Another in our occasional series showing what else was available out there to give Look-in a run for it's money. In 78 Polystyle released Target, named after the hard hitting TV show starring Patrick Mower, the show was the comic's lead strip and gave an idea what Look-in could be like if they were to add post watershed series to it's array of strips.
The main problem for me was some of the artwork in the comic, the one exception was Hazell drawn by our own Harry North. Target also had a Charlie's Angels strip - before it appeared in Look-in, unsigned, it was some of the worst artwork i'd seen in an action comic.
Also odd were the American series, as they used very British language some of the time, as well as the Angels both Kojak and Cannon appeared too. But this was also a problem with American Look-in strips too, but there were obvious restrictions on some of the language, so acceptable I suppose.
The comic was a sister paper to TV Comic, who's strips were more lightweight and it was absorbed into TV Comic after only 19 issues.
Here is the full issue for you to read...
Target No.1 - 14th April 1978
Strips: Target (Arthur Ranson ?), Hazell (Harry North), Kojak (Unknown), Cannon (Martin Asbury ?) and Charlie's Angels (Unknown).
The Cannon strip looks like it was drawn by Martin Asbury of Six Million Dollar Man Look-In fame.
ReplyDeleteI Think you may be right Sean. Although in Look-in, Martin's works were pretty much always signed.
ReplyDeleteMaybe he didn't want to advertise he was working for the competition?
DeleteThis is possible, but a lot of artists work freelance anyway. He may not have wanted his Look-in editor to know he had a heavy workload, or something like that.
DeleteYes, that's what I meant. Look-In was quite unique to keep the signatures on the art. When I worked for DC Thomson my signature was always whited out. And 2000AD was the only comic that had official credits!
ReplyDeleteIt's struck me reading some of the other issues of Target, that the 'Target' Strip could be Arthur Ranson, not up to his usual standard though.
ReplyDelete