The Wild Wonders

The Wild Wonders was a fun, completely charming strip from Valiant about Rick & Charlie Wild, a couple of brothers who'd grown up feral on Worrag Island in The Outer Hebrides, and who'd subsequently become world champion athletes, there being not much to do on the island but go running.
On reaching civilization, they were put into the care of Mike Flynn, an Olympic swimmer who, weirdly, also owned a garage in Bexleyheath.
The hyperactive lads were always happy for Mike to put them up for any charity race or sporting event going, and they pretty much tried out, and won at, every sport going over the years, along the way battling hillbillies, wild bears, gangsters, movie producers, Japanese soldiers who thought the War was still on, and the kind of cheating adults who'd graduated from the Dick Dastardly school of fair play.
It was kind of Wacky Races meets Stig Of The Dump, and owed most of it's popularity to Mike Western's superb, friendly art style.
Here's a beautiful colour Western piece from the 1971 Valiant annual, where once again, the lads leave those rotten grown-ups eating their dust.

The Leopard From Lime Street

We talked about the UK's answer to Spider-Man a while ago, but now I can finally show off a full story of this delightful strip, from the pages of kids' weekly Buster.

Interesting how it follows the Spidey template so exactly, not just in Billy ( The Leopard ) Farmer's choice of career, or his J. Jonah Jameson-like boss Thaddeus Clegg, but in the fact that The Leopard From Lime Street is as much of a klutz as Spidey ever was. I mean, tripping over power cables? Nice move, Billy!

Art here by Marvellous Mike Western, and isn't The Leopard's title logo / illustration the greatest lead in to a strip ever?

( Aside to any fans from the other side of the pond / the states: ' Lime Street ', not so much these days, but certainly in the days this strip premiered, was the downmarket, low income area of a british city. Generally where the docks / warehouses were ie. where poor people lived. Which is why Billy is so keen to score a whole Twenty Five Pounds  from his boss. )

This is the story everybody's talking about, pals! Don't miss it!

Darkie's Mob

I was never that into the british war weeklies back in The Bronze Age. Mags like Valiant and The Victor, although I bought them occasionally just seemed, well....kind of old fashioned. Full of strips that were rooted in a late '50's idea of what comics should be, they simply weren't as sexy as the american comics. Even Battle, John Wagner & Pat Mill's war anthology that began in 1975, had it's fair share of plucky Tommy's taking on Jerry under fairly dull artwork ( or so it seemed at the time. ) But there were glorious exceptions. Battle was a conflicted beast, midway between the traditional boys comic feel of The Victor and the all-out anarchy of Action, ( and by extension, paving the way for the insanity of 2000AD ). As well as the brutally realistic Charley's War, and the anti-establishment japes of Major Eazy, Battle also mined it's own field in visceral, fuck you war strips: Like Darkie's Mob.

If Major Eazy was british comics' answer to Kelly's Heroes, then Darkie's Mob was surely it's version of Apocalypse Now. As brutal, vicious, unrelenting & uncompromising as it's lead character, Darkie's Mob was the legend of Captain Joe Darkie, a hate-fuelled, stone-cold rat bastard of a hero who, through fear and intimidation, molds a squad of stragglers in the Burmese jungle into ' the most savage fighting force the japanese have ever known. '
But Darkie is not entirely what he appears to be, and the revelation of his mysterious past is part of what drives the story. Like a lot of war mags at the time, there is a breathtaking amount of casual racism, ( I doubt you'd even get away with the title these days! ) but here it kind of fits. Joe ain't a good guy by any stretch of the imagination, making Sgt's Rock & Fury look like loud-mouthed fakes every blood-drenched step of the way.
Titan are about to release collected editions of both Darkie & Eazy, and I'm gonna be snapping 'em up, but for now, here's the opener. Don't fear the japs! Fear Me!