Hey, more Beano parodies!

Yep, it's more parodies of the Beano! Like any parody, it should be taken as an "honour" of sorts - as in, the target is so familiar that it's easy to make fun of, whilst still retaining what makes it recognisable. I've featured Beano parodies before on this thing, and they just keep turning up the more I look for them.

This lot are definitely NOT child- or work-friendly, so be aware...

Freddy the Fearless Fly - as you've (maybe) never seen him before!

Apologies for the lack of blah blah blah, I've been tired/busy/sick/apathetic blah blah blah. Here's something fun while I'm getting the next "big" thing ready - it's the Dandy's "classic" character, Freddy the Fearless Fly, re-jigged by you-know-who:

Notice the infamous sock that Freddy lives in?

Also be noting the Dandy's usage of "desperate" as a substitute for "inebriated".

These are the only two of these I can find for now - but at least it's something. More fun stuff to blah blah blah future!

Shiver and Shake - 1980!

Well gosh, if Shiver and Shake isn't my new favourite old comic, I don't know what is. And him over at Kazoop's going through the whole lot of them in just as meticulous a fashion as he did with Cor!, which is obviously a good thing. Meanwhile, this week I've got hold of the 1980 annual (published in 1979, obviously).

Whilst it's slightly disappointing to not find anything of Brian Walker's Scream Inn in this particular book, it has yielded some other nice surprises...

Manuel "Spain" Rodriguez (1940-2012)

No-one told me that Spain had died last November - I only found out tonight. Who is he? Go and have a look on Wikipedia if you don't know, but he was a lot of things - a cartoonist, a biker, a biographer, a Marxist... To me, he's the only one out of all those underground "comix" folk that actually took me out of my comfort zone.

Reading Zap for the first time, I was prepared for all the "shocking" stuff inside them - from the likes of Robert Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, Robert Williams and the rest of them (and that stuff really is shocking if you don't know about it already!), but for all the violence, racial and sexual imagery presented by that lot, it was still presented in a cartoony sort-of-way - making it hilarious at the same time. Spain's stuff, on the other hand, was grubby, realistic, cold, and mostly left a bad feeling in the stomach.

As such, he could be called the only cartoonist who's ever moved me in a way that isn't a humorous sort-of-way, and I'll remember him if only for that reason.

Take a look at some of his stuff after the jump (it's a bit on the "NSFW" side of things, obviously).

Pirates! (Argh etc)

Here's something interesting, from the days before ridiculous Internet-based stuff reduced pirates to nothing more than annoying memes (and by extension, stuff like "National Talk-Like-A-Pirate-Day"). The days when pirates were romantic and exciting and murderous and fascinating all at once, and not something that's given Johnny Depp a career for life. This is a souvenir book from 1968, promoting the new Pirates of the Caribbean ride at California's Disneyland. Amazing what charity shops can be hiding, isn't it?

Filled with historical information, production drawings and photographs, and a guided tour of the ride itself, it's a nice read and a "historical document" of sorts - apparently most of the original animatronics from the ride have been replaced by likenesses of Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Geoffrey Rush and the rest of them. And of course, in the finest of traditions, Walt Disney's the only one who gets a named credit in the whole book! If anyone can tell me who the artists of any of the drawings in this thing are, I'd appreciate that a lot.

Particularly with the opening/closing pages - a nice big map of the whole thing. Available in wallpaper size! (Double click, obviously):

Here's the rest of the book, after the jump - enjoy!

Plugging for George

Back in November, I told him over at Wacky Comics that I'd put some more stuff from Plug up here. Naturally, I forgot all about it until yesterday, so here we go. What's three months between folk?

Simon Donald looking spotty

Here's something else from that Cartoon Aid thing - the contribution of Simon Donald, aka. Mr. Viz. It's fairly amusing!

And here's the lucky lad who got to meet Mr. Donald - wonder if he had any idea of the sort of malarky Simon was usually drawing?

That's him there, in the middle, clearly terrified of the camera. Not the handsome fellow we know him as these days:

Joining In with Terry Bave

Everyone else has already mentioned this, but hey - let's join in! Terry Bave's now blogging (or plugging - hopefully it'll go beyond the one post talking about his new book).

To "celebrate", here's a couple of interesting Bave-bits. The first of which is his contribution to Cartoon Aid - a charity event in 1988, run by CITV, that asked kids to design a cartoon character and be rewarded with a trip to Disneyland. Not only that, but their character would then be "brought to life" by a professional cartoonist, and all of those characters would then be put into a nice big hardback book. The profits of this book all went to the Wad Sherifay Refugee Camp in Sudan.

Of the 36,000 entries received, there was one overall winner, and fifteen regional winners (who were all rewarded with a trip to Frankfurt). And who were those "professional cartoonists" that were on board? Well, amongst other people there was Bryan Hitch (of Marvel fame), Patrick Gallagher (Oink!), Mike Collins (Marvel and DC), Simon Donald (Viz) and Davy Francis (Oink!, again). Oh, and Terry Bave, of course. Here's what him and Shiela did for it:

And here's a mini-profile on the guy, with a photo as well! All the winners of the campaign got to meet these fine comic-folk, and most of them had their pictures taken with them as well.

Now, why couldn't that competition have been running when I was in school? Bah, etc.

More from that book in the future, but for now we're all about Terry, so here's a Winker Watson he did for the Dandy in 2001, in which Watson and Creep meet their maker, so to speak:

Good, eh?

A slightly delayed look at the last ever Dandy, Part 3 - who was missing!

Here we go, the reason this post was so long in producing. It's...

25 Dandy Characters Who Perhaps Should've Had A Place In The Top 75 Dandy Characters Ever

And that's shouting! Admittedly, this lot are mostly from 1988-2001 or thereabouts, but this is my list and those were my years for the Dandy.

So, in no particular order, here we go: