This week’s blog comes to you with thanks to the author Billy Morris (@Yorkshire_Tales) for the inspiration. He recently posted this extraordinary page from a newspaper way back in the 1970s commenting “Looks like this artist ran out of time or maybe decided half of the team were too hard to draw after his Eddie Gray came out as Jimmy Krankie!”

Caricatures can of course be complimentary or insulting (whether intentionally or not, as is the case here with Jimmy Krankie). The key thing is that they must be exaggerated and exaggeration was always a bit of a byword in fanzines.

Before we start a confession; I sometimes struggle to see the difference between a cartoon and a caricature. I know caricatures are “the distorted presentation of a person, type, or action” and cartoons are seen as “broader, sequential or political in nature”[1] but caricatures are rooted in politics and satire…which is what a lot of cartoons are used for today. Anyway…enjoy this mix of various forms of satirical distortions of people and events..

Let’s give you a demonstration as to why the confusion; The word caricature is derived from Italian and essentially means loaded portrait. Though nowadays it refers normally to the drawing of a recognisable individual. Originally ‘caricature’ was used for any image that made use of exaggerated or distorted features…Which leads us to Stockport fanzine The Tea Party because the 1993 issue 26 of the superb fanzine carried this caricature of modern football supporters, though we don’t recognise the individuals it could of course be anyone wearing a replica kit and it’s bloody funny.

Way back when

The first general football fanzine, Foul was of course blessed with the cartoons of Bill Tidy but they also made very frequent use of caricatures with Billy Bremner being a particular target for them. They really disliked Leeds in general and Billy in particular as this cover from issue 25 in January 1975 ably demonstrates.

That is topped though by this astounding Judge Dredd like caricature that appeared in issue 27 in 1975. The article that ran with this was very much a Dredd tribute in its tone, the ruling Triumverate replaced by “The Doog, The Leeg and the Pork Butchers answerable to the national body of government VAT”. It predicts that by 1978 Bremner will have become all powerful as “the first true freelance professional footballer” but equally a man “loathed and feared throughout the old game for the way in which he abused it”. Strong stuff but incredibly prescient with the Bosman ruling 20 years away.

Foul didn’t stop with Billy though, by 1975 Don Revie was a year into his catastrophic period as England manager and Foul let rip. It’s a striking caricature that makes you think that Revie’s angular features were easy to draw but I’m not going to give it a go myself.

Heroes and Zeroes

Fanzines with a talented ‘in house’ artist were lucky as they could easily fill space and honour club heroes. Take this cover from issue 2 of St Johnstone’s Old McDiarmid Had A Farm from 1990. John ‘Big Bal” Balavage is honoured on the cover with a massive heid taking up a lot of space and the price of the fanzine cunningly disguised as the ball.

Now, perhaps unsurprisingly, I didn’t know a lot about big John so I went off down the internet rabbit hole to educate myself and well…I still don’t know much beyond a couple of Facebook posts marking his signing from Albion Rovers and the fact that in 1987 he “scored St Johnstone’s third goal in a 3-0 friendly win against a Hibernian XI.” (don’t get too excited, he took a penalty) and a forum entry saying he was crap at kicking and lost his place because he wouldn’t go full time.

In the same issue we once again see the crossover between cartoons and caricatures with a lovely little cartoon strip containing caricatures about the bad habits and ears of Roddy Grant, Mark Treanor, Allan Moore and Alex Totten.

This is where the internet once again proves just as weird as fanzines could be. In looking for info on Big Bal I found the wiki list of “notable players who have played for St Johnstone” [2]. There is no Sergei Balatcha on this list, Sergei Balatcha, a national hero in Ukraine and widely recognised as one of the best players of the 80s and probably the only Saints player ever to appear in a European Cup final and the World Cup is not on the list of notable St Johnstone players! A note says the list is footballers who “played 100 or more league matches for the club. Those listed who do not meet this criterion either represented their nation while at the club or are considered to have made significant contributions to the club’s history.” So there is no Saint Sergei (90 appearances) but big John (185 appearances) does appear. Some records show Sergei actually played 102 times for Saints but what the hell.

Balatcha’s arrival in Perth caused a 150% increase in season ticket sales to 2500 and lead to the club having to print more season ticket booklets as they ran out! Despite the team’s inconsistent league form Balatcha was singled out for praise with a number of remarkable results against the big guns of Celtic and Rangers and St Johnstone would go on to reach the Scottish cup semi final. Unfortunately, a change of manager and fall out over style of play the next season meant it was to be a short-lived stay and Balatcha jumped at the chance to move to Caledonian Thistle as manager in 1993. Not notable though.

There’s only one Isaías

Talking of whether a player was a success at a club or not, 1995’s issue 8 of Everton fanzine Gwladys Sings The Blues had various caricatures…of Coventry players. Their A-Z guide to the Premiership has reached C and instead of the usual dull list of joke about teams they decide to use art to cut down on the words they had to think up and then spend very little time on the ones they chose. The drawings themselves are actually very good.

I had completely forgotten about Isaías for good reason it turns out. He arrived at Highfield Road having won 3 major titles with Benfica with Bobby Robson saying he was “the most impressive player in the Portuguese League”. Big Ron did what Big Ron did and splashed out £500,000 to make Isaías Marques Soares the first ever Brazilian to play in the Premier League. Only just though, 12 appearances in 2 years ended in acrimony when Coventry refused to pay up his remaining contract. He disappeared before playing for the Portuguese beach soccer team, I suspect the first premier league player to do that.

No One Likes Us

Millwall is our next stop with No One Likes Us issue 1 from 1990 providing a couple of great portraits of fans of their most hated neighbours. Some might say the Hammer could equally have been a Millwall firm member.

Lionel from the Lane is a bit confusing, a borderline offensive stereotype from I assume White Hart Lane he spends most of his time talking about Arsenal…I guess that’s the joke and I’d forgotten Tony Adams was nicknamed ‘The Guzzler’

The French connection

Staying with stereotypes and offensive ones at that, Manchester United’s Red Issue Vol 3 Issue 7 from 1991 (ridiculous numbering system lads, utterly stupid) decided readers of the fanzine needed an Allo Allo style guide to spotting oppo fans for their upcoming 1991 European Cup Winners’ Cup quarter final.

I don’t remember many French football supporters wearing cycling shorts, the baguette, beret and onions are the laziest of stereotypes you’ll ever see and as for stupid sponsors, seeing Lee Sharpe with Sharp on his chest always struck me as something of an oxymoron. As a side note UEFA did not allow sponsors on shirts for European finals at the time so Sharp missed out on a big advertising splurge that year.

Excuses Excuses

Managers were an obvious target for treatment and so we move to Watford fanzine Clap Your Hands in 1995’s issue 31. Their treatment of Glenn Roeder indicates a certain amount of indecision from Glenn. Perhaps he was worried about value for money as Watford had to pay Gillingham £40,000 in compensation when he became manager along with a £10,000 fine for an illegal approach. Proving once again that fanzines sometimes got things slightly wrong, Roeder would go on to make one of the signings of the decade when he paid Baldock town just a further £10k for a certain Kevin Phillips whose goal would nearly propel them to the play-offs.

Well, it is sort of a caricature.

Finally, Bournemouth fanzine Not the 8502 ran this ‘caricature’ of Ian Bishop in 1989. I mean OK it isn’t drawn but it is a caricature in the purest sense of the word (a distorted representation of a person in a way that exaggerates some characteristics and oversimplifies others) and VERY funny, managing to get a tremendous number of cheap gags about a former player into just one short paragraph. This might just as easily fit into a Fat Git XI blog we’re hoping to get out soon hell, it might appear in both. I can’t remember any reference to “Bish” being fat and there were many other false rumours about him in later years.

Final Whistle

Long before @CheapPanini started entertaining us all, caricatures were seen as a cheap way for papers and fanzines to fill space. Some were good some were….well Billy Morris also passed this tremendous set of Sun soccer card images of Leeds players. You can have your own fun making up descriptions but @Yorkshire_Tales comment that “Giles becomes Lionel Richie’s clay head” will stay with me for a while.

But this is a blog about fanzines so I’ll finish with this beauty. This caricature of then manager Joe Royle also appeared in 1995’s issue 8 of Everton fanzine Gwladys Sings The Blues. I will say it is a very good facial caricature of Joe but as for the whole thing I have no idea why they did this and I don’t want to find out.

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[1] https://www.britannica.com/art/caricature-and-cartoon

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_St_Johnstone_F.C._players