Pellephant and His Friends Annual [1974]

[1973] Annual. Original price 70p.
80 pages. Colour and tone art.
Brown Watson Ltd.

Cover by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

Contents:

 2 Pellephant and His Friends Annual title page; illustration by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

 4 Fly, Flax and the Balloon Take a Trip to the Moon text story by UNKNOWN (uncredited); illustrated by GIL [Eigil Johansen] (uncredited).

 6 It's Puzzling! puzzle pages; illustrated by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

 8 Susie Susie the Pilot w: UNKNOWN (uncredited); a: Mainow [Jaime Mainou] (uncredited).

15 Fly, Flax and the Balloon In Mexico text story by UNKNOWN (uncredited); illustrated by GIL [Eigil Johansen] (uncredited).

17 Pellephant Pellephant the Ski Champion w: UNKNOWN (uncredited); a: Georges Bess (? uncredited).

25 Susie Susie and the Treasure w: UNKNOWN (uncredited); a: Mainow [Jaime Mainou] (uncredited).

32 Pellephant Pellephant the Musician w: UNKNOWN (uncredited); a: Georges Bess (? uncredited).

44 Susie Susie and the Dragon w: UNKNOWN (uncredited); a: Mainow [Jaime Mainou] (uncredited).

51 Pellephant and the Toy-Shop Gang w: UNKNOWN (uncredited); a: Georges Bess (? uncredited).

59 Pellephant The Snowstorm w: UNKNOWN (uncredited); a: Georges Bess (? uncredited).

67 Fly, Flax and the Balloon And the Flying Mice text story by UNKNOWN (uncredited); illustrated by GIL [Eigil Johansen] (uncredited).

69 Coco the Clown text story by UNKNOWN (uncredited); illustrated by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

72 Puzzles from Pellephant illustrated by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

74 Sammy Salt and the Paper Boat text story by UNKNOWN (uncredited); illustrated by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

76 Fly, Flax and the Balloon And the Tight-Rope Walker text story by UNKNOWN (uncredited); illustrated by GIL [Eigil Johansen] (uncredited).

78 Out With Teacher! picture puzzle; illustrated by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

Note: All the material is (presumably) reprinted from European comics, though specific titles and issues are unknown.

"We need a dramatic cover to attract readers."
"How about Pellephant swinging from a rope?"
"Yeah, but... It needs something extra."
"How about if the rope is attached to a helicopter?"
"Sure. But need something to make the cover really exciting."
"How about having the helicopter fly over water?"
"That's perfect."
"Should we include the Liquorice Goblin, on fire, in the background?"

There is, you should note, not a single "Don't attempt this at home" message in the entire book. I would be the least surprised at learning there is, somewhere in the original comics, a feature on the best table-forks with which to bother electrical outlets. While the stories never actually cross such transgressive lines, they skirt the very edge of what is considered appropriate in a manner which can only be read as deliberate.

King Egbert had won a football pool, so he hired an aeroplane and too the queen, Susie and the dwarfs on a trip...

Firstly, how poorly is the royal purse if the king cannot otherwise afford such a trip? Secondly, how many children of the appropriate age are going to know about football pools? And thirdly, dwarfs? So... We're okay with that, are we?

Turbulence upsets the passengers, and Susie goes to tell the pilot off for the bumpy flight, though faced with criticism the pilot bails out, a parachute strapped to his back. With no pilot, the plane begins to spin out of control until Susie takes the controls. Matters seem well in hand until the plane runs out of fuel, at which point she cajoles a flock of birds to keep the plane in the air. Once safely back on the ground, the king decides to celebrate with lemonade and cakes.

There are a lot of things in Susie which work brilliantly, yet an ever-present sense of things being slightly of-kilter keeps it from being a strip which I would feel comfortable with small children reading on their own. Mainow's art is very lively and loose, with beautiful panels displaying a great sense of style, which takes some of the darkness off the story, but there are so many issues in the narrative which feel purposefully aimed at an older audience.

"Where are we going?" Flax wondered, while he crunched a lump of sugar with his beak.
   "If the Balloon wants to, I thought we might visit the Mexicans," the Professor replied, testing the air with a wet finger. "The wind is blowing in that direction anyway, but we might pass it by, as we can't see anything because of all the clouds."
   "Mexicans? What's that" Flax asked, and sat down on the basket edge. "Can you eat it? Does it taste as nice as sugar?"
   The professor looked at him very learnedly.
   "Mexicans are what we call the people who live in Mexico. You'll recognise them by the large straw hats that they all wear. The sun is very hot there, and as you know, everyone likes to have some shade when it gets too warm. We look for shady places when the sun gets very hot, but the Mexicans carry their shades along with them, just by putting their hats on."

Fly, Flax and the Balloon, doing their bit for international relations, set off for Mexico. Because they land on a cactus, the balloon is injured, and they have to swap some of Flax's sugar for a boy's shirt to mend the tear. As much as I want to go along with the sensibilities of the strip, enjoying it for what it is, I can't help but feel that it would work much better had it included actual facts about the countries the balloon travels to, rather than lazy stereotypes.

Pellephant decides that he is going to enter a skiing competition, the prize for the winner being a hundred bottles of ginger pop. Despite not being able to ski, Pellephant thinks he has a good chance of winning, though on the big day the Liquorice Goblin decides to sprinkle sand behind him as he descends on his run. Pellephant, following behind, soon comes a cropper, and begins rolling down the hill in an ever-growing snowball.

A fairly run-of-the-mill story - by Pellephant standards - sees Pellephant coming through in the end regardless of a lack of talent. There's likely a message in there somewhere, though I dread to think what it is.

The King of Gnomeland had decided he wanted to appoint a treasurer, so he asked Susie if she could help him decide...

If the king has been relying relying on winning money to take his friends out on plane jaunts, then a treasurer is long overdue. Susie decides that each of the candidates should take over the job for a day, the one who increases the treasury taking the appointment.

Ignoring the antics which follow, the idea of increasing the value of the royal treasure in a single day would seem preposterous even to younger children, who ought to be quite aware of the difficulty of such a preposition.

Even the puzzles in this annual require a particular sensibility to properly appreciate:

A dolphin is:
(1) a vegetable   (2) a butterfly   (3) a mammal   (4) a shell-fish   (5) a pair of scales   (6) a lady's hand-bag

While it isn't a perfectly balanced collection of material, with far too much of the page-count taken up with non-Pellephant material. I don't mind the Susie stories, as they have a really weird sensibility which fits alongside the main feature, but the rest of the contents are middling at best, and Fly, Flax and the Balloon is simply infuriating.

[1973]

Pellephant Annual

1975