Wednesday 29 May 2019

Comedy Archeology - Funny Pictures

My lifelong love of comics as an art form has been well-documented in this here bloggy thing but that’s usually me going on about either superhero or indie comics. Comics can also just be funny things for kids to read and a number of said funny comics made a formative impression on me.

Asterix
Another one that likes playing around with words (and impressive that the English translators managed to convey that silliness when bringing it across from the original French). It also has an inherently funny look and feel to it that was instantly appealing to the small me.

Leo Baxendale
Most well-known for being the creator of The Bash Street Kids for The Beano amongst many others (Minnie The Minx and Sweeny Toddler to name just two), it was his creator-owned stuff that had the most impact on me. We had a copy of Willy The Kid Book 2 (never had book 1 or 3) and the sheer volume of gags packed into every pare inch of the picture of the picture is phenomenal. This being one of my favourites:-




Raymond Briggs
The Snowman is  a British Christmas TV institution but, for a gross little boy, Fungus The Bogeyman was the one that did it for me. Like Leo Baxendale, it’s the sheer volume of background information crammed into the book that make it such a delight. (Mention must also go to both the book and film of When The Wind Blows, one of the most heart-wrenching stories about the perils of nucler war of the 80s - and there were a few back then too.)

Oink!
I liked comics like Whizzer And Chips and Buster (more so the The Beano which I liked but wasn’t a favourite) but the one that I was obsessed by was Oink. Created by Patrick Gallagher, Tony Husband and Mark Rodgers (with early work from writers such as Charlie Brooker), it was the grubby little cousin to comics like The Beano and a gateway into more adult stuff like Viz, featuring strips like Cowpat County, Burp The Smelly Alien, Pete And His Pimple, Psycho Gran and Tom Thug. It only lasted for two years but I loved it.

Having moved onto the theme of funny comics, it would be remiss not to talk about one which was briefly mentioned above...






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