Christmas Post No4: The Beezer 1976

Final post this side of Christmas: The Beezer, dated 25 December 1976.

The Beezer was published by DC Thomson between 1956 and 1990 before merging into "Beezer and Topper" for three more years. Like The Topper it was published in tabloid format until; 1980 and so was another scanner-pain.

You can see cover star Ginger above there, who was an even more tedious version of Oor Wullie, both created by Dudley Watkins.

This Christmas issue shows us plenty of well-remembered Beezer characters, but if your favourite isn't here.... well, chances are it was a Topper character. They're like that.

First up is Britain's answer to Mr Magoo: Colonel Blink:

 Ha ha! It's funny because he's visually impaired. Oddly this character survived into the 90s only recast as a nearly-blind child called Blinky. It lacked the weird air of the retired army man which made the original strips quite charming. He talks like the Major from Fawlty Towers. Or Colonel Blimp.

Next up: The Numskulls, a brilliant idea about the little people who live in a man's head and control him. Like that new Pixar film.

As with Topper's Tricky Dicky, this is the only Beezer strip that still survives, now drawn by Nigel Auchterlounie, in The Beano. It's passed through many different hands and styles in the meantime.

Here is the nose Numskull visiting the eye Numskull. They're planning to get The Man to stuff his face with Christmas dinner:

 The brain Numskull is reminding The Man about how ill he felt last year after overeating by showing memories in the form of cine film:

 Which seems charmingly retro now. I wonder if the same will one day be said about this recent panel:

Sci-fi adventure next with The Space Kids!

 A bunch of stranded children are trying to teach the natives of the alien planet about Christmas. It's just like the days of Empire once again! Tricky Wallahs, these aliens! They don't like it up 'em!

The fat kid tries to get extra helping of pudding (fat kids, eh?) and ends up pursued by nightmarish hell-beasts:

 Lesson learned.

Young Sid, The Copper's Kid is fairly self-explanatory.

 And The Banana Bunch, a strip originally created by the great Leo Baxendale, is a fun kids-in-a-clubhouse strip, albeit mild compared to The Krazy Gang.

After the fat kid, Fatty, sneakily eats the food put out for Santa (fat kids, eh?), jolly old St Nick himself snacks on their Christmas dinner:

 And poor Fatty has to do without. Lesson learned. At least you didn't get nightmarish hell-beasts, Fatty!

 The only strip to be around for the entire run of The Beezer was Bill Ritchie's Baby Crockett, which I found annoyingly cutesy as a child and fares no better in retrospect.

 Little Mo is a kid who gets into scrapes. And may have just discovered heroin.

 The Badd Lads were a bunch of habitual thieves (like Topper's Freddie the Flop) called Boss, Knuckles and Fingers. Boss was about to spend Christmas in the big house until he escaped. And he would've gotten away with it too if Knuckles hadn't cut the Christmas cake so weirdly.

 Rounding out the issue is Pop, Dick and Harry, twin kids who get into scrapes and their misguided father who tries to outwit them.

But wait! That's not all! You may have noticed the subtitle "and Cracker" on that there cover...

 

Cracker was a comic launched in 1975 and just a few months before this issue was published had ceased, merging into Beezer. It existed for a short while as a pull-out section, published sideways so that it maintained its same size and format in The Beezer's tabloid sized pages.

 

On the "cover" is Cracker mascot and answer to the question "What would a Gremlin look like in human form?", Sammy. Sammy hosts reader jokes in the form of cartoon, with a "laughometer" running along the bottom of the panels.

 Can't decide if that's a racist cartoon or a meta commentary on racist cartoons...

Inside is Scrapper, a kid who gets into violent scrapes. He loves fighting. And his punchline takes place on the day after Christmas:

 Joe Soap is really weird strip about a boy whose Granddad is a crackpot inventor who has a bunch of soap bubbles with unpredictable effects. 

 Told you it was weird.

Secret agent adventure next with Iron Hand, an adventurer with... well, an iron hand. It can do various Inspector Gadgetty-type tricks.

 I have literally only read two Iron Hand strips and in both of them his attempts to go undercover are ruined by someone noticing that he has an iron hand.

 Young Foo, The Kung Fu Kid features a yellow-skinned, slitty-eyed child with martial arts skills. Nothing wrong with that, right?

 Fortunately this is much less offensive than other Young Foo strips I've seen, but I'll save them for a later blog...

Little 'Orror is about a child who is only interested in the macabre while his parent just want him to be normal. I have goth friends who I'm sure can relate.

 And finally, on the "back cover" is Billy the Kid.

Now Billy is (get this) a rough little "menace" of a kid with back spiky hair whose best friend is his equally menacing dog.

Hey! That's the same punchline from Scrapper! In the same comic-within-comic! Get stuffed, Billy the Plagiarising Kid!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Post No3: Krazy 1977

Let's just get straight into this: Krazy Comic, dated 31 December 1977.

 Krazy was published by IPC, between 1976 and 1978, whereupon it was absorbed by Whizzer and Chips.

From day one Krazy set out to be different even from the other IPC titles. It wanted to be more "hip" and "now", having odder, non-lead character-driven humour features and references to pop culture or current events that others shied away from. The effect of this when reading it today is that much of it screams "It's 1977!" at you.

A fun gimmick of Krazy was the "disguised" back cover. You could, if you needed to, flip the comic over and show a full-page illustration that made it seem like you had a holiday brochure, or a record album, or a paint-by-numbers. This, being the Christmas issue, gave you a cracker disguise with this rather charming art:

 It may not come across too well in this scan but it actually looks pretty good rolled up! Inside, on the letters page, we get this dubious pranking suggestion:

 Also worth noting is that (I'm told) the April 1st edition 1977 had the back cover disguised as... the front cover!

The first strip inside is arguably Krazy's biggest stars, The Krazy Gang (not to be confused with The Crazy Gang).

A typical small-group-of-kids-with-a-clubhouse strip (see also The Banana Bunch in the next blog) the Gang were: Ed (commander and the leader), Blue (Ed's parrot), Brainy (the brainy one), Cheeky (the Cheeky one, went off to headline his own comic 1977-80), Sporty (the sporty one, also, surprisingly, a rare example of a non-white child in British comics, even rarer that he's not a stereotype) and Liz (the two-X-chromosomes one - seriously being "the girl" was often deemed a character trait in itself, see also Toots in The Bash Street Kids). And something else...

 Oh yeah, Freaky. I've read a lot of Krazy Gang stories in my life but I have no idea what Freaky is. He seems to be a hovering, talking, many-eyed flying saucer nightmare creature with spindly arms. Who hangs out with these kids in their otherwise pretty ordinary adventures. And no-one ever explains it or questions it. Freaky just is. I assume he had an origin story, probably in issue one. Maybe this was the creature that brought the Gang together, like Hulk to the Avengers or Starro to the JLA.

 It's terrifying. I mean look at it!

 Look at it!

 LOOK AT IT!

 KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!

*ahem*

Next up we have Paws, a talking dog named after a shark movie (it's 1977).

 The next, truly memorable character the come from Krazy is Pongo Snodgrass, a disgusting child obsessed with remaining as stinky and hideous as possible.

 Pongo had a long life in Whizzer and Chips in a self-titled strip by Ian Knox, but here he started out with a two-page advice feature Pongalonga Pongo, giving tips on creating revolting smells.

 He also occasionally popped up as an antagonist to The Krazy Gang.

There's a one-page feature, pre-empting Raymond Briggs by several years, by showing what Santa does the rest of the year.

 Half-page strip Duck Turpin is about a mallard malcontent who apparently constantly robs the same bank yet is still allowed back in and greeted with a smile.

 We had proper customer service in them days.

Micky the Mimic ("he can impersonate anybody") causes mischief with his vocal talents like a young Terry Mynott.
 For the family Christmas he pulls out some (1977) popular personalities for a postprandial entertainment.

 Not gonna lie, I love that tiny Tom Baker.

 Hit Kid was a weird strip in which a boy with no visible face would be hired to "take out" a bully or other bother-causer. In a strictly non-lethal way of course, although this issue has Hit Kid dressed as Father Christmas pulling a gun through his beard.

 Custard Pie Corner was a page whereby readers could send in picture of their teacher or little sister or anyone else they'd like to see get pied.

 Or they could suggest a celebrity, like Magnus Magnusson above or Julie Covington from Rock Follies (it's 1977!).

 And one of those readers would grow up to be Jonnie Marbles...

Next is full-colour fun with Six Million Dollar Man parody (it's 1977) 12 1/2p Buytonic Boy (he gets his "bionic" powers from a special tonic. Which he buys).

It's a pretty good strip which is worth going into in greater detail later but suffice to say in this issue Steve of the Everso Secret Service saves Christmas.

 Another one-page one-off gives us reasons why Santa may be late this year. Including:

 (It's 1977)

Oddly there's a one-page illustrated text story from Detective Fumbly's (Nut)Casebook by Willie Cook.

 It reminds me of similar page-fillers from 50s American comics like Bud Sagendorf's Popeye.

 Bung-ho indeed.

There's also actually quite good Batman pastiche Birdman and Chicken the Boy Blunder! (That exclamation mark's in the title) Here they are at the end of a serialised adventure having been banged up with the very villains they were chasing.

 The one in the top hat is called The Giggler.

Handy Andy ("his hand pictures come to life") is a little more high-concept and involves supernaturally-animated shadows.

 Every week also included hand shadow instructions:

 Erm...

A Krazy Look at TV puts a "wacky" spin on a current TV show. This issue feature Selwyn Froggitt (it's 1977).

 Rounding out the issue is one of the weirder concepts for a strip I have seen.

Scaredy Cat (as far as I can fathom) is about a cat who was left an enormous fortune in his owner's will and the staff of his mansion who stand to gain the lot when the cat dies. So every week they plot a new way to murder the moggy. For reals.

 Here they use a fancy-dress Christmas party as an excuse to bring out their weapons without the need to disguise them.

 Needless to say their every attempt is thwarted with Scaredy (no idea why he's called that) blissfully unaware his life is in danger.

So let's end on that lovely, murderous thought.

Merry Christmas!