Cracked

Some scans in this article contain racist caricatures.

Shortly after the closure of Buzz, D. C. Thomson decided to have another go at launching a new weekly humour comic for children. It would do things a bit differently from its immediate predecessor: whereas Buzz had been in A3 size, the new comic would be A4, allowing it to boast 32 pages of comics and features. Although it didn't have a regular cover star, instead featuring a large splash panel promoting the characters within, it would feature a character that did not really have a strip of his own, but rather served as the comic's host, not dissimilar to some titles by rival publisher Fleetway of the time. It would prioritise gags, and lots of them, and include several points of reader interactivity.

The first issue of Cracker was on the shelves in January 1975, just two weeks after the conclusion of Buzz, but this title was destined to have an even shorter run: just 87 issues, across twenty months.

I have an issue from just after the halfway point here, number #51, and -- along with some examples of stories that had already been phased out by this point -- I'm going to well and truly scan it in.

Sammy, drawn by Ken H. Harrison, was the comic's aforementioned 'host' who appeared in a number of different features.

Already we come to what I warned you about before: one of the most racist characters in D. C. Thomson history. I believe I previously described Young Foo, the Kung Fu Kid as "quite possibly the most racist thing ever to appear in any British comic", but I retract that: there is definitely more racist material than this, appearing in significantly later publications, just not every single week. But it's still horrible, and this is probably one of the least objectionable editions there is.

I will note that the title character does not speak in a racist phonetic accent in the strip itself, but does on the occasions he crosses over into other strips in the comic. As against that, at least one edition of his own strip ends with a stunningly racist punchline which makes Tintin in the Congo look progressive.

Depressingly, this story survived Cracker's closure and merger with the Beezer. That's an A4 size publication, merging into an A3 one. As with several other cases, Cracker appeared in the Beezer as a pull-out section which could be folded over to make an 8-page mini-comic. Normally, the 'junior' comic remained in the title of its new home for less than a year, but this 'two-in-one' nature meant that the Beezer was branded as Beezer and Cracker until the end of April 1978, over eighteen months after the merger.

Less than a year after that, in February 1979, another D. C. Thomson title merged into the Beezer, namely Plug, which would also appear in the same 'pull-out' format. Although I don't have the exact issues, it seems pretty certain that all but one of the survivors of Cracker vacated the Beezer when this second merger happened; certainly they stopped some time that year.

Despite frequent accusations of being highly derivative of Dennis the Menace and Gnasher, Billy the Kid (and Pongo) also survived the merger.

The Headhunters of Skookum Skool was a carry-over from Buzz, with a new twist: every week a new headmaster would be hired, but would last for those two pages only before somehow being scared off. Spookum Skool had also been carried over from Buzz, but was retired around six months into Cracker's run, along with a further spin-off which we'll cover later on. Headhunters was also not long for this comic: it appeared for just four more issues after this one, bringing the Skookumverse to an end.

Although he appeared from the first issue, Dunder Ed was sometimes an intermittent presence in Cracker, missing seventeen of the eighty-seven issues.

If Cracker had a success story, Scrapper (not to be confused with Lord Snooty's pal of the same name, who had his own strip in the Beano for a few stints in the late 50s) was undoubtedly it: he was the only survivor of the cull of Cracker characters from the Beezer in 1979, and continued to appear until 1988. (Oddly, despite appearing from issue 1, he missed the last two issues of Cracker itself.)

The Astro-nuts, drawn by Alan Rogers, was added mid-run.

Readers' jokes page Jest a Minute also survived the merger; Sammy was usually drawn by Ken Harrison, as previously mentioned, but this doesn't look enormously like his work to me.

Hector the Collector, drawn by John Aldrich, gives us an example of Sammy guesting in the strips of Cracker to provide the punchline; this strip would also be retired in a month's time.

Wonder Wellies is another D. C. story by newspaper daily artist Andrew Christine, that was added in the comic's first retool when the other two Skookum strips were retired. (An identically named strip with a very similar concept appeared in Buster from 1983 to 1985.)

One of the most notable things about Cracker is that it contains the first published work by Barrie Appleby, who is still drawing for D. C. today; he currently draws Roger the Dodger for the Beano, and continues to draw Cuddles and Dimples for the Dandy Annual. (He had a stint at Fleetway after Cracker's closure, but was back at D. C. by the early eighties.) Both the strips he was drawing for Cracker at this point were replacements for ones which had been phased out at different points of its first year, examples of which we'll get to further down this post.

Fiends Beans by Gordon Bell was also added in an early retool.

Jimmy Jest -- His Shadow's a Pest is derivative of Jimmy Jinx and What He Thinks from Buzz (and now appearing in the Topper), down to both being drawn by Ken Harrison, although it had only been added to Cracker about three months before this issue.

Joe Soap and his magic bubbles, drawn by John Dallas, also survived the Beezer merger; it's a curious mix between a straightforward 'funny' story and serialised action at this stage, although it seems to have lost some of the latter and become more of a gag-a-week strip by the time it reached the Beezer.

Absolutely no comment whatsoever.

Slojak is another Barrie Appleby story; Kojak was at the time being broadcast on Saturday nights on BBC One, and this strip is Fleetway-esque in its homaging of current American TV series.

One of the earliest D. C. strips created by my favourite comics artist John Geering, The Nutters was reprinted sporadically in the Dandy for a period in 2004; despite appearing in all but one issue, they did not survive the merger, perhaps because of Geering's increasing workload.

It strikes me that with more (if smaller) pages to play with, Cracker basically split its letters page up over several different features. The Ghastly Geezer Gallery is suspiciously similar to a feature in the short-lived Fleetway comic Shiver and Shake (79 issues, March 1973 to October 1974), Creepy Creations, with the key difference that in that comic, the reader-submitted illustrations would be touched up by artist Ken Reid (perhaps also the case here, looking at the line work, but probably not to the same extent).

Clearly Young Foo wasn't enough racism for one comic, because there's some more up next.

Simple Spyman by Bill Ritchie appeared in every edition of Cracker, but was not carried forward to the Beezer.

Cracker's obligatory 'serious' adventure story, The Iron Hand by Paddy Brennan, also appeared in every edition (initially alongside a sci-fi serial, Castaways on Planet Doom, which was retired around nine months in) and survived the merger.

Another Fleetway-esque strip, Little 'Orror by David Easington was added a few months in, and also appeared in the Beezer afterwards.

(You may have noticed that nearly all of Cracker is black-and-white; just the front and back are in colour, and even the centre pages are only duotone. I presume this was a trade-off for the increased page count compared to other D. C. comics, but it doesn't feel like one that was worth making.)

* * *

Just to quickly round up some of the most notable stories not in this issue (all had been retired by this point), we start with the other Skookum Skool spinoff, which put the focus on the school's playgroup:

The Snookums kicked off a four-page feature branded "Skooldaze", which featured all three Skookum stories spread across the centre pages; Spookum Skool was retired in issue 23 and The Snookums the week after.

Big-Head Branny the Strong-Arm Janny was an early Barrie Appleby story (in fact I believe his first published British comics work), which featured for the comic's first six months. A lot of Appleby's early work is reminiscent of Ken Reid (particularly the levels of grotesqueness reached in B-HBtS-AJ), who drew for D. C. in the fifties and sixties before departing to work for Odhams and Fleetway, and it's interesting to note that Appleby now draws Roger the Dodger -- the last of Reid's creations still running in a weekly comic.

And Curly's Commandos is the other of Appleby's Cracker strips.

Finally, another reader-submission feature, Mad Ads, which appears here courtesy of an eBay listing:

Obviously in any summary of Cracker, it's hard to get around the fact that it contains a story which is just not conscionable, but an issue that many of these titles have is that, no matter how good their stronger material was, they struggled to establish their own identity -- and the issue is exacerbated by giving Cracker 32 pages, which makes some of the material feel very thinly-spread. Apart from Scrapper, no story from this comic managed to last for five years in total, although the thirteen-odd years he notched up isn't bad.

So, that brings an end to the D. C. Thomson mayflies: to put them in chronological order, Buzz, Cracker, Plug, Nutty, Hoot and even Beezer & Topper are all accounted for. (Well, I'd like to scan in a much later edition of Nutty at some point for comparison, but we'll see if one turns up in the big pile of comics in the charity shop.)

There are still many, many short-lived titles by Fleetway to go, with only Nipper ticked off that list so far. Some would make good articles. Others it would be hard to find a representative issue for, or have individual stories I could get a whole post out of (or, indeed, already have done). Some are tricky to track down. One in particular already has whole websites devoted to it and it's hard to see what I could add. But I think it'd be neat to assemble a complete collection of one issue of each of these titles.