Retro UK Annuals: Bugs Bunny 1983

Along with the Tom & Jerry version, this was my very first annual I received on Xmas Day 1982. What I didn't know is that this would be the last Bugs Bunny annual to be published by World Distributors, who would finally give up producing classic cartoon annuals a year later, ending a golden era.

World published its first Bugs Bunny annual in the early 50's, but it was from its 1964 annual that it would publish a new book every year. Every book included reprints of American comic strip (licensed from Western Publishing), and most (including this one) also had short stories, jokes and even puzzles.

I'm proud to present the best bits of this fine annual. Unfortunately, my copy is long lost, and the one I later obtained has some bizarre tick marks (why?), which I'm only able to conceal on a few scans. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy reading them.

Front cover:

Back cover:

In this annual, there were three illustrated short stories, and the following is the first one, which I present in full:






This annual has plenty of puzzles, activities, and jokes. The former two were completed or had a few scribbles on, so I decided not to upload these. And most of the jokes are very painful (I like to know who wrote these), so here are the more bearable ones:



And, of course, I shouldn't forget to include examples of the American comic reprints included in this book. Here are the first pages of the first few:



And here's my favourite comic strip (in full), Power of Pizazz. I don't mind admitting that when I first read this, I had enormous sympathy for the alien "Bugs" when he exclaimed "This is food?" - I thought he was eating cauliflower!










More Bugs Bunny annuals will appear soon. Coming up next - Pink Panther!

Retro UK Annuals: Tom & Jerry 1967

The year was 1966: America was gripped by Beatlemania, the England football team won the World Cup, and the first Tom & Jerry annual was launched a few months before Xmas. Ah, it was a good year to be English (or so I imagine, being born 11 years too late!).
This was published by World Distributors, who were already publishing annuals based on classic American cartoons years before, with Bugs Bunny in the 50's and the Flintstones, Huckleberry Hound, and Top Cat annuals during the early 60's. Before then, publishers Dean launched the first Mickey Mouse annual in 1930, and Felix annuals popped up a decade before. It's a wonder why Tom & Jerry annuals arrived much later than their fellow animated stars.
World would only publish one T&J annual in the 60's, before embarking on a regular yearly run during 1970-83. Throughout the series (and indeed like the vast majority of these annuals), these books consisted mostly of reprints of American comic strips (published by Western Publishing), with some original illustrated stories and jokes/puzzles/activity pages.
To kick-start this new series, let's take a peek at some of the select pages from this annual, starting with the front cover:

Back cover:

Title page:

Four T&J comic strips appeared in this annual, the following are the first pages from each strip:




To complement the T&J strips, Barney Bears appears (with his nephews Fuzzy & Wuzzy) in a couple of his own:


Not to be outdone, T&J stalwarts Spike & Tyke get their own couple of adventures:


Another twin set of strips feature a character who is relatively unknown in Blighty: Wuff the Prairie Dog, specially created for the T&J comics in the US:


But there is more T&J stuff to come: Four illustrated stories are featured, and here are the openings from three of them:



However, here is a complete story, in which even Tom & Jerry themselves were influenced by the British music invasion (check out their moptops!):







There will be more selected Tom & Jerry annuals appearing in the future, alongside others (watch out for Looney Tunes, Pink Panther, Top Cat, and more). Unfortunately, due to a HUGE collection, I'm unable to show them all, but I do hope you enjoy viewing my selections and inspire you to collect these gems, whether they are British annuals or classic American comics.
And if you can identify the artists and/or original publishing dates, feel free to post a comment. Share it to the world!

This blog isn't dead yet!

Hi Guys!

Just to let you know that I haven't abandoned my blog. Been busy doing other, more important things, so I apologise for the lack of posts.

However, my new series of UK Cartoon Annuals will DEFINITELY make its debut in the next few days (I already made some select scans from one of them).

Stay tooned!

A little experiment...

During the festive period, I've been experimenting on cleaning up the audio on a couple of cartoons using the open-source program Audacity (I know there are better, more sophisticated programs out there, but due to this credit crunch, I decided to restrict myself to free software). The first cartoon to get this treatment is the 1929 Aesop's Fable Wood Choppers, where my copy has a rather crackly audio. I managed to clean it up using a minimum amount of noise reduction, and in my opinion, the end result is adequate, if not great:

Aesop's Fables - Wood Choppers
Uploaded by ldglover

Krazy Kat's Alaskan Knights proved to be more troublesome. Bootleg-print aside, this one not only has a crackly audio, but it's also very faint and has a lot of background hiss. Minimum noise-reduction and low-pass filtering made it more audiable, but despite boosting the audio as well, it still comes out as quite faint, See what you think of it:

Krazy Kat - Alaskan Knights
Uploaded by ldglover

Happy New Year!

For all you new-year bargain-hunters out there, here's a Pink Panther comic strip (from TV Comic #1099, 6th January 1973) for you to enjoy:

Merry Xmas!

A very merry christmas to all!

And here's my present to you good folks: A Looney Tunes comic strip featuring Sylvester (TV Comic #1045, 25th December 1971). Artwork by Bill Titcombe.

Enjoy! Ho, ho, ho!

Coming Soon in 2009

This blog will largely focus on comic strips throughout the next year, but I will still throw in the occasional classic/unusual cartoon clip.
Due to other commitments, I decided to delay my new series of UK Annuals posts until January. Sorry for not posting anything on this recently, but I reckon the New Year will be the ideal time to launch it. Nevertheless, I will reveal that the first post will be dedicated to the very first Tom & Jerry annual, published in 1966.
Also, I plan to post another topic very shortly, to run alongside the Annuals: Six of the Best, a selection of comic strips from TV Comic, combining the classic American cartoon characters with the British comic strip style. Watch out for Bugs Bunny, Droopy, Road Runner, and even Deputy Dawg!
But there will be previews during the run-up to Xmas and New Year, all of which will be Yuletide-related. To kick-off with, enjoy some mistletoe fun with Tom & Jerry (from TV Comic #940, 20th December 1969). Artwork by Bill Titcombe: