A Cracking Christmas Comics Competition
A Great and very Happy Christmas for all readers! I'm writing this in the early hours of Christmas Eve 2015, and it's rather sobering to realise that it's been nearly two months since my last blog post - about Misty at Halloween. Some of you will know that I've been fairly active on Twitter and Facebook since then, posting (on most days) a few snapshot pictures of 'On This Day' comics from our past. That's a lot of fun to do and I plan to keep it up as much as possible but not at the expense of the blog - it just takes much longer to prepare a blog post than a quick social media update from my phone. I have a lot of ideas for the blog so hopefully time will allow for me to develop a few of those in the New Year.
In the meantime, let me say it again: Happy Christmas! To mark the occasion I've put together a little seasonal quiz for you to ponder over the festive period. There's even a smashing prize to be won: from 30 years ago, this 1985 Christmas issue of Whizzer and Chips! All your favourites are in there - Sid's Snake and Shiner, Sweeny Toddler, Joker, Lazy Bones, Tomboy, Sweet Tooth, Odd Ball and all the gang - replete with snow-covered story titles and holly-decked panel frames. IPC knew how to make comics Christmassy and this is one of the most Christmassiest Christmas issues of the lot!
Christmas trees not included
To win this super prize (sent postage free), you'll need to identify the titles of the strips from which each of the 21 panels below has been scanned. Then take the first letter of each title and rearrange them to form a name, sentence or phrase associated with the IPC/Fleetway comics featured in this blog. Email this phrase to me at gnfar@outlook.com (sadly, answers on a postcard cannot be accepted) by 5pm British time on New Year's Day, and I'll select the winner at random from all the correct entries.
To confirm: to have a chance of winning, all you need to tell me in the email is the name, sentence or phrase made up of the first letters of each of the 21 strip titles. However, I'll be especially impressed and give a special mention to anyone who can send me a list of all 21 strip titles, the artist of each and the comic in which each particular panel appeared (clue: no single comic is featured more than once).
WARNING: I have now posted the answers in the comments section below.
Here are the panels. Good luck!
Panel one
Panel two
Panel three
Panel four
Panel five
Panel six
Panel seven
Panel eight
Panel nine
Panel ten
Panel eleven
Panel twelve
Panel thirteen
Panel fourteen
Panel fifteen
Panel sixteen
Panel seventeen
Panel eighteen
Panel nineteen
Panel twenty
Good luck! And whether or not you fancy the quiz, I hope you and yours have a wonderful Christmas and New Year. Thank you to everyone who has read the blog this year, and I really do appreciate all the kind comments, plus the Likes, Favourites and Retweets on social media.
Please make time to pick up a comic or two over the holidays and, above all, remember:
