In 1970, McDonalds had the idea to syndicate a daily and/or Sunday Ronald McDonald comic strip. They took it to the Hearst corporation and it was quickly picked up by their strip department at King. During the development stage King, which had a license agreement with Charlton at the time, brought the concept to the offices at Derby.
Drawn,and most likely written, by longtime King artist (and eventual editor in chief of King itself) Bill Yates, the title was a weird mish mash of kids stories and surreal tales that *seemed* like kids stories but were definetely of a more mature age group target. Although the daily strip never happened (at least not to my knowledge) Charlton was able to knock out four issues before the idea was scrapped. It's interesting to see that this was treated like any other strip, and that it wasn't used as a way to put McDonalds products into every story as marketing---the way it would certainly be if this were being published today.
The Library has returned from our (very) extended hiatus!I have returned from six months of traveling and (mis)adventures,
and
have finally settled back into a steddy place to stay and stopped my
rambling around the country. Much has happened in the past half-year,
and I will be addressing all the amazing things that have been going on
as far as Charlton related new comics and books and such in a later
post. Trust me, it's been pretty wild!
But for now, let's
jump right in with something to READ (this is a library, after all!),
with this issue of SICK: #119 February 1978.
SICK, had been around
for quite some time having been first published by Joe Simon, then
Pyramid, it finally came to Charlton for the rest of it's run. Many have
a large dislike for Sick, as it was never considered on the Level of
MAD, CRACKED etc, but there were some really great moments, and this
issue is one of them. The issue features almost all Jack Sparling
artwork on the stories (with a bit of Dave Manak, DEK, and Bill Burke in
there to boot), and featuring the writing talents of Joe Gill, Bill
Pearson, George Kashdan, Arnold Drake, and David Allikas.
The choices of parodies are pretty strong with rips on The Deep, MASH, CPO Sharkey, Rhoda, and Fish, as well as arguably Sparling's greatest (recurring) character; Cher D'Flower.
