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.
