COMIC CULTURE SHOCK...
IT’S ELECTRIFYING!
Self-styled comics guru Mark Campbell goes back to the 1960s and casts a spotlight over Sparky, a publication for younger readers that managed to last for over a decade, despite its somewhat old-fashioned views…
“Everyone’s a little bit racist,” goes the song from Avenue Q. Well, if you think people are a little bit racist now, how about winding the clock back to 1965 and taking a gander at Sparky? It was, as they say, a different age. Sparky (later The Sparky Comic) was a D C Thompson publication aimed at slightly younger children than its perennial favourites The Beano and The Dandy. And while I’m probably exaggerating the racist angle—it’s not up there with Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech—it is impossible to ignore.
The name of the comic derives from its early cover star, a jet black ‘African native’ character, barefoot, with bangles on his ankles and wrists, a grass skirt and thick red lips. Thankfully, he didn’t talk in ‘Jamaican patois’, and he didn’t have a bone through his nose, and was generally shown to be just as clever, if not more so, than the people around him. In fact, he was remarkably similar to the similarly ‘culturally insensitive’ Sooty Snowball from an old D C Thompson title, the short lived The Magic Comic. However, that ran from 1939 to 1941, almost thirty years earlier, when the world was definitely a different place. (But then The Black and White Minstrel Show was still showing on BBC1 in 1978, so logic and good taste go out of the window). Sparky’s adventures ran for 210 issues, ending, thankfully, in the issue dated 25 January 1969 Sparky was edited by Bill Mann (later Ian Chisolm) and was a 24-page affair, divided roughly into four or five two-page adventure serials and eight or nine humour strips. It ran for an impressive 652 issues, finally merging with Topper in 1977 (see Infinity #42). The first of its numbered issues is cover dated 23 January 1965, the obligatory free gift being a ‘Flying Snorter’. This was basically a balloon/whoopee cushion combo that you blew up and let fly round the room, letting off a hilarious farting noise. Its appeal is timeless—I’m willing to bet my four-year-old son Oscar would love it.