Boys Adventure Comics

26 July 2026

Heroes! The British invasion of American comics - part 12

Recently (ish!) finished at the Cartoon Museum (here) was their exhibition 'Heroes! The British invasion of American comics'.

For anyone who couldn't make it here's part 12 of my look at what you missed...

Part 1 was here

Part 2 was here

Part 3 was here

Part 4 was here

Part 5 was here

Part 6 was here

Part 7 was here

Part 8 was here

Part 9 was here

Part 10 was here

Part 11 was here

25 July 2026

UPDATED: All the Bears

There's a story to be unpicked somewhere about all the following characters and, right now, I'm not sure how it all hangs together so I just need to start somewhere by working out all the instances of the character appearances that I've found so far.

The characters are Star Bears, Scare Bears and Were Bears...

UPDATE (25th July 2026)...here's a packet of glow-in-the-dark stickers (available, at the time of typing, here for £59.99)

UPDATE (01/05/26): Here's a 48 page long, full colour, A4 sized comic that I've never seen before...

and here's the back page...

So the comic contents are as follows...

1). front cover - 1 page

2). Scare Bears meet the St. John badgers - 2 pages, new material

3). Star Bears - 4 pages, (reprinted from Zodiac comic #1)

4). Scare Bears - 4 pages, (reprinted from Zodiac comic #1)

5). Scare Bears - 12 pages

6). Star Bears - 4 pages, (reprinted from Zodiac comic #2)

7). map of the events going on in Hyde Park that day - 2 pages

8). Star Bears - 4 pages, (reprint from Zodiac comic #3)

9). Scare Bears - 4 pages, (possible reprint from Zodiac comic #4)

10). Star Bears - 6 pages, (possible reprint from Zodiac comic #4)

11). Scare Bears - 3 pages, reprinted from Zodiac comic #2

12). advert - 1 page

13). rear cover - 1 page

UPDATED: I've found an image of the Scare Bears stickers (25 in a pack for 24p!) so I've added that in below...

1). Star Bears

Created by Craig Dixon and Matt Gibas

Here and here I looked at Z comic...

...which has 4 pages of Star Bears content...

...and then there was the sticker book (here)

And in this book there's a 6 page strip...

Here's an example page...

2). Scare Bears

Illustrated by Craig Dixon and Matt Gibas

Illustrated by George Nicholas

This featured in the sticker book (here)

Here and here I looked at Z comic...

which featured a 4 page Scare Bears strip

there was also the Scare Bears monster party book that I looked at here

The Scare Bear also feature on the cover of 'Cartoon Aid' which I looked at here

and this has two newspaper style strips

plus this full-colour 12-page strip (illustrated by George Nicholas - my list of his work here)

3). Were Bears

another comic from George Nicholas - which I looked at in more detail here - a title from 1990/1. So I'm assuming that the Scare Bears evolved into Were bears

24 July 2026

UPDATED: SSI journal - 1985

I've looked before at all things to do with the SSI (Society of Strip Illustration) here and I like the newsletters they produced BUT these were produced in very low quantities so you stand virtually no chance of collecting a set.

I've looked at some examples of the SSI journal for

1992 here

1981 here

1982 here

1983 here

and for other years I'm just going to collect images for the covers as and when they come up for sale on ebay. Over time we might end up with a full (??) set. So here's the start of a covers gallery for SSI journal for 1985...

UPDATE (24th July 2026); now with cover for the August 1985 issue added

SSI newsletter, June 1985

SSI newsletter, August 1985

originally for sale c/o here

SSI newsletter, October 1985

originally for sale c/o here

SSI newsletter, November 1985

c/o friend of the blog Andrew Wolf

23 July 2026

Tarkan - covers gallery, part 2

Tarkan is a well-known Turkish comic character (see his wikipedia entry here). It first appeared in 1967. In 1973 there was a short-lived pan-European comic published in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Netherlands, Luxembourg and here in England too. Full colour, 16 pages in length.

Here's the start of a covers gallery for this title...

Part 1 was here

Tarkan, weekly, #8, 21st April 1973

Tarkan, weekly, #9, 28th April 1973

Tarkan, weekly, #10, 5th May 1973

Tarkan, weekly, #11, 12th April 1973

Tarkan, weekly, #12, 19th May April 1973

Tarkan, weekly, #13, 26th May 1973

Tarkan, weekly, #14, 2nd June 1973

all images from this ebay seller

22 July 2026

UPDATED: Dennis comic - Marvel UK

Michael Carroll's timeline of Marvel UK comics (here) has an array of interestingly short-lived comics on that I thought I should create cover galleries for them. Sometimes this is easier said than done but let's start off with the 19 issue Dennis comic from 1989/90.

This would have been called Dennis the menace (since it's based on Hank Ketcham's US comic star) but here in the UK that was obviously a non-starter as an idea. It also makes it really hard to search for!

UPDATED (22/07/26); thanks to friend of the blog Richard Gilham we can now add the covers for issues 3, 4, 5, 6 & 9 to the covers gallery

UPDATED (22/06/26)

I'm indebted to Frank Motler for highlighting these two 'Dennis' publications. Any more out there?

150 adventures of The Pickle, Corgi Cartoons, Hank Ketcham

Dennis annual 1988

and to friend of the blog Richard Gilham for supplying the images below of issues 1 & 3 of the Dennis special that publishers London Editions produced

Dennis special #1, London Editions

Dennis special #3, London Editions

UPDATED (20/05/26)

There are further appearance of Dennis (Mitchell) in the following publications...

an annual from Marvel UK...

...and this special (#2) from London Editions

UPDATE: I've now found the cover to issue 7. Interestingly the title has been amended from Dennis to Dennis Mitchell (which is the full name of the character - perhaps DC Thomson had been in touch to say the original title was too confusing???)

Dennis comic, #1, 30th November 1989, Marvel UK, 45p

image from here

Dennis comic, #2, 14th December 1989, Marvel UK, 45p

Dennis comic, #3, 28th December 1989, Marvel UK, 45p

Dennis comic, #4, 11th January 1990, Marvel UK, 45p

Dennis Mitchell comic, #5, 25th January 1990, Marvel UK, 45p

Dennis Mitchell comic, #6, 8th February 1990, Marvel UK, 45p