Top 100 Strips In IPC Kids Comics

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This should keep Alan and I occupied if nobody else.

100. Super Dad

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 11:13 (twenty-two years ago)

99. Shiner

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 11:13 (twenty-two years ago)

98. Buytonic Boy (this is the worst pun ever to appear in a comic, and not worst in a groanworthy good way either)

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 11:14 (twenty-two years ago)

97. School Belle (this would never be green-lighted nowadays, paedophile's charter etc etc.)

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 11:14 (twenty-two years ago)

96. Milly O'Naire And Penny Less
95. Ivor Lott And Tony Broke

(Note to US readers: there is a whole strand of class conflict strips in UK comics. These two eventually teamed up.)

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 11:18 (twenty-two years ago)

94. Odd Ball (this was about a ball who was odd. It looked a bit like one of the Vermicious Knids from Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator)

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 11:41 (twenty-two years ago)

93. Faceache (Watch 8 year old kids try and 'scrunge'! Watch 8 year old kids develop lockjaw!)

― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 11:53 (twenty-two years ago)

92. Joker (I never liked Joker, a rip-off of Roger the Dodger w/o the rigorous scientific method implied by Roger's enormous library of dodges.)

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 11:57 (twenty-two years ago)

91 Mustapha Million - Arab Kid and pal (i.e. he was normal like you and not a strange rich furriner) have fun where money is no object and recklessly wasted
90 Bumpkin Billionaires - Filthy rich fools annoy neighbours as they try to lose their money but inadvertently make even more in the process

― Jaunty Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 12:14 (twenty-two years ago)

89. Beastenders (one of about a million strips in which monsters would take the parts of popular TV characters.)

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 12:22 (twenty-two years ago)

88. I cannot remember the title of this one but it was about a robot teacher. Maybe it was called Robot Teacher. I think it appeared in SKOOL FUN!

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 12:23 (twenty-two years ago)

87 Sweet Tooth - kid buys sweets and gets their presence past school bully through cunning ruses involving disguising them as everyday objects etc

― Jaunty Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 12:27 (twenty-two years ago)

86 Kid Kong - Giant ape that has a human gran, does anything for a 'nana, gets into scrapes for being enormous basically

― Jaunty Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 12:30 (twenty-two years ago)

85 Krazy Gang - Sporty & Ethnic & Nutter & Girl & Alien spaceship sort of thing get up to various wholesome activities that all typical kids should be aspiring to and not sniffing glue

― Jaunty Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 12:33 (twenty-two years ago)

(hang on is Fleetway IPC? I'm getting confused. and where were Dads as Lads?)

― Jaunty Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 12:34 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes Fleetway is IPC.

Dads as Lads is my #1 pick so let us hear no more of it yet!

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 12:38 (twenty-two years ago)

84. Cheeky - Anarchic fourth-wall-bending fun from I think Baxendale (the artist not the band). I can't remember anything about the stories but they were mental.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 12:39 (twenty-two years ago)

83. Store Wars - free market parable about two huge department stores, one of which is run by a jolly smiling man and one of which is run by a villain. I may be getting it mixed up with another strip but I think the idea was that the 'good' store sold everything really cheap and the 'bad' store didn't.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 12:41 (twenty-two years ago)

82. Sweeney Toddler. Psychopathic babies are just what the youth of today should be reading about instead of playing video games.
81. The Upper Crusts and the Lazy Loafers. Yet more 'living next door' Class War japes.
80. Scared Stiff Sam. He was big and gormless, his name was Sam, and he was frequently scared stiff. And his dog was as scared as he was. His Ma used to insist it was all in his head.

― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 12:45 (twenty-two years ago)

79. Hit Kid - strip about a child hitman !!! employed by kids to get revenge on adults, bullies, etc. He didn't actually kill them though.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 12:46 (twenty-two years ago)

78.

http://www.toonhound.com/creat-3.jpg

(The site from which this comes contains MAJOR THREAD SPOILERS but several major omissions too)

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 12:49 (twenty-two years ago)

such as

77. Marathon Mutt - strip about a dog running a marathon. It had cliffhangers and everything too! I missed the last episode. Speaking of which -

76. Cliff Hanger. Nod to Fighting Fantasy wherein Cliff would end each strip in deadly peril and the reader would get three choices as to what to do. Answers on the letters page.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 12:53 (twenty-two years ago)

75. Daisy Jones' Locket. A young girl with a genie in her locket - cue hysterical misunderstandings as the genie produces wishes for misheard requests.

― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 13:00 (twenty-two years ago)

74 Pete's Pocket Army - Pete has an army. In his pocket. Toy soldiers that are ALIVE. Quite scary in concept. Not very interesting to kid me

― Jaunty Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 13:03 (twenty-two years ago)

73 Ad Lad

― gobemouche, Tuesday, 3 February 2004 13:55 (twenty-two years ago)

I have no idea what you are talking about.

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 14:32 (twenty-two years ago)

Jordan it's easy! The dominant comic form in the UK from the 40s to the 80s wasn't the monthly comic book but weekly anthology titles with anything from 4 to 20 different strips in. The most famous to non-Brits are probably 2000AD and maybe Eagle, but the ones we're talking about were kids' humour titles, which ruled the market in the 70s and 80s. The biggest sellers were the Beano and Dandy, published by DC Thompson in Scotland, but overall the market leader was Fleetway aka Odhams aka IPC which published lots of different titles and its their strips we're talking about here, for instance

72. Sid's Snake - boy. snake. hilarity.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 14:54 (twenty-two years ago)

71. Rodney Rix and his Tricks With Bricks (oh no wait that was in Viz comic)

― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 22:29 (twenty-two years ago)

70. Good Guy. Every strip is about Guy being Good in the face of temptation provided by seeming relative of the Mekon.

69. Me And My Shadow. His shadow is alive. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

― Vic Fluro, Thursday, 5 February 2004 18:54 (twenty-two years ago)

(this is my favourite thread for ages on ilx.....i was thinking about Store Wars the other day)

68. Chalky - he's quick on the draw! boy draws things with chalk, they come alive.

67. Fuss Pot - spoiled girl with very pointy nose demands more stuff. one strip i remember in particular : she is bored of ready salted, salt & vinegar, cheese & onion crisps (near enough the only three flavours available then). cue scientists coming up with more and more ridiculous flavours to satisfy her fussy tastebuds - "green mouse flavour? ERK!"

― zappi (joni), Friday, 6 February 2004 06:40 (twenty-two years ago)

66. Lazybones. he got out of doing anything by sleeping. zzzzzzzz! he had a small dog that held up signs in the background commenting on the strips progress. i liked that dog.

64. Sheerluck Holmes. solved thinks by.....well who do you think?

63. there was one about a school that had a pupil from each country of the world, indulging in the kind of mass stereotyping now popular only in the Daily Mail.

― zappi (joni), Friday, 6 February 2004 06:58 (twenty-two years ago)

I always thought Fuss Pot was a man wearing a dress. My kid-brane didn't see her as a lady cos she was so unladylike, so even though the character was wearing a dress I saw a man not a woman. it was the Ames Room illusion of comic strip characters.

Cheeky wasn't Baxendale but the artist did have a manic quality similar in spirit

interesting article - http://www.mccready.cwc.net/slippy.html - hmm, wedge blog maybe...

― Jaunty Alan (Alan), Friday, 6 February 2004 09:55 (twenty-two years ago)

62 Gums - a shark with no teeth

― Jaunty Alan (Alan), Friday, 6 February 2004 09:57 (twenty-two years ago)

61. Dreamy Den - boy daydreams. At least it's supposed to be a boy but nobody in the strip looked human. They all had eyes perched halfway down their noses like Picasso paintings. It was fab-gear.

― Vic Fluro, Friday, 6 February 2004 13:49 (twenty-two years ago)

60. Gremlins - audaciously easy-to-draw black blobs whose hobby was pestering humans. Lead Gremlin had a peaked cap. That's about all I can remember but it was good!

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Friday, 6 February 2004 15:03 (twenty-two years ago)

59. the slimms - fat parents hatch elaborate plans to eat cakes, but are foiled by thin wily son. hmm, now i think about it he must have being doing it for their own good - at the time i thought he was just doing it to annoy them...

― zappi (joni), Sunday, 8 February 2004 07:21 (twenty-two years ago)

58 Paddywack. The k is backwards and for why? Because this is a short strip about a stupid irishman being stupid, usually by taking an everyday english expression literally. the interlocutor expresses how incredibly dumm paddy is by slapping own forehead, falling backwards comatose or eyes popping out with large exclamation marks over their head/steam coming out of ears

― Jaunty Alan (Alan), Monday, 9 February 2004 11:23 (twenty-one years ago)

57. The Terror Toys. Every IPC comic had a 'serious' strip too, this one being a 2-page serial about toys that came to life, it was K-FRIGHTENING especially when the kid is in the bath playing with his toy flotilla of battleships and they start shelling him! (um...ok nobody actually had a toy flotilla of battleships but EVEN SO)

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Monday, 9 February 2004 11:30 (twenty-one years ago)

56 Sick Sid and Fit Fred - you can probably work this one out
55 Frankie Stein - a fairly well meaning frankingstein's monster character
54 $6,000,000 Gran - not as funny as the 6 1/2 p buytonic boy - on the subject of which i was reminded this w/e that the enemy were known as "N.M.E." which was because the NME would have been on the next floor of King's Reach Tower/Tharg's spaceship. probably. And it occurs to me that when I first started reading the NME that this would have been my main mental association with the title. NOW THEY REALLY ARE THE ENEMY, yuck yuck

― Jaunty Alan (Alan), Monday, 9 February 2004 12:16 (twenty-one years ago)

53. THE LEOPARD FROM LIME STREET of course! I hope this isn't ascending order as this is the best strip of all time. Billy Farmer is bitten by a radioactive leopard and begins to slowly mutate, so he fights crime. Like Spiderman except Uncle Ben was still alive and a total bastard. Absolutely wonderful especially when his eyes started glowing and he grew fangs.

― Vic Fluro, Monday, 9 February 2004 20:24 (twenty-one years ago)

52. Angel's 'Proper' Charlies: rare hints of romance in this one as beautiful Angel makes three gormless lads vie for her attention. Note prim scare quotes in title to make sure the kids knew that 'proper charlie' was SLANG, ugh.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 10 February 2004 10:38 (twenty-one years ago)

51. X-Bow. Nuff said pilgrim.

― Vic Fluro, Tuesday, 10 February 2004 20:39 (twenty-one years ago)

50 Whizz Wheels - naturalistic (ie not knockabout cartoon) strip about some kid who had a Chopper bike (with the high backed "L" seat and smaller front wheel) and his minor adventures

― Jaunty Alan (Alan), Wednesday, 11 February 2004 10:55 (twenty-one years ago)

49. - Becky Never Saw The Ball.

― Vic Fluro, Wednesday, 11 February 2004 19:14 (twenty-one years ago)

four weeks pass...

48. Mister Big Nose. I was unfortunately banned for life from getting Oink comic, and being a weak and unrebellious child I never took the obvious step of buying it anyway and then hiding it, like porn. As a result, I missed out on what is obviously one of the finest strips ever.

― Vic Fluro, Wednesday, 10 March 2004 21:36 (twenty-one years ago)

six months pass...

47. "little geyser" = about a small waterspout makin its way in the world (intorduced in in cor!! no.1 as "a great comedy series... the most original character ever") (sadly i don;t know if he made it even to cor!! no.2)
46. "kid chameleon" = "an english boy raised by reptiled in the kalahari" (cor!! wz v.proud of its colour repro and this adventure wz designed to exploit that)
45. "jack pott" = a kid who likes to gamble (very run of the mill: interesting only for the feebleness of the name really)
44. "stone age brit - ancient nit" = can't think of another caveman strip
43. "ginger's tum" = about a greedy cat (in whizzer) (or chips, which wz "inside" whizzer)
42. "minnie's mixer" = minnie has a mixer which mixes things up
41. "barry and boing" = "orphan barry bates was helping a spring-built robot to escape from his cruel alien masters" (from knockout)
40. "boney" = abt a runaway skeleton (ditto)
39. "the toffs and the tuffs" - cf tom's comment way up top abt class warfare
38. "pete's pockets" = pete has all sorts of stuff in his pockets

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 9 October 2004 19:23 (twenty-one years ago)

(i did a whole bunch to get this going again) (i guess the last mutated into - or from? - pete's pocket army)

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 9 October 2004 19:27 (twenty-one years ago)

37. Goon Platoon Common sense-lacking fun in the British Army.

― robster (robster), Monday, 11 October 2004 08:04 (twenty-one years ago)

36 Boyfriend from Blupo. He's gorgeous, but... wait for it... on his home planet he's considered ugly!! LOL. Always has some "sweet" ending showing how much the BF from P wuvs his lady friend.

Bonus article on Girls ComiXoR from the "BBC cult" site, written by Jac Rayner - one of the Dr Who crowd back in the day - and probably still is judging by the existence of this article!

― Jaunty Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 12 October 2004 09:18 (twenty-one years ago)

35. Pop, Dick and Harry. From the broadsheet comic, Topper. Dad has two mischevous sons with hilarious consequences.

― everything, Tuesday, 12 October 2004 22:03 (twenty-one years ago)

35. Ollie Fliptrik. Unreadable bilge with rubbish art and no jokes that's taken over the whole Dandy on the basis of presumably being 'l33t' or something. It's sheer hideous influence over a once-proud comic must give it some kind of score here.

― Vic Fluro, Wednesday, 13 October 2004 19:29 (twenty-one years ago)

Four days later I suddenly realise - oh yes, IPC.

― Vic Fluro, Sunday, 17 October 2004 07:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Some more of the Whizzer & Chips rogues gallery:

33. JR(Junior Rotter). Snot-nosed rich kid in a stetson. Has goody two-shoes sister called Sue Helen(geddit?)

32. Phil Fitt. Tracksuit-wearing fitness-obsessed youth, usually accompanied(for ironic purposes) by stock comic fatty Brad Habit.

31. The Ossies. The usual kids-up-to-mischief hijinks, but with the twist of being set in Australia. Woo.

30. Little Devil. He's a mischevious demon on a constant mission to get children to misbehave, but who's plans invariably backfire with hilarious(and often painful) consequences. Like the Beano's Emlyn The Gremlin, but not as good.

― Philip Alderman (Phil A), Sunday, 17 October 2004 17:54 (twenty-one years ago)

Uh, I like to retrospectively renumber those as 34 - 31. Thanks.

― Philip Alderman (Phil A), Sunday, 17 October 2004 18:03 (twenty-one years ago)

seven years pass...

We never finished this. ;_;

― I must be old, I recognise nobody in ITV2 idents (aldo), Friday, 11 May 2012 21:32 (thirteen years ago)

29. Watch Out Beagle's About (from Buster) - Basically Watch Out Beadle's About but with a beagle.

― everything, Friday, 11 May 2012 22:07 (thirteen years ago)

28. Whacky :"he's always getting whacked". A kid that gets whacked a lot.

― everything, Friday, 11 May 2012 22:09 (thirteen years ago)

Unfortunately I think those two might be made up.

― I must be old, I recognise nobody in ITV2 idents (aldo), Friday, 11 May 2012 22:11 (thirteen years ago)

Whacky is in the 1973 Cor! annual.

― everything, Friday, 11 May 2012 22:13 (thirteen years ago)

Google tells me that on Facebook 1 person Likes "Watch Out Beagle's About".

― everything, Friday, 11 May 2012 22:16 (thirteen years ago)

I stand corrected.

― I must be old, I recognise nobody in ITV2 idents (aldo), Friday, 11 May 2012 22:17 (thirteen years ago)

27. Ivor Lott and Tony Broke. (Also from Cor!)

― everything, Friday, 11 May 2012 22:21 (thirteen years ago)

BTW "On Comedy - the Beano and Ideology" by Leo Baxendale is an unusual and fascinating book, if you can find it. Partially autobiographical and partially ruminations on the construction of the plots of these comics, eg. what's the significance of spankings/the role of slippers etc. At one point he enumerates the spankings administered on Minnie the Minx etc over all the time he drew them.

― everything, Friday, 11 May 2012 22:32 (thirteen years ago)

Just noticed Ivor Lott and Tony Broke was mentioned upthread so I'll do a new #27

27. Can't actually remember the name but it was a haunted forest and every week someone would take a branch or two - let's say to make a broom. Then the broom would terrorize that person till it was taken back to the forest.

― everything, Friday, 11 May 2012 22:40 (thirteen years ago)

Think that was from Shiver and Shake.

― everything, Friday, 11 May 2012 22:41 (thirteen years ago)

26. Bobby's Ghoul - Bobby has a girlfriend who's a ghost. She dumps him in the end because she's aged and he hasn't.

― I must be old, I recognise nobody in ITV2 idents (aldo), Saturday, 12 May 2012 14:52 (thirteen years ago)

Reverse that; he has, she hasn't.

― I must be old, I recognise nobody in ITV2 idents (aldo), Saturday, 12 May 2012 14:53 (thirteen years ago)

25. Tarman of the Jungle - thick loincloth wearing chap lives in jungle with a female ape who's name escapes me(but I'd lay odds on it being "Jane"). Antics of the animal variety ensue.

24. Walt Teaser - can't honestly remember anything about this other than the oh-so witty punning title. I guess he liked to...tease people, or something?

23. The Drips - drops of water with faces delight in relentlessly falling on the head of some poor chap who's only wish in life is to be warm and dry. A chillingly bleak indictment of life in THATCHER'S BRITAIN, possibly.

― Pheeel, Saturday, 12 May 2012 23:44 (thirteen years ago)

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