UNPUBLISHED COMICS - WHACKO! ~ Comics Live Updates

Back in the mists of time - well, around 1971 at least - some unidentified person or persons tried to get the LYONS company interested in producing a new comic called WHACKO! (Or did Lyons approach a publisher like IPC with the idea?) It may have been only a provisional name, but it was never published - though a homemade 'dummy' was cobbled together by someone to show the company what it might look like. Whoever came up with the idea - whether a Lyons employee or an outsider - is currently unknown, but the pages were discovered in a secondhand bookshop by someone (see last paragraph) quite a number of years ago.

If I rightly understand what I've read elsewhere, none of the strips used were specifically produced for the actual dummy, but culled from other sources. Note that the concept of JOLLY ROLLO And His MAGIC FLUTE echoes that of PHIL The FLUTER (should actually be Flautist, but Flutist is 'smoother') from THUNDER (1970). Was Jolly a rip-off of Phil, or an early 'prototype' that was later pressed into service for the dummy? Perhaps we'll never know. ZOOM The SPACE DOG (a renamed HAPPY) seems similar in theme to strips like GALAXUS, BARRY & BOING, and, in particular, PADDY McGINTY'S GOAT, being a bit of a mix of them.

No original art was used in the dummy, the pages being merely boards with photocopies of strips stuck to them. It's entirely possible that they were rejected proposals (with completely different strip titles, as Zoom/Happy seems to confirm) for IPC/FLEETWAY, which were then renamed to make the characters seem unique to Lyons & Co. (I've digitally 'diluted' the shadows of the new logos pasted over the originals.) The late and legendary cartoonist TERRY BAVE drew all the humour strips, so could he have been responsible for trying to interest Lyons in producing their own promotional 'custom comic', or was he called upon because he drew for IPC, who might've been the potential publisher on Lyons' behalf?

Or maybe it was an outside freelance project by an IPC editor, who asked Terry to come up with some ideas - or simply used some rejected strips of his. Whichever of those scenarios it was, Terry never mentioned the comic in his autobiography, but if it was the latter, it's possible he never even knew that strips he'd submitted to IPC - possibly to try and drum up some extra work - had been renamed and included in the proposal for Whacko! It may have been the same situation for the adventure strip artists, TOM KERR and JOHN RICHARDSON, to say nothing of the writers, whoever they were.

Would a comic priced at one new pence been a viable proposition for Lyons (or anyone) back in 1971? Given the cost involved in producing a comic, it's doubtful it would ever have been intended as a 'giveaway', but maybe the possibility of it being part of a promotional offer that readers could send away for, enclosing a penny (plus p&p?) along with several coupons cut from the wrappers or boxes of Lyons products was considered? Again, the facts are probably lost to history, but isn't it fascinating to speculate?

Anyway, the pages have been shown before several years back on other blogs, but I suspect they're new to most Crivvies. So thanks to STEVE HOLLAND from BEAR ALLEY BOOKS for permission to reproduce the pages (with a little mild en-hancement by me for this presentation), to DEZ SKINN who produced an improved version of the cover (at the foot of the post), and to RICHARD SHEAF for finding them in a secondhand bookshop all those years ago. What a discovery.

Does this look like the sort of comic you'd have bought as a kid? Yea or nay, say so in the comments section if you'd be so good.