WHAM! #80 - COMPLETE CHRISTMAS ISSUE FROM 1965...

Images copyright relevant owners

Here's an early Christmas gift for all Criv-ites around my age - the complete WHAM! #80 from December 1965, to rekindle your memories of this weekly paper if you were a reader at the time.  Perhaps you had this very issue, and now you're reunited with it after a mere 52 years - doesn't time fly?!  For myself, I didn't start buying Wham! until after it began featuring The FANTASTIC FOUR in late 1966, and by then the comic had lost its photogravure printing and was published on cheap newsprint paper.  The reasons for this were down to expense, obviously, as the comic hadn't performed as well as had been expected when it was launched in 1964, so cost-cutting measures had to be implemented.

However, the comic was yet being printed in its original format in December '65, which creates a strange paradox for me.  Y'see, between the time of Wham! coming out and me starting to buy it, I'd lived in three different houses, and when I started getting the comic, it was in the cheap newsprint format.  That's why I associate Wham! as I knew it with the house I was then in, whereas its previous format 'belonged' to the time of my two prior houses - though not to my memories of the houses themselves, as I'd been unaware of the title at that time.  Consequently, to see this December 1965 photogravure copy from the time I was living in my third house is rather confusing for me as it just doesn't fit.  To me at this time, Wham! was a newsprint comic, not a photogravure one.

Anyway, enough self-indulgent prattle from me, though it's a small price to pay for the treat that now awaits you.  You may now indulge yourself in these comic glories from over 50 years ago.  Some strips show background 'bleed-through' from the previous page, which I've lessened slightly, but I can't remove it completely without wiping out detail on the side you're reading.   

Posted in: Cartoons