British Update: First Quenchers: Tabloid-Sized Titters – Big One and Buzz – premier issues
*Humour Comics: Two extra-sized premier issues this week: Big One, launched in 1964, was Fleetway/IPC’s response to D.C. Thomson’s Beezer and Topper and went those tabloid-sized weeklies one better by being even bigger – approximately 14″ x 22″. Sadly, this worked against it, being a real nightmare for newsagents, stored and sold – when it was put on display at all, as it would have occupied a huge amount of space – horizontally folded like broadsheet newspapers. We’ve never seen a copy without such a fold, and indeed we store and sell them that way. This copy of Big One #1 is FA, with a small taped tear at mid-spine, but also with a promotional sheet distributed to newsagents at the time of its release. The promotional sheet is illustrated separately below, and the price for both comic and promo is £40. Almost a decade later, in 1973, D.C. Thomson decided to introduced a stablemate to Beezer and Topper and Buzz joined the lineup for a respectable 100+ issue run, and packed a lot into the oversized pages, fronted by ‘Hop, Skip and Jock’, wherein our inventive but impecunious trio coined an outlandish money-making scheme each week. This copy of Buzz #1 is VG £40.