No Buster Due To Industrial Action
Moderator: AndyB
Re: No Buster Due To Industrial Action
As per the list from the Buster Index printed above Buster did miss a number of issues in early 1974. As far as I'm aware Buster was always printed by the same printer as Lion and Valiant and therefore their printing fates should mirror each other. I've never checked on this mind so maybe there were instances where this wasn't the case.
- bustercomic
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Re: No Buster Due To Industrial Action
Amazing read this thread....little did I know where it would go!!!
I've gone through the entire collection now and can confirm those dates are indeed correct. All the strips continued though around the missing weeks, and they even squeezed in apologies on most weeks too!
I do wonder what effect it had on readership, particularly the two big breaks.
Makes you wonder how many readers left Buster when it stopped being available.
I've gone through the entire collection now and can confirm those dates are indeed correct. All the strips continued though around the missing weeks, and they even squeezed in apologies on most weeks too!
I do wonder what effect it had on readership, particularly the two big breaks.
Makes you wonder how many readers left Buster when it stopped being available.
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Re: No Buster Due To Industrial Action
Speaking personally I'd always followed both American and British comics but round about then I switched over to American titles exclusively for a time. Disruptions in publication can have a serious effect on the sort of 'cliffhanger' endings that the home product specialized in, besides which it takes surprisingly little time to get out of the habit altogether when there are so many other things to spend one's pocket money on. I'm afraid that news of Comics International's latest 'return' has failed to interest me very much for the same reason (though I'll probably buy it simply for the new Bill Mevin cover - if I can find one amongst all the alternate printings!)
- Phil R.
- Phil R.
Re: No Buster Due To Industrial Action
Curiouser and curiouser! I've checked through a number of titles published by IPC in 1970 and found that, while some titles were farmed out for printing to various locales, others remained in-house and still appeared. For instance both Smash and Sally were published by Fleetway Printers throughout the year and not farmed out like Lion and Valiant.
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Re: No Buster Due To Industrial Action
Smash did skip a week in the summer of 1970 though didn't it? I have an issue dated 6th/13th June.Kashgar wrote:Curiouser and curiouser! I've checked through a number of titles published by IPC in 1970 and found that, while some titles were farmed out for printing to various locales, others remained in-house and still appeared. For instance both Smash and Sally were published by Fleetway Printers throughout the year and not farmed out like Lion and Valiant.
Lew
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Re: No Buster Due To Industrial Action
Yes Lew, Smash had two double issues in 1970, including the one you mention and it also fell foul to the major disruption that occured from Nov 1970 to Feb 1971 but, despite this, all issues that did appear were published by Fleetway printers. Which seems to indicate that the industrial action at Fleetway wasn't a total printing shut-down as I'd imagined in those weeks in the summer when Valiant, Lion etc were farmed out to other printers around the country.
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Re: No Buster Due To Industrial Action
Ah I get you now Ray. Sorry. Toxic ink must have addled my brain.
Lew
Lew
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- Peter Gray
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Re: No Buster Due To Industrial Action
Whoopee!! and Shiver and Shake went glossy 26th Jan 1975 and 1st Feb may be others as well..
printed by David Brockdorff (Northern Limited)
normally printed Southernprint Dorset Poole
printed by David Brockdorff (Northern Limited)
normally printed Southernprint Dorset Poole
Re: No Buster Due To Industrial Action
Peter Gray wrote:Whoopee!! and Shiver and Shake went glossy 26th Jan 1975 and 1st Feb
Not literally glossy, surely, like the covers of American comics?
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Re: No Buster Due To Industrial Action
differnt paper to the normal newpaper type..
it is more whiter...cleaner colours...crisp ink..more expensive looking..
it is more whiter...cleaner colours...crisp ink..more expensive looking..
Re: No Buster Due To Industrial Action
Peter Gray wrote:differnt paper to the normal newpaper type..
it is more whiter...cleaner colours...crisp ink..more expensive looking..
Ah - glossy generally means shiny, and I'd love to see a shiny-covered Whoopee and Shiver & Shake! Not that Whoopee and Shiver & Shake could have been much improved from the luxury item it was.
But those better quality issues were great; if only IPC had seen how good they looked, spent a bit more and stuck with them.
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Re: No Buster Due To Industrial Action
In my Buster and Cor!! 7th June 1975 it said it missed two weeks due to printing problems...
I didn't see these dates mentioned in the Buster Index on this post so added it here..
I didn't see these dates mentioned in the Buster Index on this post so added it here..
Buster Index 1960 - 1995 by Ray Moore and Steve Holland says: no issues: 1970: 21 Nov - 26 Dec, 1971: 2 Jan - 30 Jan, 1974: 19 Jan, 2 Feb, 1 Feb, 2 March, 16 March, 30 March, 6 Jul-27 Jul, 1975: 24 May-31May, 1980: 19 Jan-9 Feb
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Re: No Buster Due To Industrial Action
Hi Peter,
Yeah, all of my dates and things came from that book and so far it seems to have worked out ok.
Page by Page should list all the dates (if not the issues) soon, but I'm offline whilst I move over the next couple of weeks so could be a while yet.
Matt
Yeah, all of my dates and things came from that book and so far it seems to have worked out ok.
Page by Page should list all the dates (if not the issues) soon, but I'm offline whilst I move over the next couple of weeks so could be a while yet.
Matt
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Re: No Buster Due To Industrial Action
Just to confirm. The missing issue dates 24th and 31st May 1975 are included in the missing issue lists in the Buster Index as printed, just in case anyone thought I'd missed them out when originally compiling the list.
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Re: No Buster Due To Industrial Action
Buster Index doesn’t mention that the comic was not published for 4 consecutive weeks on 17th, 24th, 31st May and 7th June in 1980. These were the only 4 gaps in my collection of Buster for 1980. The other day I noticed that the 4 dates were also my only gaps in Whoopee collection for the same year and this got me thinking of industrial action effecting both comics.
Upon checking the neighbouring issues for both titles I can now confidently say that both comics did not come out on 17th, 24th, 31st May and 7th June 1980. In Buster and Whoopee issues dated 14th June 1980, editors provided no explanation or apology, but absence of the issues can be traced. In Buster issue dated 14th June storylines of serialized strips (The Leopard from Lime St., Ben the Bad, Keen and Mustard) carry on from the point where they ended on 10th May. The 4 missing issues make 1980 quite a short year for Buster because it also didn’t come out for 4 weeks in the beginning of the year.
As for Whoopee, it had no serialized strips with continuing storylines, but its Cheeky section ran 4-page strips around movie theme (Movie Masterpieces Starring Cheeky) and issue dated 10th May invited readers not to miss next week’s ESCAPE episode that appears in Whoopee dated 14th June, suggesting that there were no issues during the four intervening weeks! This makes me doubt the publishers’ accuracy in counting Whoopee issues and celebrating issue 500 on November 5th, 1983 on the 504th week of the title’s publication because there have been at least 4 weeks when the comic was not published in addition to the 4 dates mentioned in this post. I will now check another suspicious gap in my Whoopee collection for 1978 (three consecutive dates of 9th, 16th and 23rd December) and will write another post, if I find anything of interest to report.
I hope my fellow collectors will find this bit of info useful!
Upon checking the neighbouring issues for both titles I can now confidently say that both comics did not come out on 17th, 24th, 31st May and 7th June 1980. In Buster and Whoopee issues dated 14th June 1980, editors provided no explanation or apology, but absence of the issues can be traced. In Buster issue dated 14th June storylines of serialized strips (The Leopard from Lime St., Ben the Bad, Keen and Mustard) carry on from the point where they ended on 10th May. The 4 missing issues make 1980 quite a short year for Buster because it also didn’t come out for 4 weeks in the beginning of the year.
As for Whoopee, it had no serialized strips with continuing storylines, but its Cheeky section ran 4-page strips around movie theme (Movie Masterpieces Starring Cheeky) and issue dated 10th May invited readers not to miss next week’s ESCAPE episode that appears in Whoopee dated 14th June, suggesting that there were no issues during the four intervening weeks! This makes me doubt the publishers’ accuracy in counting Whoopee issues and celebrating issue 500 on November 5th, 1983 on the 504th week of the title’s publication because there have been at least 4 weeks when the comic was not published in addition to the 4 dates mentioned in this post. I will now check another suspicious gap in my Whoopee collection for 1978 (three consecutive dates of 9th, 16th and 23rd December) and will write another post, if I find anything of interest to report.
I hope my fellow collectors will find this bit of info useful!
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