Nigel Parkinson, Cartoonist

Nigel Parkinson, Cartoonist
Me at a Comic Con

Wednesday 6 October 2010

TV Stars Every Monday for 7d

From TV Comic's first issue in 1951 starring Muffin the Mule, through 1965's TV 21 with it's Gerry Anderson strips and Look-in during the 70s and 80s and it's many strips based on popular TV shows, British comics have often featured television characters. Even COR!! got in on the act in 1973 with The Goodies. In the days before even videotapes and certainly before DVDs and cable TV and watch again websites, the comic-reading kids had to get their fix of their fave shows via the printed page.






Paul Trevillion's take on The Munsters in TV21 was good on liknesses- not all TV characters were rendered as faithfully!






















Harry North's full-colour 'On The Buses' was a real highlight of Look-in, witty, carefully drawn and beautifully coloured.
Les Dawson, Superflop, was drawn by the multi-talented Brian Lewis. Brian tackled almost every type of comic strip and illustration in his too-short life, From broad comedy (Space Jinx) high drama (UFO)
horror (House of Hammer) to total lunacy (Moon Madness). This strip from Look-in represents a late return to comedy for Brian, to me it's one of his finest pieces.

Nowadays, of course, TV shows generally have their own dedicated comic and it runs for six months or a year until the TV show is cancelled, and that's it. A shame.

4 comments:

Lew Stringer said...

The idea of celebs in comic form has a long pedigree dating back to Film Fun and, before that, Dan Leno's Comic Journal. It's a great shame that there aren't anthology tv comics like that any more instead of separate comics dedicated to each show.

Even Buster got in on the act, featuring tv comedians such as Jimmy Edwards and Freddie (Parrot Face) Davies alongside its own originated characters. Good times.

NP said...

Yes, Dan Leno's Journal circa 1900 even featured occasional contributions by Leno himself, and was apparently a big hit. I wonder if he was the first 'real' person in comics?

Kid said...

I'm lucky enough to have the first issues of both TV COMIC and LOOK-IN, but the notion of "celebrities" in comics goes back a long way, what with LAUREL & HARDY and CHARLIE CHAPLIN, etc.

I bet some younger readers today think that Dennis the Menace started as a TV character before appearing in The Beano. (What do you mean, "He isn't a real person"?)

Norman Boyd said...

Nigel,
When you say "Nowadays, of course, TV shows generally have their own dedicated comic ", do you mean those plastic planet destroyers that have some glossy paper attached to them, that fall all over the joint in Smiths?