''The McTickles'' was a British

gag-a-day A gag-a-day comic strip is the style of writing comic cartoons such that every installment of a strip delivers a complete joke or some other kind of artistic statement. It is opposed to story or continuity strips, which rely on the development of ...

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 book magazine '' The Beano''. It was drawn by

Vic Neill Vic Neill (24 November 1941 - 24 December 1999) was a British cartoonist who drew for D.C. Thomson and I.P.C.'s comics. His first notable comic work was on Sparky strip Peter Piper. In 1969, he replaced Dudley Dexter Watkins on Topper cover s ...

and ran from 1971 to 1974.

Concept

Chief Jock and his highland clan fought a comic war of attrition against their rivals the McNasties, while avoiding the pranks played on them by the "McHaggises", small round animals with a similar shape to a haggis and with long noses and thistles for ears. Some McHaggises had legs of different length on opposite sides of their bodies, allowing them to remain horizontal while walking around the sides of mountains. The many types of 'McHaggises' included the Spiky Hedgehoggis, the Fiery McHaggis, the Roller McHaggis, and many others (This is in fact a common joke used by Scottish people when "explaining" the haggis to uninitiated visitors.) Another recurring comic device was to prefix "Mc" to important words and onomatopoeia. For example, if someone fired a gun, the sound would be written "McBang".The leader of The McTickles was named Chief Jock and the other Mctickles were Morag (Stroppy middle-aged woman), Murdo who had a long beard, Nickol who was one of the younger clan members, Donald who is also one of the younger clan members and some others who were never named.

History

After four years the strip was replaced by another Scottish-highland themed strip, '' Wee Ben Nevis'', also drawn by Neill. Beano strips 1971 comics debuts Comics characters introduced in 1971 1974 comics endings Fictional families Fictional Scottish people British comics characters Gag-a-day comics Comics set in Scotland {{UK-comics-stub