Merry Christmas: 5 Days To Go

By John Freeman on December 20, 2009 • ( 1 )

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

DC Thomson’s humour comics can always be relied on to do Christmas issues. Christmas 1984 brought these offerings from the digest sized Beano Comic Library.

Pup Parade are the Bash Street Kids’ dogs, each with the appropriate attributes of their owners, and in issue 66, Snow Joke, they were out to perform their own winter Olympics with sledging, skiing and ice skating. Indeed the story shows its age by including a reference to Torvil and Dean’s Bolero ice skating routine.

Meanwhile issue 65 had the Bash Street Kids themselves staring in Panto Time. After much initial to-do in which it only takes seven panels before Teacher’s cane is produced, they choose to put on Cinderella, not that you can really tell from the front cover, and the expected chaos ensues.

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.