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Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of comic book history that interests me. Today, I look at a mostly forgotten British comic magazine that would do comic strips based on TV shows, and also biographies of pop stars. See a Kylie Minogue biography when she was just 21 years old!
As I have noted before, one of the most fascinating lesser-known effects of widely available DVDs and streaming of movies is that there once was a time when after you saw a movie in the theater, you would have to wait for it to eventually show up on television to watch it again (or for it to be re-released in theaters, which used to happen a lot more often. For instance, most of Gone With the Wind‘s box office over the years came from its re-release in theaters). Even when VHS tapes debuted, there was still enough of a market for people to want to recreate their enjoyment of a given movie that trading cards of the movie became big business. People wanted to relive their love of the film by looking at still shots of scenes from the movie. Hey, what can we say, it was a different time (this is also why novelizations of films and comic book adaptations of movies were such a big deal).
That same concept applied to TV shows. Back then, you had to watch a TV show when it aired, and if you missed it, you would have to HOPE it would eventually be repeated (or that the show became popular enough that it would enter syndication, in which case the show would be aired on local TV stations every day, giving you the chance to rewatch an entire series within a year or so). Naturally, if it is a situation where you either catch a show when it airs or you don’t watch it all, knowing WHEN the show airs would be a big deal to you. That is why one of the most popular magazines in the United States was TV Guide, which would give you a schedule of when TV shows were airing throughout the week (as well as give you information about the various shows).
In England, there was something similar to TV Guide, only it tried to do both TV listings AND the aforementioned movie trading card approach by giving kids something to read while their favorite show wasn’t airing new episodes! So find out how ITV’s Look-In worked, and how it eventually led to a Kylie Minogue comic biography.
What was Look-In Magazine?
Look-In Magazine was presented by ITV to let its younger viewers know what shows would be airing on ITV (it effectively pretended as though the BBC didn’t exist. Eventually, The BBC would launch a competitor magazine)….
Like TV Guide, it would have articles about the various shows, but the big difference was that since it was pitched at a younger audience, it would have comic strips starring the characters from the TV shows!
Brian Slade has a great look (no pun intended) at Look-In Magazine here, and he shared some of the comics that the magazine had in its early days.
For instance, one of the shows on ITV was Follyfoot, about a teen girl who was sent to go live on a horse farm, and, well, misadventures abounded for three seasons from 1971-1973, and if you were a fan of the show, you could follow new comic book adventures in Look-In…
While originally, the covers would be photos, eventually the brilliant film poster painter, Arnaldo Putzu, was hired to do the covers, and it is amazing watching him depict the various popular culture figures of the late 1970s on these covers, from Luke Skywalker to James Bond to the Fonz!
As you can see, as the 1970s continued, musicians would be a big part of the magazine’s coverage, as well, so you’d get hilarious paintings of Luke Skywalker and Donna Summer, and Fonzie and…Leo Sayer?!
In the 1980s, American TV shows were booming on ITV, and they were adapted, as well, like Magnum p.i.…
However, as the 1980s continued, and music videos became such a big part of TV, pop musicians were getting more and more attention, and eventually, they would get comic strips about THEM, as well!
How did Kylie Minogue come to have a comic book biography in Look-In Magazine?
In August 1989, Look-In began to serialize a comic biography of Kylie Minogue, who was just 21 years old at the time!
Drawn by Maureen & Gordon Gray, it was serialized over six issues of the magazine (I found these images from a site selling the original copies of the pages!) I won’t share the whole story, but just a sampling to show you how detailed it was, a page from the start, and then the last few pages, detailing how she became a pop star…
As you can see, her star turn on Neighbours and then her hit song, «The Locomotion,» both came about so early in her life that there wasn’t a lot of room for much else in her biography, but it’s funny how the comic strip made a point to cover the BACKLASH against Kylie’s success, for some reason.
Of course, Kylie Minogue would later become possibly even MORE famous as a pop singer when she was in her 30s, so that’s why it is so funny to see her «life story» at 21. Look-In went under five years after this story was published, but obviously, a generation of British fans surely have positive memories of this offbeat magazine.
Here’s Kylie Minogue’s LATEST music video. She’s still popular 36 years later!
