The Topper Beezer Top 100

[steelclaw]

[Raven]

I felt that Puss N' Boots divided audiences, Raven: I can remember some casual comics fans expressing their dislike of it: my old man actually made the effort to state he never liked it, something he rarely ever done, on any strips. This strip definately repelled some readers.

I assumed it was broadly popular by how it doubled its page count, and how there was so much of it in the annuals , but I could imagine younger readers finding it a bit disturbing, too. It did have a slightly disturbing and demented element to it; the characters often looked so battered. The rest of the comic was much gentler.

Great sample of the strip there, Steely.

[Lew Stringer]

I assumed it was broadly popular by how it doubled its page count, and how there was so much of it in the annuals , but I could imagine younger readers finding it a bit disturbing, too. It did have a slightly disturbing and demented element to it; the characters often looked so battered. The rest of the comic was much gentler.

I'm sure Puss n Boots was inspired by Tom and Jerry, which was regularly shown on TV at the time as I recall? I don't think many children would find it disturbing as they know the difference between cartoon violence and real violence. It's only adults who tend to find comics disturbing when they forget what it was like to be a child. I was ten when I first saw Puss n Boots and thought it was brilliant. (I didn't even think of them as animals, as they spoke and behaved like humans.)

If the popularity of the strip declined it might have been that by the late-1970s the majority of the readership of The Topper was getting younger overall, and perhaps some of the humour went over the heads of some children?

[Digifiend]

I spent ages transfering it all to the new blog site..maybe I didn't need to..as I did it very quickly I lost some of my info..like dates of comics..my thoughts..and other comic pages..

so it is really nice to see them all again..

Well now you have an opportunity to find that lost info. Oocities doesn't have every Geocities site up. They're adding more all the time, so they say. The back-ups must've been done by bots, but reuploading takes time.

Thanks Steelclaw for that extra Puss an' Boots sample.

[Raven]

I'm sure Puss n Boots was inspired by Tom and Jerry, which was regularly shown on TV at the time as I recall? I don't think many children would find it disturbing as they know the difference between cartoon violence and real violence. It's only adults who tend to find comics disturbing when they forget what it was like to be a child. I was ten when I first saw Puss n Boots and thought it was brilliant. (I didn't even think of them as animals, as they spoke and behaved like humans.)

It was my favourite Sparky - and D.C. Thomson - strip, but I do remember thinking the images of them with blackened eyes, fur missing, cauliflower ears, huge lumps on their heads etc., could seem quite strong when I was very young - and they were doing lots of serious punching and kicking, rather than bending in and out of shape-type Tom and Jerry violence - but this was mixed with a lot of whimsy, which made an interesting balance.

It's interesting how different children react to things. I absolutely loved Lewis Carroll's Alice books as a little boy, and was surprised to find that a lot of people found them too macabre and disturbing as children. Re: Tom and Jerry, I remember finding the ending of the mouseketeers one where Tom is guillotined at the end quite unsettling as a little boy!

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

I felt that the worst excesses of 'Puss N Boots' was on par with some of Ken Reid's stuff as regarding disturbing imagery, Raven! Like Reid's work, though, it was clearly too fantasy-bound to give me nightmares.

Here's an early colour double-pager, which I always enjoyed as it reflects artist John Geering's Northern England [well, Manchester Region] roots [black-puddings, etc], and with a delightfully surrealistically violent final frame:





FOOTNOTE:


Before the days of mailing artwork into D C T offices via scanning, most comics artwork was simply sent into the Dundee offices using reinforced cardboard tubing. These sturdy tubes were often re-used time and again, with the simple process of taping over existing address labels. One of these re-used tubes in my possession came to reveal the home address of John Geering, one of my favourite comics artists of all time: the location was somewhere in Cheadle. I had too much respect for him to bother sending him personal mail, ---and I also knew he was extremely busy.but I do still have his old address somewhere as a keepsake. I'm delighted that I did actually meet the legend once, though........

[Raven]

The "double nirdle-hop side-step" made me laugh. Such good writing, sadly uncredited. "... at no time do my feet leave my legs!"

Puss does look quite horribly bashed in the last panel, but seems more worried about the pong of Boots's feet. Ooh, and only just noticed them kicking each other in the face in the title panel!

It's an amazing strip that is sadly uncelebrated in the great comic scheme of things.

[Peter Gray]

Heres an even more bashed up Moggy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

WOW! This is clearly PUSS 'N' BOOTS overkill!

Lastly from me, here's a very unusual BILL RITCHIE/JOHN GEERING collaboration, which is also notable for featuring SPARKY'S shortest-running title logo:

[steelclaw]

I love that gate crash cover ISPY.

[Digifiend]

Shortest running logo? Shorter than this one?

It was changed to this one by issue 35.

Different colours, narrower arch behind the title, different picture of the Sparky character.

[Peter Gray]

When you've got time Kashgar I'll look forward to the next post..

I'm shortly doing a post on Tom Bannister and will put up a link back to here as well as the artist post on Tom..

As Spy has said its a real joy rereading Beezers and Toppers..lying them down on the floor to read and marvelling at the stories..humour and art..
will be buying more Beezers and Toppers from the 60's/70's..and if lucky the 50's..

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

The 1973 SPARKY logo was a strikingly different departure of design to be fair, though, Digi........

the 1973 logo could well have ran shorter than 35 weeks, I will ask Alan Smith about this: he's more informed than SPARKY trivia-history than I am.

[Kashgar]

I have decided that instead of providing much individual detail for every entry, apart from title and artist, (a time consuming exercise when it transpires you haven't got the time to spare) I'll just put up a simple list of, say, five strips at a time and let other members provide more precise details as they will. I hope this will suffice and the first list will appear tomorow.

[Peter Gray]

Thanks Kashgar...its great discovering new characters I havn't heard of and who the artists were...also how many times it appeared..