Yet More Look-In Cover Art

In 2016 I wrote a Nostalgic post about Look-In (which you can read here), a much loved magazine (‘the junior TV Times’) of my childhood.  Designed and written for kids, it featured the major film stars, pop acts, sports people and TV stars of the day with comic strips, posters (most of the Six Million Dollar Man ones ended up on my bedroom wall) and behind the scenes articles.  It also had, through the late 70s and into the early 80s, painted covers by Arnaldo Putzu, an Italian artist working in London who made his name creating cinema posters in the 1960’s for the likes of Morecombe & Wise, Hammer (Creatures the World Forgot and The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires), the Carry On series and Get Carter (which I wrote about here).  Though other artists sometimes contributed artwork (including Arthur Ranson), his cover reign from 1973 through to 1981 still looks glorious today.

I’ve posted about the covers before (you can read previous posts here, here and here) and so, with a focus on those from 1981 (all of forty one years ago), here’s another small selection of that wonderful artwork.

Enjoy.

It was clearly a big deal for Bond to be on TV then (Dr No was released in 1962, 13 years prior to this edition.  As of today, we're 47 years after this edition, which doesn't feel right at all...)

Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man, a major hero of my childhood

I didn't realise Just William was this old, to be honest - my sister-in-law still jokes about 'scweaming until she maketh herself sick...'

"Heeeyy"

At the time I didn't realise The Latchkey Children was based on the novel by Eric Allen, but I discovered and read it in 2013 (and blogged about it here)

My favourite film of 1981, I blogged about Raiders Of The Lost Ark here

for more, there's a great Look-In archive on Facebook here

Nostalgic For My Childhood - Some More Summer Specials

A couple of years ago I had a conversation with Dude where he expressed amusement over what I had to put up with when I was his age, namely (but not limited to) very few video games, cameras that were only cameras and phones that were wired to the walls in your house.  This led to me blogging about one terrific thing I had that he didn't, the Summer Special!

As I explained then (you can read the 2018 entry here, the 2020 one here and the 2021 one here), children’s comics now aren’t a patch on what they were back in the 70s and 80s (and before that, even).  Modern titles, sealed in plastic bags and littered with free gifts, have very little in the way of comic strips or stories (in fact, most seem to consist of quizzes) but back in the day the likes of IPC and DC Thomson produced a raft of weeklies that catered for most tastes (published on newsprint with a splash of colour).

Those weeklies, in turn, gave us the Summer Special to look forward to.  A one-off edition of our favourite title, it was thicker and more colourful and the perfect reading accompaniment to a long car journey or a lazy afternoon in the back garden.

Comics historian Lew Stringer suggests (on his blog) that “today’s retailers dislike them because they occupy valuable shelf space for too many months” which didn’t bother newsagents in the 70s - Summer Specials were especially popular at seaside towns because they were pretty much guaranteed sellers, with a new batch of kids every week who’d need entertaining.

Here are a few more from my golden-era of reading them (the late 70s into the early 80s) - what were your favourites?

1976

1977

1977

1978

1979

1979 - a team-up between Spidey & The Punisher sees people disintegrate in a poisonous gas.  Even read now, the imagery is cheerfully gruesome!

1979 - a real favourite of mine, I wrote a retrospective of Look-In which you can read here

1980

1980

1980

1982

1982

1983

1983

1983

see the other Summer Special posts on this link

Thanks to Lew Stringer for the history and comicvine for some of the scans.  See also David Barnett’s excellent blog piece at The Guardian.

Photo-stories and me...

When I was a kid, a major ambition of mine was to make a feature film.  Regular readers will know I'm endlessly fascinated by the behind-the-scenes process on films (especially miniatures and matte paintings) and that started in my childhood, fed by watching Clapperboard and reading Look-In.  I particularly loved it when Mum & Dad let me stay up to watch Film (whatever year it was) with dear old Barry Norman.

Growing up through the 70s and 80s, video cameras were a pipe-dream and cine cameras were far more expensive than my family could afford so you can perhaps understand why this became a kind of Holy Grail for me. To try and create something visual, I ended up making various "photo-stories", which satisfied me for a while.

(for those who don't know, "photo-stories" were a staple of some boys and girls comics back in the day, replacing hand-drawn panels in a comic strip of posed stills.  Girls comics used them for problem pages, whilst I remember Eagle comic featuring a strip called Doomlord, amongst others.  There were also photo-novels - novelisations using film stills rather than prose - but the less said about them, probably the better).

What reminded me of all this was discovering some photographs over the weekend, of one such 'strip' I wrote.

The above picture was taken in 1981 and features my Dad, me and my school friend Geoff Burbidge. We were making a story about a bounty hunter (or in effect, a very close homage to a strip called Man Tracker from The Crunch comic, which I wrote about here).  I also used this image as the cover of a novel (or, as it'd be deemed now, a long-ish short story) I wrote in 1982 called Hadley Hall Comprehensive (and which I blogged about here).

Left - Nick walks away as Geoff (in my Dad's old trilby) threatens me.  Look at those clothes - Harrington jackets, jeans and trainers!  What a look!
Right - Nick's brother Chris (I recruited absolutely anyone who showed the slightest expression of interest!) takes aim at Nick and Geoff.  Wonderfully, this shot inadvertently captured history.  The billboard and waste-ground Chris & I were standing on is long gone, the new library in its place.  The private house beyond the awning is now a Tesco Express store.

I never gained the means to make films of my own and so I never got the chance to enter the Clapperboard Young Filmmakers competition.  I did eventually make some films on VHS, with a school friend called Matt Ratcliff, but that was much later in the 80s and into the early 90s and all of them were zero-budget horror flicks.  I'll tell you about them one day.

Now, of course, everyone with a smartphone has the technology to make films but my focus has shifted to writing only (though some of my ideas do start off as me seeing them in filmic terms).  Years back, however, Dude & I made several LEGO stop-motion epics and we both had a great deal of fun with that.

I wonder how things would have turned out if I'd had the technology at my disposal then that I do now?

Even More Look-In Cover Art

Look-In, 'The Junior TV Times', was a much loved magazine of my childhood (I wrote a Nostalgia post about it in 2016), which helped develop my love for The Six Million Dollar Man, Blondie and behind-the-scenes stuff, amongst other things.  It also featured painted covers, mostly by Arnaldo Putzu, an Italian artist working in London who made his name creating cinema posters for the likes of Morecombe & Wise, Hammer (Creatures the World Forgot and The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires), the Carry On series and Get Carter (which I wrote about here).

Looking back over the old covers was wonderful (often reminding me of things I'd completely forgotten about) and I posted some of them in 2018 with a follow-up in 2019.  Now, with little encouragement needed (as ever) and a special focus on 1980 (all of forty years ago), here's another small selection of that wonderful artwork.

Enjoy.

While I don't recall seeing this at the time (I was only six), I vividly remember the TV show (as I wrote about before) and collecting the Topps cards with my friends

Look at all that action!

Does anyone remember Flintlock?  Judging by their coverage in the magazine, they must have been big at the time...

I haven't seen it in decades (and not sure it'd be wise to revisit it) but I loved The Man From Atlantis.  I used to use plasters to simulate the webbed skin on my fingers

This shows how long it used to take films to get to TV, as the big Bond film for Christmas 1978 was Diamonds Are Forever (released in 1971)

Was it just me that found Worzel Gummidge terrifying at times (especially when he pulled off his head)?

On a Saturday morning I would often flick between Tiswas and Swap Shop - I liked the anarchy (without, at that time, understanding the concept of it) of the former and the more orderly nature of the latter

Ah, Sir Roger and the excellent "For Your Eyes Only", which I wrote about here

for more, there's a great Look-In archive on Facebook here

Nostalgic For My Childhood - Christmas Annuals (part 3)

"Christmas is coming!"

Me, Christmas 1981.  The book I'm writing in was the first diary I received and kept up with (I still write a daily diary) and the uppermost annual, by my right arm, is the 2000AD 1982 edition

As I've written about over the past two years (you can see 2017 here and 2018 here), one of the Christmas highlights when I was a kid (beyond the catalogues I wrote about in 2016) was seeing which annual I got that particular year.  If you don't remember them, annuals were (and still are) large size hardback books, designed for children and based on existing properties, generally comics and popular TV shows, as well as the occasional film and sport and pop round-ups.

The ones based on comics featured the same cast as the weekly editions, while the TV and film ones had comic strips, the occasional short story, fact files and interviews and - brilliantly - in the case of The Fall Guy, behind the scenes information on stunts and how they were filmed.

Generally published towards the end of the year, annuals are cover-dated as the following year to ensure shops don't take them off the shelves immediately after the new year (though, by then, unsold copies are often heavily reduced).  Still as popular now, the only difference (apart from the fact kids today don't have the choice of comics we did) seems to be that they're skinnier (and that's not just me being all nostalgically misty about it - my ones from the late 70s and early 80s are substantially chunkier than the ones I’ve bought for Dude over the past few years).

Here, then, is another selection of old favourites, ones I received and ones I remember my sister Tracy having.  I hope some of them inspire a warm, nostalgic trip down memory lane for you...

1975

Follyfoot was a firm favourite for Tracy (who loved horses), my memory of it is very hazy.

1977

A Christmas staple, the on-going adventures of Dennis The Menace, Roger The Dodger and the Bash Street Kids!

1977

"...everyone knows his name..."

1977

I enjoyed Dr Who as a kid but it scared the crap out of me!

1978

War comics (and their subsequent annuals) were a big part of my childhood because, when this was published, the Second World War was still a clear memory for most adults.

1978

Getting to stay up late on a Saturday night to watch Starsky & Hutch was a real treat!

1978

Monster related mayhem, another Christmas staple...

1978

1979

1979

1979

I remember reading my friend Claire's Jackie comics and annuals and not quite understanding why they didn't have war strips in them...

1979

1979

It took me a long, long time to realise that the dinosaur (bottom left)'s name - Posh Paws - was an anagram of Swap Shop...

1979

My hero and a marked improvement on the previous years annual (which I still feel suffers with poor artwork).  Alas, this would be the last Steve Austin annual for me, I didn't even realise there was a 1980 edition until fairly recently.

1980

Starlord was a favourite comic of mine (I wrote about it here) though it only actually lasted for 22 issues during 1978.  This, the first annual, came out a year after it had been absorbed into 2000AD and further annuals appeared in 1981 and 1982.

1980

  The Junior TV Times, Look-In was a big favourite of mine (as I wrote about here).

1980

Everyone of a certain age, seeing this, has just performed the theme tune riff.  Another favourite TV show of mine (which I wrote about here).

1981

 With one original Angel left (Jaclyn Smith, just in case you're too young to remember this...)

1982

Thrill Power overload (and another fantastic Brian Bolland cover), as seen in the picture of me at the top of the blog!

1982

Happy Christmas!


scans from my collection, aside from the girls titles (thanks to comicvine for those)

You can read more of my nostalgia posts here