A LOOK AT MONSTER FUN STRIPS: BRAINY AND HIS MONSTER MAKER

Brainy and his Monster Maker was a tale about a boy named Brainy who invented the World’s first monster-making ray gun. In this strip ‘monster’ meant ‘big’ rather than ‘horrible’, so don’t expect to see freaky monsters here (save for the odd giant-sized bird, dog, crab, worm or insect) – only huge hats, fruits, flowers, tarts, umbrellas, slippers, etc. Also the odd giant nose or toe because the the magical monster maker could also be applied selectively (to enlarge a particular part only).

I find the stories a bit boring and repetitive, and the artwork isn’t great too, so it isn’t high in my personal list of favourite MFC features. Readers must have seen it differently because Brainy and his Monster Maker continued from the first issue of MFC to the very last (missing issues 16, 34, 39, 41, 47, 50, 51, 53, 56, 58, 61, 64, 66, 68, 70 and 71). The illustrator was Vic Neil (I think). The strip was a one-pager, except in the penultimate issue where two independent episodes were merged to look like one – a clear case of not wanting to waste the artwork supplied by the cartoonist before the decision not to transfer the strip to the combined BUSTER AND MONSTER FUN was made.

A LOOK AT MONSTER FUN STRIPS: DRACULASS

Draculass was a daughter of Dracula who came to England from Transylvania to stay with her relatives (Aunt, Uncle and cousin Maisie – all of them perfectly normal people). Draculass was a no-joke vampire – green-faced and sharp-fanged, she fed on human blood and was always on the lookout for unsuspecting victims to prang. Luckily for the victims, Draculass’ bite wasn't lethal and didn’t turn them into vampires, all they needed was a patch of sticking plaster. Nonetheless, the little vampire’s urges didn’t make her very popular amongst the townsfolk of Monsterville, and Maisie was her only friend (possibly because they had an arrangement that Draculass won’t try to prang her cousin). Her fangs always at the ready, every week Draculass schemed to take a bite at a nice neck or two; needless to say, her plots usually backfired. 

Draculass was illustrated by Terry Bave who devoted a couple of passages to the strip in his interview for the Summer 1986 edition of GOLDEN FUN. Mr. Bave recalls he created the character together with his wife Sheila when they had been invited to contribute to the new comic by way of creating a suitable ‘monster’ feature. Initially they thought of Draculadd but then Shiela suggested that a little vampire lass might prove more fun, and by replacing the two D’s with a couple of S’s they arrived at Draculass. Mr. Bave recalled that Draculass proved very popular with MFC readers and even attracted her very own brand of fain mail, “with many a reader (especially girls) exclaiming their sheer delight over the little vampire’s fangs”. In the interview Mr. Bave says: “Obviously, the emphasis was on ‘fun’ and not ‘fear’ so I had to play down the blood-letting aspect of the vampire characteristic. When the script called for an encounter between Draculass and one of her unsuspecting victims, I would first show the little vampire sizeing-up her victim, then with fangs at the ready, then the following frame would show Draculass flying away with a satisfied grin on her face while her perplexed victim would be shown to have acquired a cross-patch of sticking plaster on his or her neck! During my many ‘talks on comics’ with children of varying ages I have always found tremendous enthusiasm for this character.”

Draculass started in MFC No. 1 and continued to the very end without missing a week. The little vampire got her own poster in issue 22 (8th November, 1975) and a cut-out mask in issue No. 34 (31st January, 1976) – you can read about the making of the mask in the same interview of Mr. Bave in the Summer 1986 edition of GOLDEN FUN. The strip survived merger with BUSTER and continued there for another fourteen months until 10th December 1977. 

A LOOK AT MONSTER FUN STRIPS: ART’S GALLERY

Art was a boy who inherited his uncle’s mansion and found stacks of paintings inside. He came up with an idea to open an art gallery to exhibit the collection but didn’t realise these were no ordinary paintings – the characters painted in them were alive and able to climb out of their frames and interact with each other and the real world. The worst thing about them was that they were all lazy-bones who hated being put on display to be ‘gawped at’ by ‘silly visitors’. The enchanted paintings plotted various schemes to send visitors packing, while Art used his wits to get the better of the misbehaved picture characters.

In the beginning the strip was tied-in with a participation feature (Art’s Potty Pictures) in which the readers were invited to send picture ideas involving play on words and win £1 for every picture published. Readers’ contributions were printed on the same pages as the strip or the page opposite. The participation feature was discontinued after issue 19 which included a bumper final selection of potty pictures. My version of the reason why it ended was the introduction (in MFC No. 16) of Ticklish Allsorts – a feature that accommodated jokes of every kind, including those of the play-on-words variety that were the specialty of Art’s Potty Pictures.

Initially Art’s Gallery occupied the two pages which formed the centrespread after the pull-out booklet or the poster was detached from the comic. From issue No. 19 the strip was reduced to one page and continued like that for the remainder of its modest run untill issue No. 34, missing issues No. 21 and 24 (also 16, in which there was no story, only the potty pictures). The illustrator was Mike Lacey (except in No. 12 where a ghost artist stepped in). Mr. Lacey’s output was quite amazing at the time – in addition to Art’s Gallery, he was also in charge of X-Ray Specs in MFC, plus he drew weekly instalments of Scared-Stiff Sam (a two-pager) and The Bumpkin Billionaires (front cover and two inside pages) in Whoopee!  On top of that, we was also the illustrator of Sid's Snake and Shiner in WHIZZER AND CHIPS. This makes at least 10 pages every week! Perhaps this was one of the reasons why Art’s Gallery was soon reduced from two pages to one and then dropped altogether. 

A LOOK AT MONSTER FUN STRIPS: GRIZZLY BEARHUG… GIANT

Grizzly Bearhug… Giant was a variation of the classic beanstalk tale. In the opening episode we meet the Shorts who are driving in their car with a caravan in tow. The car runs out of petrol so the parents go looking for some and leave their two kids and the dog beside the car. When they return they find out that a crooked witch has stolen the car but left the caravan and some beans behind. The dog buries the beans under the caravan and the next thing the Shorts know they are above the clouds atop a giant beanstalk. Their caravan rolls through the gates of a castle and then somehow straight onto the table of the ugly giant Grizzly Bearhug who lives there:

The sloppy and untidy giant is an ogre who hates ‘those rotten tichy people and midget menaces’. He is very eager to have them for tea but the Smiths take refuge in a hidey-hole behind the skirting board and spend the next 15 episodes trapped in the castle, living the life of mice. They make several failed escape attempts, outsmart Grizzly Bear a few times when the ogre plots to catch or exterminate them, survive one or two attacks by Grizzly Bear’s giant cat and raid the ogre’s larder. 

They finally manage to escape from Grizzly Bear’s castle in No. 17 but it takes them another two episodes to break completely free from the kingdom of the ogres and make it safely to the ground where they meet the evil witch and recover their stolen car.

The story lasted for 19 weeks in issues 1 – 19 and probably wasn’t a hit with the readers because it was dropped very quickly (and rightly so, IMHO). The illustrator was Andy Christine (as confirmed by signature in the third episode). The artwork was rather crude, especially in the first few episodes. The feature started as a three-pager in No. 1, then continued as a two-pager until becoming 1 ½ pages long starting from No. 14 which also marked the point when it was moved from the front of the paper to pages 30 – 31.