A LOOK AT COR!! STRIPS: ROBBY HOOD AND HIS ONE MAN BAND, PART TWO

The third story ran from 13th February until 27th March, 1971 (issue Nos. 37 – 43). Robby and Muchflour accidentally find themselves on board a strange empty barge sailing along the canal. They discover that the whole boat is booby trapped. Three dangerous looking men stop the barge and leap on board. Robby and Muchflour hide in a secret compartment in the hull and find themselves in the company of Captain Horatio Spike, a retired Royal Navy officer. Captain Spike owns the barge and has booby-trapped it against the attackers. The background story is that three weeks ago he won a contract to haul coal for one of the local mines but a Ned Tarrant wanted the business so he and his men set to get captain Spike. The thugs fall victim to the different booby-traps but manage to scupper the boat just before jumping ashore. The barge goes underwater. Robby and Muchflour decide to go after the mob. They find Tarrant and his cronies preparing to cast off with their own horse-driven barge. Muchflour launches an unsuccessful attack on horseback and ends up on board the boat, unconscious. Robby follows the barge until it arrives at the coal depot and is about to start loading. He boards the boat and reunites with Muchflour. After a few action-packed episodes Tarrant and his mob throw Robby into the canal. The spectre saves him but since Muchflour is invisible to the thugs, they think that Robby walks on water. The invisible pal helps Robby persuade the thugs that he is a magician and the boy forces Tarrant to sign his barge over to Horatio Spike.

An eposide from the third story from COR!! issue dated 13th March, 1971 (No. 41)

The final story started in the issue of 3rd April and ended in the issue of 24th April, 1971 (issue Nos. 44 – 47).  Muchflour teaches Robby to fire arrows. A stray arrow startles a lady who was painting a picture behind the threes. They carry her up to the house and dial the ambulance but a strange bearded man secretly cuts telephone wires. While Robby and Muchflour are busy trying to revive the lady, the evil man uses a fishing rod to fetch one of the paintings lined along the walls of the room. The lady comes to her senses and recognises the strange man who is Ivan Popoff. The boy and his ghost pal rush forward to get him but Popoff grabs the painting and escapes with his car. The stolen picture is “The Stately Stag”. The lady’s name is Amelia Dawson, she is an artist and art collector. The background story is that she bought the painting 6 months ago. Soon after Ivan Popoff appeared and began to pester her into selling it to him. She refused because she liked the painting, so now he finally stole it. The two friends suspect there is something strange about that worthless work of art. Popoff suffers a car accident and Robby recovers the painting. He discovers there’s another one underneath and it’s a Rembrandt. Popoff confesses that he stole the painting from a famous museum last month, disguised it and hid it in a friend’s junk shop but then the old lady bought it in mistake and he had to try to get it back. Popoff goes to prison. Miss Dawson invites Robby to live with her in her house and Robby accepts with his pal’s approval. Muchflour is getting weary of the modern times and returns to sleep in a hollow oak from where he emerged in the beginning of the series.

An episode from the fourth story from COR!! dated 24th April, 1971 (No. 47).
This was the last episode of the series.

A LOOK AT COR!! STRIPS: ROBBY HOOD AND HIS ONE MAN BAND, PART ONE

Robby Hood and His One Man Band was yet another adventure serial in COR!! that occupied two pages of the paper and lasted from 7th November, 1970 until 24th April, 1971 (issue Nos. 23 – 47). The black and white feature was illustrated by Ron Turner. The script was by Scott Goodall who is said to have written all adventure tales in COR!!

Robby Hood lived with his step-father and step-brothers who were always making fun of his name and place of birth (Nottingham) until he finally decided to run away from home and vanish into the Sherwood Forest. There he met a weirdly-dressed bloke named Muchflour Amber, one–time miller from the parish of Mansfield who spoke in a peculiar way and was seeking a fellow by the name of Robin Hood. Robby realised that the bloke was a spectre from the Middle Ages on a quest to find the long-dead heroic outlaw and join his band of merry men. Saddened by the news that Robin Hood was no longer around, Muchflour offered to become Robby’s faithful servant. One peculiar thing about the ghost was that Robby was the only person who was able to see him (well, apart from the readers of COR!!) while all the other characters of the feature were completely unaware of his presence so Muchflour never failed to catch them off-guard. It was a great advantage because the characters who Robby Hood and his “one man band” had to deal with were usually dangerous criminals. 

The series consisted of the opening episode in the issue cover dated 7th November, 1970 (No. 23) and four serialised adventures.

The first story ran from 14th November until 12th December, 1970 (issue Nos. 24 – 28).  The pair accidentally encounter two armed thugs who have kidnapped Miss Rushton, a millionaire’s daughter, and are holding her for a ransom of 20,000 pounds. Robby tries to free the girl but the bandits capture him as well and take both of their prisoners to their hiding place. Muchflour brings their treachery to an end with the aid of his ancient acorn of wisdom and a young stag whom he summons with a blow-horn. In the process of liberating Robby and the girl, Muchflour sets the crooks’ hideout on fire and grounds their helicopter. The girl reunites with her father and the kidnappers are arrested. Robby and Muchflour stay in the Sherwood Forest.

An episode from the first story from COR!! issue dated 5th December, 1970 (No. 27)

The second adventure span over the period from 19th December, 1970 until 6th February, 1971 (issue Nos. 29 – 36). Muchflour and Robby meet old Dan Spooner who has a smallholding on the edge of the forest. A construction company has bought Spooner’s land and wants him to leave. The evil foreman Herbie Bennett and his construction men try different dirty plots to drive the old man off his land and make him abandon his hut. Muchflour and Robby try to help the old-timer as much as they can but the construction men finally bulldoze the house. Spooner, Muchflour and Robby discover a maze of tunnels underneath the hut and meet a strange dwarf Bimbo who turns out to be the wicked foreman’s accomplice and lures Robby into a trap. Construction men capture Robby and carry him to their quarters where he finds out that the real reason why Bennett and his gang were so desperate to evict old Dan Spooner and demolish his house was the soil. It contains a high percentage of iron ore and the tunnels under the house were made by Bennett and his thugs prospecting. Evicting Spooner was a deliberate fraud because mining rights for the area would guarantee a fortune. The thugs dump Robby and Spooner in a hole and are going to bury them under tons of quick-setting cement but Muchflour pulls them out. They follow the crooks and make them confess by using the “noise torture” administered with Muchflour’s ancient super-loud blow-horn.  Herbie Bennett and his cronies are taken away by the police. Mr. Spooner offers Robby to stay with him, but the boy prefers the company of his invisible friend.

An episode from the second story from COR!! dated 30th January, 1971 (No. 35)

The remaining two stories will be covered in the second post on Robby Hood and His One Man Band.

A LOOK AT COR!! STRIPS: FOUR ALONE

Four Alone on the Abandoned Island was an adventure serial that occupied two pages and lasted from the first issue of COR!! until 31st October, 1970 (issue No. 22). According to a post in Lew Stringer’s excellent blog, it was illustrated by Mike Noble (at least initially). The script-writer was Scott Goodall who wrote all adventure serials for COR!!

The scene was set in a remote part of Northern Wales at the Moordale Medical Research Centre. Three boys (Barry Norton, Fleshpot Farraday (“Fleshpot”) and Beanpole Baines (“Beanpole”) and a girl (Vera Miles) participate in an unusual scientific experiment to study the effects of exercise and controlled diet on children of different physical appearance. The three boys hate each other and keep trying to knock each other about, so scientists send the four on a four-week survival course in the mountains, hoping they might learn to get along. Curious about a strange red glow in the sky, the Four return to civilization and find that Britain has been taken over by weird soggy creatures called Spungees. The aliens are made of sponge and they fire soggy gas-bombs that stun people. The children discover that the landing of the aliens and their fake radiation blanket threat has prompted the government to issue emergency evacuation orders and the whole population has been transported to Europe. Spungees need water to thrive, they plan to flood the whole of Britain and use it as a base to conquer the planet. The Four soon learn how to repel the monsters with fire because Spungees dread heat and dryness. The children find alien HQ in the marshes on the edge of Dartmoor in Devon County. After a long sequence of cliff-hangers and multiple fallings into alien captivity and breakings back into freedom, the Four finally defeat the aliens, first by spilling oil into the river, setting fire to it and burning to death the army of aliens traveling upstream to establish more posts, then by grabbing the king of Spungees and demanding unconditional surrender from the aliens. British Army pilots are amazed to discover that liberation was achieved by four children who become national heroes and celebrities. The four stopped hating each other. They promise to stick together from now on.

From COR!! dated 3rd October, 1970 (No. 18)

IMHO the story suffered from overuse of manufactured cliff-hangers alongside with pointless strife and name-calling between the children. Nonetheless, it was quite an OK adventure serial, particularly in comparison with the sequel …

The second serial ran from 1st May, 1971 until 18th September, 1971 (issue Nos. 48 – 68) and was called Four Alone Fight Formula X. The foursome are sent on a special mission to Castle Blaney Boarding School in the Scottish Highlands to investigate strange reports of rumblings in the night and farmhouses vanishing without a trace. The children find out that Herman Sourkraut, the school science master, has been secretly experimenting with Formula X that makes plants and living creatures turn into giant monsters. His experiments now complete, the evil scientist is ready to strike. Stage one of his sinister plan involves unleashing a swarm of bees that have their feet dipped in Formula X in order to make every plant they land on grow to giant size and cause chaos. Sourkraut’s plan is so cunning and devious that it takes readers and the four children a while to realise that the bee attack on a plant nursery in the village is only a diversion and that the evil scientist’s final mission is, lo and behold! to wreck Britain’s naval power by destroying the top-secret Holyoak Nuclear Submarine Base! Four Alone bravely deal with every giant monster that the evil scientist sends their way. Sourkraut’s plot is finally foiled and Fleshpot prevents him from escaping on board a pinched navy helicopter. The menace of Herman Sourkraut and Formula X is over at last.

From COR!! dated 21st August, 1971 (No. 64)

The quick summary of the plot makes it appear as if it was quite an exciting story to follow but IMHO it would have benefited a lot if the weekly cliff-hangers were just a tiny bit less made-up. To me the script clearly abused the possibility of introducing endless giant monsters many of whom came and went hardly contributing to the development of the story.

The two serials were the only ones that appeared in COR!! weeklies but there were four more stories in COR!! Annuals and one in a COR!! Holiday Special over the years. Here is the list:

COR!! 1972 Annual: Four Alone in the Castle of Fear (8 pages) – the foursome foil the plot of an evil scientist Llewelyn to launch a missile attack on London from his secret base in a crumbling castle in Wales.

COR!! 1973 Annual: Four Alone and the Alpine Adventure (8 pages) – British intelligence sends the Four to an Austrian ski resort on a mission to escort to London a Hungarian scientist who has defected to the West.

COR!! 1974 Annual: Four Alone and the Sky Jackers (8 pages) – Four Alone are on their way to visit Vera’s brother in the Middle East when a gang of terrorists hi-jack the airliner and demand money for their political cause.

COR!! 1975 Holiday Special: Four Alone Beside the Seaside (5 pages) - Four Alone help catch a gang of thieves who pinched plans of a new boat design from Russell Wolf, boat designer. It appears that the episode was illustrated by the same artist who drew Rat Trap and whose name is unknown to me. Here is the last page of the episode:

From COR!! 1975 Holiday Special

A LOOK AT COR!! STRIPS: KID CHAMELEON, PART ONE

Kid Chameleon was a beautifully written and lavishly presented tale that must have gripped imaginations of many COR!! readers. The story was about an English wonder-boy who survived a plane crash years ago and was reared by reptiles in the Kalahari Desert in South Africa.  After the plane crash chameleon lizards attended the infant with their tongues and gave him a protective skin. As he grew, all reptiles became his friends. He could talk to them in their strange tongue-clicking language and the skin-tight lizard suit of scales enabled him to change colour at will. Kid Chameleon’s quest in life was to find the man who had shot his parents and bring him to justice.

Written by Scott Goodall and illustrated by Joe Colquhoun, Kid Chameleon was launched in the first issue of COR!! and occupied the centerspread for 98 weeks until 15th April, 1972  (issue No. 98). The series consisted of an introductory episode and 12 different serialized adventures, each between 5 and 13 weeks long. Apart from the opening episode, only two of the stories had to do with Kid Chameleon’s “main” mission. The other ten told random adventures of Kid during his clueless but determined travels in Africa and Europe. Just as in the majority of other serialized adventure strips, weekly episodes ended with cliffhangers but in Kid Chameleon they were weaved seamlessly into the storyline and didn’t appear to be there for their own sake (save for the odd one or two).

Kid Chameleon was a great addition to COR!! package. Unfortunately, newsprint often failed to convey the full beauty of Joe Colquhoun’s artwork: quite frequently colours were off-register and not as vivid as the artist had intended them to be.

Let us take a closer look at the series. For the sake of reference and convenience, I have taken the liberty of inventing names for the individual stories that ran consecutively, with the ending of one story smoothly leading to the beginning of a new adventure.  

Intro: Kid’s Quest Begins

Here is the complete intro to the series from the first issue of COR!! I may be wrong but there is something about this opening episode that makes me doubt whether it was really by Joe Colquhoun:

Kid Chameleon and the Valley of Vultures (6 weeks from 13th June, 1970 until 18th July, 1970, issue Nos. 2 – 7)

The scene of the first adventure is set in the South African Kalahari desert. Kid Chameleon is captured by two game poachers who have come to the desert to kill rare antelopes. They can’t afford to turn him loose for fear that he will tell people about their wicked intentions so they tell their native trackers to dump the boy for keeps in the dreaded Valley of Vultures. Kid uses his colour disguise and ability to speak reptile language to save himself from hungry cheetahs and escapes from the valley. Camouflaged in a swarm of migrating butterflies, the lizard boy sets antelopes free while the poachers’ vehicles crash and explode.

From COR!! issue dated 11th July, 1970 (No. 6)

Kid Chameleon and the Arrow of a Thousand Diamonds (11 weeks from 25th July, 1970 until 3rd October, 1970, issue Nos. 8 – 18)

Kid arrives in a remote South African town where he is spotted and captured by Johnny Bull’s-Eye. The evil man demands instant obedience from Kid because he wants to exploit the boy’s extraordinary talents to get hold of the arrow of a thousand diamonds. The quest for the mysterious artefact involves crossing a soggy waste-land swarming with razor-fanged fish, climbing a pinnacle guarded by a hook-beaked hunter and recovering a strange arrow-shaped object. Having overcome all the dangers, Kid delivers it to Johnny Bull’s-Eye. The lizard boy has now served his purpose and Johnny Bull’s-Eye tries to get rid of him. Saved by two crocodiles, Kid sets out on a mission of revenge and unveiling of Johnny’s mystery. He retraces Johnny’s footsteps to a deserted town of Deathbowl Creek. There Kid frees an old hermit Abe Bannermann whom Johnny has tied up before leaving to unearth the arrow of a thousand diamonds and they both rush to stop Johnny. Johnny uses the arrow-shaped object to open the secret door of Deathbowl Creek and retrieves the diamond arrow but is confronted by Kid and Abe. Johnny Bull’s Eye escapes into an abandoned mine...

From COR!! issue dated 26th September, 1970 (No. 17)

Kid and the old hermit set off in pursuit once again. Abe Bannermann tells Kid the story of the diamond arrow. The precious artefact is Abe’s father’s legacy to his son that the old man hid in a safe above the mine to prevent its theft. The object that Kid retrieved from the pinnacle in the marshes was the key to the safe. Johnny Bull’s-Eye stole the only map giving the exact location where the key was hidden but couldn’t get to the pinnacle until he found Kid Chameleon whom he could send to cross the deadly swamp for him. In the meantime, Johnny tries to blow the mine up and escape through the ventilation shaft but Kid foils his evil plot. The arrow is back with its rightful owner and Johnny will face a court of law. Kid’s own quest continues.

Kid Chameleon and the Ivory Skull of Uhulu (13 weeks from 10th October, 1970 until 2nd January, 1971, issue Nos. 19 – 31)

The scene of this next tale is set in East Africa. Kid accidentally discovers a secret laboratory of an evil scientist Sunset Kilpenny. Helped by his native assistant Zarbampa, the old man performs experiments on wild animals by immersing them in a strange muddy liquid that makes them become three times as big. Kid threatens to foil Kilpenny’s evil plot, so the scientist decides to act quick – he uses the liquid on a huge ape named Goliath that obeys the scientist’s every command. He orders the hairy monster to attack a big house in the clearing of a vast coffee plantation inhabited by plantation owner Sam Crouch and his son Don. Kid comes to their rescue. The man urges Kid to stop the gorilla because Kilpenny has ordered it to steal the ivory skull of Uhulu and he must not have it. Kid tries but to no avail. The brute finds the safe, cracks it open and Sunset Kilpenny gets hold of the skull. After twenty years the sacred dance of the Fiery Dawn shall again be performed!  Sam Crouch and Danny get their rifles and the three of them set off to catch Kilpenny before it’s too late. On their way to the shrine, the plantation owner tells Kid that Kilpenny owned the land next to his when he was a young man and used it as a transit camp for stolen wild game and animal experiments. Kilpenny then became chief of the warlike Uhulu tribe because he had found an ivory skull and Uhulu legend said that whoever possessed it was their leader until death. Then one night Crouch managed to steal the skull and Uhulus lost faith in Kilpenny. Now with the help of the giant gorilla he has managed to steal the skull back and is about to be reinstated as Uhulu chief. The three of them are ambushed by Goliath but still manage to make their way to Uhulu camp. Once there, they see that the sacred ritual has already begun...

From Corr issue dated 19th December, 1970 (No. 29)

Kid uses his talents and strips Kilpenny of his powers but the possessed scientist is reluctant to give up. He gets everyone trapped in a cave-in and retreats to his laboratory. Kid follows Kilpenny to his lab where the scientist prepares to turn a lion and a leopard into giants and bring the Uhulu nation under his command. Kid manages to overturn the tank and spill the potion to waste. In a frenzy of rage Kilpenny scoops up a broken spear and hurdles it at the giant gorilla. Furious at the sudden pain, Goliath flattens the entire laboratory. Kid gets a shrinking antidote and squirts it at the ape that falls down senseless and shrinks to its normal size. Kilpenny is defeated and his dreams of glory are ended because jail awaits him. Kid rushes to free the people trapped in the cave-in so that he can move on to search for the man who shot his parents.

The next post will cover three more exciting stories: Kid Chameleon and the Treasure of Ghouli Cavern; Kid Chameleon beats Saphire Crooks and Escaped Convict gets Kid Chameleon into Trouble, be sure to come back and check them out :)