welcome and enjoy!

Hi and welcome to my blog about comics from other people’s childhood! It is dedicated primarily to British humour comics of the 60s and 70s. The reason they are not from my childhood is simply because I didn’t live in the UK back then (nor do I live there now). I knew next to nothing about them until fairly recently but since then I’ve developed a strong liking for the medium and amassed a large collection, including a number of complete or near complete sets. My intention is to use this blog as a channel for sharing my humble knowledge about different titles, favourite characters and creators as I slowly research my collection.

QUICK TIP: this blog is a sequence of posts covering one particular comic at a time. The sequence follows a certain logic, so for maximum results it is recommended that the blog is read from the oldest post up.

Copyright of all images and quotations used here is with their respective owners. Any such copyrighted material is used exclusively for educational purposes and will be removed at first notice. All other text copyright Irmantas P.



Monday, April 27, 2015

MONSTER FUN ANNUAL 1985



The 9th and the last MONSTER FUN Annual had 96 pages and cost £2.75.

Contents: The Little Monsters (in colour on front endpapers by Martin Baxendale + 3 pages of reprints by Sid Burgon), Draculass (two 2-pagers by Terry Bave, including one in colour), X-Ray Specs (two 3-pagers by Paul Ailey, including one in colour), Frankie’s Diary (two one-page sets by Jim Crocker), Tom Thumbscrew (two 2-pagers by Norman Mansbridge, reprints), Teddy Scare (two 2-pagers by Barrie Appleby), Dough Nut and Rusty (two 2-pagers by Trevor Metcalfe, reprints), Terror TV (two 3-pagers by Barrie Appleby, including one in colour), Horror Alphabet feature (3 pages by Jim Crocker), Eric Intrepid Dinosaur Hunter (4-pager by Mike Green), Creature Teacher (two 2-pagers by Tom Williams, reprints), Freaky Fotos feature (3 pages of b/w photos), Frankie Stein (a 6-pager by Ken Reid), Martha’s Monster Make-Up (two 2-pagers, probably by Keith Robson), Art’s Gallery (a 3-pager by Mike Lacey, reprint),  Gums (a 6-pager by Ian Knox), Brainy and His Monster Maker (two 2-pagers), Major Jump Horror Hunter (a 2-pager (reprint) and a 4-pager (new) by Ian Knox), Holiday Heroes (a 4-pager, probably by Chas Sinclair), Kid Kong (a 6-pager by Ian Knox), Puzzles (2 pages by Cliff Brown), Doctor Ericstein Monster Maker (a 4-pager by Mike Green, in colour).

The book begins with another cheerful panoramic set of the Little Monsters by Martin Baxendale, his only one in this book:


There are a couple of previously unseen fun features, such as Freaky Fotos:


… and Horror Alphabet – a three-page set by Jim Crocker. Here’s a sample page:


Paul Ailey provided two sets of X-Ray Specs. In one, Ray stops a raid on the bank, and in the other one he helps land a plane at New York airport in thick fog:


Mike Green contributed two stories of Eric – the lad who creates things from the junk found in Dad’s scrap-yard. In Eric Intrepid Dinosaur Hunter Eric gets an idea to make some money by selling a fake dinosaur to the city museum:


… and in Doctor Ericstein Monster Maker he tries to become rich and famous by creating his version of the Frankenstein monster:


Ken Reid illustrated a new story of Frankie Stein. Ken’s style had become rather uninspired and monotonous by then but the 6-page set, drawn with meticulous precision, is quite remarkable because it was Ken’s first Frankie Stein in nearly two decades since he stopped drawing it in WHAM! comic in 1967. In this episode Prof. Cube takes Frankie to audition for the leading role in the re-make of Frankenstein film:


The Annual has two helpings of Martha’s Monster Make-Up – the feature that Ken Reid used to draw in Monster Fun Comic weeklies. Both sets were illustrated by someone else who had studied Ken’s style and tried to imitate it to the best of his ability. I will take a guess that the artist was a one-time BUSTER sub Keith Robson who occasionally stepped in for Ken Reid on Faceache and other strips in the seventies. Here is a sample page from the Annual:


Barrie Appleby drew both Terror TV episodes. One is a western story of Alias Smith and Bones, while the second one features TV at Midnight – the show that makes the late night horror movie look like cartoon-time:


It was the second year in a row that Major Jump Horror Hunter was presented in the form of puzzles; here are the first two pages:


I am unsure who illustrated it but I think it may have been Ian Knox who also provided two surprise sets of strips that were usually given to other artists to draw. In Gums, the cunning Captain Mayhem swindles Gums out of his false teeth and sends them off to space tied to a US rocket. Cap’n Mayhem’s fiendish plan is to starve Gums into becoming his pet performer for food.  The US space shot finally shakes off Gum’s false teeth and they zonk straight back into the shark’s mouth. Gums wastes no time switching places with his tormentor:


The other surprise set by Ian Knox is this 6-pager of Kid Kong in which the gorilla is sent on a mission to save the world from the evil Doctor Bananas. Here it is in full:


This post marks the end of my Monster Fun Comic series in which I covered the developments in the life of the comic, provided an account of each strip that appeared during its relatively short run, and reviewed all MFC Holiday Specials and Annuals. MONSTER FUN COMIC is the third comic after COR!! and SHIVER AND SHAKE covered in this fashion on this blog. I have no plans to undertake another project like this in the immediate future but will add the odd blogpost until I have more time and enthusiasm to resume regular blogging.

All Images 2015 © Egmont UK Ltd.  All rights reserved. Used with permission.

18 comments:

  1. Irmantas, your exhaustive posts have been a pleasure to read and you've created a great resource for enthusiasts of British humour comics. Have a well-deserved rest, but I'm glad to read that you won't be abandoning your blog entirely. Thanks for all your hard work!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for your kind words, Niblet, and best of luck with your Cheeky Weekly blog!

      Delete
  2. My copy is 15 miles away, but the Martha and X-Ray Specs episodes you showed clips of are by Henry Davies.

    Well done on all your hard work - I've learned a lot from it!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Andy, I'd appreciate if you take a closer look and let me know when you get a chance to check your copy because I think the two strips were by two different artists. I will look with a fresh eye myself tomorrow.

      Delete
    2. I've just tweeted to Henry - see what he says! Henry is quite versatile, although he knows I prefer his original work - I'm not a fan of his ghosting if I'm honest.

      I know Keith's style from all his Beano and Dandy work. It's not him, and I can see how the trouser style confused you on Ray :)

      Delete
    3. Does he say it was him who provided the illustrations then? He is indeed quite versatile, if that's the case.I really must take another good look tomorrow!

      As for Keith Robson - I hear there were two Keith Robsons working in British comics - one was Buster Sub-editor in the early 70s and ghosted Faceache when Ken failed to meet his deadlines. I don't know about his later career. The other one drew Jonah in the Dandy in the early 90s, doing a decent imitation of Ken's style. Quite a coincidence, don't you think?

      Delete
    4. Wow! I always assumed it was the same guy. Was it really two different people? Could it have been father and son perhaps?

      Delete
    5. Brother in law of the second Keith Robson told me they were two different unrelated persons.

      Delete
    6. I didn't hear back from Henry, but I've just checked my own copy. If you compare this book with his work on Beano and Dandy comic libraries, Dinah Mo in the weekly Dandy etc, all four stories are by Henry :)

      Re Ken, it's fair to say that it isn't the level of detail he had in the 60s, but boy is the detail he has in there beautiful - even just in the oak panelling and the sky in the two frames you showed.

      Of course, when I was 11, all I knew of Ken's work was Faceache at Belmonte school (which I much prefer to the earlier stuff), Tom Horror's World, reprints of Martha's Monster Make Up and other beautifully clean work. When that's all you know of his work, what he was still capable of in the 1980s is still aesthetically pleasing if not beautiful.

      Delete
  3. What?! Irmy, tell me it isn't so! You just have to do Whizzer & Chips! (If you haven't already.) Life won't be the same without regular posts from you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Kid, I am not abandoning the blog - more like taking a break. Whoopee! is a more realistic candidate than Wh & Ch, firstly because I think it was better, also because I don't have a complete set of Whizzer and Chips.

      Delete
  4. Irmy, looking at those Frankie Stein panels makes me wonder yet again whether Ken Reid used an assistant in his later years, and merely inked their pencils. They are so completely devoid of the spontaneity, fluidity, variety and movement that were such a feature of his earlier work. The composition of that 2nd panel is awful, and Prof Cube's hand in the 1st one is not how Reid usually drew them. I find it hard to believe that he could have deteriorated to such an extent.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ken didn't have an assistant in his later years. His style changed because of age - you have to remember there are two decades between the two versions of Frankie Stein. Ken was in his mid-fourties when he illustrated the feature in WHAM!, and 65 or so when he did this set for MFC Annual 1985. By the way, I think your description of Ken's style in his later years could also be used to characterise his early work on Fudge the Elf.

      Delete
    2. I'm not terribly familiar with his Fudge the Elf character, and I suppose if Jack kirby could deteriorate so badly then it could happen to Ken Reid also. However, when one compares Queen of the Seas, for example, to his later style, the latter seems like a very poor imitation of the former. Such a shame.

      Delete
  5. Thanks for all your hard work...will often look at your blog posts for reference and I really enjoy your blog so much...
    Whoopee!! is my favourtie comic (Beano my favourite for DC Thomson) so that would be amazing to see that done...

    have a good rest..

    .also would be fun to see some more nursery comic pages and your thoughts..

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks for all the excellent work on Monster Fun, Irmantas, one of my all-time favourite comics - it's another excellent, extremely useful and highly entertaining reference guide. Much appreciated and very much enjoyed. Especially good and very helpful to have a guide to the Specials and Annuals.

    Have a good break, and I'll look forward to your occasional blogposts ...



    ... until you get started on your exhaustive Krazy project!


    Well, you know you want to!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Raven. It is my modest contribution in an attempt to "re-write" UK comics history in favour of IPC comics - to me, they are so much better than DCT output during the seventies.
      If I do another series, I think I will stick to Whoopee! :))

      Delete
  7. Dick Doobie go on my nerves through having to keep holding upside-down and to a mirror in order to read Dick’s words. It’s interesting that the edition you’ve put up (I don’t doubt you have others) gives Sam’s mother’s name as Hilda – no doubt named after Hilda Ogden! What do you mean, “Who?” You see, I’ve started and the project hasn’t begun yet!

    ReplyDelete