Bright Spark

The above is a typical example of We Are the Sparky People, a strip which appeared in the DC Thomson comic Sparky for around two thirds of its 1965-77 run. Drawn by Jim Petrie (better known as the artist for 2,000 editions of Minnie the Minx in the Beano), WAtSP was a metafictional workplace comedy based around a fictionalised version of the Sparky office staff; other fourth-wall-breaking strips where the characters would interact with the comic's writers and artists would appear before and after this in various DCT comics, but the Sparky People were unique in depicting the ongoing adventures of the people actually putting the comic together.

The Sparky People also appeared, of course, in the annual Sparky Christmas book. The annuals would always be dated with the year ahead, so the Sparky Book 1976, pictured above, was published in mid-to-late 1975. They were also in a near-constant state of production and had extremely long lead times, each book typically being finished a whole year ahead of schedule -- so the 1976 Book would actually have been completed by around summer 1974. This would cause the occasional oddity; it wasn't unusual for a strip which had been dropped from the weekly comic to show up in the annual quite some time later. (I understand that these days, the Beano and Dandy annuals are no longer produced quite so far in advance.)

And this particular book contains, via the Sparky People, perhaps the only joke ever made in one of these annuals about their long lead times.

(Incidentally, I'm not certain these particular drawings were done by Petrie -- they look a bit like they might have been done by John Geering, an extremely prolific DC Thomson artist who created unforgettable characters such as Puss 'n' Boots and Bananaman, but was also a frequent stand-in when a strip's usual artist was unavailable, ghost-drawing strips including Dennis the Menace and Desperate Dan over the years. Better eyes than mine might be able to tell for sure or not.)

The Sparky's final issue was the one dated 16th July 1977, whereupon it merged with DC Thomson stablemate the Topper. The Topper was at the time published in A3 size, whereas the Sparky was, like most other comics, A4; to account for this, the Sparky initially appeared in Topper as a pull-out section which could be folded over to make an eight-page mini-comic (before the Topper itself changed over to A4). We Are the Sparky People was one of the strips to survive the merger, at least for a short while, but none of the strips commented on their change in situation.

The Sparky Book, however, continued for a year or two afterwards -- and the 1979 book would have been in development around the time the comic was winding down. I get a bit of a vibe from this book that the people working on it guessed it would be the title's last hurrah and wanted to go out on a high (there was a 1980 book, but it was mostly reprints). On the other hand, the Sparky contained many of my favourite DC Thomson strips, and it might just be a really good book featuring those characters. It does seem interesting to note, however, that for the first and only time, the Sparky People got the cover of a Sparky publication all to themselves!