KEN REID AS IPC SCRIPTWRITER

Ken Reid is widely recognised as one of the great UK comics illustrators but he is sometimes overlooked as a brilliant scriptwriter. In this post I will focus on Mr. Reid’s IPC work.

He only wrote two strips for the publisher – the first one was SUB in SCORCHER (the first of Mr. Reid’s eight soccer strips that he drew in 1970 - 1974). Ken wrote scripts for all but the first two of the 31 episodes of this hilarious feature. Here is an example:

The second was of course Faceache – the long-running strip that began in JET and transferred to BUSTER when it absorbed JET. The first two episodes were written by Ian Mennell (I think they were episodes one and three in the JET run of the strip) before Ken took over as the writer and continued for more than a decade until BUSTER became BUSTER AND JACKPOT. The last episode of Faceache that Ken drew to his own script appeared in BUSTER cover-dated January 30th, 1982. Here’s an example of an early one from JET:

I contacted Dez Skinn who was the BUSTER sub-editor in the seventies and asked him how he remembered Ken as scriptwriter.  Here is what he had to say: “… as the Buster sub-editor I dealt with Ken on a weekly basis, sometimes chasing him for his finished artwork, which would arrive with the pencilled lettering that he wanted. Sadly he was deemed to have overwritten his work (invariably his narrative panels) making it too detailed for little 'uns so we usually had to cut it back by at least 25%. Like Alf Saporito on Cor!!'s Gus Gorilla, Terry Bave, Leo Baxendale, Reg Parlett and many other writer/artists, his scripts were drawn up full twice-up size on thin paper for the editor’s approval... Given that IPC considered his work dark, they'd never give him - of all people - carte blanche!“

Faceache was a big success, as evidenced by its spectacularly long run. After 8 years of writing and drawing Faceache, Mr. Reid was presented with two awards for the feature by the Society of Strip Illustration. One was Cartoonist of the Year and the other one – Humorous Script Writer of the Year. The ceremony took place at the Y-Hotel in London on Sept 23rd, 1978 where Ken’s prizes were handed to him by Michael Bentine. Untypically, IPC celebrated Ken’s achievement and recognition by including this short article in BUSTER cover-dated Nov. 18th, 1978:

When researching for this blogpost, I remembered Peter Gray’s old website where he showed Ken’s letter to his penfriend Chris. In the letter Ken tells Chris about the S.S.I. awards ceremony and his misadventures at the Y-Hotel. Here is the first-hand account by the man himself (click to enlarge): 

ADVERTISEMENTS IN MONSTER FUN COMIC

Before I close the chapter of MONSTER FUN COMIC weeklies and call this mission completed, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the adverts which appeared in the paper.

IPC in-house advertisements can be found in nearly every issue of the paper. They promoted free gifts and special features in sister publications such as Whoopee!, Whizzer and Chips, Jinty, Tammy, Battle, Tiger and Scorcher, Shoot!, BUSTER, LOOK AND LEARN and others. They also advertised Annuals and Holiday Specials of various IPC comics; here are some of the countless examples:

During its short lifetime MFC celebrated the arrival of quite a few new sister publications in a variety of genres:

From MONSTER FUN COMIC No. 15

From MONSTER FUN COMIC No. 19

From MFC No. 36; MFC Issue No. 35 had 4 pages of ACTION adverts

From MONSTER FUN COMIC No. 68

From MONSTER FUN COMIC No. 71

It is impossible to imagine an IPC comic without those small post stamp offers and ads aimed at stamp collectors. They can be found in nearly every issue of MFC:

Very often post stamp ads appeared in the same block with Whimsies from Wade or Whoppas from Wade:

Toys companies formed another group of commercial advertisers. One can’t help noticing that the vast majority of products were boys’ toys. There were quite a few ads of North Pacific line of flying craft models from Hales. The black and white adverts promoted Delta Dart Glider, Sky Flyer, Sleek Streek, Drifter, Skeeter, etc:

Atlantic UK Distributors Shard (Sports & Toys) Limited with their ATLANTIC big new range of scale models in full detail was another big advertiser of boys’ toys. Their adverts with red spot colour made several appearances on the back page of MFC towards the end of the run:

The full-colour full-page advertisements of Minic Ships range of scale models by Hornby also fell within battle and warfare category:

These adverts of Timpo adventure club from Timpo Toys, Kung Fuey Dragon Kite from Golden Wonder, Prehistoric monsters scale models and Kellogg’s Rice Crispies were also targeted at boys:

..not to mention these Norvic Man ads:

Here's an untypical Norvic advert promoting something specifically for girls:

These were not gender-specific:

 

Unhealthy foods and sweets formed another major category of the adverts. Cadbury’s was a regular advertiser. Their Curlywurly Bar ads came in a variety of designs and free gift promotions but always featured this poorly drawn bloke:

Cadbury’s also advertised their Freddo competition:

TreborLand and Trebor Blobs candies appear to have been big in the mid-70s; they were a frequent guest in MFC: 

...and sometimes even paid for two pages to promote their competitions:

Bessett’s Sweets were after kids’ pocket money as well:

Kellogg’s, Nestle, Nesquik and Weetabix were also there:

There were four adverts of cinema films: one for the musical Mister Quilp of the Old Curiosity Shop:

…  two for At the Earth’s Core:

… and one for Future World:

Adverts in comics were often presented in the form of comic strips, and there were several examples in MFC; all can be viewed in the gallery below.

 

This concludes the series of blogposts about MONSTER FUN COMIC weeklies and I will now proceed to Holiday Specials and Annuals.

All Images 2014 © Egmont UK Ltd.  All rights reserved. Used with permission.