Preview: ‘Monster Fun’ #12, It’s A Halloween Spooktacular, New Look, Same Load Of Laughs

by Richard Bruton

The all-ages monthly Monster Fun brings a new look for its Halloween issue, featuring Kid Kong, Gums, and more classic and new Brit humour comics.

Plenty of reading in the 52-page comic, with 13 strips, plus Henry Flint’s fabulous Global Ghoulies, and a few pages of quizzes, gallery, letters page, and games.

As I’ve banged on about many, many times, it’s a fine thing to have more and more comics, in whichever form, out there for children, and I do hope that Monster Fun’s success – enough to go from every two months to monthly certainly – continues for a long, long time.

Okay then, this month’s particular highlights first, then a preview of the strips to enjoy inside.

First, as previously mentioned, Flint’s Global Ghoulies. Just one page homaging the idea of Ken Reid’s World Wide Weirdies perfectly…

Then we have a comic stacked from the start with great strips, but Stacy Whittle and Brett Parson’s Gums just takes the prize for silliest and best single pager in here. There’s just something with Parson’s art that absolutely nails the whole thing every time I see it…

And then there’s Kid Kong in another ridiculous thing by Alec Worley and Karl Dixon, this time featuring Gran’s Great Grandma, Vladweena… which goes about as well as you’d expect. Fabulous cartooning by Dixon and great gag after great gag by Worley makes it three pages of silliness and vampire gags.

And there’s another Kid Kong single pager, guest starring Smizard the cake-mancer and his magical breadstick, created by nine-year-old Charlie Rockey as part of the Draw a Monster competition – always so good to see kids getting involved in comics like this – congratulations, Charlie!

As usual, Chris Garbutt’s Hell’s Angel – one of the strips not based on existing Brit humour comics characters of old – is a superb and funny thing. Little Hell’s Angel takes Big-D (yep, the Devil in kids comics, of course it’s fine, stop worrying there in the Bible belt) trick or treating, much to his disgust. Although, he has to agree that the copious amounts of candy is a good thing. Well, until it isn’t…

The Devil, demons, halloween, barfing everywhere… now isn’t that just perfect?

Also this issue, an end and a beginning. We say farewell to Ned Hartley and Dan Boultwood’s Steel Commando, one of the couple of ongoing strips in Monster Fun. It’s been lovely seeing Boultwood’s distinctive artwork here and I can only hope there’s more to come from him in the future.

As for the beginning, it’s the start of two-part Crabbe’s Crusaders, a classic Brit adventure comic with a typically dubious setup involving Professor Crabbe and a group of orphans who get shipwrecked on his desert island. This being classic Brit comics, the Prof kits them out with tech as the Crusaders and sends them out to bring peace to the world in all manner of dangerous situations. Yep, that’s your straight-up endangering children charge right there. But hey, it’s Brit comics, this sort of craziness happens all the time.

The new Crabbe’s Crusaders written by Alec Worley and with Ruairi Coleman on art is all very Power Rangers versus Godzilla, with the kids in tech suits and flying planes with holo-fields. It’s fast and big and looks really great. Always good to have a little adventure in amongst the laughs.

Okay, that’s enough highlighting for now, let’s go with a full line-up preview.

Monster Fun #12 is out on 4th October.

GUMS – by Stacey Whittle and Brett Parson

KID KONG – by Alec Worley and Karl Dixon

HELL’S ANGEL – by Chris Garbutt

KID KONG – DRAW A MONSTER COMPETITION – by Alec Worley and Karl Dixon, letters by Hanna Fulaptik – Smizerd the Cake-Mancer created by Charlie Rockey