Faceache

Ricky Rubberneck was a boy with a "bendable bonce" (head), his skin like stretch rubber. At will, he could alter his face into anything. The term "faceache" was commonly used in England from the 1950s onwards to mean "miserable-looking person".^{[citation needed]}. References to the character's real name being Ricky Rubberneck were dropped early on, and he was subsequently known solely as Faceache.

Initially, the face-changes were accompanied by variety of sound effects such as "Twang!", "Doyng!" and "Gloylp!", until issue 21 of Jet, in which the consistent word "scrunch" was used for the first time. This was dropped after a while, reverting to random sound effects, until finally in issue 646 of Buster on the 6th January 1973, the words scrunge and unscrunge were introduced for the first time and immediately became the permanent descriptors of the transformations, the latter being used when Faceache returned to his normal appearance.

Several of the stories were set at Belmonte School, home to two other recurring characters — his friend Cyril, and the headmaster Mr. Snipe.

As the years went by, Faceache's 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.

An adult Faceache appears in the 2005–2006 comic book limited series Albion, as one of a number of comics characters who have been imprisoned by the British government. In Albion Faceache's real name is said to be "Frederick Akeley".^[2]

• British humour