Let there be light-heartedness sayeth The All-Smiling Comic Creator. And lo, it came to pass that another ‘Dreamy Daniel’ was blessed with the 4-colour radiance of Hee Hee Heaven.  Casting aside the tongue-in-cheek biblical imagery, an ‘S.I.G.’ (Spectrum Is Green) salvation was, indeed, at hand...pulling the strings of my suspended belief!  In other, less portentously metaphorical, words: I became, at a tender impressionable age, utterly hooked on comics. My Alice-like curiosity led me far from the sanitised safety of those 'Janet and John' schoolbooks and left me tumbling into a paper-chase Cheshire Cat wonderland of illusory intrigue and absurdist delight. There was no turning back. Here, then, is a brief oddball odyssey through the nostalgic labyrinth of my Comicy Saturday world which, for the small eternity of my childhood, held me as a willing captive.
    First, allow me to set the scene. Saturdays would usually begin with an ‘Eagle Eye Junior Spy’ morning mission to capture a loaf, for mum, from the Parslow’s bread-ladies (who always smelt freshly baked!).  As a regular Cob Loaf Agent, they would secretly pass me a free wafer bar as a sign of solidarity. En route, I would enter the shadowy portals of Old Tom’s Sweetshop to replenish my bubblegum card and Lucky Bag reserves. Occasionally, I would be assigned the fearful task of buying bacon and ‘bangers’ from the EC horror-crypt butcher shop filled with blood-spattered sawdust; gruesome hanging cadavers; and glistening ogre-sized knives. I recall, with a shudder, the sinister one-eyed butcher cat, black as the blackest night, who would sit on the meat cleavers bench glaring jealously at the customers.  No room for ‘Korky’ cuteness in that particular slaughter house! Escaping quickly, I would dash into the nearby paper-shop breathing a heavy sigh of relief. Mission accomplished.
    Within the comforting confines of the newsagents could be found the whirly rack American import magazines which included the DC and Marvel superhero comics redolent with the bright brash promise of juvenile wish-fulfilment.  They also supplied most of the DC Thomson and IPC weekly treasures together with the popular cathode ray comics such as TV Comic; TV Tornado; and TV Century 21. I had to explore further afield for the elusive 'Dr.Graves' by Charlton and those obscure 'Lost in Space' and 'Twilight Zone' Gold Key comics. I didn’t need a Commando Comic Pocketbook to realize that getting a paper-round, and eventually a bike, would extend my area of newsagent infiltration. It was time to expand my territorial boundaries. I had that ‘Sammy Shrink’ feeling as my world suddenly grew larger!
    My earliest memory of comics goes back to one fateful Saturday morning when dad mysteriously left a pile of second-hand annuals in the bedroom. My young life was transformed from that magical moment onward. I vividly remember being entranced by the other-worldliness of the Dan Dare 1963 Annual. The text stories I was oblivious to since I was still struggling with 'Janet and John' but the comic strips, incandescently coloured, were a spellbinding revelation to me. More earthbound adventures were found in the Champion The Wonder Horse Comic Annual. My reading skills improved dramatically as a result of attempting to decipher these annuals. The teachers may have deplored comics but little did they realize to what extent kids like me were inspired by them. From Mekon-chasing spaceman to animal-taming cowboy, the comic strip universe had welcomed me in grand style. My Saturdays would never be the same again.
    Besides developing my latent word comprehension skills, cartoon art also had a profound nurturing influence on my budding aesthetic sensibilities. I remember being fascinated, to the point of obsession, by my dad’s old Giles annuals and the affectionately drawn, typically downtrodden, British characterisations on display. In particular, the lovably anarchic, Baxendalesque, mischief-making of his tiny tots of terror kept me amused for hours at a time (overseen by a perpetually grumpy black-garbed Grandma and the disgruntled skeletal ‘school death’ figurehead that was Chalky !).  No artist could render snow-laden landscapes or the sombre wetness of winter rain as evocatively as Giles. Already I was torn between an imaginary life in outer space and a real life in soggy olde England.
    TV related comics were another strong formative influence on my already over-active imagination. As a child of the sixties, I became the Gerry Anderson equivalent of ‘Danny Dare’. In 'Fireball XL5' terms, I was a ‘baby zoomer’ Steve Zodiac wannabe with a pre-puberty crush on the vivacious ever-smiling Venus.  When 'Thunderbirds' arrived on the supermarionation scene, I naturally gravitated towards John Tracy’s orbital loner plastic persona.  For Anderson fans, Saturdays were momentous days back then. The sophisticated newspaper-style futurism of TV21 was appearing on the FAB horizon. TV Comic offered the caricaturist early adventures of 'Supercar' and 'Fireball XL5' as well as Mevin’s faithful homage to Roberta Leigh’s ethereal 'Space Patrol'. At Christmas, Century 21 comic annuals were as abundant as sparkler ray-guns and 'tintabulated bubble-headed booby' robots (to quote Dr. Smith!) This was truly the boyhood era when, to paraphrase 'Stingray', “anything could happen in the next half hour!” 
    Comics were everywhere. Even the comics had pull-out comics hidden inside of them. Baxendale’s 'Badtime Bedtime Story' pull-outs instantly come to mind as flatulent naughty boy eviscerations of wholesome traditional tales. The Whizzer had its Chips just as ‘Bully Beef’, in more ways than one, had his!? The Ranger comic supplement to Look and Learn overshadowed the parent magazine thanks to Don Lawrence’s lavish, pseudo-Romanesque, 'Trigan Empire' epic. This sat appropriately, though uncomfortably, alongside the rather deflating presence of ‘Beric The Bold’ (alias Asterix) in the Good Queen Cleo strip. Strange bedfellows! Anyone remember ‘Space Cadet Jason January’s’ gripping (or should that be sniffing?) encounter with the escaped lunar convicts who threatened Earth with a toxic whiff of Gas-G66?
    Meanwhile, back in the comic-strewn alleyways of our neighbourhood, everyone had a prying ‘Keyhole Kate’, ‘Nosey Parker’, or ‘Snooper’ in their midst. The (artful) Dodgers were slyly avoiding the (playground) Menaces. The local tomboys were busy emulating ‘Minnie The Minx’, ‘Bad Penny’, ‘Beryl The Peril’, or ‘Pansy Potter’; proving conclusively that girls are, indeed, more troublesome than boys! Fantasist fibbers were regularly consulting with the daydream thought balloons of ‘Spoofer McGraw’.  ‘The Bash St. Kids’, ‘Swots & Blots’, and ‘The Tiddlers’ were blitzkrieg commentaries on the classroom warzone; with ‘The Dolls of St. Dominics’ taking over where Searle’s ‘The Belles of St. Trinians’ left off.  ‘The Wacks’, together with ‘The Beat Boys’ (Nick and Nat), were tuned-in to the sixties pop mod scene which ‘Danny’s (squaresville) Tranny’ failed to transmit. All short-trousered life was there.  Essentially, these comics were blowing a big wet raspberry at all the grown-up absurdities, playground antagonisms, and clip-round-the-ear fears which were part of being a Brit-kid during those rough-and-tumble times. The dreaded slipper, potent symbol of parental oppression, was now on a foot firmly being pulled!
    There was, of course, a considerable element of wish-fulfilment in many of the strips. When life became too harsh, how I longed for, through the whimsical pages of Sparky, a ‘Mr. Bubbles’ to wish my troubles away; a ‘Peter and His Magical Pipes’ to serenade into life those tropical island Bounty Bar poster advertisements; or a chance to borrow ‘Invisible Dick’s’ torch of anonymity. Alas, I had to make do with my space age dreams of 'strange new worlds' and interplanetary playtime with the BEM (Bug Eyed Monster) infested 'Lost in Space' family. Thankfully, it was the sixties comic culture which gave such escapist fantasies an added visionary impetus alongside such landmark influences such as the Apollo space program, Captain Kirk’s everlasting mission, 'Bleep and Booster’s' telly-comic adventures , and not forgetting Major Matt Mason and Major Tom. It was the best of times for a starry-eyed fledgling space cadet.
    Sadly, though, my weak eyes did not make the grade! Like many kids in those days, it was not until I had a school sight test that it was discovered I was in need of a permanent Clark Kent disguise. ‘The Numskulls’ in my Eyeball Operations Department must have suffered retinal damage due to excessive torch-under-the-bedclothes eyestrain. Suddenly, I could sympathise with, as well as laugh at, the myopic misadventures of Mr Magoo’s British Beezer cousin ‘Colonel Blink The Short-sighted Gink’. Comic strip characters such as Joe 90 and The Milky Bar Kid (who regularly appeared on the back page of TV Comic) were small comfort to a boy who secretly wished to somehow acquire the gift of X-ray vision. Oh well, I often thought to myself, at least if I could stay in the bath long enough (unlike ‘Georgie & His Germs’!) I may yet develop ‘Fish Boy’ webbed feet.  I could also console myself with the thought that I was still able to leap down the stairs like a demented ‘Billy The Cat’ or sprint home from school ‘Billy Whizz’ style. All was not completely lost in my Comicy Saturday world. Besides, what need have I of mere mortal eyes when Dr. Strange supplied the all-seeing ‘Eye of Agamotto’ to psychedelically enhance my inner vision?
    Dr. Strange materialized onto the power-packed pages of Terrific and introduced me to the mind-blowing wonders of metaphysical melodrama as originally conjured up by Steve Ditko. British reprint titles such as Terrific and Fantastic offered a diverse black and white mix of Marvel mayhem and I was soon transformed into The Absorbing Boy of comic culture; akin to ‘The Absorbing Man’ who so memorably battled ‘The Mighty Thor’ in those early issues of Fantastic. It is the disturbingly subversive artwork of Steve Ditko, though, which absorbed me most of all. Often to be found lurking in the pages of Charlton’s horror titles and the ubiquitous British Alan Class anthologies, Ditko’s wild-eyed, feverish, distortions of the paranoid human psyche are a ‘far (primal) scream’ away from the granite-jawed certainties of Kirby and Lee.
    As the seventies dawned, the juvenile jesters and phantasmagorical entities continued to thrive alongside the misery-peddling newspapers; seeming to mock them with simplistic smiles. The power strikes left us reading our comics by candlelight. The flickering fluid forms of Lopez’s Dickensian ‘Janus Stark’ reflected the distorted humanity of those agitated days; the artwork etched in coal-dust and harsh shades of ash. Galaxus-like, I grew taller as the years passed and was soon able to reach-up towards the higher forbidden realms of the newsagent top shelves. A sneaky peek at the Love-In temptations of OZ revealed Randy Rupert, the bare-it-all bear, and Robert Crumb’s X-rated obsessive phobias and wild sexual fantasies. I was growing up fast and the comic characters that once crowded my fanciful young mind were slowly consigned to fading memory. It was a Desperate Dan world and the cow-pies had to be earned!
    In conclusion, I have been describing a unique time in childhood history when the kids truly were united. The comics had become a nationwide shared network of thrills and laughter which somehow brought us closer together. They taught us to smile at the insanity of the world we were born into and to poke fun at its bullying authoritarian ways. They rejoiced in the power of the pun to overcome all adversity (something the prim-and-proper teachers and humourless politicians resolutely failed to do!). IPC’s Wham comic even had guest readers democratically ‘cartoonified’ on their front pages; blurring the boundaries between everyday kids and their comic strip counterparts. The ‘Ivor Lotts’ and ‘Tony Brokes’ (like Lord Snooty and his ‘street urchin’ pals before them) transcended, through the alternative reality of comicdom, their social class divisions and could become chuckling chums in Cheekyland. Most of all, the comics gave us an endless supply of whimsy, wonder, and wackiness to enliven our days and tickle our sense of fun. These innocent, life-affirming, pleasures remain in the hearts and minds of those who still retain the gentle punster spirit of those original Comicy Saturday experiences.  
   

My speech bubble is about to burst so I will leave you now with these defiant words: Long Live The Crikey Revolution!  

Nuff said!!