Best of British: Bonfire night - The Nervs by Ken Reid and others

Looking back, it seems totally irresponsible to have shown kids being so reckless when playing with fireworks on bonfire /Guy Fawkes night in children’s comics. After all bonfire night was an event that regularly resulted in serve injury and sometimes even in death to those taking less care than they should have when dealing with pyrotechnics and fire . Then again it was a very different time and I doubt that any of these strips encouraged children to run around with lit fireworks in their hands. The strip below from "Smash! and Pow!" #145" (cover above, dated 9 November 1968) is by the legendary Ken Reid, and features a different take on the use of fireworks in this stunningly illustrated two pager.

The "Nervs" was a strip that charted the adventures of "Fatty" (not the most PC name) a rather dim-witted boy and the internal microscopic creatures that inhabited his body. Strangely there were a few similarly strips like this in UK kids comics , but the “Nervs” was by far the funniest with poor Fatty being put through some horrendous situations. Fair to say they don't make them like Ken Reid anymore!

Below are a couple of other classic Bonfire night covers.

"Whizzer and Chips" dated 1 November 1969 - Many British comics gave away free gifts at certain holidays/events like the free Guy Fawkes mask presented here. Sadly, I give my original issue away many years ago and only picked up this copy (less the mask) last year.

"Wham!" #125 dated 5 November 1966 - The Tiddlers was a traditional type of British children's comic strip based on out-of-control school kids. This cover is by Mike Lacey in the legendary Leo Baxendale style. The Tiddlers at this time featured a lucky reader being drawn into the strip, in this case Noel from High Wycombe.

"The Beano" #1268 - dated 5 November 1966 - Cover by Dudley Watkins - This image is from the Financial Times online edition (an article on the financial side of collecting British comics).

Above an advert that appeared in kids comics in the 1960s - early 1970's for fireworks, something that would not be allowed today.

My Famous Firsts: Incredible Hulk issue 137

Although I had been aware of the Hulk through the pages of the UK weekly comic “Smash” where his stories had been reprinted since 1966, it wasn’t until 1971 when I saw and purchased my first US Hulk comic, the above issue 137 (cover by Trimpe and Marie Severin). At the time of his appearances in Smash! I wasn’t a fan of the character mostly because his strips seemed poorly produced with pages looking crammed (Smash would print 4 US Hulk pages into 3 UK pages etc) and of course I was only about 6 years old at this time and superhero stories weren’t of that much interest to me then. However, by mid-1971 my fascination with the superhero genre was starting to emerge and those elusive US Marvel comics (DC’s weren’t that hard to find) were starting to be a priority purchase for me.

My first memory of seeing the Hulk was on the cover of my brothers copy of Smash! Issue 17 which featured Jack Kirby’s cover for Incredible Hulk issue 1. Sadly the Hulk was printed in flesh tones as Marvel only supplied Odhams with black and white artwork forgetting to tell them that the Hulk was green (or even grey as he appeared on Kirby’s US cover). Cover from the Grand Comic Database.

It was on a trip to my local newsagent around July 1971 where I spied Incredible Hulk issue 137 which I immediately purchased. I held onto this copy of the Hulk (and issue 136 which I purhased a few weeks later) for decades until I I left a large box of comics containing these issues sometime in the early 1980's, when I moved house. It wasn’t until a holiday visit to Liverpool around 6 years ago that I saw a nice copy of issue 137 (and 136) for sale at the very reasonable price of £3 each.. As soon as I saw the cover of issue 137 my memory went back to the day I first purchased it and remembered (before I opened my copy) the above strange character from that story which must have made a strong impression on my then young mind.

Issue 137 was the final part of a two issue tale called “The Stars, Mine Enemy” that began in issue 136. The story lends heavily from Herman Melville’s novel “ Moby Dick” where the Hulk is forced aboard a ship of aliens who are hunting the alien creature Klaatu. There he meets the Abomination who is First Mate aboard the vessel where as expected the Hulk and Abomination begin fighting. The captain of the space ship Cybor, hires Xeron the Starslayer to help him hunt down and destroy Klaatu who was responsible for destroying half his body. As the hunt progresses Cybor harpoons Klaatu, but gets pulled into the sun killing him and seemingly destroying the monster as well (50 plus year spoiler : Klaatu returns) . As the Hulk and the Abomination continued their fight, their blows bring them closer to Earth's atmosphere where they are pulled in by the planet's gravity sending them into a free fall to the planet's surface. Some of my favourite pages from this issue are noted below:

The above cover (by Herb Trimpe and Sal Buscema) to issue 136 was the first part of this tale called “Klatuu! The Behemoth from Beyond Space!” I first purchased this comic a couple of weeks after buying issue 137 in the same newsagents and found it "fun" that I found this and issue 137 together in a market stall in Liverpool some 50 years after I first bought them in Glasgow.