How can I be four books deep into this read through already? That’s over 1,000 pages and half of my collection. Fleetway’s Big Comic Book 1990 strode into a new decade by visiting the past once more with 256 pages of classic strips from the pages of classic IPC comics. The cover no longer carries the logos of Buster, Whizzer and Chips and Whoopee because just like its fortnightly counterpart the books now also contained reprints from Cor!!, Cheeky, Wow!, Jackpot, Monster Fun and Krazy.
Of course, these comics all merged into one another and eventually into Buster at some stage, so don’t be expecting a completely new cast. But still, there was a wider selection of strips to pull from. The book as a whole is probably the most enjoyable one yet, but I wonder if that’s more to do with how much I’m enjoying coming back to favourite characters year-on-year, so each one feels better than the last. The cover is the one that usually comes to mind when recollecting the series, that Frankie Stein panel in the middle standing out from the crowd.
Regular readers won’t be surprised to see the star of our first highlight. Again taking the Gums strips from his later John Geering era, I have to say I did let out a laugh when I saw the penultimate panel. There’s something very ‘Wile E Coyote‘ about the sheepish great white in that one. It perfectly sums up the character and why I love him so much and as such it’s the perfect introductory strip for new readers.
With John behind the pen I thought this would’ve been written by OiNK’s Graham Exton again but he’s confirmed it wasn’t. The real culprit is most likely Gums’ original writer Roy Davis who, after pulling back on Bluey and the other humans, introduced the more soap opera-like elements of the undersea cast I’m much more familiar with. We’ll have to assume it was Roy though because we can’t confirm.
While gambling isn’t exactly something you’d expect to see in a children’s comic, Jack Pott’s compulsion to bet on anything and everything became so ludicrous, and the winner’s rewards so child-friendly, he might just be the only one to get away with it. Drawn by Jim Crocker, Jack originated in Cor!! before (fittingly) moving to Jackpot and then survived the inevitable merge into Buster where he stayed until 1988.
While this example doesn’t include any of his trademark gambling, I’ve chosen this particular strip because it reminds me of my dad. I don’t mean his father, I’m referring to Jack himself. I remember as a young boy my dad showing me how to do the household chores badly so as not to be asked to do them again! A perfect example of his sense of humour and reading this page made me chortle as I remembered times like that, so it’s a very personal choice.
Creepy Comix was surprisingly not a stablemate of Gums from Monster Fun but rather a later addition to the IPC lot in the short-lived Wow! which launched in 1982 and lasted just one year. Davey Doom owns all the editions of his favourite Creepy Comix, the large variety of characters in which can come to life to help their friend before disappearing back into their pages once more. Horror comics have frequently been frowned upon by the usual anti-comics brigade so it’s nice to see one of them get its own back in a way.
Drawn by Reg Partlett, the strip made the migration to Whoopee, then to Whizzer and Chips, then it joined the fun in (you guessed it) Buster, only succumbing in 1997 when Buster itself went all reprint material. Easily the most popular of all of Wow!’s strips, the page I’ve photographed for you spoke to many of the young readers I’m sure. It certainly would’ve raised a smile with me after years of horrible school uniform shopping.
The Winners is one of those strip series that’s stayed in the deep recesses of my ever decreasing memory all these years. The second I saw the faces of the characters in the title banner I could remember enjoying them in the pages of either these books or the fortnightly comic, so they must’ve been a highlight for me back then. Judging by this example I can see why. Of course, Mike Lacey’s always-funny collection of facial expressions could be a key reason.
This lucky family won every competition they ever entered. You’d think that’d make us dislike them if they got everything handed to them on a platter, right? Nope, not at all. For example, there could be a ton of fun to be had watching them practicing something they weren’t good at for their next competition. However, the best stories were always the ones when, despite all their preparations, they’d win only via some accident or mistake, such as here. Continuing with new strips all the way to the mid-90s in Buster, The Winners was by far the longest-running Jackpot strip of all.
Big Comic never had much in the way of small, quick gags. Unlike the variety in OiNK, the comics these books pulled from were all pretty stringent in their strip sizes. So when a page of Silent Funnies popped up it drew the attention when initially flicking through the book. Drawn by Jim Crocker I’ve no idea which comic it was pulled from although my sources (that’s Lew Stringer to you and me) suggested it could’ve been a good fit for Krazy.
As a kid I loved to draw. I drew all the time and on any thing. I was always bought drawing pads and yet the school books that had to be returned at the end of the year would still end up covered in tiny diagrams of things I loved from cartoons, comics and movies. I saw it as a service. I was cheering up the next poor soul who had to wade their way through them. Naturally then, Chalky always spoke to me when I collected Big Comic Fortnightly, even if the idea of using huge chalks already felt outdated to me. Although what else could he have used here?
Chalky first appeared three years before I was even born (and at my age I take that as a small win) in the pages of Cor!! in 1971 before transferring to Buster three years later. Some erroneous information online has Terry Bave credited as creating Chalky although “more regularly drawn by Dick Millington or Gordon Hill“. He was actually first drawn by Arthur Martin and, while we can’t be completely certain about this particular page, it was most likely drawn by Gordon.
The S.O.S Squad were a four man elite anti-terrorist task force originally comprised of Captain John West (don’t laugh), Sgt Thomas Mackenzie, Corporal Danny Lloyd and Henry ‘Fingers’ Malone, and later by the icy lady officer Captain J. W. Ironstead… oh hang on, wait. No, that’d be the Eagle strip of the same name from the second volume of that legendary comic. Instead, our S.O.S Squad is led by a kid in a box called Zed and stars others with such names as Skypole, Baby Boffin and the delightfully named Effel.
Drawn by Jimmy Hensen this spread is a perfect example of the high octane chaos that runs through all of their strips. So I was surprised to find out they didn’t last very long in the pages of Buster, just over a year as a matter of fact right at the beginning of the 1980s. There’s no accounting for taste, I guess. It’s a shame though, as their entries in this book are among the best this volume contains.
When I was young I was always encouraged to read. This began by collecting The Railway Series which my favourite early childhood TV show was based on. Then my parents bought me the Story Teller magazine and cassette partwork for two years. Soon, I discovered comics via OiNK and in later life my mum admitted she liked the fact I always asked for comics instead of sweets in the shop because they encouraged me to read more and improved my school work as a result. In contrast, our next character’s parents constantly wanted him to ditch the books in favour of what they saw as more “boyish” hobbies, which never made sense to me.
It wasn’t just me. All of my friends loved to read. So yes, it was always confusing why Bookworm was mocked by some of his peers for reading. Anyway, this particular favourite first appeared in Whoopee in 1978 and made the move to Whizzer and Chips in 1986. A bibliophile, Book Worm always has a book under his arm, normally one which just so happens to give him the right knowledge for whatever situation he finds himself in.
Here though, in this story drawn by Sid Burgon his peers appreciate his obsession and it’s also an example of how some strips could be edited for Big Comic’s audience. The year of the annuals has been changed, you can see a title has been erased from the one he’s holding in the shop and ‘Cor!!’ has been unceremoniously scribbled out in the last panel. I don’t think this was necessary, we all knew these were reprints, but I can understand why they did it.
What can I say? I couldn’t decide between two of John Geering’s Gums strips so I went with them both. There are more but this one stood out. Now we know where Bruce in Jaws learned his trick that took Brody and Quint by surprise! With our shark friend high and dry it’s time to close over another massive tome in the Big Comic Book series for another whole year. Next Christmas you can expect double the amount of classic humour strips.
That’s because in 2026 alongside The Big Comic Book 1991 we’ll also have our first annual for its companion title, Funny Fortnightly. Does that mean even more Gums? We’ll find out in a year. In the meantime, there are plenty more annuals to enjoy this season and of particular interest to fans of these characters and creative teams will be the Buster Book 1991. You can read all about it from Monday 8th December 2025. It’s certainly a Big Christmas this year!
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