Bunsen's Burner

Bunsen's Burner was a short lived, humorous adventure strip which ran in the pages of Smash! in 1969. It concerned the adventures of Ben Bunsen, who inherited a fortune from his late uncle-but only on the proviso that he first drove an ancient steam powered car (nicknamed 'the Burner') around the world! Bunsen and his pal Dusty Myles duly set off to complete the task, but were continually hampered by a criminal mastermind called The Octopus and his associates (including 'The Inventor', an incredibly lazy fat man with a talent for creating fiendish mechanical devices without leaving his armchair, and 'The Conjurer', a master of disguise) who had been hired by Bunsen's evil cousin Nicholas to kill Ben and thus allow nasty Nicholas to seize his inheritance. Luckily, Bunsen's uncle had anticipated this problem might arise, and so had a special course built, leaving instructions with his lawyer to hire a couple of bodyguards to trick Ben and Dusty into diverting onto this course if the attempts on their life became too much of a problem. The special course turned out to have a giant Atlas globe at the centre of it, so by driving around it Ben and Dusty had unwittingly complied with the letter of Uncle Bunsen's demand! Ben inherited his fortune, and Nicholas and The Octopus were left lamenting the fact that the expense incurred by their schemes had left them both penniless.