Countdown to Look-In: The Comics of 1971

Part One: The Junior TV Times

For me, 1971 was the last great year for comics. I was only 10, which seems a shame. Sure, I had yet to discover the likes of Dan Dare and Tintin, but I’d be dipping into the past in both cases, and 1971 was the last year in which I found myself in tune with what was happening in contemporary comics. And I doubt anyone would argue that the two new arrivals that landed at the newsagents’ a shade over fifty years ago were anything less than classics...

After the massive disappointment of TV21, which had evolved into an unrecognisable sub-Marvel clone during the preceding twelve months, it was welcome news to my nine-year-old self when a new TV-based comic arrived on the scene in the first week of January 1971. Our mum had been buying the TV Times every week for a year or more, and I had come to regard it almost as one of my regular comics; so if there was ever a target market for a ‘Junior TV Times’ as the new arrival styled itself, then I was it.

I’d received my first ever diary at Christmas 1970, but was at somewhat of a loss as to what I should write in it. Here was an event worthy of note, and, in anticipation, I marked down Friday 8th January in red biro: ‘Get new magasine (sic) comic LOOK -IN’. The entry was struck through when the first edition arrived, unexpectedly, a day early on Thursday 7^th.

The idea of a Junior TV Times most definitely appealed to me, even if the cover star of issue one, Tony Bastable, was part of a programme I didn’t even watch. Thames TV’s Magpie – essentially, Blue Peter in loon pants – was a show we’d dipped in and out of but never really took to. It seemed somehow too much a product of its time, too seventies and, worse, too aware of the fact. Nevertheless, Bastable’s cover star status wasn’t about to put me off the excitement of a brand new comic.

Look-In didn't actually feature many of my TV favourites of the time. I thought it odd that they couldn’t have found room for Gerry Anderson’s latest, UFO, which was a staple of ITV’s Wednesday night schedule here in the ATV region. There was, of course, an excellent reason for that, which we shall examine a little later. What Look-In did find room for in that first edition was a comic strip of adventure series Freewheelers (we never watched it), photo features on Survival (boring) and Junior Showtime (kids’ variety show – horrors!), and a faintly irate column penned by cover star Tony Bastable. None of this interested me.

On the plus side, there was a decent (and funny) comic strip version of Please Sir! and an enjoyable single-page comic escapade featuring Leslie Crowther, although not based on any specific Crowther TV show. And towards the back, you got to see what was being shown across all the ITV regions with a short-form TV listing: probably the only time such an item had ever been included in a children’s comic. Look-In’s big draw, and the only colour comic strip in that first edition was a 2-page story based on the kids’ adventure serial Timeslip, then mid-way through its 26-episode run. The story started with the intriguing premise of time-travelling teens Liz and Simon arriving in what appeared to be a pre-historic jungle, then discovering a contemporary artefact – a telephone receiver – in a swamp. Not so much time slip as slime tip...

Issue 2 added the unappealing prospect of a piratical comic strip, Wreckers at Dead Eye, which was apparently based on a Thames Television series, although I'd never heard of it, and I wasn’t interested in costume drama of any description. Over the coming weeks, there was a good deal of tinkering with the layout, as features exchanged pages, and new ideas were tried out. Unusually, there was a complete absence of advertising until issue 5, which also included the first page of readers' letters (suggesting a 4-week production schedule). Oddly, none of these readers' missives appeared in the Tony Bastable ‘Backchat’ feature, despite his issue one promise to do just that. Bastable, in fact, proved to be an irascible correspondent, given to venting steam on topics such as his hatred of school dinners, and generally using his page as an excuse for a bit of a moan. His complaining sarcasm can't have cut much ice with readers or his editor (former Gerry Anderson scriptwriter Alan Fennell) because the aptly-named Bastable was soon dumped in favour of the more avuncular Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart.

Despite its curate’s egg contents, I stuck with Look-In. An early disappointment was the demotion of Timeslip to black and white, with Mike Noble now reassigned to the horsey strip Follyfoot, adapted from the popular TV series. Noble excelled at drawing horses (an an artist one either can or cannot draw a horse convincingly), so he must have been happy with this new assignment. In retrospect, though, Follyfoot, with its strong appeal to girls, was a worrying foretaste of things to come.

On the Buses was a welcome arrival during the summer of 1971, with superb colour artwork from Harry North... so good he got to sign his pages. The scripts, however, were a bit of a let-down. Clearly, the smut and sexism of the original could have no place in a comic for children (even though we watched the series), but in place of bawdy humour, the comic version opted for melodrama, with Stan and Jack’s exploits including rescuing children from a burning building. Even at the time, I felt this wasn't quite right. Look-In’s other sitcom strips (Dr. In Charge, The Fenn Street Gang) were generally a lot funnier, and the On the Buses strip quite often felt uncomfortably misjudged.

From issue 40 onwards, the photographic covers which had echoed those of Look-In’s grown-up companion paper the TV Times, were suddenly replaced by paintings. Most of these came courtesy of prolific movie poster artist Arnaldo Putzu, whose likenesses were never less than stunning (I suspect he used a Grant enlarger*), but whose slick, light-over-dark ‘scumbled’ acrylic painting technique didn't much appeal to me at the time. I liked artwork to look properly ‘finished’, but Putzu's covers had the slickness of art studio visuals. Brilliant work, but I was too young to appreciate it properly.

With the Putzu covers, Look-In had founds its house style and no longer looked like a scaled-down version of the TV Times. His artwork was still dominating the covers when I baled out in Januray 1973, but he would continue to work for the title for many years to come. Look-In itself, however, was slowly shifting towards a different target audience – pre-teen girls – and by the autumn of 1972 it had lost the universal appeal that had been there from day one. Pop star covers began to feature with increasing frequency, still springing from the easel of Mr. Putzu, but there was only so much David Cassidy an 11-year-old boy could put up with. When he began to feature in his own series of comic strip adventures, I saw the writing on the wall. It was, in fact, the promise of yet another Cassidy cover in January 1973 that had me telling our mum that I didn’t want to be bought Look-In any more.

Look-In itself would continue for more than ten years, a remarkable achievement for any comic launched during the 1970s. Sadly, the scenario in the juvenile publishing world was all too often the same: optimistic launch, followed by months of editorial uncertainty, new stories, different features, new artists, and when all else failed, absorption into a more successful ‘companion’ paper. In its original incarnation, Look-In was clearly not finding an audience, and the shift towards pop and more female-oriented content probably saved it. Boys mostly either didn’t care for comics, or preferred the bloodthirsty war stories and shoot-ups that were routinely served up by titles I never chose to explore. I was evidently cut from a different cloth – the ideal reader for a Junior TV Times. There just weren’t enough of us...

(* Grant Enlarger: a kind of rostrum camera with a hood used by artists of yore to enlarge and trace photographs as part of the now obsolete practise of paste-up.)