NODDY IS BACK

Remember my Noddy scans from waay back in February? Well here’s an update for all you fans out there in toyland. That means you Mrs Fluffy-Cat. I’ve scanned the whole book and it’s available to download here as either a .cbz file or a .pdf – but make haste because I don’t have a lot of space and these babies are 24Mb each. I’ll keep these up for as long as I can but more downloads lined up for the coming months may push the space so much that I have to lose something.

For now:

Download the .cbz file here

or even

Download the .pdf file here

and remember kids a Noddy book is not just for Christmas – it’s for life. Actually I just bought a new copy of this – same edition but in better condition from Oxfam online. So my old copy scanned here can go in the bin – so much for nostalgia eh?

NODDY AND IT!

Noddy reaches it’s stunning season conclusion or something like that. One last strip from The New Big Noddy Book and this is my favourite guilty pleasure.

They don’t look much like toys to me. That’s a real monkey and the guy with the huge hooter is a real clown for sure. I think Enid is trying to make us feel better claiming they are just toys, bad or otherwise. Mr Swing-About has a name, but the other guy is just an anonimous long-nosed clown, one of hundreds no doubt.

This is kidnapping and extortion surely? Thankfully this is not America and those toys will not fry if caught. Still I’m thinking already what kind of punishment might fit this crime. This is a moral book you know. They’ll never get away with it.

What? Big Ears hasn’t even got five pounds? How do these people live. Get a job. Big Ears has spent everything on that flash bike. Happens sometimes as you get older. You want to recapture your youth. Common sense goes out of the window. No money, but a bike that’s too young for you. Boy is he gonna feel stupid later.

Big Ears is upset again. And when Big Ears gets upset so do I. The chair’s too good for those criminals! Thank god for bunnies. Now go vote for The Hammer!

“He’s sure to be locked in!” Are you not going to check first? See if you can force a window or something? Put your shoulder against the door? No? Tunneling it is then.

I get the feeling that since no crime has been reported Mr Plod has arrested the criminals for just looking dodgy or perhaps for being reckless in charge of a cottage. The clown looks half the man he was already. Still not good enough for upsetting Big Ears though.

Well that’s the last we’ll see of Noddy for a while. Wave bye bye. Next up a bit of Beryl. Stay tuned.

NODDY SMELLS OF FISH!

Here’s another excerpt from The New Big Noddy Book which I still believe should’ve been called The Big New Noddy Book but no-one listens to me do they? It strikes me that an illustrator the obvious quality of Beek might perhaps have interpreted the word ‘lake’ a little more generously than he has here, however, on with the story. Careful now, this is not for children you know.

Still looks more like a puddle than a lake to me. It cannot possibly contain all that furniture. Stealing by finding Noddy, stealing by finding!

I know it’s easy to sneer, but really has Noddy got plans for the unmarried Miss Fluffy-Cat. I find that third panel upsetting on so many levels, but it hardly gets any better does it! For god’s sakes woman, put some clothes on! She’s blown Noddy’s hat off and to be honest I thought that was a fixture!

Once again the forces of chaos have descended and Noddy’s understanding of female demands hardly seem up to the task. He’s only just met her and already he’s building her a house and who do you think has paid for those bricks? I can’t see what was wrong with the railway station.

What that woman does and doesn’t want seems to be paramount in her own mind. Is she just shellfish (ho ho). Big Ears has obviously been around a lot more women than Noddy – there’s something nautical about the man, although that might just be his predilection for blue blazers and gold buttons. Miss Fluffy-Cat is taking the situation rather well all things considered. It must have been a bit of a let down what with Noddy being the star and all.

Bizarrely for the fifties Mr Big Golly is proving rather generous, though I can’t quite bring myself to reveal his involvement and negative impact on another story within. Where is Carol Thatcher when you need her? How times don’t change!

“I really must give you a hug Noddy, for being so nice.” Well I can see this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. That or it’s the oldest trade-off in history. Come to think of it, I don’t believe that was ever her furniture in the first place. She’s done this before. Oh it’s so easy to be cynical … and that’s why I do it! Next week – violence, kidnapping and horror as Enid Blyton meets Stephen King head on!

NODDY AND CHAOS

Here’s a Noddy story in a more familiar format. Still no word balloons though. Like most stories in Toyland it starts innocuously enough. What child could possibly imagine the psychological horrors to come? Not this one that’s for sure. Begin with caution dear readers – you are now entering the Enid Blyton zone! Another misleading title too!

Already the hairs on the back of my neck are beginning to prickle. Am I supposed to identify with Noddy or the naughty bears? I can’t help myself  - IT’S THE BEARS! If there’s a moral to this story do yo think it involves the enormity of the ice-cream Noddy is gorging himself on. I’m confused and conflicted at the same time.

It was only a game! I was … I mean they were only mucking about! You’ll notice how socially relevant this story still is what with joy-riding, violence against the police and immigrants selling dodgy fruit by the barrow load (sorry)!

My anxiety level is through the roof! Police, bricks, oranges and now skittles! Before I read this story everything seemed so certain and now the forces of chaos are truly in control. What will become of us. It hardly seems worth growing up if this is what life is going to throw at you.

How am I … I mean how is he going to talk his way out of this mess. I thought this car was sentient anyway – what’s it doing running off like that. Blame the car Noddy … blame the CAR!

I don’t like water! I can’t swim! This is touching on all my primal fears at once.

Trust an elephant to know what’s going on! Know your Hindu pantheon I always say. But now you realise why I was so worried. That policeman doesn’t just lock you up – it’s like Midnight Express down at his station I’m telling you. Anyway, I’m a nervous wreck now, but that bleedin’ car’s a bit too happy considering it nearly got Noddy relaxing at her majesty’s pleasure. Parp-parp indeed.

And now you’ll gather that things rolling out of control down hills is considered too much excitement for children by me from now on. Next week we turn to that eternal battle between toytown boy and toytown girl as sex rears it’s ugly head in The New Big Noddy Book! See you then.

Meanwhile remember my advice column from 1949 or thereabouts? Well here’s how to straighten that hunch honey! Ohh that’s harsh!

You’re feeling more musical already I can tell. Ever thought of taking up the flute? Stay tuned for more invaluable advice soon!

WHY I WANT TO BASH THE TIN MAN’S HEAD IN!

As promised more Noddy from The New Big Noddy Book and the story of the little clockwork car. That doesn’t strike me as a sufficient or terribly accurate title for such a traumatic adventure. Read it for yourselves and make your own mind up.

The clockwork car is faster than Noddy’s by virtue of it’s clockwork nature – but what is the motive force behind Noddy’s car I have to ask myself some forty years later? Despite that outstanding question at least Noddy’s car is an honest bright yellow, not Bismark grey! Already I can feel the anger welling up inside. The tin driver is obviously a Nazi. I congratulate my younger self – even then I was albeit unknowingly a raving anti-fascist. Hooray for Noddy! On with the story…

The tin man is rude to Big Ears. Somehow, deep in my psyche, Big Ears has come to represent my own dearly departed father. Big Ears has been insulted. My father has been insulted. The tin man must die!

Getting a job polishing humming tops hardly seems a fit punishment for a toy with that much of an attitude. If I had my way he’s eat that nuffing key! Grr! And so you see forty years later the scars persist and the tin man has still not been punished. It’s him or me. One of us has got to go. I’ll make that tin man sorry if it kills me.

And now with my anger management issues unresolved we turn next week to the forces of chaos running wild in The New Big Noddy Book!

An update is that Beek or Eelco Martinus ten Harmsen van der Beek to give him his full name (names don’t get much fuller than that) died in 1953 and looking up the book title through google shows it as being first published in 1953 – but then it might not have been a first edition and the inscription might still be 1962 – or perhaps I want to see 1962 because it’s the year I was born! Who knows.

THE BIG NEW NODDY BOOK

Join me now and for the next few weeks in a nightmarish journey to the origins of me. I pulled this book off my shelf just the other day and was thinking about it and about comics as usual and about how in Great Britain comics have developed in very different ways to the traditions my American readers find familiar over in the United States. Noddy here is an amalgam of illustrated text stories, single illustrations and strips that are like regular comics but different in that instead of word balloons (considered vulgar and American at the time) they have explanations and dialogue running underneath the separate panels usually 5 or 6 to a page in an orderly grid. For anyone familiar with the classic Rupert Annuals published by the Daily Express you’ll remember that the text there was written in rhyming couplets – it doesn’t go quite that far here. It all seems very dated now at any rate, but what I would like to ask is – why? What is so inherently sophisticated about word balloons? Maybe you’ll tell me. Maybe I’ll agree, but for the moment and again over the coming weeks let me take you through my favourite strips from this book. I find them quite bizarre now, but in a strange way even more exciting than I did then. There’s a clue within I feel.

The New Big Noddy Book - it's hell inside!

Some background. Well, I’ve had it since I was little. You can see how battered it is. The spine has gone and there are many repairs. Pages are not numbered so unless you read everything you can never be quite sure there isn’t a page missing. The frontispiece reveals that the book wasn’t originally mine, someone else wrote that “This book belongs to: -whoever-”, so perhaps it was second or third hand before I got it. The book has been published many times and the date written in the front could be 1962, but I have a feeling the book is earlier – maybe mid-fifties. That date looks like it could be a 53? I’ll investigate later.

By Enid Blyton (who was not on drugs apparently)

The stories to come will be strange enough, but consider for the moment the work of Dutch illustrator Beek. Although Blyton wrote many charming (!) stories surely it is Beek that has fixed the image and identity of Noddy so solidly in our minds for over half century. More on Blyton, Beek and Noddy later. In the meantime enjoy this full page (framed) illustration. Most of the illustrations would be vignettes like the one above, but when the picture took a full page for some reason that demanded a frame.

Pictures by Beek (To Noddy what Steve Ditko was to Spider-man)

More Noddy next week – and things are going to get stranger and stranger. Girls, sex, kidnapping, violence, cats, skittles, maybe even social commentary and breaking gender and racial taboos. Well I said maybe.