Mystery comic - anyone seen this before?

Lew Stringer · Post by **Lew Stringer** » 01 Sep 2007, 16:29

The cover of a 1969 comic called Cracker is up for bids on Comic Book Postal Auctions. (It's not the 1975 DC Thomson comic of the same name.) I've never heard of it. Is it a rejected dummy issue? More info here:

http://lewstringer.blogspot.com/2007/09 ... comic.html

Lew

philcom55 · Post by **philcom55** » 01 Sep 2007, 18:25

'Wot no Free Gift!!!'

Very curious! (I assume this is a production proof or colourist's copy rather than the original line art BTW?)

It's also intriguing to note that Beano and Dandy had just gone up from 3d to 4d during the previous year.... Hmmmm, yes - very curious...!

- Phil Rushton

Lew Stringer · Post by **Lew Stringer** » 01 Sep 2007, 18:32

philcom55 wrote:'What no Free Gift!!!' Very curious! (I assume this is a production proof or colourist's copy rather than the original line art BTW?)

It's also intriguing to note that Beano and Dandy had gone up from 3d to 4d during the previous year.... Hmmmm, yes - very curious...!

- Phil Rushton

Good point Phil! No free gift announcement, which makes me believe even more that this is a dummy cover.

It's possible that the original artwork was coloured if they'd intended it to have good production values like the early Wham! comics, but the repro of the cover is too poor to tell if it's original art or a print.

Lew

Post by **AndyB** » 02 Sep 2007, 00:18

It's handlettered IPC style. I'd go with a predecessor to Whizzer and Chips.

Lew Stringer · Post by **Lew Stringer** » 02 Sep 2007, 12:12

Does no one else have any thoughts on this comic? I thought it was a fascinating find on Compal's part myself. A comic that could have been!

Lew

Captain Storm · Post by **Captain Storm** » 02 Sep 2007, 16:40

Hi Lew.It can get frustrating when you have a big find and no one gets in on the joy.I myself posted a blurb about the Adam Eterno tribute site and it didn't illicit one reply.Particularly annoying seeing as it is the first and only one on the entire Internet!Then again our likes and dislikes are different and what might be brilliant for some is a sack of manure for others.Also have to take onboard the actual numbers of members who post on a regular basis.Probably only a handful of us.Quite a few lurkers though judging by the Hidden and Guest entries on the forum.Now onto the matter at hand.I tend to ramble,so forgive me.I noticed your post as I read all posts.However I didn't reply simply because I don't know enough about dummy issues and so forth to comment and instead rely on experts like Kashgar and yourself to fill in the blanks in my knowledge.The only other dummy issue I know of is the 2000ad one which is covered on the BBC site.Thanks for bringing it to the fore here though.I noticed it mentioned on a few other sites and blogs as well.A case for study to be sure.As indeed are all the "pink" comics given away free in comics as a sort of intro to a new publication.Or am I dreaming?
I suppose the only way to tell if Cracker was the precursor to Whizzer & Chips is to get hold of it and compare the characters.If you can spare a few hundred quid that is!Shame really.As whoever buys it will put it under lock and key.Can't see them scanning that baby for free.

Richard S. · Post by **Richard S.** » 02 Sep 2007, 18:00

on the subject of dummies, see this very site for a dummy of the legendary Eagle magazine

http://www.comicsuk.co.uk/ComicInformat ... mePage.asp

I'm always interested in dummy issues and obscure British boys comics and would be delighted to see more of them, but I have the feeling that the odds are against it, how Cracker came to survive, who knows!.

Richard S.

Lew Stringer · Post by **Lew Stringer** » 02 Sep 2007, 18:15

Captain Storm wrote: I suppose the only way to tell if Cracker was the precursor to Whizzer & Chips is to get hold of it and compare the characters.If you can spare a few hundred quid that is!Shame really.As whoever buys it will put it under lock and key.Can't see them scanning that baby for free.

Eh? It's already been scanned and put on the Compal site. It's only the cover art they're selling Cap'n, not the entire comic.

Lew

Lew Stringer · Post by **Lew Stringer** » 02 Sep 2007, 18:23

Richard S. wrote:on the subject of dummies, see this very site for a dummy of the legendary Eagle magazine

http://www.comicsuk.co.uk/ComicInformat ... mePage.asp

I'm always interested in dummy issues and obscure British boys comics and would be delighted to see more of them, but I have the feeling that the odds are against it, how Cracker came to survive, who knows!.

Richard S.

There must have been loads of comics that never made it to publication. A good illustrated feature on them would be fascinating in my opinion. A few I know about are:

Spitfire - Which Odhams were working on just before IPC swallowed them. According to Mike Higgs (who had an explorer character in there) the comic would be more traditional, like Valiant etc, than their "Power Comics" were. I've often wondered if some of the strips that turned up in IPC's revamped Smash! were originally intended for Spitfire.

Spooky - This was to have been another Fleetway venture into the humour horror genre, like Monster Fun Comic. It was in the planning stages in the 1990s but nothing came of it.

Potty - This was going to be a younger version of Oink! - and I was asked to be its freelance editor! But falling sales on Oink and other reasons meant it never even reached a dummy issue as I recall. (I think I may have come up with some characters but it was 20 years ago so I can't remember now.)

Lew

Captain Storm · Post by **Captain Storm** » 02 Sep 2007, 18:42

Lew Stringer wrote:

It's only the cover art they're selling Cap'n, not the entire comic.

D'oh,should've went to specsavers! And the fact that I can't find the scanned contents of the comic on the compal site means I need binoculars

colcool007 · Post by **colcool007** » 02 Sep 2007, 18:54

I have a copy of one dummy. I think it was called Thunder and it was early 80's. It was part of my haul from when Tony O'Donnell moved and had a major clear-out. It was the first time that I had seen a copy labelled No 0 and thought it very odd. If I can, I will dig through the stuff that I have in the UK and try to figure out a bit more about it and put a bit more gen on this thread.

philcom55 · Post by **philcom55** » 02 Sep 2007, 19:20

To my eye that cover looks strongly reminiscent of the Odhams house style, as seen on the early covers of Wham! and Smash!. What's more, the 3d price tag could be seen as a belated recognition that such earlier titles had failed to make an inroad into DC Thomson's market simply because they were so much more expensive (you could, after all, buy a Dandy and a Beano for the same price as one copy of Wham!). The date seems particularly significant too since 1969 was the year in which IPC officially abolished the old Odhams group as a separate entity. It sounds quite feasible that Cracker could have been casually discarded by the new regime, along with the existing Smash format and their flagship title Eagle (after a few short months in which a reprint of the Dan Dare classic 'Rogue Planet' was horrendously butchered to reach an early conclusion).

An alternative explanation could be that Cracker was a dummy title prepared by a number of redundant Odhams personnel in order to offer it to a variety of prospective publishers. If the item had appeared on eBay I'd be inclined to ask the seller if the board carries any publisher's stamp, but I'm not sure if you can do that with Compal. Incidentally, does anyone know if Gordon Hogg or Alf Soporito (Saporito?) are still with us?

- Phil Rushton

Peter Gray · Post by **Peter Gray** » 02 Sep 2007, 23:29

Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 1:47 pm Post subject:

Oh No!!!!! a dummy comic 1990 IPC which never made it..it featured Tom Patersons work......

http://uk.geocities.com/pjgtompatterson/

...little z...
thanks to Paul McScotty

_________________

Lew Stringer · Post by **Lew Stringer** » 03 Sep 2007, 09:38

Peter Gray wrote:Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 1:47 pm Post subject:

Oh No!!!!! a dummy comic 1990 IPC which never made it..it featured Tom Patersons work......
http://uk.geocities.com/pjgtompatterson/

...little z...
thanks to Paul McScotty

How could I have forgotten that one... and I was in it too!

That came so close to being launched. The company spent a lot of money on market research, printing up a thousand or so copies. It tested very positively. Kids liked the fact it was different. Then a changeover in ownership (I think when Egmont came in, or when Robert Maxwell fell off his boat) and the comic was pulled.

Lew

Kremmen · Post by **Kremmen** » 03 Sep 2007, 09:59

Captain Storm wrote:Hi Lew.It can get frustrating when you have a big find and no one gets in on the joy.I myself posted a blurb about the Adam Eterno tribute site and it didn't illicit one reply.Particularly annoying seeing as it is the first and only one on the entire Internet!Then again our likes and dislikes are different and what might be brilliant for some is a sack of manure for others.Also have to take onboard the actual numbers of members who post on a regular basis.Probably only a handful of us.Quite a few lurkers though judging by the Hidden and Guest entries on the forum.

If I may digress, you make a fair point. However, not everyone has the "encyclopaedic" knowledge or resources that some of you good folk have. I have a lot of memories of comics from the 60s and 70s but I wouldn't dream of calling myself an expert. As such I'll comment on what I know, or think I know. Other times, I'll lurk.

As to Cracker - wasn't Robbie Coltrane good? Oops, sorry, wrong Cracker!

Seriously, though, to my uneducated eyes it looks like it might be an attempt at a pre-1969 Smash! or Wham! comic. As has been said, the absence of a Free Gift suggests a dummy issue.

I was interested in the speculation about strips for an aborted Odhams title possibly turning up in the revamped Smash! I always felt that Fleetway/IPC couldn't abide titles that were different in style to their own, so when they took over companies such as Odhams dumbed titles like Eagle right down until people got fed up and stopped buying them. Mind, that's just my opinion.

I'll get me coat...

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