Merry Christmas: 2 Days To Go

By John Freeman on December 23, 2009

Our run of Christmas covers continue as we countdown to Christmas Day.

There wasn’t much Christmas cheer on display on the Christmas cover for Bunty in 1987. Indeed it seemed to be all doom and gloom – a miserable Christmas for The Kids Of Hunger House, a cold Christmas in School’s Out and tears at Christmas in The Four Mary’s.

After Ian Kennedy’s full colour IPC Fleetway cover of Super Naturals 1987 Christmas issue yesterday, he returns to DC Thomson’s limited colour newsprint for this compilation cover for Bunty in the same year.

The tears are not from one of the four Mary’s – Field, Cotter, Simpson and Radleigh, but rather for one of their friends, Denise Fowlds, who is feeling sorry for herself since her divorced mother is in hospital and she has fallen out with her sister who has sided with their father.

Set in the past, Hunger House is Conwyn Castle stately home where the bereaved master of the house is such a miser that he doesn’t feed his children properly. But all is not lost as finding and reading his late wife’s diary brings him to his senses in time for Christmas dinner.

School’s Out has four pupils of Wansdale School – Carol, Dawn, Marie and Ellie, queuing in the snow for the New Year Sales. So really they only have themselves to blame if they have a cold Christmas.

More Christmas covers tomorrow.

About the Author
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John Freeman

John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.

He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.