Wednesday 11 March 2009

Dicky Howett and Tim Quinn writer in Marvels Channel 331/3 Childrens comic!





The glue sniffing joke went a bit too far for my taste...maybe it shouldn't have been called a Children's comic..it seems more of a Teen comic. This story did get them into trouble. Other cartoonist more tamer came in shortly after..














Dear Peter,

Looking forward to our meeting too.

I’m sending a few odds from our early Marvel days...see what you make of them. Happily they are approved by the DPP!

Channel 33 1/3 was the humour comic we put together for Marvel. Great cover.

Hulk the Menace was our combination of the Incredible Hulk and Dennis. It ran for quite a few years in various Marvel weeklies. During a real-life political election we had Hulk start his own political party in the strip. These 3 strips were stopped at the last minute by Marvel who actually said that they couldn’t print them in case they influenced readers in their voting!!! Sometimes working in comics beggared belief.

Jet Lagg was one of our British silly super-heroes. He gained his powers from having a blood transfusion from Roger Bannister, the 4 minute mile champ. His sidekick was a little punk kid called Spunky. The strip I’m sending you features the infamous mass murder scene for which we got sent to the beak.

Davros and the Daleks from Doctor Who Magazine where our strip ran for over 10 years.

Tim
Thanks Tim.


I like the Hulk Menace and Dr Who jokes best..:)
I'll do a blog post soon on these..thanks for the scans..
the glue sniffing joke in the Batman and Robin spoof was quite strong...not used to humour like that...reminds me of the 60's power comics..like The Nervs by Ken Reid..
I can see why you got into trouble..its very hard not to cross people lines..
As I say liked the Hulk and Dr Who...very clever and nice and black humour..

thanks again Peter..


Yes, glue sniffing was pushing it a bit especially in those glue sniffing days. At that point we were turning out so much material that I possibly didn’t stop to think of possible implications in transforming comic book readers into druggies. I was also doing a lot of stuff for IPC and Thomson’s and various women’s mags where I was a feature writer.

Anyway, I did enjoy Hulk the Menace and here’s another one I’ve just unrummaged...along with another strip from Doctor Who Magazine.

TQ

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Another great UK comic strip I can only find on this blog! I loved the Channel 33 1/3 comic as a kid and remember thinking at the time it was a bit close to the bone...Marvel characters (who I'd previously only seen in weekly re-prints of the Lee & Kirby stories) appearing in a magazine which joked about glue-sniffing and peeping toms! Saying that though, I also remember seeing a Dicky Howett comic strip in another magazine that my brother kept under his bed - very bawdy.

dicky H said...

Yeah, I know I did some really naughty stuff, but back in those days I was a freelance cartooner with a young family and needed to pick up work wherever. I stripped for a yachting publication, a risk assessment company and the Rentokil in-house mag. All fun things to be sure, the subjects of which I knew not and cared not. Sex mags on the other hand....actually paid very well!