On this day, 19 April 1980: Jackpot
Cover artwork: Jim Petrie (The Incredible Sulk)
On this day, 19 April 1980 …It’s back to Jackpot this week, and this one caught my eye as an example of one of those ‘competition winner’ issues that were fairly unique to this great comic. Jackpot’s Big Idea was ‘winning things’, and in addition to most of its stories being based around this theme it ran a huge number of competitions to entice our hopeful little hearts. Every few weeks there would be a competition so big that it would secure full-page front-cover billing, both for the week of the competition itself and for the announcement of the winner, who would no doubt be thrilled to discover an artist’s representation of themselves that somehow didn’t quite match the likeness of the photos inside. The prizes awarded in these competitions needed to have an active, visual element to justify the showcase picture spread, so they tended to be ‘supermarket sweep’-type affairs in which the winner was given quarter of an hour to raid a toy shop or sweet factory or, in the case of 11-year-old Timothy Sinclair, build a mountain of Heinz Baked Beans tins. Lucky Tim stacked 312 tins, which he got to keep, but he was presumably more incentivised by the 50p per can, which hopefully made up for the jokes that might have followed at school the day after this issue hit the shelves.
Richie Wraggs: Mike Lacey (artist)
Angel’s ‘Proper’ Charlies: Trevor Metcalfe (artist)
Jack Pott: Jim Crocker (artist)
Laser Eraser: Robert Nixon (artist)
Class Wars: Vic Neill (artist)
The Amazing Three: Trevor Metcalfe (artist)
The Amazing Three: Trevor Metcalfe (artist)
Cry Baby: Mike Lacey (artist)
Robot Smith: John Geering (artist)
Robin Good: Jack Edward Oliver (artist)
Milly O’Naire and Penny Less: Sid Burgon (artist)
The Incredible Sulk: Jim Petrie (artist)
