Digifiend wrote:The latest download is Classic Biffo - which they said was drawn by Dudley D Watson! Somebody's been a right Smiffy with that one!
That Smiffy would be me, I'm afraid. Hands up. My mistook. No idea where my head was at with that one. It's fixed now. I shall go and sit on the naughty step for half an hour.
I'd like to see The Three Bears, Little Plum or early Calamity James. I'd also be interested to see the first Tim Traveller strip, but I don't think they'd use that one.
'Michael Owen isn't the tallest of players, but his height more than makes up for it' - Mark Lawrenson
I'm pretty sure in the first Tim Traveller strip he just finds the bike on a "dump" (of the kind where people just chuck anything that probably hasn't existed for at least 50 years), fiddles with the "funny lever" and rides off into time.
It was a new strip which was quite a rare and big thing to my young mind, i remember it 'well'! Same with Betty's Yeti.
Your recollection of the first Tim Traveller script was pretty much spot on! I wanted to keep the idea simple, rather in the manner of Jimmy and His Magic Patch, and figured that most children would have a bike and one that could travel in time would be incredibly cool! Tim won the vote ahead of Crazy For Daisy and a couple of others, although CFD was also put in the comic. It was great to create a story that proved to be so popular! I left the Beano for the Dandy after writing the opening twelve episodes and I was delighted to see it continue for many years under different writers. One thing I personally would have liked to have seen was the back story to that first episode - I mean, if you had a time-travelling bike, why would you put it on the town dump? What could possibly have gone wrong?
I had vague ideas to bring back Tim Traveller from the beginning again as a semi-serious adventure strip, but beyond a new Tim finding the bike and riding into 1940 (the lever is set on that and he assumes that was the year the bike was made, because it's rusty and abandoned), then being seperated from it by an unexploded bomb, the story didn't get too far.
Maybe it would have been a bike from the future that the original owner of it had lost some years before Tim found it, and then the (now adult and slightly mad) owner tries to chase him across time with a time unicycle or trike or something.
Your recollection of the first Tim Traveller script was pretty much spot on! I wanted to keep the idea simple, rather in the manner of Jimmy and His Magic Patch, and figured that most children would have a bike and one that could travel in time would be incredibly cool! Tim won the vote ahead of Crazy For Daisy and a couple of others, although CFD was also put in the comic. It was great to create a story that proved to be so popular! I left the Beano for the Dandy after writing the opening twelve episodes and I was delighted to see it continue for many years under different writers. One thing I personally would have liked to have seen was the back story to that first episode - I mean, if you had a time-travelling bike, why would you put it on the town dump? What could possibly have gone wrong?
Brilliant to hear about that. I remember Tim Traveller fondly from when I first read the Beano and I've been lucky enough to get some 1998-2001 issues he was in. I enjoyed it and also thought it was a better strip than Crazy for Daisy.
The losers in the vote (from The History of the Beano) were Camp Cosmos, Have a Go Jo, Sydd and Trash Can Alley. I don't really know anything about those strips except about their artists - Camp Cosmos and Sydd were by John Geering, Dave Mostyn drew Have a Go Jo and Trash Can Alley was by Bob Dewar.
'Michael Owen isn't the tallest of players, but his height more than makes up for it' - Mark Lawrenson
I remember that "competiton" (for those that don't - for a few weeks new strips were previewed in the comic, and readers would then vote for the one that stayed on... this was years before Big Brother!). I thought Camp Cosmos had "mileage", and i beleive it did re-appear in an annual or summer special. My English teacher was into The Beano and assured us in class that Crazy For Daisy "wouldn't last".
They had two of those competitions, and the first one was won by Vic Volcano, a character seemingly based on my brother! Me and a friend at primary school (hmm... this would date the two competitions to the 1994-6 period) wanted Vic to win, and were together when we got hold of the issue in which the winner was to be announced. We both were flicking the pages chanting "Vic Volcano!" and then ran around the room cheering like football fans when we saw he had won. We didn't get out much.
There was more than two. Vic Volcano's was indeed around that time. The Daisy/Tim one was a few years later. Another of these Comic Idol contests was won by The 3 Bears (who should've just been added seperately, to be honest, since it was a returning strip, not a new one).
I have some strips featuring Have-a-go Jo, but that's about it for the voting contest during 97. I didn't even understand it much when I first read it. I prefer Have a go joe from the 1930's.
I do have the first episode of Minder bird (UGH!!) The Sort Out Squad and Vic Volcano aswell.
Comic Idol, as it became, ran annually until 2006, when Nicky Nutjob beat Scammin' Sam and Mia Starr according to my records, but the competition was retired when Euan left the Beano.
The vote or 'Comic idol' winners were:
1995 - Vic Volcano
1997 - Tim Traveller and Crazy for Daisy
1999-2000 - The Three Bears
2002 - Freddie Fear
2004 - Joe Jitsu and Colin the Vet
2005 - Zap Zodiac
2006 - Nicky Nutjob
It's worth noting that the last two were dismal failures and lasted for only a few months. In the 2004 vote, Joe Jitsu won but Colin still got in because he only lost by 1% of the votes. I voted for Colin!
I don't remember the earlier votes - the 2002 vote came before I started reading it, but I do have some 1999 issues with three of the four strips in the vote - The Three Bears, Tricky Dicky and Gordon Bennett, but not Inspector Horse and Jocky.
'Michael Owen isn't the tallest of players, but his height more than makes up for it' - Mark Lawrenson
