"Master Mind" was a
comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...
in the
British comic
A British comic is a periodical published in the United Kingdom that contains comic strips. It is generally referred to as a comic or a comic magazine, and historically as a comic paper.
British comics are usually Comics anthology, comics antho ...
magazine ''
Buster''. It made its first appearance in the issue dated 8 November 1980, and ran until 1983 when it was replaced with ''
Cliff Hanger
A cliffhanger or cliffhanger ending is a plot device in fiction which features a main character in a precarious or difficult dilemma or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode or a film of serialized fiction. A cliffhange ...
''. It was written and drawn by
Jack Edward Oliver
Jack Edward Oliver (19 June 1942 – 26 May 2007) was a British cartoonist. He is more usually known as J. Edward Oliver (or JEO, or Jack).
Biography
JEO achieved fame in the 1970s with a long-running strip in the UK music paper '' Disc (an ...
.
Alf Witt was a boy who lived in the town of Flittem, and was not very clever. After falling into a hole, he met a
wizard called Madness Madnesson (a reference to
Magnus Magnusson
Magnus Magnusson, (born Magnús Sigursteinsson; 12 October 1929 – 7 January 2007) was an Icelandic-born British-based journalist, translator, writer and television presenter. Born in Reykjavík, he lived in Scotland for almost all his life, a ...
, who hosted the television show ''
Mastermind
Mastermind, Master Mind or The Mastermind may refer to:
Fictional characters
* Mastermind (Jason Wyngarde), a fictional supervillain in Marvel Comics, a title also held by his daughters:
** Martinique Jason, the first daughter and successor of th ...
'' at this time) who gave him super powers. By getting into a
telephone booth
A telephone booth, telephone kiosk, telephone call box, telephone box or public call box is a tiny structure furnished with a payphone and designed for a telephone user's convenience; usually the user steps into the booth and closes the booth ...
and saying the mystic word "Pass", Alf Witt would transform into a
superhero
A superhero or superheroine is a stock character that typically possesses ''superpowers'', abilities beyond those of ordinary people, and fits the role of the hero, typically using his or her powers to help the world become a better place, ...
called Master Mind.
In the strip he would come across a
supervillain
A supervillain or supercriminal is a variant of the villainous stock character that is commonly found in American comic books, usually possessing superhuman abilities. A supervillain is the antithesis of a superhero.
Supervillains are oft ...
and ask the readers for help on how to defeat him, this would usually involve puzzles such as
anagram
An anagram is a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of a different word or phrase, typically using all the original letters exactly once. For example, the word ''anagram'' itself can be rearranged into ''nag a ram'', also the word ...
s,
join the dots, and many others. Master Mind also had a dog that would accompany him, called Bones.
{{Comic-strip-stub
British comic strips
1980 comics debuts
Comics characters introduced in 1980
Comics set in England
Superhero comics
Male characters in comics
Child characters in comics
1983 comics endings