I looked into the artist on that issue, Lou Cameron. His comic book credits as an artist are pretty sparse and end around 1960. After that he became an extremely prolific writer of film and TV novelizations and soft-core cowboy “sex and sagebrush” novels. There are more than 300 books in his bibliography.
Did he do CI’s The Time Machine as well?
Yes. 4 years before the film came out. I think he does a better job drawing machines than he does people or landscapes. His Morlocks weren’t as scary as his Martians.
I think they were better than the ones in the classic 1960 movie, though. They were one of the things that kept me awake as a wee lad.
I believe the slur actually comes from the British boarding school system, where older students were allowed to use younger boys as servants, which could get really abusive.
The cigarette use oddly doesn’t seem to be connected to the pile of wood either, rather from ‘fag end’, originally meaning a useless remnant of something, normally cloth, which then got transferred to a cigarette end, and from there to the whole cigarette.
There’s also a type of meatball, which tends to startle overseas visitors when they see it on an English menu.
Again, I think that comes from the meat originally being rolled into logs. And yes, I’ve heard of some American tourists demanding that the term be taken off UK menus.
This is the first time I’ve heard about the connection with British schoolboys and the ends (my people would probably say “butts”) of cigarettes. Interesting!