Comics UK

I like this dynamic depiction of the Leopardman strutting his funky stuff at the 1979 Selbridge Rock Festival, where he's promised to take the place of some "big-headed rock stars."

Of course, the police are waiting.

Raven wrote:I like this dynamic depiction of the Leopardman strutting his funky stuff at the 1979 Selbridge Rock Festival, where he's promised to take the place of some "big-headed rock stars."

Of course, the police are waiting.

Wonderful artwork!!

The police were always waiting

blackpuddingbertha wrote:Thanks for the link starscape - loved the video!

Will you be reprinting more of them? I'm thinking particularly of the grey ghost / leopardman robot stories that have stuck in my mind since childhood.

Fantastic art and great stories

The licence expired a while ago. I've had a few thoughts about a new comic* but never considered resurrecting the Leopardboy. It's an idea!

I did try a few years ago to get the licence for a new Valiant annual - reprints and new stories of classic characters. I had hoped it to be the first in a resurrection of a number of series (a Valiant Annual, a Vulcan Annual etc) but since IPC went over to DC Comics for licensing, they're just not responding to emails.




*which, if you're wondering would be a historical action comic - Romans, Celts, Vikings etc

Well I'd certainly buy a collected collection or two of the strips either hardback or like the marvel essentials range, or even something like the doomlord floppy that came out a few years ago (You can never have enough Doomlord! ).

That's a shame re DC - Do they reply to snailmail?

Leopardman was definitely my all-time favourite Buster character. It was sad that he was the last of a dying breed in Buster - that of the adventure stories. They used to be so abundant in Buster but after Leopardman stopped in 1985 they had been phased out for good (unless you count the Leopardman reprints in 1990). From then on it was funnies all the way.

Folks I have a complete absence of Buster from my collection and would love to delve into some of the adventure strips talked about. Are there any annuals or reprints that have some of these featured and that might serve as a possible taster for me?

Thanks in advance.

There may be the odd annual that reprints a few Leopard strips, but, apart from that, I think you'd need to buy the original weeklies.

Thanks Raven.

Raven wrote:There may be the odd annual that reprints a few Leopard strips, but, apart from that, I think you'd need to buy the original weeklies.

The annuals did have Leopard strips. I have a few. I've also got a substantial collection of originals - and I was thinking of scanning the Leopard strips from those anyway.

Tammyfan wrote: The annuals did have Leopard strips.

I'd taken - wrongly, I think - Billy's question to mean annuals with reprints of the weekly serials. The Leopard is certainly in a few Buster annuals, usually original tales, though, rather than reprints of the weekly strip which is much better, and more definitive, so I'd say Billy is still better going for the weeklies to get the proper flavour of the classic serial, art and story-wise.

Some of the '70s Buster annuals are likely to have a higher adventure strip quota.

1972's delightful Birthday Book For Boys is a nice sampler of IPC adventure (and humour) strips, come to think of it, with a new Fishboy seven-pager, and a sixteen page reprint of the first few instalments of Galaxus (chopped up a bit), both Buster adventure strips. There's a copy for 99p on eBay as I type.

Someone is selling a couple of Whizzer and Chipses from January 1982 on eBay and elsewhere (at £3.99 each, mind), declaring "WHIZZER AND CHIPS****CRABBE'S CRUSADERS".

Does anyone know if there actually were Crabbe's Crusaders reprints in Whizzer and Chips in '82?

This is not definitive, but it rings a bell.

The adventure strips gradually went out in Buster, the last being the Leopardman in 1985. By then he was the last one standing as well. From the mid 1980s on it was all funnies. The Leopardman enjoyed a brief revival in 1990, but it didn't last. A lot of it was all those other titles Buster absorbed over the years and their strips (Tom Thug, School Belle, Ricky Rainbow, Junior Rotter etc). I reckon that as more of them were absorbed, they gradually pushed out the adventure strips because the newly-absorbed funnies were taking more space. And it sounds like tastes changed and readers were no longer into the adventure strips - the failed revival of Leopardman points to this.