CHRISTMAS? BAH! HUMBUG(S)...!

Having recently shown you the covers to all seven Annuals

bearing the name of WHAM! (plus another two combined with

POW! ), I thought you might appreciate seeing the inside of the very

first one (for 1966).  And what better strip to show you than one which

fits right in with the start of the year, what with all that snow and ice on

view?  Okay, these conditions haven't quite happened yet in my

neck of the woods, but they're bound to soon (hopefully).

Looking back, it seems that all the Christmases and New Years

of my boyhood were like this.  It may have been only in the comics,

but so powerful is the image that it leaks out into the reality of the time

as well - at least in the mystic bands of memory.  The two pages repro-

duced here don't seem to me to have been drawn by the regular weekly

artist, but they do full justice to the characters nonetheless.  Often a

strip could look all the poorer for not being drawn by its usual

illustrator, but that isn't the case here.

THE HUMBUGS were reprinted in the revamped SMASH! in

1969 under the name of THE TERRIBLE TWINS, and I was so

pleased to see the familiar characters again that I don't think I even

noticed the strip had been retitled until much later.  Or could it simply

be that by the time the pair resurfaced, I had forgotten what they

were originally called?  It's not impossible, even for one with

such a mighty memory as I.

I recall one of the weekly strips referring to the FANTASTIC

FOUR, which was appearing in Wham! comic at the time.  BRUV

dressed up in a MICHELIN MAN costume and played at being THE

THING, and SIS merely hid behind a fence or a lamppost and pretend-

ed to be invisible.  Of course, it was easy to ignore that The Thing was

supposed to be orange-skinned when the comic was in black and white,

but had it been in colour, a mention could simply have been included

of Bruv painting the costume in the requisite hue.  (Yes, I know -

I worry about such things too much.)

Anyway, that's perhaps too much spiel for a mere two

pages, but hopefully you'll enjoy them despite that.

(Incidentally, I suspect that the lettering is by TOM FRAME,

who later worked on 2000 A.D.'s JUDGE DREDD.)