TV Comic - Six Of The Best: Christmas Cartoons.

The British Droopy comic strips will appear shortly in the New Year, but in the meantime, here's six festive comic strips featuring Tom & Jerry, Bugs Bunny, and Barney Bear. Happy holidays, everybody!

Tom & Jerry #1098 30th December 1972. Artist: Bill Titcombe

Barney Bear #1254 29th December 1978. Artist: Bill Mevin

Bugs Bunny #1254 25th December 1981. Artist: Bill Titcombe

Tom & Jerry #1669 16th December 1983. Artist: Bill Titcombe

Barney Bear #1254 27th December 1975. Artist: Bill Titcombe

Bugs Bunny #1254 27th December 1975. Artist: Bill Mevin

TV Comic's Six Of The Best - Barney Bear

MGM's Barney Bear was popular enough to have his own comic-strip adventures in the US, and via their licensing deal with Western Publishing Company, TV Comic created their own Barney stories in 1973, starting with issue #1101 on 20th January, and would grace the comic for a total of seven years (followed by reprints which lasted until the comic's demise in 84). Although only limited to one page a week, Barney would appear in colour during the first three years. His printed cartoons were first drawn by Tom & Jerry artist Bill Titcombe, and shortly after the strips switched to B&W in 1976, Bill Mevin took over cartooning duties (who surprisingly proved adept at maintaining Titcombe's design of the lumbering bruin). Most (if not all) of the stories were written by fellow cartoonist and TV Comic editor Dick Millington.

TV Comic maintained the Walter Beery-type personality of Barney, as favoured by MGM director Dick Lundy. However, they decided not to include his comic-strip nephews Wuzzy and Fuzzy. Instead, another character was introduced to the UK readers as a comic foil, a moose by the name of...erm...Moose! This character would have a more downbeat personality to counteract Barney's "know-it-all" demeanour, but would more often than not get the last laugh.

Presenting six of his best cartoons, published between 1973-9. Enjoy!

#1101 20th January 1973 (first appearance!). Artist: Bill Titcombe.

#1112 7th April 1973. Artist: Bill Titcombe.

#1179 20th July 1974. Artist: Bill Titcombe.

#1196 16th November 1974. Artist: Bill Titcombe.

#1126 1st November 1975. Artist: Bill Titcombe.

#1432 25th May 1979. Artist: Bill Mevin.

Coming up next: Droopy.

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!