Comics UK

Hmm... the Incredible Hulk might have been an inspiration as well.

Week two develops them all beautifully. I expect good things from week three (roll on Friday!)

I think Nigel's one is pushing ahead for me..

though all three are good and by artists I like..

maybe all three will be a tie..so all of them can stay..

Meebo And Zuky are most interesting for me. It looks modern but it has a nice classic feel. The hoover picture in this week's issue is probably the wildest thing I've seen in the Beano. Very funny. Home Invasion is quite different in that it seems to have a touch of a serial about it. Si Co is the only one I don't like much. But I didn't like Vic Volcano either. Definitely the strongest Comic Idol line-up so far though.

I picked this up as my occasional dip into The Beano.

Meebo And Zuky is basically Puss n Boots filtered via Itchy & Scratchy - and it's great. Can you imagine something that extreme (for want of a less loaded word!) appearing in the Beano ten years ago? Or even five years ago? Or even last week?!

PaulTwist wrote:I picked this up as my occasional dip into The Beano.

Meebo And Zuky is basically Puss n Boots filtered via Itchy & Scratchy - and it's great. Can you imagine something that extreme (for want of a less loaded word!) appearing in the Beano ten years ago? Or even five years ago? Or even last week?!

And Itchy and Scratchy is itself based on Tom and Jerry... but yeah, seeing the hoover rip off his flesh leaving just a head (that's new for The Beano! ) is definitely similar to a few I&S shorts within The Simpsons. Which just happens to be one of my favourite TV shows.

It's got something of Itchy and Scratchy about it, but it's a lot closer to Puss 'n' Boots in its surreality - still many miles beyond Puss 'n' Boots though. Next week's is a lot closer to traditional Puss 'n' Boots though.

I can tell you that Home Invasion is taking a completely different course from Zap Zodiac. The third week is great, and well worth your £1.35.

Much as I love Puss'n'Boots - and John's Sparky Puss'n'Boots strips from the 70s get my vote as the funniest comic strips ever - the big influence on Meebo & Zuky was classic cartoons. Tom and Jerry, Road Runner, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny... the cartoons I loved as a kid had characters being blown up, sliced to bits, squashed, dropped off cliffs, maimed... and they kept coming back for more. I wanted to do something like that, and so we got Meebo & Zuky. There you have it, straight from the horse's mouth.

Yeah, there's a definite cartoon influence on Meebo and Zuky, for sure.

I can't help but think that Meebo and Zuky are at a slight disadvantage with their names though. The names aren't especially memorable (at least), whereas Oh Oh Si Co and Home Invasion seem easier to remember.

Having seen the week 2 strips I think they're all good and I would be fine if any of them went into the comic. Also, one good thing is they're all drawn by top regular artists - in past votes, there's usually been at least one strip drawn by a 'newcomer' - of those, I think Dave Eastbury (Freddie Fear) is the only one who has established himself in the comic.

I guess Dave got lucky because he very quickly got assigned Ball Boy as well.

A bit obvious, but it would've been nice to see a new artist.

Or maybe there are no good new artists - the dandy is hunting for new ones by publicly inviting submissions, which I can't remember DCT doing before.

That's because in the past, Beano, Dandy, Beezer, Topper, etc have used each other's artists a lot of the time. With only Beano to borrow from now, if none of the artists have time for extra work, and nobody has submitted speculative applications, they need to advertise.

Digifiend wrote:That's because in the past, Beano, Dandy, Beezer, Topper, etc have used each other's artists a lot of the time. With only Beano to borrow from now, if none of the artists have time for extra work, and nobody has submitted speculative applications, they need to advertise.

You're assuming we were given the opportunity to contribute. I think it's more likely they're just looking to distinguish it from The Beano.

That's why Wayne Thompson and Jamie Smart work exclusively for the Dandy. I believe there is a concerted effort and has been for a couple of years to have separate Beano and Dandy artists.

In the past, there was a great deal more common usage - Bob Nixon, John Geering, Tom Bannister, and George Martin all come to mind in my lifetime as contributing to at least half of DCT's comic titles at any one time.

AndyB wrote:That's why Wayne Thompson and Jamie Smart work exclusively for the Dandy. I believe there is a concerted effort and has been for a couple of years to have separate Beano and Dandy artists.

In the past, there was a great deal more common usage - Bob Nixon, John Geering, Tom Bannister, and George Martin all come to mind in my lifetime as contributing to at least half of DCT's comic titles at any one time.

Much as I always dreamed of being a Dandy artist it does make sense to have a visual difference between the two comics. A mistake IPC made, imho, was that most of their humour comics were too similar looking, and I suppose the same criticism could apply to several comics of the 1930s.

Even back in the 1960s there was a difference between Dandy and Beano, with some artists never crossing over between the two comics. (For example Eric Roberts and Bill Holroyd never drew for The Beano in the 1960s/70s if I recall, and I don't think Baxendale ever worked on The Dandy.) I could be mistaken as I don't have Ray's indexes to hand at present but I think that was the case.