Thursday 25 February 2010

Ken Hunter's The Jellymen from the Beezer 1960..

Did you have nightmares reading this as a kid?

















Thanks to PHIL RUSHTON for scans
and Spy for saving them from comicsuk forum

The Jellymen are a super creepy creation...with good use of the large pages...strong layouts..every page is different..

The image of the Jellymen are up there with Popeye's The Goon..they have a unworldly look..

Look at picture two seeing the Jellymen marching in large numbers what an amazing image..
these should be reprinted....in colour!

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Its time hollywood made a movie

Perry said...

...I was scared to walk to school for fear of Jellymen attack.Fantastic comic strip-it would make a great film (..all that merchandising,Wii games,etc.etc),but personally I like to keep it (slightly secret)in lovely half-toned artwork.A book of the whole series would be great though.

raeda999 said...

I remember when they came out first. In school we talked about them all the time. They were frightening to 7 year olds.

Stephen Prince said...

I'm so glad I have found my way to this page! The Jellymen have stayed with me all these years! I'm 60 this year! - Fabulous! Such a simple idea and lovely clear artwork. It was a thrill each week! It is lovely to see the opening pages once again, particularly the teasing opener about what just might be in the depths of the sea! Fantastic!

Anonymous said...

Totally agree with Stephan, we're the same age and I loved the Jellymen, such a great story, absolutely brilliant to see these again, excellent and thanks.

Anonymous said...

I loved the Jellymen stories. My surname is Jellyman so it made me feel famous. HaHaHa!!

John Pitt said...

The Beezer was my favourite of all the DC Thomson papers , my Granny used to get it for me every week and the highlight for me was The Jellymen. I just wish I could find them all again to read somewhere on the internet ( anybody? ) For me , no other Beezer centre - spread even came close!

Mike Cardy said...

I'm 62 and was an avid Beezer reader, the Jellymen were definitely a favourite story. I was explaining to a friend recently about the trumpet hands of the Jellymen and the bubbles that they made. Glad to have found the page, many thanks for the scans.

Dan Laird said...

Amazing.Until finding this tonight I have found no one else who remembered the Jellymen.So quintessentially British as well.Anyone remember Louis Crandell"The Steel Claw". To the best of my recollection he was a 'Valiant' character. Also "Jack O'Justice a 17th or 18th century swordsman/avenger type. Really can't recall which publication though.Perhaps 'Buster'?

P7ped said...

Can anyone remember what happened in the final episode. Where they defeated?

P7ped said...

Can anyone remember what happened in the final episode. Where they defeated?

John Lloyd said...

Like many others I thought the Jellymen story was a brilliant idea and, as someone else said, it would be fantastic to be able to see the whole story again.

Anonymous said...

P7ped If i remember it right they simply walked across the country and went back into the sea

J.R. Hartley said...

Wrong. They are here. Amongst you .....Now .......

Unknown said...

Yes, they just walked back into the sea. Can’t remember why, but I recall that the Army, science boffins and plucky schoolboys combined had been basically powerless against them. Which scared the you know what out of one seven-year-old! Basically it was a kids cartoon strip as written by John Wyndham. Genius!

Robert said...

I was too young to read this when it first came out in 1960 but I caught the reprint about 10 years later. Back in 1965 I’d read “Dr Q and the Jellymen” which I realised was a sequel to the original story which I hadn’t yet encountered . It involved several of the characters from that first story going to help the Jellymen who were now threatened in their undersea habitat by an evil scientist, the aforementioned Dr Q. So when I got to read the reprint of The Jellymen, I knew that despite their creepy appearance these creatures were going to turn out to have been merely misunderstood.
After emerging from the North Sea, they’d been attacked by various frightened human and in self-defence had encased them in seemingly-impregnable bubbles, spun from their trumpet-arms. These didn’t do permanent harm, as long as the bubbles had a base in the ground, through which the humans could be dug out. Early on, a brainy schoolboy created a formula by which the bubbles could be melted. Eventually a child-Jellyman used telepathy to explain that the Jellyman meant no harm, but were simply crossing Britain from the North Sea (where they’d lived for centuries but had to evacuate due to a lack of food) to reach a new habitat in the Atlantic. The story ended as they reached their goal.
I also remember a sequel story from a Beezer annual in the 1990s, which told how a young scientist found a lone Jellyman who hadn’t returned to the sea with the others and had been held captive for decades in a top-secret facility!

Peter Gray said...

thanks Robert for the info...