The post formerly known as “Where’s your pheonix?”

09/01/2012 by admin.

…because instead it ought to be called Where’s my Pheonix!

 

My regular buys, though some have not so regular publication!

The Pheonix is a new, weekly British adventure comic that is distributed (apparently) in (some) shops. It launched on Saturday… not that you’d have noticed if you didn’t read the Times or British Comic websites. As it’s name sort of implies it’s a revival of a certain other comic, namely the ill-fated DFC of a few years ago. It’s been bankrolled by an “anonymous benefactor” and apparently has enough funding to guarantee it running for another two years. Though if I ever win the lottery that will be immediately doubled.

Anyway, as I said above the comic is supposed to be distributed in shops, or at least in Waitrose. Good luck finding it though! Wherever I’ve been on the internet I’ve only seen tales of dissapointment. Waitrose isn’t as common up north or in Scotland as it is around my way, so some people went on special journeys of no small distance only to be met with a blank wall!

I didn’t have such a trek to my nearest store in Ely, but had just as much luck! Aside from a proper dig in the typically messy comics section I also checked along the tills (where the special Waitrose magazine is sold). Having not found it on Saturday I carried on into Cambridge for the other bits I wanted to buy. In desperation I also checked for it in Forbidden Planet (nope!), Smith’s (nope! But they did manage to stock all four Commando issues this time around) and various other small shops (nope!).

Picture related

However, I decided that as the comic was also available by subscription from the internet, perhaps the January 7th date was simply when those copies were posted. The actual physical copies wouldn’t be distributed to shops until the following Monday? Well I went in earlier today and… nope!

This time I tried asking at customer services too. The first person had never heard of it. Neither had the second. She rang up one of the “higher ups” who had also never heard of it. She then rang up one of the even-higher-ups who wasn’t in the office (this was about 5 o clock mind you). To be fair to them they did even offer to have him ring me back, but I just said I’d buy it online instead. Perhaps a mistake, I could have appealed to his patriotism… by calling him a traitor. And other such polite and persuasive arguments.

Picture related

Anyway, I tried my best. But now I’m going to have to be reduced to buying it online. You’d think the people that run physical shops would be more worried about people buying everything over a wire wouldn’t you? One computerised logistics centre does the work of 100 supermarkets, the shop managers are under just as much of a threat as the checkout girls if they continue to lose sales.

 

 Still you get a free binder. More shelf space I have to find!

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Posted in Pheonix, British comics industry, 2010's | 1 Comment »

A Wartime Christmas

26/12/2011 by admin.

1940! Four digits written in fire on the pages of our history, Britain entered that year apprehensive about the “phoney war” and left it wondering if she’d ever see 1942. Large parts of our cities were rubble and the families of many a soldier and airman spent Christmas dinner with an empty place at the table.

However, in the middle of 1939 when these annuals were being prepared, it was still just a number. And for the children reading their new books on this day 72 years ago they were a welcome look back into times of peace.

 

 Though they’re both in remarkably good nick I actually got them months apart from different places!

One annual for boys and one for girls. Both from the same publisher and with a remarkably similar style of contents. They’re also very good value with over 200 pages each (paper rationing had not yet begun). Of course they’re full of text stories, reading two of those probably takes as long as reading the whole 2012 Beano Annual! And from the sound of things the Beano and Dandy annuals this year are actually thicker than the average size, which is 64 pages. 64 pages! That’s a jumped-up monthly magazine! Something ought not to have the right to call itself an annual with anything under 100.

 

Tell your friends… NOW!

 

The girls get a double-page contents with pretty illustrations.

Both annuals also have an introduction from the editor of their respective weekly comic (a thing unheard of today, though ask me again if Commando decide to do annuals again. Today “The Editor” would at least use their real name mind you) and extra illustrations around everything. Then we’re on to the stories, with block illustrations in line or grey washes. These washes look magnificent.

 

Not always of the most dramatic incidents in a story, mind you.

The Champion was primarily a sport-themed comic that ran from 1922 to 1959. It might be considered a forerunner of the sport-themed comic (with strips, not completely text!) Tiger , into which it was eventually incorporated. As well as sport it also included a few stories of war or adventure (most famously Rockfist Rogan, a fighter pilot who was also a boxer!). This particular story starts off the annual with a mystery about a “monster” seen in an estuary near a navy base. Why yes you have guessed that it’s a submarine! The opening illustration to the story even features some very German-looking men being punched. The story does not mention the nationality of the spies operating the sub, mind you.

 

The Schoolgirls’ Own Annual, in the tradition of British Annuals, was named after a publication that was already defunct. The Schoolgirls’ Own ran from 1921 to 1936, featuring stories of Morcove School. This was a girl’s school close to St Jim’s from The Gem, as Cliff House (home of Bessie Bunter) was close to Greyfriars (home of Billy Bunter). Comic cross-pollination is older than you think!

This opening story is also set in a public school (though not Morcove… in fact I don’t think any of the stories in this annual are!) and features a tangled mystery involving a young new girl, a bully, a wrongfully-expelled heroine and mysterious thefts. It’s a real page-turner though the solution to the mystery (and exposure of the real thief) is very cliche’d.

Other styles of story include tales of dancers and amateur theatricals…

 

Clickety-click

Both annuals cram in plenty of school sports…

 

You could just say “The Summer Game” and “The Winter Game” back then!

In the Schoolgirls’ Own we get an amusing comedy-of-errors story with plenty of characters all misunderstanding one another (an actress disguised as a schoolgirl fails to realise she’s insulting the headmistress of the school, for instance!).

 

The Champion, in it’s run, produced two detectives in the mould of Sexton Blake. In the beginning there was Panther Grayle (an article in the 1925 Champion Annual states he has very nearly acheived the same level of fame as Blake… among the staff of The Champion maybe!) and later on there was Colwyn Dane, assisted by cockney lad Slick Chester. This story for 1940 appears to be yer usual Scooby Doo-style tale of a fake ghost intended to scare people away from a treasure (I haven’t completely read either book yet!). Colwyn Dane continued in Champion Annuals into the 1950’s, the paper became even more sport-oriented after the war, and the stories reflected that - he would go undercover in a county cricket team and so on.

 

This reminds me of the style of one of the earlier Commando artists…

Finally mention should be made of a war story featuring air raids from the end of the Champion Annual. Something for the boy hiding in the family shelter to think over as the Blitz began, perhaps…

 

Now here’s the sort of scene that’s supposed to be in the illustrations!

Both annuals also feature articles. Most of the articles are also loosely written in the form of stories (what would have been called “chatty” in the 20’s and early 30’s)  that contain advice. In The Champion we have the rules and terminology of Baseball, supposedly introduced to an English public school by an American named Cornelius T Pepperjohn. While Americans probably usually assume Cricket is “the British version” of Baseball, in fact Rounders is a lot closer. However from what I remember of Rounders at primary school it’s not as “organised”, has more “bases” and different rules. Though that might have just been my primary school!

I do seem to remember playing a lot of Baseball at secondary school, mind you. Of course we didn’t have a proper field for it, they never even bothered to paint a diamond (there was easily enough room for one though, that school’s field was vast). I think it was just an excuse for our PE teacher to shout “Strike 2… he could be in trouble!” in a ridiculous American accent.

 

Also our school’s “catcher’s fence” was “my face” usually.

Of course in those days every boy knew all about Football, so a ’story article’ about that concentrates more on tactics, organising training and the importance of selecting team members based on ability, not friendship!

 

How many schools really appointed an ex-international as their coach? Even in those days of capped salaries?

Meanwhile on the girl’s side there’s an article about what to do when invited to a dance. The girl in question gets a fashionable dress… by altering one she already has with new bits of material. She can’t afford a fashionable handbag either, so creates a matching one for her dress from scratch, using a handkerchief and ribbon! The only new thing she buys is tights… could you imagine a girl’s annual suggesting altering and making things yourself these days? And remember this article was written before rationing!

 

“I might go and work in Singapore dontcha know. I’ll be well away from this Hitler business out there…”

There’s also more conventional articles with short sections containing useful information. For the girls there’s suggestions for hobbies and crafts… including plenty more making of your own clothes.

 

Everybody collected stamps back then. Everybody. It’s amazing there was enough left for posting letters.

And for the boys, advice for doing odd jobs around the house. The very idea of a book aimed at children these days talking about replacing fuses and fighting minor house fires! They’d never print that sort of thing today… and that means that we’ve lost something, quite frankly.

 

 “Most people fly into a panic and forget the number for the fire brigade” in my admittedly limited experience.

Interestingly there’s also an article about Speedway, from 1939! I was under the impression it didn’t arrive in Britain until the late 40’s, having originated in Australia. In fact the editorial in issue 4 of my Red, White & Blue said as much… oh well, lucky it’s going to be re-launched!

 

2 wheels, no brakes, aeroplane fuel. What could go wrong?

And finally, the back covers, both containing adverts for the weekly publications that the annuals are associated with… in the customary style!

Who cares about actual speed, bikes like that look faster than modern ones!

Posted in Schoolgirls Own, The Champion, Amalgamated Press, 1940's | 1 Comment »

Petunia Rascal

10/12/2011 by admin.

Free badge!

This is one of my favourite titles in the small press today. Probably because it’s the one that’s closest to ‘proper’ British comics, especially the modern-day Dandy! Petunia is the boss of her “crew”, the Skate Pirates which also includes Bill Pukes (the dumb one) and Jolly Rodney (the straight man). Other characters include a witch that lives under the sea and a giant eel!

 

Among other talking sea life

The first story in this book involves Petunia running afoul of the witch while skating at the market. She tries to escape by skating into the sea… like ya do. The second story is even better, as Petunia and her pirates decide to get revenge on snack companies that have put 10p crisps up to 45p!

Remember the ones with wheels?

In addition to this there has been a tiny free comic called “Do the Conger Bomba” (online here) and right now you can read an advent calendar comic that’s being updated every day until Christmas eve. Oh and it’s in colour!

http://petuniarascal.smackjeeves.com/comics/1366212/christmas-is-coming-title-page/

 

I do beleive this page contains cameo appearances

While I’m on the subject of the small press, I’m intending to create two small, irregular comic magazines. Hopefully with the first issues of both ready to go over Christmas. The first is to be called The Sentinel, and I’ll have more on that in a later post. The second, though, will be called The Small Press Digest and will feature ‘reviews’ (more like descriptions, so people can choose what they will like themselves), how-to articles and short stories/comic strips. Contributions are welcomed!

But for now…

 

 

Posted in S. Atholl Gordon, small press, 2010's | 1 Comment »

Armistice Union Jacks

12/11/2011 by admin.

For nearly a decade after the end of the First World War it was hardly mentioned in British comics. Any war stories were either set further back in time (for instance the Afghan wars), or else were about fictional conflicts set in the near future. Often against made-up countries presumed to be in some part of the dismembered Austro-Hungarian empire.

However by the second half of the twenties stories and articles about the war gradually crept back in. The Union Jack in November 1926 was one of the leaders of this trend with a series of three plates celebrating the armistice.

I only have two of the issues though!

Normally I don’t care about gifts with comics. I buy them for the art and stories alone, in fact I prefer comics without their gifts because they are usually far cheaper! I got the first issue of the re-launched Wizard from 1970 for a tenner that way. But I made an exception when I saw the first of these pictures on sale…

Wonder if this has been reproduced anywhere else?

The plates are accompanied by brief articles about them. These also contain plenty of reminders that no other paper has ever made such an amazing offer at the price, that demand is high and that a regular order should be placed. You’d think The Dandy would try this in these days of ‘pester power’ eh?

 

They also contain previews of the next plate

 

And remember that regular order!

The three issues are bumper numbers in other ways too. They feature the start of the serial The Three Just Men by Edgar Wallace. This was considered so important that the first two parts (and maybe more) take precedence over Sexton Blake and appear right at the front!

 

I doubt that happened with many other serials.

The Three Just Men is the sequel to 1905’s The Four Just Men (yes the Four came before the Three, for reasons that will be obvious if you’ve read the first one XD). It features a group of highly skilled gentlemen who publicly sentence people to death and then carry out the promised assassination by some clever trick. Just like The Deathless Men and V would be doing in later decades. The Four Just Men was actually one of the first ‘really old’ stories I read. It was fairly hard going for me at the time but now I breeze through stories from 10-20 years earlier. Maybe I ought to re-read it.

 

The copy I own is actually from the 50’s mind.

Sexton Blake is also on top form. The story concerns the return of one of his greatest enemies (and he wasn’t short of those in the twenties!) Leon Kestrel, the “master mummer”. A mummer was a kind of ‘quick change’ artist who with clever, quickly-applied makeup, could appear to be many different people on stage. Kestrel on the other hand could do this in real life, with disguises that couldn’t be detected even at close quarters by friends of the person being imitated. This of course led to fantastic stories where you never quite know who is who, especially if Sexton Blake also steps into one of his famous disguises.

 

Kestrel also had a love of the theatrical. He would threaten to carry out seemingly impossible crimes - in this case stealing gemstones one at a time from a necklace (”pinching it by installments!” declares Tinker) despite the fact it’s inside a locked case and guarded round the clock. He would also steal valuable art treasures that it would be impossible to sell on simply for the fun of it. Not that he wasn’t also above swindling honest people out of large sums of money. Oh and of course his skills at deception, burglary and quick changes of appearance help him with an endless series of amazing prison escapes when he is finally captured!

 

Oh and his wife/accomplice Fifette who is just as skilled as he is!

I don’t have the third issue of these armistice numbers, but the editorial further up mentions that it is the first issue to feature Dr Satira. I don’t think I’ve ever read one of his stories, but it says he has a personal army of ape-men so I expect it can’t be half bad!

Posted in Amalgamated Press, Edgar Wallace, Union Jack, Sexton Blake, 1950's, 1920's | 1 Comment »

Proper British adventure comics are still around, if you know where to look - Part 4

06/11/2011 by admin.

You may recall I started this series of articles in the middle of last year, anticipating the release of what it was leading up to. However my anticipation was, in fact, 11 months out! But on the second of this month it finally arrived…

Strip Magazine

Meet the newest comrade in the battle against boring comics, and one that has shot straight into my “regular buys” pile:

 

(For some reason Cambridge Smith’s is only selling 3 Commando’s a time now)

Strip Magazine is an all-new monthly of 68 pages that costs a mere £2.99, which is amazing value considering what you get. It even “feels” longer than the Judge Dredd Megazine did in the good old days of 2004 when it was 100 pages long and cost £4.99! It’s also filled with newly-created characters that exist solely for the purpose of being comics - they aren’t just dumb toy adverts or TV show tie-ins.

We start off with a comedy superhero strip (no don’t run, it’s only a page and actually funny!), which is promisingly advertised as “The only superheroes you’ll see in Strip Magazine”. The introduction doesn’t beat about the bush either. The publisher, Bosnian Ivo Milicevic, grew up reading classic British adventure comics such as Action and Valiant. He later discovered, to his horror, that there was no equivalent comic being published in Britain today. It’s nice to know that foreigners care about this vast, vanished part of our culture - even if British people don’t!

 

Some of those parody heroes are a bit close to the bone! Lets hope Marvel/DC are able to laugh at themselves…

The first strip kicks off in fine style with a massive-explosion-to-page ratio of four in six…

 

KATHOOOM!

It’s Black Ops Extreme, and features a team of mercenaries who have all been convicted of various crimes, and are now earning their freedom by tackling the dirtiest jobs in the world’s hotspots. In this first story blowing up a drug factory in the disputed Western Sahara region. It is, in fact, unintentionally similar to Commando’s “Convict Commandos” series. The characterisation in those stories is brilliant, but here it doesn’t really have a chance to get off the ground in only six pages. But we’ll see how things go on (oh if only this was a weekly!).

I’ll remain pessimistically optimistic that this story isn’t going to end up with them discovering that actually “western capitalism” is “the real enemy” and fighting against Britain / America. But we’ll see… elsewhere in the issue it is implied that they will at some point be off to Afghanistan, a current conflict that Commando has only slightly touched on so far.

 

The comic also contains adverts for other Print Media publications, including this upcoming collection of a Croation comic called Herlock Sholmes. It sounds amusing, but there’s been some more unintentional sameness… for that was the name given to a comedy detective in Tom Merry’s Own annual from 1950!

 

Which coincidentally had the same title as the first Sexton Blake story from 1893!

But I suppose the name is pretty obvious. As is “Sherlock Homeless”, who has been spotted in Viz but also as a comic created by Mashiro Moritaka in Bakuman when he was a child!

Next we have an article on Action, the infamous comic from 1976 that featured endless violence and gallons of blood. It was dubbed “The Sevenpenny Nightmare” by The Sun, Condemned by the Football Association for encouraging hooligans and even debated in parliament!

 

Using, I notice, a picture from the newly-recoloured Hook Jaw and not the original…

For all it’s horror Action did pave the way for the long-running 2000AD. Horrific violence apparently isn’t so bad when it’s happening 130 years in the future, or to robots and aliens. The article does make the highly-dubious claim that Blackjack in Action was “the first British strip to feature a black lead character”. Even ignoring offensive stereotypes like Policeman Pete (”he takes care of the nigs”!) from Tiger Tim’s Weekly, I’m sure that can’t be right. Could this be a brief flash of Megazine Syndrome - IE completely writing off anything that came before Comrade Mills as worthless?

Promisingly this article is named “Classic British Comics” - could it be one of a series? If it is I expect we will be seeing features on non-Eagle, pre-Mills titles that are not also awash with “hurr hurr Danny’s Tranny they wouldn’t get away with that today!” ‘hilarity’.

Anyway the reason Action has been featured in this first issue is to introduce the newly-recoloured reprint of an infamous seventies classic - Hook Jaw!

 

Crunch!

Written off on a certain forum I go to as “dated” (erm, yeah?), it’s actually one of the best strips in the comic! The new colouring is pretty sympathetic to the old artwork, but It seems to me that the gore has actually been toned down(!). I’m sure pictures I’ve seen of the colour Hook Jaw pages from the original printing in Action had far more blood. But of course only some of the pages were originally coloured, here they all are.

 

The next strip is a prequel to The Iron Moon, which I shamefully don’t own yet! It’s done in the same delicate watercolour/pencil style, which looks wonderful. The main character is Charlotte Corday, a secret agent in some kind of mystic investigation department. She also showed up in London Calling, which I talked about here. The Iron Moon is actually set in a different universe to that story, but one that is no less bonkers! It’s set in the 1890’s, but Queen Victoria is both still alive, and apparently came to the throne in the 1690’s! Also the British Empire extends all the way to mars, plus France has been conquered too.

The next story is Recovery Inc. What can I say about this one? Well it features a woman in a tight black leather suit narrating the story as she creeps around stealing stuff. It’s like they threw a bunch of recentish thriller DVD’s at the writer and said “make this”. It also features swear words “disguised” by random symbols. Except those random symbols are actually text speak for the actual letters of the word. This is possibly even worse than fake “futuristic” swear words like “Frell” and they’d better pray nobody at the Mail/Express has their reading glasses on. It smacks of being written into a corner, if Eastenders (or Action!) can manage without swearing so can you!

 

Incedentally if it wasn’t for the explanation of what Recovery Inc is on the contents page I wouldn’t have had the faintest idea what this was even about.

 

Next there’s an article about PJ Holden, the artist on Black Ops Extreme, which also goes over his work for Rebellion, Warhammer and some other small(ish) press stuff.

 

The next strip is Warpaint, which smacks of the mystik faery spyrit type of stories that made me finally give up on 2000AD. It also features one of these narrating the intro, complaining about how “us people” “like stories that start at the beginning”. Actually from what I’ve seen of a lot of modern British/US comics they very rarely start at the beginning these days. Luckily the Japanese (and Commando and Spaceship Away) are there to put things right!

Anyway this story features a girl called Mia, the same name as the main character of Recovery Inc! Her and a friend are stealing pipes from an old building to sell for scrap, when the security guard catches them. He is then eaten by the pipes and Mia is eaten by a coyote spirit… and no doubt will emerge with superpowers and fight against the evil forces that are working to tear Gaia apart at her ley lines by brainwashing earth’s chyldryen into driving cars, eating meat and wearing clothes. Or something.

 

I’d say “Manga influenced” here… but I won’t because I’ve done more than idly flick through a few books in a shop!

Fortunately the next strip is far better! It’s the first winner of the Strip Challenge (don’t google that with safe search off). It’s self contained in six pages and so hits the ground running. Basically a secret agent in the future called Agent Syber rescues a kidnapped scientist from the baddies, and that’s it. Oh well, only six pages after all! I was actually pleasantly surprised to see a black and white strip. It shows that this comic is produced by people who love comics, not men in suits droning on that a lack of colour won’t appeal to the TV and Videogame generation.

 

I want to draw a colour strip set in Britain’s countryside now!

The final adventure strip is Age of Heroes. It has utterly beautiful artwork, and features a wandering blind storyteller who, erm, tells stories. It’s set on another planet, and so features references to several made up heroes. One of whom is called Drake, who was a blind swordsman - like Japan’s Zatoichi! Anyway, the storyteller begins to tell his tale of an adventuring monk called Wex, who walks along a bit, and then decides to rest but gets a knife thrown at him. Erm, and then we have to wait for part 2. Again, if only this was a weekly!

 

Finally on the back cover (on the cover! Told you this was a proper British comic!)  we have the other humour strip. This a comedy story about a faceless spy who looks very similar to the brilliant I.Spy of Sparky! Except this time he is up against evil intelligent apes. One of the hench-apes decides to change sides and help him (there’s no prospects for promotion in evil organisations), then they beat up the baddies. Well it is only a page!

Posted in Print Media, PJ Holden, Herlock Sholmes, Action, Hook Jaw, Strip Magazine, 1950's, 1970's, 2010's, Keith Page, Gem | 2 Comments »

What laziness has wrought

25/10/2011 by admin.

You may remember that I was required to take my self-published comics The Red, White & Blue and The Trident off-sale, because it turned out the character of Sexton Blake was copyrighted after all. Well I’d hoped to have had them both re-launched by early September… some hope! I’d like to make some waffling excuse, but the actual fact is I’ve been far too lazy. The 3-page Speedway story in issue 4 of the old RWB took me almost 2 months, the time I’d set aside to do the entire issue in. Oh and each issue (once it gets underway) is intended to have 19 comic pages in! Plus a 10-15,000 word text story, a 2-3,000 word serial instalment, an editor’s page and illustrations for all of those… and still be bimonthly!

 

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

Oh well, the new date for the debut of issue 1 of both publications is January 2012. Even I ought to have finished them by then! From then on, hopefully, the RWB will be bi-monthly, and the Trident intermittent but ideally about 3 times a year.

BUT in addition to that, I also hope to be emigrating to Japan sometime next year. That means I’ll be (to begin with anyway. Perhaps things will change if certain circumstances go well) on a work visa which will restrict the type of things I can do for money. “Making comics to sell on the internet” won’t be one of those things, and so they won’t be on sale, just tantalisingly have their covers previewed on the website. Still at least for a while people won’t notice if the issues are not finished in time, so long as the covers are!

This took me ages, as you can see.

Anyway In some other bad news, I have been working on a manga-style comic for a competition organised by the Japanese embassy. The closing date for the competition is November 1st, and I’m fully booked this weekend. So it looks like that won’t be finished in time. However I do have tomorrow off work, lets see just how fast I can draw eh?

If I don’t finish the comic in time I’ll instead finish it more gradually and upload it here in a rudimentary form (the screen toning will be more Gordon Livingstone than Takeshi Obata). At least then somebody will read it!

If I had been sensible I could have had the manga nearly finished by now, but “sensible” is not in my line. I decided my room needed a re-arrange, so that I could put my various books in some sort of order, free up some shelf space and most importantly put the bed closer to the heater. I thought that this re-arrange would take “maybe 2-3 hours” and started at 5:50 on Saturday. I finished at 7:00 today. Still it feels good to have a collection that looks like a collection!

This picture was actually taken after the furniture moving was mostly finished. The only book re-arranging that had been done was the fitting of the dark brown shelf and putting the books on it (which before were where the bed now is).

No more than 2-3 hours work, this(!)

The arrangement of the rest of the books got, er, a little complicated…

 -   - 

Still it’s no worse than the comic section in Smith’s…

Finally, though, some order started to emerge. All the Boys’ Friend, Chums, Union Jack, Chatterbox and Captain are together!

 With a row of odds n’ ends in the middle.

Aand here we are, everything together with it’s companions. I even found room to put my volumes of Punch that I rashly bought on Ebay years ago and haven’t been able to shift since up there. Weirdly enough jokes about political scandals of 120+ years ago just aren’t funny today, especially if they are in French (which language Punch apparently expected it’s readers to know). Even the quality of the illustrations doesn’t save them!

  - 

Finished!

Oh yeah as well as moving my desk I also freed up some space on it.

What will I do with all this? well, draw comics on it hopefully.

Oh well, Just to show I haven’t been totally idle, the back page of the first issue of the new RWB is going to introduce the first “Felneyverse” characters to  make it into print. Here’s the rough artwork, which still needs processing, colouring, lettering and putting together.

 

Erm, quite a bit of processing…

Here we have Norman Saxon, the Sexton Blake replacement (but set entirely in the early 20th century). Xin Zhou, Norman’s assistant who will also feature in a series of boarding school tales. Eugene Manx, the secret agent hunting down escaped Nazi criminals, and the Tigers of Punjab, fighting for justice during Indian partition!

 

All my character’s faces look the same so I cunningly part-concealed one in a space suit

And here is Steve Gunn, a soldier in World War 3 which happens from 2020 - 2023 (this is set in a very different alternate universe, which diverged from our own history in a major way in 1985, with the discovery of zombies!). Sarah Millman, the future cop who features in the first colour strip (her arm looks bizarre, oops). Robert “Rocket” Redferne who will take to the space-lanes from issue 5 onwards. Finally there’s Mary of Middleford, who has a 4-page intro story on the website and ought to “kick off” (ha ha haaaa) in issue 7 or 8.

Oh and also I’ve created a new logo for The Trident too. The new version will be A4 sized and will feature a complete story of 15-25,000 words and a short story of 5-10,000 words and/or a serial installment. Not quite decided yet! Oh it’ll also have illustrations, unlike the A5 sized old version.

 

Posted in 2010's, Me!, Trident, RWB | 1 Comment »

Hilgay Haul 2: The Haulening

18/10/2011 by admin.

On Sunday there was another Hilgay Book Sale. They are definitely more regular than annually, but they don’t always put up a sign for it on my route home from work, and Hilgay is rather far to go of a Sunday on the off chance! (Mind you the road up that way is nice. I’d love to do it in a Morgan 3-wheeler, early on a summer’s morn, with no coppers watching!).

Anyway this time I actually saw the posters talking about the prices of the books, 50p for Thin and 90p for Thick! XD. But there wasn’t as many that interested me so I only got a few.

 

As well as a couple of Edge books (I’ve only ever read one but have about twenty, time to get crackin’?) I got a Sabre Boys’ Story Annual. This has alternating stories, some are very short (2-3 pages) while others are very long (20-30 pages). The story-paper size of the book makes me wonder if they are reprinted stories from somewhere. One of the stories is by Robert A Heinlein and is very American. It mentions things such as “Teamsters” (a trucker’s union in the US, or so I wiki’d) without further explanation - possibly a reprint from a Pulp?

The book is undated but appears to be from the late 50’s or very early 60’s. It clearly once had a dustjacket which may have contained the date. Oddly despite the probably-reprint nature of most/all of it’s contents all of the illustrations appear to be by the same artist, and so were probably commissioned for the book.

The other book is called Adventure Story Book for Boys. It’s apparently No. 17 in a “Bumper Book Series”. The Friardale website has mention of such a series and says that Number 17 (which it gives no other information about) was published in 1955. It certianly looks 50’s anyway. It’s all text stories which are on the usual lines of boyish adventures, secret agents, pirates, cowboys etc.

The final book is an account of the battle of Singapore - from the Japanese side! My own comic will one day play host to a “Commando”-ish story about a Japanese Navy pilot from 1910 to 1945, so this ought to be useful. It’s written by one of the commanding officers in that campaign who at one point bemoans the number of times he leaves cars parked “hidden” somewhere, only to come back later and find a lucky shell has scored a direct hit on them.

 

We haven’t got this one…. yet.

Posted in Sabre, Purnell & Sons, Beaver Books, Edge, 1970's, 1950's | 1 Comment »

Graffix - The “British Manga”

11/10/2011 by admin.

I’ve written before about a prevailing attitude in British comics fandom that somehow “doing manga” will “save” British comics from extinction and/or transformation into dumbed-down toy catalogues. Well the people who weren’t convinced by that post may be interested to find that actually “British manga” has been done, twice, and they’ve probably never even heard of it! I was reminded myself when I was digging through some 90’s Beanos not long after making the original post.

 

This one might be worth a bit some day eh?

 

The actual ad

The books are called Graffix, and were published by A & C Black in the late 90’s, and then again in the late 00’s as “Colour Graffix”. They have a complete story in each book, on a variety of themes. All of the stories are well-written, tense and adventurous. There’s quite obviously “boys” and “girls” stories which can be chosen by simply looking at the covers, however the appeal should be universal as they are all good. In fact sometimes the boyish stories turn out to be romances while the girlish ones turn out to be scary sci-fi/horror adventures!

Front covers of the respective series

 

And the backs

These were sold as books, rather than as comics, so would have stayed on the shelves just like the “tankobon” manga format that we get in Britain. They’re a fairly comparable size too.

 

A Colour Graffix, ordinary Graffix, old hardback edition, a “Western edition” manga and a Japanese tankobon

Despite all of this, and the insistence that “the kids” “love that chunky format” and that comics should “go in the direction of manga” it is apparent that Graffix did not sell very well at all. In fact almost all the copies I have (gotten secondhand, mainly off Amazon resellers) are ex-library.

 

I can recall those adverts appearing fairly regularly from around 1997-8 onwards until I stopped getting the Beano at some point in 1999. It seems like Graffix were hit with the problem that troubles the modern Dandy and ended the DCT Fun-Sizes - distribution! I don’t ever recall seeing them in bookshops (mind you at the time I would have been mainly looking for Star Wars novels in the Sci-Fi section) and only once in Ely Library (in about spring 2001 when I was “too old for comics” and also “into serious stuff like politics”).

The eagle-eyed will have noticed that one of the books in the advert features the distinctive style of Janek Matysiak (why yes I did spell it wrong and have had to come back!) who also works for Commando. He’s provided the cover and interior artwork for this particular story (which features “Han Solo” and “C-3PO” (in ’stripped down’ form years before Star Wars Episode II!) taking a job from “Jabba the Hutt” who looks more like Ming The Merciless!). Not all of the stories were such blatant ripoffs, may I hasten to add. It’s good fun anyway.

 

 

The adverts also show off the Graffix tagline of “it’s a book! It’s a comic!”. But what does this actually mean? Well basically it means that parts of the story are explained by type, in some books it’s “on the page” like in a book with the comic strip panels as “illustrations”. In other books the story is explained in boxes at the top of the panels. Either way it’s additional points of the story being explained by captions. This may be considered “unusual” in American or Japanese comics, but as every reader of this blog ought to know, it’s actually standard practice in proper British adventure comics! Here’s one of the wordier Graffix tales, Biker:

 

Compare that a few examples from other titles such as Commando, Tiger and Radio Fun

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Another thing that Graffix have in common with the best of the traditional British adventure comics is the fact that the artists have all used their own style and not been forced into a particular “house” style (like in War Picture Library) or “type” of artwork (like most manga). Interestingly the copyright page in each book states that the ownership of the story, art and cover art all belongs to the respective creators! An incredibly enlightened attitude by the standards of properly published British comics even today. Though one that might possibly cause problems later, with the copyrights being ’split up’.

One of the more distinctive art styles is that of Lucy Su, who actually uses two totally different styles in two different stories. The first is in Girl Gang.

These bratty teenage girls have a much better ’secret society’ than the ’secret society’ me and my friends had between the ages of 8 - 12.

In this a girl called Alice does a couple of favours for a popular girl at school, and ends up being persuaded to join the girl’s gang, who do things like track down the houses of rude bus conductors and smash up their greenhouses.  Alice is assigned a mission to steal a “snobby” girl’s diary, but makes friends with this girl and instead ’steals’ a fake, non-embarrassing diary. I must add that the story shows that the gang only writes off the girl as a snob because she is rich, but it turns out good and bad people exist independently of how much wealth they have. This is a good anti-socialist idea to be putting in children’s heads. I wonder what my bratty anarchist self of 2001 would have made of it?

Lucy Su uses a different style for the much-different The Headless Ghost. In this story a deaf boy is able to lip-read a ghost’s warning about a buried wartime bomb in a cemetery. The art style here is in contrasting pencils that creates a creepy atmosphere.

 

Wooo

The much more conventional Guard Dog is drawn in a much more conventional style by Dave Burroughs. This is a logical follow-on from all those stories in annuals from the 90’s - 50’s about boys who discover smugglers / coiners operating in their neighborhood. This time the crime is video piracy, and the crooks are forcing the boy’s dad off their patch at the market, while at the same time making sure another carpentry stall owner gets the blame.

Laser Quest is a wierd one. The art here is very gloomy and shadowy (though the story does mainly take place in a dark room). Bits of it actually remind me of Jose Maria Jorge, though there’s not a flying machine in sight! The story is about a girl who has to help her dad manage her younger brother’s birthday party at a Laser Quest game. Except the computers have been infected with a strange virus called ZUC. This later manifests itself as a rag-smothered player in the actual game itself, with a laser that can melt bricks! See what I mean about the “girls stories” being unexpectedly scary?

And then there’s the boys story that turns out to be romantic. Though it does involve horses so I ought to have seen it coming. The art in this one is by Bob Moulder, and puts me in mind of another book I’ve seen, though I can’t seem to lay my hands on it at the moment. This book was definitely from the 50’s or 60’s though!

 

Respect, illustrated by Kim Harley, is the Action to Guard Dog’s Splendid Book for Boys. It’s about a boy who’s teacher dad has been locked up for a crime that anybody but a teacher would just be fined for. He kicks out at the system by becoming a graffiti artist, trying to get in a local gang. If one artist sprays over another’s work it’s considered an insult and they attack him, the gang try and trick him into spraying over their own tag just to give them an excuse. In the end he realises that trying to “fight back” by making a mess everywhere is actually the easy way out rather than actually dealing with your problems. Admirable attitudes again, though not “right on” ones.

Another story illustrated by Janek Matysiak is Bodyparts. This is set in the near future and features scientists experimenting on lab-grown organs, stem cells and other futuristic medical advances. But somebody is out to sabotage the experiments.

 

This actually mirrors the real “near future”, ie our present, though the sabotage is political and orchestrated by people so pig-ignorant you don’t even know where to start on their “views”. In a century’s time the breakthroughs of the next 20 years or so will be viewed as one of the “big steps” in medical science. On the lines of Hippocrates, Vesalius, Jenner, Snow and Fleming. How they will laugh at people who think that “you might be eating DNA!” is an acceptable argument against genetic modification.

Finally a look at the more modern Colour Graffix. From the titles on A&C Black’s website they all appear to be reprints of the original books, but with colour! However as other experiments have shown adding colour to artwork not originally intended for it doesn’t tend to look very good. I get the impression the creation of Colour Graffix was more of a “because we can!” exercise thought up in a boardroom. Would have been much better to have reprinted the black and white ones and spent the extra printing money on new stories!

 

If there’s one criticism I can give Graffix it’s that they’re far too short! Many of the stories just seem to halt abruptly. Here’s a side by side comparison with manga…

As you can see Graffix is less than half the thickness. The other problem is that there’s not really many of them, there seems to have been only 32 books, released at the rate of around 4 a year through the late 90’s and up to 2001. The fact that Colour Graffix are just running through the same stories again doesn’t bode well either. They ought to produce a “Graffix deluxe” that are 2-3 times the length, in black and white, but keep the British-style storylines and artwork. Oh and cheapen the paper and cover quality just a tad to keep the price down. Market ‘em well enough (maybe get them in with the manga section!) and they’ll fly off the shelves, I guarantee it! Plus bring back Roy Kane: TV Detective and Captain Hawk, those guys are crying out for recurring stories. Plus lets catch up with one of the many footballers of Graffix 10 years on, now that he’s playing for a professional team that’s on the up!

Oh and if you are reading this, A&C Black, get the Folio Society on a lavish reprint of this:

Mine’s falling to bits but the paintings are beautiful. Need a tightly-bound slipcased edition!

Posted in Graffix, Bob Moulder, Dave Burroughs, Lucy Su, Kim Harley, A&C Black, Janek Matysiak, 1990's | 3 Comments »

Comic Football - Suspended!

03/10/2011 by admin.

Bad news from newcomer Comic Football, it has been sent for an early bath after a stellar performance.

 

It was a game of three halves… erm

Despite giving 110% out on the pitch, at the end of the day that old injury to football comics told and it looks like the kid will be out for the forseeable future. The manager does, however, hint at a return in the future for the plucky upstart. We can only hope we haven’t seen the last of this promising talent.

Well I’m not gonna tell any old person my address XD

In transfer news the first subscription issue of The Dandy got transferred to my house. Remember, it now has under 8,000 people on the terraces but if you buy online the tickets are only £1! Get them now and secure your place right behind the goal.

 

Posted in Comic Football, Dandy, 2010's, DC Thomson | 1 Comment »

Save The Dandy - A call to arms

16/09/2011 by admin.

Again.

There’s been quite a lot written about the decline in Dandy sales lately, a lot of it in the form of mouth-foaming ravings on blog comments. These basically split into the “the artwork isn’t that great” camp and the “it’s just what the modern style is like and besides sales of everything are dropping” camp. (The third camp being bewildered casual fans wondering what on earth provoked such fury, such as me). If you ask me in amongst all the molten lolva flowing from the trollcano there were some valid points. However neither side seemed willing to accept the other viewpoint at all, meeting it with circular arguments and personal attacks. (NB: I’ll spare you the links as they were all full of swearing and I want to keep this blog clean, it’s part of my self-publishing site… at the moment the only working part!)

All of this actually made me stop caring about the Dandy. But then I thought why let that get me down? I’m jingoistic and patriotic and usually champion century-old story papers nobody’s even heard of. Of course I should be standing up for our longest-running comic!

What can we do?

Comments from people who work on the Dandy, and parents of children who get it regularly, seem to suggest that actually kids do like it as it is at present. Of course there may be room for improvement and perhaps they’d like it even better if it had 1960’s style Dudley D Watkins artwork. BUT if it goes to the wall it will never have a chance to improve. Lets get the sales up first and worry about the details afterwards.

How can we get the sales up? Well DC Thomson haven’t exactly got Marvel or DC money behind them, they can’t afford mass advertising campaigns to raise awareness of their titles. These are often poorly distributed (not seen the Dandy in Tesco for a while now, for instance) or buried under a ton of stupid toy-covered tie-in rubbish. So, let’s not rely on DC Thomson buying adverts, lets use the oldest trick in the book…

 

It was ancient when this was printed!

What trick is that? The trick that they had to rely on when newspapers and magazines were full of ads for quack remedies, there was maybe 3 radio receivers in the whole world and television was a charming theory…

 

Yes, lets advertise the comic ourselves! Lets assume out of the 7,500-odd readers that 6,500 are “regulars” and the others might get it one week and not the next. It’s possible that the regulars will know the irregulars and may be able to persuade them to get it more often. And of course there are the friends at school who may not get any comics. If anybody from the Dandy is out there it’s certainly worth a go!

And for those of us “rather beyond” the target age group, we must know somebody with young children! Comic fans are the best-placed to remind new parents that combined words and pictures help develop to literacy. You could even mention that you are trying to learn a foreign language and want to buy comics in that language, then idly add “it’s how I learned English in the first place!”

 

Koko, then something about listening… erm…

And then of course there are other comic forums populated by people who may live in Britain but who primarily read American, Franco-Belgian or Japanese comics. Are you a member? Try and get people to rally around one of their home-grown icons!

Finally there’s a slightly more unorthodox tactic. Ever hear of guerrilla gardening? What about guerrilla comic placing? I may have subscribed to the Dandy now (£15 for 15 issues and free delivery!) but, well, I don’t exactly have much room…

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Oh dear

…nor am I really that interested in modern comedy comics, preferring 100 year old adventure papers. So once I’ve read the Dandy’s I’ll be leaving them in places that kids or parents might find them. Because if they read it themselves and decide they want more, the job’s done! (Mind you, make sure that your “guerrilla comic placing” doesn’t get confused with “littering”! )

And before I go, that subscription link again!

http://www.dcthomsonshop.co.uk/Group-Dandy.aspx

Posted in Dandy, 2010's, DC Thomson | 2 Comments »