Faceache

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Faceache was a comic strip in, originally, the UK comic Jet, first appearing in issue 1, dated 1 May 1971.

Drawn by Ken Reid, Ricky Rubberneck was a boy with a "bendable bonce" (head), his skin like stretch rubber. At will, he could scrunge his face into anything. Several of the stories were set at Belmonte School, home to two other recurring characters - his friend Cyril, and the headmaster Mr. Snipe. The strip was retained when Jet merged with Buster later that year, the first merged issue dated 2 October 1971. The word scrunch had been slowly overtaken by scrunge.

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 a dodo, tricking his teacher into believing that that bird was not extinct; in another, he became a grotesque mole-like creature, burrowing under a smoke chimney and causing it to collapse.

Reid continued drawing Faceache until his death in early 1987. Frank McDiarmid took over from then on, until the strip ended in the issue dated 1 October 1988.

An adult Faceache appears in the 2005 comic Albion, as one of a number of comic book characters who have been imprisoned by the British government. In Albion Faceache's real name is said to be "Frederick".

The term "faceache" was commonly used in England from the 1950s onwards to mean "miserable-looking person".