Proper British comics

Simon Brew

85p for the fecking Beano!

None of that superhero stuff here. It's a footballer, a whizz-kid and the genesis of Bananaman that deserve to be remembered. And not a screwed up teenager in sight...

When comics and geekdom are inevitably crossed, the end result becomes Superman, Spider-man, assorted superheroes, and basically all those dark, moody tomes that movie studios are bustling to bring to the big screen.

But I’m British. And call me old fashioned, but when I went comic shopping during the 80s, I couldn’t find a single example of angst-ridden dual identity whackos. But there was this little lot…

WHIZZER & CHIPS

I was a Whizz-kid, and I thought Chip-ites sucked. I can barely remember a single strip from the comic, but nonetheless loved the whole sense of rivalry and suppressed hatred that underpinned its pages. Er, I might be reading too much into it, of course.

ROY OF THE ROVERS

As British as HP Sauce, Rover cars and Dell’s customer support, Roy Of The Rovers started life in Tiger, which in turn was much better than Eagle. But the Roy Of The Rovers comic also gave us Tommy’s Troubles, The Safest Hands In Soccer, The Hard Man and some strange story about a robot playing centre forward for a top division football team. I think his name was Emile Heskey.

NUTTY

Simply for Bananaman, which single-handedly justified the existence of this otherwise utterly forgettable comic.

CHAMP

Anyone remember this? Like most unsuccessful comics of its day, it merged with Victor, which basically meant that all but one of the stories was ripped out of it. The We Are United story was hilariously weak, but utterly enjoyable, It had a character called Fred Rimmy. Really.

THE BEANO

Not the current version – bought it the other week and it cost 85p! 85p for the fecking Beano! No, I want the rough-round-the-edges version, complete with crappy free gifts such as sweets that took your teeth out, 3D glasses and the kind of shit tat that BBC’s kids’ magazines monopolise these days. And the Bash Street Kids, obviously.

OINK!

It lasted just a couple of years, the first issue of which had a crap record mounted onto the front of it. It infamously annoyed WH Smiths, inspired a piss-poor video game, and was seemingly a kids-forerunner to Viz, just with pigs. There’s blatantly a joke there, but I can’t work out what it is.

Others worthy of a namecheck:
Buster, Topper, Whoopee & Wow, The Beezer, Eagle, Tiger and Spike.

I feel better now.

User's Comments

Re: Proper British comics Posted by Looter on May 10, 2007 10:05:53 AM What about the Dandy? Or Jackie?
Re: Proper British comics Posted by simonbrew on May 10, 2007 10:10:28 AM The Dandy: rubbish Jackie: I'm not a girl, and have no urge to snog pillows.
Re: Proper British comics Posted by cjlines on May 10, 2007 04:09:57 PM I had the first issue of Oink, which had a flexi-disc single on it. I can't quite remember the song, but I think it was by Uncle Pig or something like that.
Re: Proper British comics Posted by simonbrew on May 10, 2007 04:44:41 PM It was by Uncle Pigg. Who had two 'g's, for some bizarre reason. It went something like "Don't eat meat cos it's made from ham, eat that nasty butcher man" I am not making that up.
Re: Proper British comics Posted by Robmac on May 15, 2007 01:42:24 PM Oink was a favourite of mine, Uncle Pig the editor was a great role model and the weird and wonderful characters like Horace 'Ugly Face' Watkins were cruel and ver funny. My nan used to have a papershop and whenever I used to visit her she would always have a stack of UK comics for me to read. My bedroom was packed with Beanos, Busters and Dandy (which were never read as they were rubbish). I also had a pile of Battle and Battle Action Force which had some great action man/GI Joe strips in them. Battle also had a great sinister strip in it called 'Invasion 1984' about samurai zombie space aliens invading earth - great stuff when you are 9!
Re: Proper British comics Posted by Jason on July 4, 2007 12:24:49 AM The Beano is worth every penny of its 85p. What else can you get for that money these days? Admittedly, it doesn't have quite as much appeal to me since they ditched Joe Jitsu (though he makes an occasional reappearance), but it's still damned fine weekly entertainment. Wake up and smell the newsprint! (The Dandy was also very good before the recent re-launch. It still seems to be holding its own, so I guess they're aiming for a different market, a market I'm not part of.)
Re: Proper British comics Posted by TVdust on July 4, 2007 11:03:29 AM I was an un-ashamed Eagle boy. The rubber-masked Doomlord used to scare the bejezus out of me (it was photo-story when I remember it; thus terrible).