A bagged comic with gifts was a novelty 18 years ago when other comics featured gifts that were enclosed within the comic or cover-mounted with sticky tape. However it soon became commonplace with other publishers wanting to imitate the successful format. It's now resulted in the shelves being stuffed with bagged comics and "plastic tat" with magazines sliding untidily into a mess, obscuring each other and spilling onto the floor. The other huge disadvantage is that potential readers can't browse the comic before buying! This air of mystery worked for Lucky Bag Comic but it's not ideal for every title! Such bagged comics now mainly sell on the attraction of their "gifts" rather than the excitement of the reading matter. (Fortunately The Beano is very rarely bagged with gifts, instead selling on the strength of its content.)
Lucky Bag Comic did well initially. I think it ran for three years in all but I'm not sure because I quit after a couple of years but it was a fun title to work for. I was assigned to draw (and often write) the two page strip Horror Bags, - a team of monsters inspired by a range of crisps of the same name! Other contributors to the comic included Mark Bennington, Joe Matthews, Nigel Kitching, Paul Palmer and more.
The cover shown above was done in 2003 and is the only one I drew for the comic (although I did illustrate one of the plastic bags too, which I'll show when I find it). Editorial suggested I made it look like a torn cover showing the Horror Bags looking at a page inside, which was a nice effect.
Here's the final Horror Bags strip I did (script, art, colours) which appeared in issue 23 in 2004. (The comics didn't have cover dates so I can't be more specific.) I thought the "game over" panel was appropriate as I was leaving the comic. The artwork used for that panel was something I created using a landscape generation software called Bryce.
6 comments:
I remember the comic.. I might have an issue around someplace.. there was another type of that nature done featuring stuff owned by.. I think Cartoon network (or more stuff shown on there).. but most of the time, lucky bags just give... well, some of it used to be okay at times but mostly, not great stuff and probably only just about worth the price.. they stick to badly drawn colouring posters and stuff mostly.. but there were nice ideas like this one..
don't remember the crisps though.. odd that..
I remember Horror Bags from the 70s - I had no idea they were still around in this Century, much less starring in a comic strip. The things you find out.
I bought it for a bit in the early 00s when I was around the age of 9/10 and enjoyed it. It was the only non-DC Thomson comic I could find, so it was interesting to read something with a different feel. I remember one of the issues I bought had the viking characters (Thors or something) in the middle of doing work on the title font, as I think it changed the next issue. I always liked when comics had the characters interacting with the font!
Ah, now Gary, this is confusing me.. I vaguely remember them.. but one place that seams to try to have the most 'expert' information, claims they were discontinued in 1978.. That's pretty clearly wrong.. cause why would they do a comic strip tie in with a range of corn snacks from over 20 years before.. (also, there mascot in the 78s was a vampire who was probably meant to be Dracula.. and no way had a range of monsters like that.. so.. must have brought them back at some point..
might even be like the problems with Space Raiders (no where near as good these days.. that started as 'outer spacers' or something like that, as space ships, then Alien raiders, the Space Raiders with the fantastic stories of Astra and her space pirates, then went rubbish with generic dull rubbish alien designs ¬_¬
Perhaps the snacks in the 2000's were different Horror Bags than the '70s versions? Otherwise I'd have been asked to base the characters on the old mascots from the '70s crisps, but the ones I was told to use had different names to those.
I think the 1970s versions consisted of Bones, Fangs and Claws. A Vampire character oversaw the Fangs and Claws, while, you guessed it, a skeleton took care of the Bones.
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