Showing posts with label John M. Burns. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John M. Burns. Show all posts

Tuesday, 19 May 2015

The Tomorrow People



The Tomorrow People was ITV's answer to Dr Who, except with even less money for special effects.
For those who weren't in the UK at the time, The Tomorrow People were basically the X-Men, except they all had the same powers. They were a group of teenage mutants who were the next step in human evolution due to their telepathic skills and ability to 'jaunt' ( teleport ) and who'd taken it upon themselves to protect us 'saps' ( Homo Sapiens ) from all kinds of threats.
As the self-appointed best representatives of Humanity, they were also the first point of contact for any nice aliens out there, and were always jaunting off on adventures to other planets.
Too, they spent a lot of their time helping new Tomorrow People 'break out' and discover their true nature ( subtext much? )
The reason that, even if we'd realised, we didn't care about the lame special effects was a) we were too busy jaunting around the playground and b) that incredibly trippy and spooky opening title sequence:


Luckily, the inevitable Look-In comic strip had unlimited special effects, AND John M. Burns. Here's a killer story where the People go all Dennis Wheatley, and face off against the Devil, something that never happened in the show, more's the pity.
Not only is Burns artwork as wonderful as always, but the writer, presumably longtime Look-In scribe Angus P. Allen, makes the effort to use lead Tomorrow Person John's incredibly posh school-teacherish speech patterns.
The only thing wrong with this strip is that it reflects a later roster for the gang, and not the team from the first series ( and on the cover above ), thereby missing out on one of the show's best unintentional running gags.
Throughout the first series, the character of Kenny was played by a young lad with no acting experience, who turned out to be so bad that each episode has a scene where the People are off on another adventure, and Kenny starts to come with John, Carol & Stephen, before one of them invariably says: 'Er, no, Kenny, you stay and look after the lab'
Honestly, check out a couple of episodes on youtube, it happens every damn time.















Thursday, 2 October 2014

Jane



Jane is the queen of British 'good girl' heroines, the patron saint of innocent young things who just can't seem to help constantly falling out of their clothes. She was the UK forces' sweetheart in World War 2, and I'm sure you've all heard the story about the British army making it's long delayed advance into North Africa, our boys being motivated on the day Jane finally appeared nude in her strip.
Towards the end of the Bronze Age, Jane returned to her home in The Daily Mirror, presumably because it was the early '80's and she knew we all needed cheering up.
This new strip's original title was Jane, Grandaughter Of Jane but no one cares about continuity in this case, so it was soon dropped. Garth never aged, so why should Jane?
These scans come from world's greatest John M. Burns fan and our old pal Sean Philbo Phillips, who used to get his Nan to cut Jane out of her copy of The Mirror and save them for him. Because that's what Nan's do.