Most annoying comic strip

[Ian]

What comic strip did you find most annoying?

It would be rare if even your favourite comic didnt have at least one,it might be the artwork,the weak storyline ect but you always avoided reading it.

Some suggestions

Wonder Worm from Cor! comic.Just plain stupid and not in the least funny.I also detested the artwork.


Dannys Tranny from Topper.Eventhough it was at one stage in the 70s the cover star of Topper it always looked and felt very old fashioned.What kids in the 70s used the term transistor radio.

Ad Lad from Whoopee and Aqua boy were also annoying.

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

'TV. TERRORS' from 'TV COMIC'......but it ran for years on end, so what do I know!!!

[Conor B]

The Bogies (Dandy Xtreme 2008-)

[*] Awful storylines
[*] Awful artwork
[*] Awful character names (usually)
[*] Advertising awful things

[Peter Gray]

I agree the bogies has made me stop buying the Dandy extreem again...

it crosses a line for me....

[Lew Stringer]

I agree the bogies has made me stop buying the Dandy extreem again...

it crosses a line for me....

I presume you've never read Viz then?

Lew

[Peter Gray]

I had a look in the shop...for the first time (the very first time I saw it once on holiday in the hotel with a 90's Buster)..after reading your blog on Viz..
saw and read your suicidal Syd which I thought was good black humour..
toilet/rude humour when its not subtile is not for me......
I'm more of a naughty postcard humour type guy rather than spelling it out in graphic detail....so don't like Round the Horner.But Hancock..The Goons..The Gluims are my taste..
Give me the two Ronnies...Benny Hill...Harry Hill anytime.......Little Britain though did make me laugh now and again crossed the line for me ...it will date very quickly..sick jokes..wee..poo jokes are just

[Rob J]

Dannys Tranny from Topper.Eventhough it was at one stage in the 70s the cover star of Topper it always looked and felt very old fashioned.What kids in the 70s used the term transistor radio.

Noooooo!! Well, okay - a bit. But what made this strip work for more was the art. A little more "realistic" - giving Topper a slightly different dimension.

Most annoying for me were the fleetway filler strips - evil eye, creepy car, fun fear. They probably all started out strong but bloody hell, they got old fast then just seemed to run for years and years and more years. Very monotonous 'grey' tone to the "stories" with art that didn't lift them out of the uninspired writing.

[Raven]

Most annoying for me were the fleetway filler strips - evil eye, creepy car, fun fear. They probably all started out strong but bloody hell, they got old fast then just seemed to run for years and years and more years. Very monotonous 'grey' tone to the "stories" with art that didn't lift them out of the uninspired writing.

Filler?!! For me, Reg Parlett's art on Evil Eye and Creepy Car was among the highlights of their comics - I still love it - and these quirky strips - and Fun Fear (especially good with Robert Nixon art) - were always good, freaky out-of-the-ordinary fun. These were always 'among the first strips you turn to' material for me.

One man's filler is among another man's favourites, I suppose.

[Ian]

I have to agree Raven, IPC were at their best when doing spooky humour and Reg Parlett was always in a league of his own.

[Raven]

I have to agree Raven, IPC were at their best when doing spooky humour and Reg Parlett was always in a league of his own.

That concentration of Evil Eye, Fun Fear, Sweeney Toddler, 'Orrible Hole, Creepy Car, Scream Inn and Ghoul Getters Ltd. when Whoopee and Shiver & Shake joined - one can but swoon. (Though Ian, by Aqua Boy do you mean Terry Bave's Aqua Lad from very early Whizzer and Chips? Another of my favourites! But then, I love freaky sea creatures in comics - and I didn't think this one lasted long enough to get too repetitious. I liked Ad Lad too, one of the modern feeling strips Whoopee launched - though its conceit that commercials were broadcast live on TV so a kid could burst in and interrupt them on air was a bit annoying; who believed that?)

There were a few IPC strips with a very limited concept I wasn't so keen on - Lazy Bones in Whizzer and Chips seemed to go on forever with variations of the same material.

I think I found it more annoying though when a favourite strip's artist would be suddenly replaced with a much less impressive one - either as one-offs in specials or annuals or filler in the weeklies and it just wasn't the same, or, much worse, regularly in the weeklies.

[Kashgar]

I know this isn't quite what this strand is about but I always found it irritating when Fleetway/IPC, who I consider the main culprits, used to use inferior artists to draw strips for their yearly annuals. Strips that you'd really enjoyed in the weekly comics would be stripped of their regular artists and 'enthusiastic' amateurs would take over with at least drab, if not downright dire, results. And this was exacerbated in the 1970's when they produced way too many comic annuals in the first place with titles that had died the death years before still deigning to be considered annual worthy years after their demise and virtually all chockful of bad renditions of once quality strips.

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

I remember especially bad examples of 'FRANKIE STEIN' artwork in these annuals.....DCT used the proper artists in most cases, however, the artwork was obviously scaled diffeently, with fewer frames, and I sometimes felt slightly 'cheated' with stories you could read in a flash.........

[AndyB]

The problem with IPC is that while there was a reasonable amount of new content in their annuals, they used a lot of reprint - either drawn by the serving artist at a much earlier point in their career and underdeveloped (contrast Bob Nixon's 1980s Roger with the 1970s version!) or drawn by a previous artist - a bit like printing a Davy Law Dennis in a modern Beano. Fits in Classics, but not the "proper" comic - by contrast, mixing a couple of Bob Nixon strips in with Barrie Appleby's version when they're short works reasonably well because Barrie doesn't draw him or Cruncher Kerr awfully differently from the way that Bob did.

Mismatches just don't work.

[Lew Stringer]

I know this isn't quite what this strand is about but I always found it irritating when Fleetway/IPC, who I consider the main culprits, used to use inferior artists to draw strips for their yearly annuals.

I appreciate your frustration (which I also often shared) but the problem was the page rate for the annuals was often lower than the weeklies. Well, they could have paid the same rate for every page, but it would have meant there would be even more reprint in there to balance the budget. So the compromise was to pay a lower rate on some pages. This meant that some regular artists weren't keen on doing material for a lower rate (or they simply didn't have time) so new artists were brought in. However, the benefits of this were that it gave valuable experience to those artists. My first IPC work was on the annuals, "ghosting" Tom Paterson and Sid Burgon. I wasn't considered good enough for the weeklies at that stage but it was a good method to see what I could do. The theory being, I assume, that if a job by a newbie was poor, it'd be less noticeable in an 160 page annual than in a 32 page weekly. (Although if the job was really poor you wouldn't get the gig at all of course.)

IPC were always on the look out for new artists and the annuals were an ideal place to try them out. Annoying for the readers at the time, but interesting for comic historians in retrospect to see their early work.

Lew

[Raven]

The problem with IPC is that while there was a reasonable amount of new content in their annuals, they used a lot of reprint - either drawn by the serving artist at a much earlier point in their career and underdeveloped (contrast Bob Nixon's 1980s Roger with the 1970s version!) or drawn by a previous artist

Often I loved this as a kid - getting end to end classic reprint material (like Reg Parlett's early Harry's Haunted House) in IPC's specials and annuals, and being introduced to vintage strips like The Pirates and Glugg and the like! It was one of the more appealing aspects of them for me. It would seem much stranger nowadays, perhaps, as styles have changed so very much.

I do think they usually had *just enough* of new stuff by the right artists in to keep things fresh and acceptable in the IPC annuals, though - I recall that Terry Bave tended to do all his usual strips, and as well as always, in the annuals, for example. And you'd often get a few special things, like a great, colourful Robert Nixon cover or a new long, complete Mike Brown Badtime Bedtime type story.