HOWARD THE DUCK COVER CAVALCADE

Reading Howard the Duck  was like having an acid trip without taking any drugs... it was weird.  Steve Gerber's  mallard creation first appeared in a Man-Thing  story before eventually being awarded his own mag, and what a mag it was.  To many readers, the stand-out issue of the series was the 3rd issue, "Master of Quack Fu!", drawn by John Buscema, an artist who could draw anything and imbue it with a sense of realism.  To start the ball rolling in this covers cavalcade, let's look at the first dozen issues.  The rest will surely follow in an upcoming post.

DENNIS THE MENACE BOOKS PART 2

One could argue that, in a sense, the last Dennis the Menace  annual was actually the one for 2009, as Dennis's  visual appearance in the ones for 2010 and 2011 was based on the television cartoon series, rather than the character we knew of old.  Is it a coincidence that they presumably didn't sell as well as previous editions, leading to the demise of the 55 year old series of books?

The final two annuals were also the ones which were rebranded "Dennis and Gnasher", again after the TV series of the same name.  Gnasher's  name had been added to the cover a few times in previous years, but on those occasions the title had been "Dennis the Menace and Gnasher", with his canine chum's appellation in much smaller letters.  Perhaps the change in appearance and name was a step too far for loyal readers, causing them to abandon their childhood chum's annuals on the grounds that he was no longer the Dennis  they were familiar with.

Whatever the reason, Dennis  hasn't graced his own regular annual or book for nearly a decade.  There have been a couple of retrospective "one-offs", but I think it's time for D.C. Thomson  to at least consider releasing a "Best of Dennis the Menace"  annual or special to celebrate this striped icon of British comics.  In the meantime, enjoy this classic covers cavalcade of the last 19 Dennis  books ever to be published.

(As in part 1, where the back cover illustration is the same as the front, it has not been included in order to avoid repetition.)   

TV CENTURY 21 COVER CAVALCADE

If there was a superior comic to TV Century 21  in the 1960s then I never saw it.  This weekly periodical simply oozed class.  With the cream of British illustrators like Ron Embleton, Mike Noble, Richard Jennings, Graham Coton, Don Lawrence, Frank Hampson, Don Harley, Eric Eden, Ron Turner, and Frank Bellamy, there simply wasn't a better drawn comic around.  True, not every above named artist appeared at the same time or with the same frequency, but with visual storytellers of that calibre, how could the comic possibly fail?  It hit the ground running and for the first few years at least, it was probably Britain's best-selling comics for boys.

Based mainly on the TV puppet shows of Gerry Anderson, the comic also included non-Anderson  strips like Burke's Law, Agent 21, My Favourite Martian, Get Smart, and The Munsters, though obviously not all at the same time.  The Daleks  appeared on the back page for the first 104 issues, which was a wise choice as they were one of the biggest things on television at the time in their battles with Doctor Who.  The Doctor  never appeared in strip form in the comic itself, but the Peter Cushing  incarnation appeared in a few cover photos around the time of the big screen Daleks  movies.

Tastes change over time however, and eventually the Anderson  shows fell out of fashion, and TV21  along with it.  In 1969 it became TV21 and Joe 90  when a short-lived sister paper starring the bespectacled junior agent was merged into it, but the title was eventually revamped as a standard comic and reverted to the name TV21, with no Anderson  content remaining at all.  A shadow of its former self, it was merged into Valiant  in October 1971, becoming Valiant and TV21.  Its name lasted on the cover 'til April 1974, but was absent on the issue before Valiant  subsumed Lion  in May.

Let's take a look at the first 25 covers from when TV21  was the new big hit on newsagents' counters all across the country.  We'll see some more in an upcoming post.