Dreamy Dave and Dozy Dora

DREAMY DAVE and DOZY DORA is chiefly remembered as being amongst the most whimsical of all th nursery-like strips that so populated the early years of SPARKY, and the siple premise of the central sleepy pair: that they fall into slumberland at the drop of a hat, and embark upon weird-and-wonderful misadventures of a decidedly Alice in Wonderland type. This dreamlike and disorientating, sometimes alarming [in it's depiction of often frankly bizarre characters] would stand this strip in good stead right from issue one, through until very late 1968, during which time the format rarely swayed from the dreamland pair [amongst the most innocent and trusting duo seen in any comic of the era, another of it's slightly disturbing properties] as they encountered a single strange character from the subconcious, who introduced them to a sometimes nightmare world of escalating insanity.

For all it's strangeness, [or possibly because of this!] DREAMY DAVE and DOZY DORA remains one of the handful of easily-remembered concepts of the very early period of SPARKY, striking a chord even today who remember the early period of this least-revered of the stable of D.C.Thomson humour comics. Artists who worked on this strip at various times included James Malcolm and Pam Chapea, the latter of whom was to turn out much similarly whimsical work on MR Bubbles.

Altogether strange and sometimes even sinister, but without a doubt one of the key elements that summed up the very early SPARKY, perhaps partly due to the fact that the strip was often rendered in full-colour, within the centrespread.