Red Lines

This is a very early example of Ali's Baba, a strip which appeared in D. C. Thomson's Sparky from January 1970 up until the comic's end in July 1977; it was drawn by Malcolm "Mal" Judge, better known for D. C. stablemates such as The Numskulls and Billy Whizz. This particular strip is taken from the Sparky Book 1971; the Christmas books were usually finished at least a year before publication, and Baba and his guardian angel must have just sneaked in before the deadline to debut in the weekly comic and the accompanying annual in the same year.

In this particular strip, Ali's invisibility to the other characters is represented by making him transparent. Which seems fair enough. However, it appears very unlikely this method was used in any other strip.

For the vast majority of editions (this example is from the 1973 book),¹ they did something more interesting -- having the outline of Ali and his speech balloons appear in colour:

This certainly isn't the only example of comics taking advantage of the duotone colour scheme decades before they were printed in full colour -- similar tactics were used for thought balloons, dreams and fantasy sequences in other strips -- but it's simple yet very effective. (Judge tends to keep the backgrounds as uncluttered as possible to help sell the effect.)

This method was definitely being used as early as the fifth edition in the weekly comic, raising the possibility that the strip from the 1971 annual was done very early (Baba does seem to be a bit off-model), before they thought of this idea, they hadn't quite nailed down how the strip should look, or for some reason related to the annual's production the usual method wasn't possible on that page. It's even possible that it was just a mistake -- the parts that needed to be turned into colour line would need to be indicated at the printing stage, or sent as a separate overlay, so perhaps for that page it was just omitted in error.

Ali's Baba survived the Sparky's closure and merger with the Topper, where the twosome were a big success and appeared until 1988. With more and more of the comics being printed in colour, especially the Christmas annuals, the story was no longer always limited to duotone but continued to represent Ali's invisibility in the same way -- here's a late-stage example, from the Topper Book 1987:

I presume I don't need to point out how the transparent title panel helps to convey Ali's invisibility in the same way as the duotone strips, and sells the effect for the rest of the story. But I have anyway.

Ali and his Baba were dropped from the Topper in the final reshuffle before the comic merged with the Beezer to form the Beezer and Topper in 1990; they departed at the same time as another survivor of the Sparky merger, Peter Piper, who would resurface in the Dandy further down the line. The only remnant of Sparky still going after they'd gone was Hungry Horace, one of several Sparky strips that had actually originated in the Dandy and was revived to launch the new comic.

Apart from the fact that one of the strips that replaced it was Stavros, at first glance a knock-off of the Harry Enfield character but apparently made with Enfield's blessing, it's worth considering that if they'd held on a little longer (and managed to outlast Malcolm Judge's death in 1989 -- I'm pretty sure the above eighties strip is still Judge, but apparently some Topper strips were done by Vic Neill) they could have quite possibly survived not only to the B&T, but even to the Beano or the Dandy when that comic also folded in 1993. Especially given what happened thereafter.

More than a decade on, Ali's Baba was reprinted in the Dandy for a few months around 2003-04,² colourised and with a new name. (In the final months before its controversial revamp, the Dandy was playing host to quite a bit of reprint material: the same issue I've used also features Edd the Ghost, reprinted from Beezer and Topper in the early nineties, and Piggles from Hoot in the mid-eighties. Adjacent issues also have Keyhole Kate reprints from the late eighties and early nineties; Kate had first appeared in the very first issue of the Dandy, but also had a spell in the Sparky when it first began.)

It would be nice to be able to directly compare an original Sparky or Topper strip to a Dandy reprint. However, in this case I don't think it's strictly necessary. Let me show you what I mean.

The different coloured outline for the speech bubble is a nice touch, but... somehow it loses something. And surely the above Topper story indicates the old method still worked just as well?

---

1. For the first few years of the strip's life it seems to have vacillated between the titles Ali's Baba and Ali and His Baba before settling on the former. ^↩
2. The book The Art and History of the Dandy doesn't include it in its index of stories, although it does list every other reprinted strip, so its omission must just be a mistake. ^↩