Wednesday, October 30, 2013

It's Halloween Buster! (1994)


Yep, it's that time of year again - Halloween, which means that we dip back into a Halloween comic of the past, this time the 1994 Buster Halloween issue. One wouldn't really guess it from a quick glance at the front cover above, but this is really is Halloween issue! Sadly, Buster's strip isn't themed so for the sake of sticking to the subject I'll skip it and move on.

The first Halloween strip is X-Ray Specs, illustrated by none other than Mike Lacey. As always it's a well-drawn strip, but the colouring seems very cheap and lazy, it really doesn't look that good at all!




The colouring gets better over the page on Tom Thug's strip. As illustrated by Lew Stringer, Tom attempts to find or make a Halloween mask, but he isn't having much luck!



Speaking of masks, here is the free one that was included in the centre pages, illustrated by Jacula! (Geddit - Jack, and Dracula! Chuckle!)


Next up is Dozy Derek, who, like Smiffy from The Beano, really doesn't know what's happening! Art by Mark Bennington



Tom Paterson's Watford Gapp was in an entirely different art style, almost impossible to connect to his more common style such as the work on Sweeny Toddler. Fortunately, he leaves a smelly sock in one of the panels to ensure us it's still him.



And finally, although I haven't covered every spooky strip in this issue, I'll leave you with this two-page Lucy Lastic story, illustrated by Mark Bennington.




3 comments:

Andy Boal said...

Unfortunately that’s how Fleetway achieved “full colour” - only so many pages were coloured properly, the rest were done on the cheap with five or six flat colours, like X-Ray Specs and Dozy Derek.

Lew Stringer said...

Looks like something's gone a bit wrong with your scan in the last tier of the Tom Thug page, George. Tom's head's a bit distorted in that panel before he hits the lamp post. :)

Yeah, unfortunately although the publishers decided an 'All Colour comic' was what the kids wanted, they didn't provide the budget to do it justice. Luckily Tom Thug was one of the pages allowed proper access to full colour (which I coloured myself) but others (such as the X-Ray Specs example) were done on the cheap by the art assistant adding flat colour overlays. They did their best with limited resources but those bright cyans and magentas didn't do it any favours I thought.

George Shiers said...

I've uploaded a better scan now, and included jack Edward Oliver's special Halloween mask!