Fight! Fight! Fight!

In March 1983, the very third Fighting Fantasy gamebook, The Forest of Doom, was published in the UK.

I'm aware it's a story I've told several times now, but the range's co-creators, Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, had jointly written the first book in the series, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, which was an instant bestseller. To produce two new books in the same time it had taken to write Warlock, they divided their efforts, and Livingstone's first solo gamebook, Forest, was published the exact same day as Jackson's offering, The Citadel of Chaos. Four more books would be written in this way before Puffin Books realised that if they were going to keep up with public demand, and the copycat series by other publishers that were beginning to crop up, they were going to have to open things up to outside writers.

As you might expect, Livingstone doesn't have everything down pat at this point, and Forest is a bit different to his later books. It's generally a bit easier, especially when it comes to combats. The basic plot is still on the simple side, and an excuse for a classic dungeon crawler (albeit one that takes place outdoors). One of the most notable curiosities is that if you reach the end of the book having failed to find both parts of the fabled Dwarven warhammer you're trying to retrieve from Darkwood Forest, you can loop straight back round to section 1 and continue playing (provided you can pass a Test Your Luck roll to escape some Wild Hill Men); presumably Livingstone took it as read that the player would follow paths not taken on the second time round, but there's still going to be some overlap with areas where the forest apparently magically resets itself between visits.

The Many Faces of Rubidium von Screwtop

One of the newest strips in the weekly Beano, Rubi's Screwtop Science, started life in CBBC's 2016 series Dennis & Gnasher: Unleashed; Rubidium "Rubi" von Screwtop (daughter of Professor von Screwtop, a re-imagining of a mad scientist who originated in Lord Snooty and His Pals all the way back in 1939) was one of several new friends for Dennis created for the TV series who was subsequently transplanted into the weekly comic. She started out as a supporting character in Dennis' own strip, but also made some appearances alongside Dennis' other two best friends from the series, Jemima "JJ" Jones and Pie-Face (a new take on Dennis' friend from the nineties and noughties) in a strip known simply as Rubi, JJ and Pie-Face, then in 2017 she got a strip of her own.

JJ and Pie-Face also had their own stories for a while, but Rubi's has proved by far the most popular, and the other two only seem to appear as supporting characters these days. (Pie-Face's pet potato Paul also briefly had a strip of his own, which is the only strip ever to be headlined by an inanimate object; certainly in D. C. Thomson's history, and quite possibly in any comic, anywhere, ever.) Rubi's Screwtop Science began as a half-page Funsize Funny in early 2017, and was notable as the first strip in the comic's history headlined by a disabled character.

"Happy to Sign This!"

The author was delighted not only to see a copy of this edition again, but also to learn that the entire series is now on YouTube.

Which may be the closest this saga ever gets to a nice, neat ending.

By Gordon's Beard

Recently, I have written a few things about editing on the BBC's 2006-09 version of Robin Hood. These posts feel a bit like they've come from a fansite in a parallel universe where the show survived the departure of nearly all of its original leads, ran for a few more series and left a bigger cultural footprint than it actually did, so I've been quite pleased with the audience they've found.

One of the most famous stories about the series, though, concerns the August 2006 theft of some master tapes. Although the majority of the material was apparently recovered later on, there is some reshot material in the broadcast episodes. But nowhere tells us exactly what.

Here is Little John, as played by Gordon Kennedy, when he makes his first appearance in the final moments of the first episode, "Will You Tolerate This?" (original TX 07/10/06):

Here he is in his first scene of the second episode, "Sheriff Got Your Tongue?" (TX 14/10/06), sporting a beard which looks much the same for most of the episode:

(Episodes 1 & 2 were filmed in the same block, and on the DVD commentary for episode 2 showrunner Dominic Minghella identifies the scene where Marian tries to rescue Robin from the dungeons, half an hour into episode 2, as the very first to be filmed.)

But when we get to the castle scenes later on, Kennedy is visibly close to clean-shaven in the scene where the other outlaws arrive to help Much with his rescue attempt (apart from this shot, he's only seen in wide shots for the rest of this scene, and the lighting also suddenly changes at the point the others arrive, as if it's been put together from two different takes):

Toddler of Terror: The Director's Cut

A few months ago, I published a history of Ivy the Terrible which went down spectacularly well. (Thanks again if you reposted it or said something nice about it.) This is a deleted scene which I realised very quickly should probably be spun out into its own piece.

This is, once again, the first ever Ivy strip, as published in the edition of the Beano dated 04/05/85:

In (approximately) May 1988, Ivy made her debut in the Beano Comic Library range, with an issue rather unusually titled simply Ivy the Terrible:

The reason for this name is because this issue is essentially a revised and heavily expanded version of that very first strip... and, since I've separated it out into its own post, I may as well give you the entire issue.

33 on E4

As one door closes, another must open. In the great shake-up of late 2024, E4 became the only place to see new-to-linear-TV Simpsons in the UK, following their releases on Disney+ a few months beforehand. Season 36 became the first season to premiere on the channel in this way at the start of this year, but E4 are still playing catch-up with Seasons 33 through 35, which were first seen over here on Sky shortly after their US broadcasts.

One week after their debut of S36 concluded, the first of these seasons entered the fray. Season 33 aired on FOX in the US from 26 September 2021 to 22 May 2022; was first seen in the UK on Sky with "A Made Maggie" as a Christmas special on 24 December 2021, then weekly from 21 January to 5 June 2022; and now it has completed its cycle with its first run on free-to-air TV, which occurred in double-bills from 1 March to 3 May of this year (with one or two little wrinkles we'll come to soon). After E4's premieres of Seasons 32 and 36 were largely untampered with, how did Season 33 match up?

Only YOU Can Save Cliff Hanger!

Last year, I published one of my favourite things I've ever written -- a history of Cliff Hanger, the part-gamebook part-comic strip that ran in Fleetway Publications' Buster from 1983-87, and was then reprinted from 1992 until near the comic's end in 1999. Here's a thing that's been bothering me about the strip for a while. Or possibly two things, one of which isn't bothering me any more.

One of the many interesting quirks of Cliff is that almost every single strip is numbered in a unique way: which number strip it is appears on Cliff's jacket. (Or occasionally somewhere else if artist J. Edward Oliver can't put it there for some reason.)

The number in the final regular strip in 1987 was 197. (Thanks to Great News for All Readers for the scan of the original strip, rather than the colourised reprint.)

The rules surrounding this numbering system seem pretty clear: Only the 'regular' strips in the weekly comic count. Cliff's jacket appears unnumbered in Christmas annuals or Summer Specials, or other nonstandard strips such as the Cliff Hanger Adventure Book, a cut-out-and-keep Choose Your Own Adventure story which appeared over five issues of Buster.

That Cannonball Kid Sure Scores a Mean Owen Goal

This is an example of Cannonball Kid (drawn by Rob Lee), a story which appeared in D. C. Thomson's Nutty from around the midpoint of its 1980-85 run to its end. If you remember my earlier look at Nutty, you may notice this is the exact same strip I used as an example of the Kid there... but there's a reason for this. (Apart from the fact it's the only Cannonball Kid strip I have.)

In April 1998, the Cannonball Kid was dusted down, colourised and renamed for use in the Dandy, and as it happens, this strip became the very first edition of Owen Goal: