Monster Fun Halloween Spooktacular Special set to hit comic shops and newsagents soon

It’s time to pre-order your copy of the Monster Fun Halloween Spooktacular, from your local comic shop, ahead of its release in early October by Rebellion!

Monster Fun Halloween Spooktacular - Cover

With a stand out cover by Tom Paterson, Monster Fun will be delivering howls of laughter this Halloween.

One of hundreds of comic properties now owned by Rebellion, Monster Fun was a weekly British comic strip magazine for children aged seven to twelve. Published by IPC Media, it ran for 73 issues in 1975–1976, then merging with Buster.

Focused on humorous monster strips and stories, the magazine is perhaps best known for “The Bad Time Bedtime Books” minicomic inserts, created by Leo Baxendale, but also drawn by artists that include Terry Bave, Mike Brown. and Jack Clayton.

Britain’s kookiest, legendary anthology returns from the great beyond with plenty of brand new, HELL-arious comic strips, most of them originally appearing in Monster Fun, but some from other titles.

These include “Draculass”,“Frankie Stein” (who was also the fictional editor of Monster Fun), “Gah!” (a new strip, drawn by Tom Paterson, which looks a veritable treat!),“Gums”, “Hell’s Angel” (by Chris Garbutt), “Hire A Horror” (by Matt Baxter), “Kid Kong”, “Sweeny Toddler” (by Tom Paterson), “Tokoloshe” (art by Juni Ba, “Teddy Scare” “Wiz War” from Pow! (by Kek-W and Lew Stringer) – a diabolical host of new frights!

Gah! art by Tom Paterson, for the 2021 Monster Fun Halloween Spectacular
Hell’s Angel art by Chris Garbutt
Hire A Horror art by Matt Baxter
Tokoloshe art by Juni Ba
Wiz War art by Lew Stringer

We’re also being treated to some action adventure, in the form of one of Britain’s best loved superheroes, “The Leopard from Lime Street”, last seen in The Vigilant.

There was once a time when British comics happily mixed action adventure and humour comics, so I’m glad to see this happening in this new Special, too. Keith Richardson, the senior Graphic Novels Editor at Rebellion, and the creator in charge of this project, makes no secret of his love of the character, and of course Rebellion have already put out two excellent collections of the original strip.

“I think that ‘The Leopard from Lime’ street cemented my love of the superhero genre and had much more of an impact on me than any of the American heroes,” Keith told Broken Frontier earlier this year.

“It was far more relatable, seeing this guy running across semi-detached rooftops instead of swinging around New York skyscrapers.”

The impact of the COVID Pandemic on distribution of comics and magazines last year had a knock on into 2021, resulting in far fewer Specials from Rebellion, but the line up revealed so far for this Monster Fun Halloween Spectacular looks great, ushering in the witching season in spooktacular fashion!

• The Monster Fun Halloween Spectacular will be available from newsagents and comic shops on 6th October 2021, Diamond Preview code JUL211880 – and the Treasury of British Comics web store

Check out our full guide to 2021 Rebellion releases – both 2000AD and Treasury of British Comics – here

An earlier version of this story indicated this Special would be released on 22nd September – that date has now changed to 6th October



Categories: British Comics, Classic British Comics, Comic Previews, Comics, downthetubes News

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