several times now, but the range's co-creators, Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, had jointly written the first book in the series, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain , which was an instant bestseller. To produce two new books in the same time it had taken to write…
One of the newest strips in the weekly Beano , Rubi's Screwtop Science , started life in CBBC's 2016 series Dennis & Gnasher: Unleashed ; Rubidium "Rubi" von Screwtop (daughter of Professor von Screwtop, a re-imagining of a mad scientist who originated in Lord Snooty and His Pals all the way back in 1939) was one of several new friends for Dennis created for the TV series who was subsequently…
The author was delighted not only to see a copy of this edition again, but also to learn that the entire series is now on YouTube. Which may be the closest this saga ever gets to a nice, neat ending.
Recently, I have written a few things about editing on the BBC's 2006-09 version of Robin Hood . These posts feel a bit like they've come from a fansite in a parallel universe where the show survived the departure of nearly all of its original leads, ran for a few more series and left a bigger cultural footprint than it actually did, so I've been quite pleased with the audience they've found. One…
A few months ago, I published a history of Ivy the Terrible which went down spectacularly well. (Thanks again if you reposted it or said something nice about it.) This is a deleted scene which I realised very quickly should probably be spun out into its own piece. This is, once again, the first ever Ivy strip, as published in the edition of the Beano dated 04/05/85: In (approximately) May 1988,…
As one door closes, another must open. In the great shake-up of late 2024, E4 became the only place to see new-to-linear-TV Simpsons in the UK, following their releases on Disney+ a few months beforehand. Season 36 became the first season to premiere on the channel in this way at the start of this year, but E4 are still playing catch-up with Seasons 33 through 35, which were first seen over here…
Last year, I published one of my favourite things I've ever written -- a history of Cliff Hanger , the part-gamebook part-comic strip that ran in Fleetway Publications' Buster from 1983-87, and was then reprinted from 1992 until near the comic's end in 1999. Here's a thing that's been bothering me about the strip for a while. Or possibly two things, one of which isn't bothering me any more. One of…
This is an example of Cannonball Kid (drawn by Rob Lee), a story which appeared in D. C. Thomson's Nutty from around the midpoint of its 1980-85 run to its end. If you remember my earlier look at Nutty , you may notice this is the exact same strip I used as an example of the Kid there... but there's a reason for this. ( Apart from the fact it's the only Cannonball Kid strip I have.) In April 1998,…
On 29 December 2007, the second series of the BBC's latest adaptation of Robin Hood came to an end with a highly contentious finale where Guy of Gisborne stabbed Marian to death in a jealous rage. It's perhaps not the most interesting thing about these episodes, but although produced as two 45-minute episodes, titled A Good Day to Die and We Are Robin Hood , they ended up originally airing as one…
When looking in charity shops I am principally hoping to find another batch of old comics, or maybe some Choose Your Own Adventure books, but I buy other stuff as well. Such as this: Children's Hour was the second Radio 4 series from Armstrong and Miller, in which they starred as newspaper critics Craig Children and Martin Bain-Jones (characters the duo later reprised for their Channel 4 sketch…
Shadow on the Sand is the fifth Lone Wolf gamebook, and also the conclusion to the Kai sub-series (also known at that point in publication as the 'basic rules' series, as it marks the point where Lone Wolf goes from initiate to Kai Master, and so unlocks a whole new set of Kai Disciplines to choose from). It is structured uniquely: instead of a single 350-section adventure, the game is split into…
In October 2007, the BBC's Robin Hood TV series returned for its second series. Amongst a number of changes, the entire title sequence was completely overhauled, with a lot more colour, variety, shots of forest scenery interspersed with clips from episodes and whatnot. A visual summary of all the different credit screens would look more or less exactly like this: Episodes 4, 5, 8, 9, 10 and 11…
In the issue of the Beano dated 2nd January 1993, a terrible monster made its debut. No, it wasn't Hot Foot , it was the first edition of a story that was, for its first week only, called The Yeti , drawn by stalwart artist Robert Nixon: This was the only edition to run to two pages (at least in the weekly comic), and with the status quo set up, future editions carried the full title of The Yeti…
In the third Lone Wolf gamebook, The Caverns of Kalte , Lone Wolf is sent to the frozen wastes of Kalte to apprehend Vonotar the Traitor, the renegade wizard who has fled there and now rules over the Ice Barbarians. At a certain point in the ice fortress, you will come across a stone door which, upon examination, will turn out to be a prison cell for Loi-Kymar, an elder of the Magicians' Guild. If…
No, it wasn't some weird dream you had, D. C. Thomson really did produce an entire comic based around the ultra-homely Bash Street Kid. Plug ran for just 75 issues between September 1977 and February 1979, after which it merged into the Beezer ; its demise is often blamed on its considerable production values such as use of gravure painting, higher-quality paper, and more pages in technicolour…