Faceache was acomic strip appearing inBritish comics in the 1970s and 1980s. He was created byKen Reid.
Faceache first appeared in issue #1 ofJet, dated 1 May 1971. The strip was retained whenJet merged withBuster later that year, the first merged issue dated 2 October 1971. Reid continued drawingFaceache until his death in early 1987.Dez Skinn and Frank McDiarmid took over from then on, until the strip ended in the issue dated 1 October 1988.
Rebellion Developments is due to republish theFaceache series as part ofThe Treasury of British Comics.[1]
Ricky Rubberneck was a boy with a "bendable bonce" (head), his skin like stretch rubber. At will, he couldscrunge his face into anything. The term "faceache" was commonly used in England from the 1950s onwards to mean "miserable-looking person".[citation needed]
Several of the stories were set atBelmonte School, home to two other recurring characters — his friendCyril, and theheadmasterMr. Snipe. The wordscrunch had been slowly overtaken byscrunge.
As the years went by, the name Ricky Rubberneck was dropped, and the character was simply called "Faceache". Also, his scrunges got more and more complex, with him able to appear identical to other people, and even scrunging his entire body into various (monstrous) shapes, rather than just his face. In one strip he turned himself into adodo, tricking his teacher into believing that that bird was not extinct; in another, he became a grotesquemole-like creature, burrowing under a smokechimney and causing it to collapse.
An adult Faceache appears in the 2005–2006 comic booklimited seriesAlbion, as one of a number of comics characters who have been imprisoned by the British government. InAlbion Faceache's real name is said to be "Frederick Akeley".[2]
