At first glance, The Tellybugs looked a little old fashioned for a relatively hip comic like Smash! but it was perhaps the most relatable strip in the comic. The domestic setting looked very 1960s, which despite what some historians might tell you, was more mundane than the flower-power scenario they paint it as. The dad in The Tellybugs looked and dressed just like most dads of the time, and the television going "wonky" was always a likelihood. I remember a few times when "a valve went" in our old set.
The artwork was by the superb Cyril Price, a veteran artist in comics by 1966, who had previously drawn many strips for the old comics of The Amalgamated Press such as Illustrated Chips and Comic Cuts. By the sixties he was a regular artist on Georgie's Germs in Wham!
No doubt because of his work on Georgie's Germs, Price was chosen to draw The Tellybugs. The premise had similarities; instead of tiny humanoid "germs" inside a human body, these "bugs" lived inside a TV set. Price drew them as a flat-capped, boiler-suited workforce with long hair, running wild and anarchic. The human Dad of the strip representing authority, trying to keep things in control, usually in vain.
The Odhams "Power Comics" were brilliant for stuff like this. Some might say they were a bit too reckless. There's no way that a children's annual today could feature a story where a character fiddles around with live electronics or throws a bucket of water over a TV set. Even back then it was edgy, but that was part of the appeal of Smash!, Pow! and Wham! They felt a bit dangerous, but at the same time they were actually treating readers with respect. They didn't put any warnings on the strips. They didn't feel they needed to. They respected our intelligence not to imitate scenes from the comics. We'll never see their like again.
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