SPARKY MOONSTERS COVERS - PART ONE

Rather than doing the series of guest appearances at Scream Inn in one go, I though it would be more fun to add some variety and start a concurrent gallery of those bright and busy SPARKY Moonsters covers by Bill Ritchie. 

By way of intro, here is the back page of SPARKY No. 1 with The Moonsters advert:

… and the back page of SPARKY No. 2 with the premiere of the strip, explaining how the two main characters found themselves on the Moon and met the funny native folk:

Here are the first five Moonsters covers after the strip was moved from the back page to the front and marked the beginning of the spectacular run of 105 covers:

Come back soon for the second guest appearance at Scream Inn. In fact, it was guest appearance of Scream Inn in a strip from a sister title that made a guest appearance in Shiver and Shake. Am I making sense here? :)

GUEST APPEARANCES AT SCREAM INN - WIZARDS ANONYMOUS

The very first time when characters from another strip showed up at Scream Inn was in Shiver and Shake issue No. 37 (17th November, 1973). That week the guests were Treacle and Brimstone from the excellent albeit short-lived Wizards Anonymous feature from the “Shake” section of the paper. I covered the strip in detail HERE, and even showed both pages of the episode, but I want this to be a complete series so I will show them again. 

The first guest appearance was quite disastrous for Innkeeper and Co. because the potty sorcerers outsmarted the hosts and walked home with one million pounds. This, however, wasn’t the end for Innkeeper who made his own guest appearance in the pages of Wizards Anonymous in the very same issue, outfoxed Treacle and Brimstone and got his dough back. Here’s the complete story from Shiver and Shake issue No. 37 (17th November, 1973), drawn by Brian Walker, written (I suppose) by the usual writer, Brian Walker’s neighbour and mate Cliff Brown. Excellent stuff!

GUEST APPEARANCES AT SCREAM INN - SERIES INTRO

I like it when characters make guest appearances in other features. I may be mistaken, but Scream Inn may very well be the champion in this category, at least as far as IPC comics are concerned. The general setting of the strip with Innkeeper welcoming a fresh guest every week offered a perfect frame for including virtually anybody and anything into the story.

A quick look through my notes tells me there were at least 13 episodes with such guest appearances, so I thought it might be fun to do a series of blogposts and show them all! I will start it in a few days, but until then here’s a nice exchange of visits between two Whoopee! star characters – Scared-Stiff Sam and Frankie Stein from the issue of Whoopee! & Shiver and Shake cover-dated 5th April, 1975:

GOOFY COVERS

While composing a recent post where I showed front pages of several landmark SPARKY numbers, I realized I’ve seen lots of beautiful covers of British comics but I’ve also come across a few that weren’t quite so excellent.

The examples that immediately came to mind were the covers of JACKPOT where attempts to draw realistic portraits resulted in these creepy caricatures of sinister-looking creatures:

Tammy also had a few. Take a look at this one; there is something seriously not right with the poor girl on the right, don’t you think?..

TAMMY had a series of covers drawn from readers’ ideas by one of the good artists but in this case the Editor was probably pressed for time and simply used the drawing sent by a reader:

I am sure there are many more and I will expand the gallery when I come across some. Do you recall any covers that you thought weren’t quite up to the standard?