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Ken Reid:
Britain’s Monstrous Mirth-Maker
From ‘Roger the Dodger’ and ‘Jonah’ in The Beano of the Fifties, through ‘Frankie Stein’ and ‘The Nervs’ in Wham! and Smash! in the Sixties to his last episodes of ‘Faceache’ in Buster in the Eighties, British weekly comics have been a weirder, wackier place thanks to the warped genius of Ken Reid. His fifty-year cartooning career dates back to 1938 when he began the popular children’s strip ‘Fudge the Elf’ for his local paper, the Manchester Evening News. On February 2nd 1987, while working on a new ‘Faceache’ page, he suffered a stroke and died at the age of sixty-seven. This December 18th 2019 would have been his 100th birthday and to mark this centenary, here are some recollections by some of his greatest peers and admirers, originally published as tributes after his death in 1987 in Escape Magazine No. 11 (the original 1987 credits for these writers have been retained).
Leo Baxendale, creator of ‘The Bash Street Kids’ and other Beano classics:
‘Ken Reid’s finest creations for children’s comics (and these were adult characters – in particular Jonah and Jasper the Grasper) – has a quality of intensity of comedy. Such intensity is a drain on the nervous system, and Jonah took a toll of Ken. The “all-time great” characters of comics history are generally marked by longevity. ‘Jonah’ ran for only six years, but that was by quirk of circumstance. Jonah, an incandescent creation, and the immortal “Aghhhh! Its ‘IM!” live persistently in the mind.’
Pat Mills, writer of Nemesis, Slaine, Charley’s War and Marshal Law:
‘My fondest memories of Ken’s work – apart from the immortal Jonah – are ‘Frankie Stein’ and ‘Georgie’s Germs’. He was into anarchic black comedy decades before it was fashionable and to my mind is still ahead of his time. People still wince when I tell them about a classic ‘Frankie Stein’ where the monster needs a pair of feet warmers and solves the problem by putting a kitten in each boot. This was twenty years before The Young Ones.
‘And there was the mysterious dummy strip Ken drew, which I heard about when I was starting 2000 AD. It was about a ghastly survivor of nuclear war, who tries to commit suicide in a different way every week, but he is prevented by a foul growth on his body which could turn into different shapes – a propellor, parachute, etc. I was mad keen on it, but The Powers That Be refused to let me see it and, as far as I know, it’s still locked away in some IPC vault.
‘I felt that his creativity was stifled at ‘The Fun Factory’. Their attitude to him was far from enthusiastic. (“It’s all very well you saying he’s brilliant, Pat, but he won’t follow the script – he keeps adding masses of extra pictures. And we have to keep whitening out the dogshit!”) It’s a bloody shame he didn’t get the wide recognition he deserved – not to mention the royalties. As far as I know, he would have had no choice but to sell all his rights, like the rest of us, to make a living – for ‘Jonah’, ‘Faceache’, the lot. And years before, when IPC took over Smash!/Wham!, the Managing Editor axed ‘Georgie’s Germs’ saying it was the most disgusting thing he’d ever seen. If you know anything about the judgement of the people who ran ‘The Fun Factory’, you’ll know that’s actually a helluva compliment.’
Savage Pencil, re-animator of ‘Mr Inferno’ and ‘Dead Duck’:
‘Ken Reid seduced this innocent at an early age with a book I picked up at a jumble sale, Fudge and the Dragon [interior page, below]. It was primarily kids’ stuff, a stab at cashing in on the Rupert Bear boom that I would normally have left alone. But something satisfyingly oddball in the drawing style made me eager to lock onto it. That example of Ken Reid’s considerable talent is now out of my clutches, trashed by the passing of time. Yet I’ve never forgotten the effect his art had on my still developing imagination. Together with the Mad and Zap artists, Roth, Mouse and Herriman, Ken Reid made me want to draw, to try and nudge a little closer to his genius. Some twenty odd years later and I’m still trying.’
Davy Francis, artist on ‘Cowpat County’ and others in Oink!:
‘What drew me to Ken Reid’s stuff was the way he went completely over the top. Instead of the usual comeuppance of the whacked bum, Reid’s characters ended up with multiple contusions, blistering black eyes, cauliflower wars that looked like lumps of chewing gum, tongues hanging out at the side of their mouths. And there were his utterly ridiculous plot devices, like the Custard Factory cooling tower of custard that you just knew would explode or erupt or have other catastrophic results. Ken Reid lives on in his work and all of us who were touched by his humour are, in our own different comics, creating “memorials” to Reid and those other masters in that great studio in the sky.’
Kevin O’Neill, artist on Nemesis, Metalzoic and Marshal Law:
‘Of the many influences on my work, the two most profound were the 1933 film King Kong and the bizarre comic art of Ken Reid. Ken developed a keen sense for the twisted side of life, which prompted one Managing Editor at IPC in 1970 to comment on how much Reid’s work “repulsed” him and how “that sort of thing would not be published in IPC humour comics.” I had recently joined IPC as an office boy on Buster and I always felt Ken Reid was a fish out of water at IPC. His considerable talent was mismanaged and misunderstood. The maniacal ‘Frankie Stein’ from the pages of Wham! fell into the hands of others who, while maintaining the character’s popularity, cast him into the twee safe world of comics, that same world that Ken Reid worked so hard to demolish. However, he left a fine body of work and a fitting epitaph – “Aghhhh! It’s ‘IM!”’
Robert Nixon, current artist on ‘Roger the Dodger’:
‘I never met Ken Reid, but even so he had a profound influence on me through his work. When I received the sad news, I was working on a ‘Roger the Dodger’ set, one of the many characters first drawn by Ken Reid that are still going strong today. His style and imagination were unique and as long as there are British comics, his influence will shine through.’
Alan Moore, writer of Watchmen, Halo Jones, V for Vendetta and more:
‘More than just a great comic creator, Ken Reid was a great English fantasist, with a drawing style as accomplished as that of a Carl Barks or a Wally Wood. Reid created a fantasy world in his comic strips that had its own unique asylum atmosphere, where hilarity was dragged out to the point of gibbering dementia and the humour flirted shamelessly with the disturbing and the repulsive. In all the rich history of British children’s comics, I can think of few artists who equal Reid in their technical skill, and none who match him for sheer inventiveness or originality of vision. British comics have lost one of the greatest and most seriously overlooked craftsmen. I regret never having penned this tribute while he was alive to read it.’
Lew Stringer, creator of Brickman, Tom Thugg and more:
‘Of the handful of people who can make comedy in comics actually work, Ken Reid must come top of the list every time. He had a gentle, intricate penline which combined with his wacky sense of humour to give his characters a loopy look in their eyes, that let you know immediately that they were all a brick short of a load. Like all humour artists, Ken Reid’s work is underrated. Unlike most of us, he deserves the highest recognition. He had the magic.’
Rebellion have recently issued these three compilations of Reid’s classics in their ‘Treasury of British Comics’ Collection:
In a limited edition, comics historian Irmantas Povilaika has published two hardback volumes of Reid’s work for the London publisher Odhams Press Ltd.:
Volume 1 features:
• Frankie Stein episodes from Wham! weekly comics (139 pages)
• Frankie Stein episodes from Wham! annuals (10 pages reprinted in full colour)
• Jasper the Grasper from Wham! weekly comics (12 pages)
• The Odhams Years of Ken Reid – Part One (illustrated biography) by Irmantas Povilaika (13 pages)
• From the Reid Archive (reproductions of Frankie Stein sketches and drawings, plus Ken’s hand-written scripts of three Frankie Stein episodes for the Annuals, 18 pages).
Volume 2 features:
• Queen of the Seas from Smash! weekly comics (56 pages)
• Dare-A-Day Davy from Pow! weekly comics (88 pages, including banned Frankenstein episode (reprinted on 2 pages))
• The Nervs from Smash! weekly comics (46 pages)
• The Odhams Years of Ken Reid – Part Two by Irmantas Povilaika (biography, 8 pages).
The main Article originally appeared in Escape Magazine No. 12, 1987
