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(Article
by Louise Pearse and Shaqui Le Vesconte)
'Follyfoot' was the first 'new series' strip to appear in 'Look-In',
whereas all others, from adventure-style like 'Timeslip' and 'Freewheelers', to
historical ones like 'Wreckers At Dead Eye' and 'Redgauntlet', and comedies 'Please
Sir!' and 'Crowther in Trouble', were all already running or long
established when the publication started.
The story of a farm for
retired or unwanted horses, inspired by Monica Dickens' 1963 novel
'Cobbler's Dream', 'Follyfoot' was no mere horses' runabout but used the
theme as an analogy for how people also mistreat and reject each other.
Dora (Gillian Blake) is left by her parents to live with her uncle the
Colonel (Desmond Llewellyn) while they go overseas, Steve (Steve Hodson)
is good-hearted but blighted with a criminal record, as is biker Ron
Stryker (Christian Rodska), while the ageing ex-boxer Slugger (Arthur
English) has seen better days. Despite seeming slow by modern standards,
'Follyfoot' was hard-hitting for its time (the shooting of injured horses
in episode 1 is notably upsetting) with an edginess to the characters, who
were occasionally at odds with each other.
A cover (the first of eight over three years)
and feature in issue 25, week ending 28 June 1971, introduced the series
to readers, replacing 'Timeslip' - now relegated to b/w - as the main
colour strip a scant two weeks later. Showing
remarkable faith, 'Look-In' opted to give the new strip a rare colour
centrespread format for the entire first story, though this was wearing on
established artist Mike Noble (who drew the strip through all but a
handful of instalments), and it was never tried again - the only other
occasion in the title's history was the first part of 'Kung Fu' in 1974.
The Strips versus the Series
The artwork is the
most attractive quality, and overall, the scripts do hold up rather well
but character development and credibility take a back seat compared with
the TV series. The stories themselves could well have been filmed as
actual episodes, although there is little of the continuity and nature of
growth from the characters themselves that flowed through the series. As
encapsulated stories, they capture the spirit of what Follyfoot was all
about: the health and welfare of horses. As in the TV series, a variety of
good and bad support characters play their part to give the core
characters motivation and a purpose, copying fairly closely the antagonism
between the Hammonds and the Follyfoot team for the first year.
The strips also, much like the series, highlight the social changes
happening in the 70's – urbanisation of housing and the reducing use of
horses within the community. The characters as portrayed do a great deal
of growing up within the tv series, something almost impossible to portray
in a comic strip. The strips are more like 'missing scenes' than part of
the overall timeline established by the series. The strips are able to be
somewhat more inventive than the series, constrained as it was by budgets
and locations. With fewer limitations to stunts, horses are used in more
action sequences - bolting, runaways or bucking broncos - than on TV. Of
course, in live action it's impossible to hold a conversation on a
galloping horse, so the strip has a greater flexibility for moving the
story at a very fast pace. In the series the characters were very involved
with the moral aspect of what they were doing, with regard to the horses
and the people involved with them. In the first series Steve often
reminded Dora that people were important, not horses, a viewpoint she does
not share until later on.
The strips are also more tactile - the romance hinted between Steve and
Dora allows for more physical contact between the characters, where the
series was limited to meaningful glances and wistful stares to convey
meaning and emotions. This is an area where the strip excels, certainly
from the point of view of someone who would have loved the characters to
be more demonstrative of their feelings, rather than restrained.
That said, only the
strip drawn by Martin Asbury in late 1973 (replacing Mike Noble for his
annual holiday) shows any of the conflict between Dora and Steve more
common to the series, enhanced by better likenesses and some of the
artist's usual off-kilter style and colouring.
All that aside, the strips
are a wonderful adjunct to the series exactly because they fulfil aspects
of the characters and storylines that couldn't be done by the TV series,
due to budget constraint. Something that does seem prevalent in the strips
is they all have neat and tidy endings with little or no heartache. In the
series, angst was a big part of the story, with not all the endings happy
or resolved. As in life, there is not always a solution to a problem, but
the strips all end neatly and succinctly with the bad guys caught, or the
horse rescued, like modern fan fiction. In fact, the strips performed the
same function but with the added bonus of really lovely artwork to make
them very readable and collectible.
And beyond Look-In...
There was no
doubt 'Follyfoot' was a popular and endearing series throughout its run,
and 1973 saw it given a dedicated 'Look-In' tie-in special. Strip writer
Angus Allan, and photographer Paul Stokes, visited the cast and crew on
location during the filming of the third and final series, which provided
unique features and pictures as well as a new black and white strip by Mike
Noble, among abridged reprints of the first two stories.
Overseas, the series also proved popular in Germany where it was titled
'Follyfoot Farm', and the 'Look-In' strips were reprinted as a series of
fortnightly albums from late 1973, to coincide with the first broadcasts
there. The first album was, curiously, recoloured monochrome reproductions
but later used the original full-colour artwork. The fifth - and possibly
final - edition is a reworking of the Special, with some different photos
and layouts.
With 'Follyfoot' coming to an end in the UK about the same time, the strip
continued until spring the following year, culminating in two linked
'epics' where Steve is forced to go on the run by forgers, and headhunted
to become a stunt-rider for a jinxed circus. This finale goes beyond the
series with Steve taking the offer and leaving Follyfoot - a move which
throws Dora and nearly leads to a disastrous fire - in a single-part coda
drawn by Stanley Houghton. A thoughtful conclusion fitting to the spirit
of the series.
(Louise
Pearse is editor of the
http://follyfoot-tv.co.uk website) |
