Look-In #22/1979
Look-In #22/1979 (cover-dated 26 May 1979) lands at one of the most eventful transition points in the magazine's run: it marks the final instalment of the Dick Turpin strip's opening story arc ('The Deserter'), and falls in the same week that The Bionic Woman's solo colour strip concluded and the inaugural CHiPs strip debuted, making the issue a pivot between the long-running American action shows that had defined Look-In through the late 1970s and an incoming wave of new ITV-screened properties. The simultaneous presence of Steve Austin, Jaime Sommers, Oscar Goldman, Dick Turpin, and Ponch and Jon in a single weekly children's magazine captures, in miniature, the breadth of ITV's imported and homegrown drama offer at the close of the decade. As the first run of CHiPs in the magazine lasted only through June 1979 — barely two months — issues from this debut window represent Look-In's earliest British comics treatment of the California Highway Patrol duo. The Bionic Action crossover that began the following week would prove to be Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers' final shared stage in British comics.
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Look-In was launched on 9 January 1971 by Independent Television Publications Ltd. as a children's counterpart to the TV Times, subtitled 'The Junior TV Times,' with Alan Fennell as founding editor and Angus Allan as the principal strip writer; after Fennell departed in 1975, art editor Colin Shelbourn took over editorial duties. By 1979 the magazine was under some creative pressure: both the Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman television series had already wrapped in the United States, and their respective Look-In strips — written throughout by Angus Allan, with Martin Asbury drawing the Steve Austin stories and John M. Burns and John Bolton sharing the Jaime Sommers pages — were winding down after nearly four and three years respectively. The Dick Turpin strip, timed to capitalise on the ITV period drama that had begun airing earlier that year, was written by Allan and drawn by Alan Parry, while the incoming CHiPs strip — bridging the gap left by the bionic franchises — would cycle through artists including Jim Baikie before that first short run was aborted as quickly as it began.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Issue #22/1979 is cover-dated 26 May 1979 and represents the conclusion of the Dick Turpin strip's opening story arc, 'The Deserter,' which had run from issue #14 (31 March 1979).
- The Dick Turpin comic strip — tied to the ITV series of the same name — was written by Angus Allan and drawn by Alan Parry; it ran in Look-In from March to October 1979.
- This issue falls at the exact changeover point when The Bionic Woman's solo colour strip (drawn by John M. Burns and John Bolton, running since August 1976) concluded its run, with its colour page allocation passing to the new CHiPs strip.
- The CHiPs strip, featuring Officers Ponch and Jon of the California Highway Patrol, made its Look-In debut in May 1979 — its first run lasted only through June 1979, making issues from this debut window exceptionally brief in the run's publishing history.
- CHiPs had only begun airing on ITV in January 1979 (London region first, other regions following by February), making Look-In's strip debut virtually simultaneous with British viewers' first exposure to the show.
- Steve Austin and Oscar Goldman appear in this issue as part of the closing episodes of either The Bionic Woman strip or the very earliest Bionic Action crossover strip, in which both characters were written by Angus Allan — their near-four-year consecutive presence in Look-In was drawing to its final chapter.
- The Bionic Action crossover strip that immediately followed (from 31 May 1979) — uniting Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers in a new black-and-white strip — was drawn first by Ian Gibson, who subsequently became known for co-creating Halo Jones for 2000AD.
- Look-In strips from this era have never been officially collected or reprinted in a dedicated volume, meaning the original weekly issues remain the sole format in which this material exists.