Scorcher was the name of a football-themed British comic magazine published by IPC between January 1970 and October 1974. Scorcher featured various well-known comic strips, such as Billy's Boots, Bobby of the Blues and Lags Eleven, a story about a prison football team. In addition, the Nipper strip was absorbed from the Score comic, and Hot Shot Hamish made its first appearance after that. Some of these stories later found homes in Roy of the Rovers and in Tiger. IPC Magazines, the publishers of Scorcher, always referred to it as a "paper" rather than a comic in its editorials, to distinguish it from more child-oriented publications such as The Beano or The Dandy. In addition to its realistic and comedic football-themed stories, it contained factual items about British professional football, and advertisements not only for contemporary toys, games and confectionery, but also others aimed at an older readership, such as for the Charles Atlas body building method, and recruitment advertisements for the Police, the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy. Publication history In July 1971, Scorcher joined with another football-themed comic, Score (initially called Score 'n' Roar, launched in September 1970), to form Scorcher and SCORE, before finally merging into Tiger to become TIGER and Scorcher. The word Scorcher started with almost equal prominence to TIGER on the title page, but as usually happened with such mergers the title size was reduced in November 1975, and again in February 1978 before finally being dropped from the title of the comic after the issue dated 30 August 1980. In total, 548 weekly comics were published with Scorcher in the title, with the following cover dates (the comic usually appeared for sale one week before its cover date, and capitalisations are as they actually appeared on the title bar of the comics): 77 issues of Scorcher from 10 January 1970 to 26 June 1971 171 issues of Scorcher and SCORE from 3 July 1971 to 5 October 1974 300 issues of TIGER and Scorcher from 12 October 1974 to 30 August 1980 (Industrial action prevented publication of 3 issues in December 1978 and a further 5 in May and June 1980) 14 editions of Scorcher Annual were published from 1971 to 1984, and Scorcher or Scorcher and SCORE Holiday Specials each summer from 1970 until at least 1980. Scorcher #1 Issue No. 1 of Scorcher was dated 10 January 1970 and