Wacky Comics!: Fighter

Showing posts with label Fighter. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Yet More April Fools!

Well, now has all been revealed! Over on Lew Stringers blog he wrote about a comic called 'om nom NOM!', which was printed on edible rice paper! Of course, just like the Fighter comic mentioned on this very blog, that was an April fools prank as well - no such comic exists (if only it did though :P )!

Harry Rickard, who helped design the Fighter comics, went out of his way to post status' and messages that The Wizzo comic was ending - yep, you guessed it! April Fools! If you went onto the Wizzo website you may have seen the message, but, if you looked closely at the URL, you would have spotted the word 'fools' in there!

Monday, April 2, 2012

April Fools! - Fighter

As I'm sure many of you guessed, yesterday's post about the rare and forgotten 1963 comic called Fighter, it was actually an April Fool, put together by myself and Harry Rickard!

Seen at the top of the post is the original cover design for the 1st April edition, which we decided was way to bright. We then dulled it down some more, and Harry sent it to me, along with the others, to write a fake history on and change the white areas to a duller grey. I decided to dull down all the colours, and the final design can be seen above.

As for the images, they came from several different comics. The cover image for the 1st April came from Battle comic dated 7th May 1983, the 29th April cover from Look And Learn (Incorporating Ranger Magazine) No. 351, dated 5th October 1984. The cover image for the 'tattier' May issue came from a book entitled Collins' Adventure Annual. I'm not sure of the date, but a messsage written in pencil inside the book says "Xmas 1931", meaning that it could have been issued in 1930 (theres a scan of the full cover above). The joke came from Illustrated Chips #2894, dated August 12th 1950. The space adventure story came from the first issue of an Australian comic called Outer Space, which I know little about.

There's been one or two other pranks going on in the world of comics, but I won't say anything about them until they're revealed!

Don't worry though, from now on all posts here will be genuine - well, at least for the next year! ;D

And whilst your at it, why not check out Harry Rickard's blog -

http://wizzkid97.wordpress.com/

Curious Comics - Fighter (1963)

Since I wasn't around in 1963, I hadn't actually seen or heard anything of the above comic, until I came across two copies earlier this year. I bought the two April editions at a car boot sale, and the May edition came from ebay, hence the fact it is in a tattier condition.

The comic was called Fighter, and is an incredibly scarce comic from the early sixties! It began on 18th March 1963, and, unlike most other comics launched around that time, the first issue didn't come with a free gift. My earliest issue is issue #3, and includes many brilliant stories including Jet Jackson (subtitled -The World's Bravest Pilot!), Samson's Tank and The Diamond Throne.

Unlike other adventure comics of the time, Fighter didn't have any humour strips, the only items not drawn in the style of adventure strips were the jokes! The below example is about smoking, something which would not be allowed in comics today!

The cover designs weren't bad either! They had a striking picture, a bright eye grabbing yellow logo on a red background and a loud promotional statement at the top!

Fighter cost 5d, which was around the same price as Buster, Lion, Wham! and other comics cost as well. So it had a nice selection of comic strips, looked fantastic and was good value for money - then how come nobody has heard of it?

The answer is simple, the contents was terrible. Unlike most other comics around the time, Fighter had 7 pages of advertisements, and only 9 pages of comic! And because most of the stories were continuous, very little was learnt and strips would take forever to get anywhere! Take a look at the below example of a comic strip named The Space Dominion, and you'll see what I mean. This comic strip was only two pages, and if that's three boxes per page, then the story is never going to get finished! Because of the lack of sales, many shops stopped ordering the comic, and at the end of its run it was only avaliable in a handful of different shops!

After a mere 11 issues, Fighter was last sold on 27th May 1963, and then it disappeared from memory forever - as though it had never existed!