TV spoofs

[Niblet]

Sigh - I loved Terror TV.

Yes, it was certainly among the best of the TV spoofs, partly because its format meant it wasn't tied into the same situation week after week.

Here's another good one from B&MF 27 November '76

[Power fan]

..and on the subject of Z Cars, Boys' World had XYZ cars, and about the same time was it Beano or Dandy with Q bikes? Half-way through that series, the bikes changed from the conventional to the small wheeled Moulton type (which I would have thought would have been even more difficult to draw!)

[Digifiend]

Q Bikes, later renamed the Q Karts, was in the Beano. And Sparky had L Cars!

[Kashgar]

Yes, Chester the Champion Chump was a reprint of the Charlie Drake strip with Charlie disguised beneath a mop of black hair.
Re these TV linked strips one of Fleetway's first must have been 'Consternation Street' in Buster in 1965 drawn by Reg Parlett. Although apart from the title ( and how many kids would have had this four syllable word in their vocabulary) it had little to connect it with the Weatherfield original.

[Niblet]

Re these TV linked strips one of Fleetway's first must have been 'Consternation Street' in Buster in 1965 drawn by Reg Parlett. Although apart from the title ( and how many kids would have had this four syllable word in their vocabulary) it had little to connect it with the Weatherfield original.

Fleetway obviously thought the idea was so good they also did 'Horrornation Street' in Shiver and Shake

[Niblet]

In the the only link to a TV show in this strip is a rather weak pun in the title category (see also the two posts above), we have this. Another 'kid who can do hypnotism' strip that tries to distinguish itself by its title's allusion to the game show Blankety Blank.

[Niblet]

Like their TV counterparts The Beverly Hillbillies, the Bumpkins became hugely wealthy after oil was found on their land. Unlike TV's Clampett family, the Bumpkins would resort to anything to dispose of their 'money-stuff' and return to the simple life. Their attempts to return to poverty were thwarted as each week they unwittingly saved the life of a passing billionaire who rewarded them with a cheque which exceeded the value of the fortune they'd just lost.

Why didn't they just feed all the reward cheques to their goat?

[Lew Stringer]

Like their TV counterparts The Beverly Hillbillies, the Bumpkins became hugely wealthy after oil was found on their land. Unlike TV's Clampett family, the Bumpkins would resort to anything to dispose of their 'money-stuff' and return to the simple life. Their attempts to return to poverty were thwarted as each week they unwittingly saved the life of a passing billionaire who rewarded them with a cheque which exceeded the value of the fortune they'd just lost.

Not only mining TV for ideas but mining their old comics too. The thwarted attempts to get rid of cash idea was previously seen in Ronnie Rich in Smash! in 1966.

All based on Brewster's Millions (1902) anyway.

[Niblet]

Bewitched was a US TV series featuring a female with supernatural powers trying, but not always succeeding, to hide her true nature from the public.

Bewitched Belinda was a comic strip featuring...er well, the same idea, really. This particular strip presents us with extra spoofery, as Reg Parlett depicts the store management as Captain Peacock and Mr Rumbold from Are You Being Served? (with a couple of Dalek variants as well).

By the way, Belinda, if you're trying to conceal the fact that you have magic abilities, maybe you should lose the big, black witchy hat. Love the wellies, though.

[steelclaw]

Niblet I found this Double Deckers strip you mentioned in Whizzer & Chips Aug 1971, which I picked up the other day.

[Niblet]

Thanks, Steelclaw. I was interested to see the copyright caption in the strip. I've never seen that in the reprints in Cheeky Weekly (where the strip was retitled The Gang). It's always seemed a bit odd to me that a comic publisher can just change the name of a strip when reprinting it and apparently not fall foul of the original copyright. I assume there was some deal done with the copyright holders to allow IPC to reprint the strip under another name, otherwise what's to stop a publisher reprinting say a Thunderbirds strip and calling it LightningAvians or something?

[Digifiend]

You can copyright likenesses of models and puppets as used in Thunderbirds, but you can't copyright a likeness of a real person (look at the current Dandy, the only celeb who they actually got permission to use is Harry Hill. The rest are used under public domain). That's why The Double Deckers could be reprinted as The Gang without infringing Fox's copyright, but you couldn't do the same with Thunderbirds.

[Raven]

You can copyright likenesses of models and puppets as used in Thunderbirds, but you can't copyright a likeness of a real person (look at the current Dandy, the only celeb who they actually got permission to use is Harry Hill. The rest are used under public domain).

I don't think that's right, Digi. There are rights associated with the commercial value connected with an actor or celebrity's image, and commercial use of famous people's images would generally have to be officially licensed. Parody would be a good defence though; people would probably get away with spoofs - though some people may still get permission first.

The Double Deckers strip wasn't a spoof, of course, but an official tie-in, and use of the actors' likenesses was probably determined by the contracts they signed with 20th Century Fox; probably all rights associated with their images connected with The Double Deckers would have been signed over.

But the reprints as 'The Gang' are interesting, as the *concept* of the series - the kids using an old bus as a gang hut, and hanging round with Albert the street sweeper would have been copyright Fox, so I wonder if permission was sought.

Presumably the Gang reprints dropped the Fox copyright notice, then, but did it avoid strips based around the bus? Also, I wonder if there's a reason why Scooper in the strip didn't really resemble the actor, Peter Firth - even having black hair.

The Double Deckers was a nice, lively comic strip let down by the depiction of the black kid Spring by the artist, which was often a cringe-inducing racial stereotype it's surprising was still appearing by 1971. Just look at that second panel.

[Lew Stringer]

You can copyright likenesses of models and puppets as used in Thunderbirds, but you can't copyright a likeness of a real person (look at the current Dandy, the only celeb who they actually got permission to use is Harry Hill. The rest are used under public domain).

I'm sure we discussed this before. Harry Hill is an official Harry Hill strip. The rest (Jeremy Clarkson etc) are just spoofs. You can spoof any public figure. That's how Mad gets away with it. It'd be a different matter if they had a regular Jeremy Clarkson strip every issue of course.

As for Krazy renaming The Double Deckers, as they owned the artwork they could do what they liked I guess and hope no one notices, - and the likenesses weren't exactly spot on were they?

[Niblet]

Presumably the Gang reprints dropped the Fox copyright notice, then, but did it avoid strips based around the bus? Also, I wonder if there's a reason why Scooper in the strip didn't really resemble the actor, Peter Firth - even having black hair.

None of the reprints in Cheeky Weekly featured the double decker bus, so like you, I thought maybe they avoided using those as a ploy to get around any copyright issues. However, in the Cheeky Holiday/Summer specials, some of the reprinted strips (which continued to appear as The Gang) did show the bus.

The final comment here http://www.thedoubledeckers.com/99com.htm suggests that "the comic (i.e. Whizzer & Chips) didn't have the rights to portray the faces of the actors concerned". Maybe that explains your observation about the lack of likeness in the case of Peter Firth's character, and also had something to do with how IPC was able to re-use the strips.

Also, the author suggests the artist was Roy Davis (not a name I'm familiar with, but I'm no expert), but I believe the artist was Robert MacGillivray. Can anyone confirm I'm correct? Please see Steelclaw's post above for a sample strip.