26: Power Cut? Boo. Ghost Story! Yay!
How embarrassing. You know, if people didn’t think I was a genius because of the fact that I can write and draw comic strips :p – they’d realise that I’m actually an idiot.
So I did this strip, thinking this is great! It’ll be really current and seasonal! Then my wife just told me over dinner that… no, worse: my 9 year old son told me that, Halloween isn’t for over a month!
Roll With It!
But “What the hell”, I decide, after spending some minutes feeling stupid, and wondering, “Can I pull off another strip from scratch with 2.5 hours for my Friday Deadline?” No, is the answer to that one! I worked flat out today from 11am – 5:30pm forgetting to even eat lunch, doing this one. But – I decided, I’ll roll with it. I’ll do a Halloween/spooky strip every Friday from here until OCTOBER 31st. October.
Sound good?
At least I’m not doing Christmas stuff yet!
Classic Horror
Above: The best Fun Comic ever. Monster Fun!
Didn’t we all love those classic monsters in the 1970s though? Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, The Wolf Man, The Mummy… We may have been too young to actually see any of the films, but they were pop-culture icons. The best comic ever – for me, as a 7 or 8 year old 70s kid, was Monster Fun! From the same publishing house as Whoopee! – Monster Fun had everything. It was a comic (check), it was funny (check, check), it was full of monsters and ghosts (check, check, CHECK!)
My cousin Ross, in Merseyside gave me a heap of them during one family visit to the relatives Liverpool, and I just loved them. They even had their own version of JAWS. He was called GUMS! And his strapline was ‘His Bark is Worse than his Bite’.
Later, I graduated to HOOK-JAW, which was another more cynical play on the popularity of JAWS in the extremely violent ACTION Comic.
** Stay Groovy, all you 1970s kids! **
– John White
If you enjoy today’s strip and article, please leave a ‘comment‘ so that I know? And please ‘Share’ it – in whichever way you prefer. Every bit helps, to get my comic ‘out there’ – and – encourages me to stick at it.
Thanks!
I like how you are using the telly as a light source. I remember doing homework and crafts etc. just by the light of the telly – it seems mad now!
Ha! Thanks.
Funny I still clearly ‘see’ you sat by the fireplace, about 3 feet from the telly, with the 2 button remote control on the floor in front of you. The telly was probably nearly as close to you as the remote was. A Volume on and off button, and a channel changer. We had two channels, and one of them probably wasn’t even in air at that hour!
Lovely strip, John. I like the bird’s eye views of the 70s living room: it enables you not only to show the decor but also the way the family are simultaneously close and doing their own things.
I longed to celebrate Halloween (or Hallowe’en, as I still pedantically call it sometimes) but nobody ever did when I was a kid, apart from some half-hearted attempts at apple bobbing. I would have loved to watch scary movies, go trick or treating etc.
I had no idea you used turnips in place of pumpkins in Ireland, but then I had no idea you had frequent power cuts either. We’re sort of conditioned here to remember them as the result of industrial disputes, but I guess they were just as often the result of faulty supply.
Was Halloween not really a very big deal in England Darren?
When I came to Ireland in 1977, there was no Guy Fawkes Night – for obvious reasons, and Halloween was when you lit bonfires and maybe (illegally) used fireworks. Fireworks still are illegal here, so some people drive across the border to Northern Ireland to buy them. To be honest, I think they SHOULD remain illegal if you haven’t a license. I’ve seen kids doing stuff with them at Halloween which makes my hair stand on end.
I know the power cuts in the UK were due to strikes – and Ted Heath’s government introduced a 4 day week to save energy. Why we had power-cuts in Ireland is something I’m actually not sure about, but I’ll look it up. There were LOADS of strikes going on here in the 1970s, but maybe the infrastructure was a bit temperamental too.
I googled it: ‘Long before pumpkin carving became popular, Celtic people in Ireland were carving turnips and lighting them with embers, to ward off evil spirits. This Celtic custom is the historical root of Halloween pumpkin carving. Irish immigrants brought their tradition with them to America. Pumpkins are native to America. In those days, they were not found in Ireland. As Irish immigrants came to America, they discovered pumpkins. They quickly discovered that hollow, softer pumpkins, were much easier to carve.’
That is FASCINATING! Well done Candace. So it started in Ireland.
You know, if you light a turnip – the evil spirits will be held off by the smell alone.
Brilliant. I am amazed that we used turnips for Hallowe’en – I remember mummy carving them. What a job, that is dedication!
Oh, I remember doing it too!
Okay, once probably. I was sat in front of the ‘Incredible Hulk’, breaking my wrist with some sort of tiny scooper thing. I presume there were no American style Pumpkins for sale in Ireland or the UK? I mean, there’s not a whole lot you can do with them!
Or was it just that we never really did the sort of fancy, cool stuff that other families did? 😀
I don’t think people really did carve pumpkins then. Maybe just wealthy D4-type families. Or maybe carving turnips was a N. Irish thing.
Yeah, it sounds very posh Dublin 4 alright. “Yeah, when I was over in the States – this is what folks there were doing.”