Triple Dog Dare

Last time, I was looking at Bananaman strips from the late 90s adapting episodes of the 80s TV series, which were drawn by John Geering -- who had created the strip and drawn the vast majority of it up to that point, but had no known involvement in the series. It would be worth going back and reading that piece if you haven't already, as that way this one will make sense.

But in short: the last strip adapting a TV episode is from the issue of the Dandy dated 3rd July 1999, and a week later a wholly original strip appeared for the Dandy's world-record-breaking 3007th issue, dated the 10th July. On the 20th July, John Geering died. (Some sources list his death as the 13th August, which is the date his obituary appeared in his local newspaper, the Warrington Guardian; I am presuming the date given in the Independent's obituary is correct.) However -- as was often the case when an artist passed away -- he had a buffer of strips built up, and new stories by him continued to regularly appear in the Beano and the Dandy for around two months after his death.

In issue #3004 (19/06/99), another strip drawn by Geering had started appearing in the Dandy: a revival of Puss and Boots, the very first characters he had created for D. C. Thomson in 1969.

The first few issues from this period have both PaB and Bananaman, but for the most part the cat and dog seem to have temporarily replaced the Big B (which was not the only time Geering took a break from Bananaman to experiment with something else), down to being formatted in the same way with the full-page title panel. That splash page is very unusual: the Bananaman strips from 1998-99 are the only other D. C. strip I've seen with them.

Puss and Boots had originally appeared in the Sparky, later moved to the Topper upon that comic's closure in 1977, but vanished from their new home in 1979. They then had some previous appearances in the Dandy from 1987 up to the mid-nineties, the first series of which renamed them Mutt and Moggy. That run feels a bit tamer (although the second series, which began in 1993 and used the original name, is less so), with Geering's distinctive sense of humour toned down somewhat (he wrote many of the scripts himself), whereas the 1999 stories are closer to the Sparky/Topper incarnation. Looking at them today, this raises the possibility that they're reprints -- the Dandy had been having a lot of success with colourising and renaming stories from other, long-defunct D. C. Thomson titles and running them as 'new' strips at the time. But the art style definitely looks like the Geering of the nineties, not the seventies. I wonder if maybe I Google 'puss and boots sparky', could it be by some thousand-to-one chance that...

Oh. So the art is new, but it's a redrawn version of a Sparky story with the script predominantly the same. (You can just about make out in the margins of the second page the date 16/10/76; presuming this refers to the date of the issue it was scheduled for, that would pin it down to Sparky #613.) Perhaps an obvious answer when you think about it, but I've never seen an artist directly remake one of their old stories like this before. At least one of the other strips from this period is also a redraw, as the original version later appeared in D. C. Thomson's monthly reprint title Classics From the Comics, but I can't definitively say if all of them are. The most obvious difference is that the 1999 version removes Puss' nephew Tich. (Baggle.)

The only strip Geering was regularly drawing for the Beano at the time of his death was the hopefully self-explanatory Dean's Dino, which had begun in issue #2946, dated the 2nd January 1999, and was retired following its artist's passing (barring a short-lived revival in 2004 as part of one of the comic's Comic Idol competitions). The Official History of the Beano doesn't give an exact end date, only that it "appeared 37 times in 1999"; if it appeared every week, that would put its end date in early September, but there was at least one issue it definitely missed. New Puss and Boots strips initially stopped appearing in the Dandy in September, tallying with when the Official History indicates Dean's Dino ended, but they then crop up again for another three or four issues in November. I am quite certain these were still drawn by Geering, but it's possible they were incomplete and another artist had to do some finishing touches.

Even more strangely, though, several further strips appear as one-offs even later on. The first is in issue #3043, dated March 18th, 2000; then issue #3046, dated April 8th; whilst the following strip was not published until issue #3054, dated June 3rd, and is almost certainly the final new work by Geering to appear in a weekly comic:

The term "nirdle" was coined by Geering for the strip as an all-purpose nonsense word which, over the years, was used for everything from musical instruments to units of currency, or, in this and other cases, the name of a TV station. There remains no doubt in my mind that this -- along with the other '00 stories -- is also a Geering strip (and a particularly good one, at that), and I can only assume that there was either a deliberate decision to slowly drip these out, or some of them got lost down a sofa somewhere.

The Christmas annuals were worked on even further in advance, and Geering's final published new strip was a Bananaman story which appeared in the Dandy Annual 2002, a full two years after his death; this appears to have been done well before the typical lead time of about a year. (A Tim Traveller story by original artist Vic Neill appears in the Beano Book 2002; Neill had died in December 1999.)

Bananaman was rested for a time following Geering's death, but returned the following year drawn by Barrie Appleby, who had been Geering's regular understudy, including many of the character's appearances tying in with the TV series such as the Bananaman strip that ran in the short-lived BEEB magazine; however -- as frequently happened when a long-serving artist died or retired -- the strip's artist would go on to change several times in the years that followed. Puss and Boots also returned later in the noughties drawn by Appleby, were retired as part of the Dandy's infamous major relaunch in 2004, but then returned once again in 2008, this time drawn by Nigel Parkinson; I can't say when exactly they stopped appearing in the weekly comic, but their last known appearance seems to be the Dandy Annual 2012, where they were drawn by Nigel Auchterlounie.

I am aware we've gotten into unusually sombre territory here. But here is a selection of the 1999 Puss and Boots strips in my possession: my favourite comics artist, writing and drawing quite possibly my favourite comic strip ever. Enjoy them.

Puss and Boots' first appearance in the Sparky had been in the issue dated 21/06/69; although it's not expressly stated, it seems reasonable to infer that this run was to mark their 30th birthday, given it starts more or less on the anniversary itself. It started life as a one-page story, and was promoted to two pages in 1973; if these are all indeed remakes of Sparky stories, they all hail from between then and 1979.

Long before this expansion, the strip was moved to the back page of the Sparky within three months of its debut; this allowed it to appear in full colour at a time when most of the comic was monochrome, and was rather unusual for such a new story. The first few editions are virtually unrecognisable -- you can read the very first one, perhaps Geering's first ever published work, at the top of the page here -- and are often suggested as being derivative of Tom and Jerry, but it evolved into its familiar form in a matter of months, if not weeks (you can find later examples, including the first ever back-page edition, if you continue to read that thread).

I might upload some Mutt and Moggy strips another day, but the twosome are less anthropomorphic in that incarnation, in early strips even being a cat and dog actually owned by someone (I don't have it, but the first strip depicts them being adopted by him when they're a kitten and a puppy)... although Geering seems to have shifted approach later on. An early example of M&M from 1988 can be found here; note the different character designs, toned-down dialogue and visuals, and less extreme depictions of violence. Peter Gray describes it as the "younger version" of the strip, and it does seem to have a Muppet Babies vibe to it. Compare it to this strip from 1990, which is closer to Puss and Boots, down to having an individual episode title (which started when the Sparky strip expanded and was kept for all two-page incarnations except the 1999 one, which eschewed them in favour of a return to the original "They fight like cat and dog" tagline).

I am not entirely certain when Mutt and Moggy ended (the otherwise excellent book The Art and History of the Dandy is a bit vague on things like when later strips finished), but I think it was around 1991 or 1992. In December 1993, they returned to the Dandy under their original name, with Geering pushing the strip further towards its roots; thanks to the magic of eBay listings with convenient photographs, you can see an example of a 1994 strip here. On the available evidence, I don't think this run lasted more than a year or so, but the assistance of anyone with fewer gaps in their collection would be very much welcomed.

Although PaB did not have a home in a weekly comic for much of the eighties and a significant part of the nineties, they did make quite a few appearances in the digest-sized Comic Libraries during that time, and were mainstays of Classics From the Comics.

Whilst this version is known as Puss and Boots, it is more frequently spelt as Puss an' Boots or Puss 'n' Boots. (I am aware this may be the least interesting fact ever.)

Many of the duo's aunts and uncles appeared over the years, most of whom were Scottish.

Note that a very similar but clearly different drawing to the splash panel on this one appears on the cover of Fun-Size Dandy #319; it's presumably taken from the original Sparky version of this story. (A Fun-Size Dandy from that near the end -- there would be just five more issues after that one -- would almost certainly be a reprint, but it's nonetheless interesting that the twosome continued to appear there long after they'd been retired from the full-size comic.)

Although he was introduced pretty early on in the Sparky era, this is probably the only appearance of Tich in a Dandy strip; he's certainly not in any of the other 1999-2000 strips, and it seems unlikely he was in the mid-nineties incarnation. (Baggle.)

That aforementioned very last strip which did not run until issue #3054 has another curiosity: In that issue, for the first time, that week's Bananaman story was placed on the cover of the Dandy. (The comic had experimented with different cover stars for one or two issues in 1999, but Cuddles and Dimples were the full-time cover stars from July 1999 to November 2000.) It seems almost as if this was intended as a tribute to Geering in the issue which carried his final work for the weekly comic, and might be part of the reason for the delay (although if so, it seems a bit odd they'd wait that long; Bananaman strips drawn by Appleby had been running for several months by that time).