Things for December

Christmas... The time of year when you just want five sodding minutes of peace and bloody quiet to yourself, and traditionally there's no better or easier way of putting that message across than burying yourself in a big fat book. I did a similar post to this a few years ago, but here we are in an odd moment of motivation, and so it is - the "best" books a comic-liker could hope to find themselves reading over the festive period and beyond.

Apologies for this terrible picture - my camera's died, so this is the best my phone can offer.

The majority of these books can be found for a few pennies on Amazon Marketplace, but some of them you might have to look a bit further for... They're all definitely worth it though (if you like this sort of thing).

An explanation, of sorts...

Bob's Beano

Seeing as how Bob Dewar's so fantastic and everything, here's some more of his stuff - all of this is from the 1993 Beano book (as in, from 1992). Possibly my favourite Beano book ever, along with the 1990 and 1992 ones... It's like Sophie's Choice, really!

He has a LOT of pages in this book:

For those not "in the know", scanning annuals is HARD.

And here's Bob Dewar's first ever interview from earlier this year, thanks to Adam Smith for the link:

Bob Dewar on Life as a Cartoonist and Illustrator

More Petrie Classics!

Didn't have time to scan this lot this morning, what with having a job and so on, but they're here now - some more favourites from the pen of the dearly departed Jim Petrie... Beginning with an episode of the Sparky People, from the 1980 (or 1979, that's how annuals work) Sparky book:

A Minnie classic now, from the 1990 Beano book (the first Beano annual I ever got) - this one even got animated for the Beano Video back in 1993 (which I assumed would be on YouTube in full, but isn't, shockingly enough).

And lastly, a couple of oddities from the 1993 Topper annual - the early 1990s (and especially the later part of that decade) were VERY interesting with regards to the Beezer and the Topper - in that the artists were free to do pretty much whatever they wanted, which is how we ended up with Jim giving us this colourful character:

And this absurdity of nature - must've read this one over a hundred times when I was a youngster:

So once more, here's a toast of sorts to someone who's utterly irreplaceable in the comics world. 

Jim Petrie, 1932-2014

Bugger, another hero's gone - LOVE Jim's stuff, there's not many that give such a sense of "movement" as his wildly spinning limbs and so on do. Plus the weird facial expressions, false teeth popping out, massive tongues... There won't be another like him, that's for sure.

At least his legacy's all there on paper - for Minnie the Minx alone, according to Jim, there's "2000 weekly instalments, 400 annual stories, 35 summer specials and 7 libraries - total, 2,082!".

Gordon Bell - 1934-2014, a mini tribute

By now most comic readers are probably aware that Gordon Bell left this world on the 13th of February, aged 79. One of the hallmarks of being a "great" comic artist is your work being easily identifiable as uniquely yours, and Gordon's style was DEFINITELY a unique one. Tributes to him abound (for example, here, here, here, here, here and here), and here's another one - beginning with the first bit of Gordon's work that I ever saw, from the first Beano annual I ever got:

Here's a self-portrait of sorts from the 1993 Topper annual:

And arguably his finest creation, that master of hokum, flim-flam, posh and poppycock, Spoofer McGraw:

RIP, Mr. Bell.

This Is Not Who We Were

If there's anyone still "out there" in Internetland, my apologies. It's been a long, weird Summer. They could make a film out of it, maybe. It wouldn't be a very good film, but it'd involve extreme emotional opposites - dizzying heights of happiness, nauseous lows of depression, love and heartbreak, lies and deceit, scary gangsters, threats of every kind imaginable, death, courtroom dramas, some good music, a lot of booze...

But that's not what we're here to discuss. This is a "fun" and "happy" place where fun and happy things are looked at. Normal service will resume shortly, but for now (just to "tide things over"), here's some cultural sensitivity courtesy of DC Thomson, circa 1993. Enjoy in an "Oh we're so much more enlightened twenty years later" sort of way.