Red, White & Blue issue 1 and Camcon

16/05/2012 by admin.

All the way back in May 2011, I decided to ‘retrospectively’ ask IPC for permission to use Sexton Blake in my Red, White & Blue comic, and got turned down! So I decided to re-launch the comic, now with a new detective called Norman Saxon, and three black and white serial comics instead of two. The initially-planned release date for the new issue 1 was July, then September. Then February 2012, and then “Camcon 2012″, which was held on the 12th of may. I was up until 1 in the morning the night before printing and stapling! This in spite of the fact 10 of the 15 comic pages had already been drawn. I’m still hoping to make the comic bi-monthly eventually, though. Mind you only the first issue has a 25,000-odd word article about the history of British comics in it, which took “a while” to do (and still has a few mistakes - see under the History tab!).

So what does the finished product look like? Well I’d already posted the cover design on here, but the final has been altered slightly - mainly to “double date” it (I wish it had ‘only’ taken those four months to produce) and also to point out not every issue will have 40 pages!

Same price as the old 24 pagers, though!

The two serial strips from the old version have returned. The first parts of them have been re-scanned and the script has been altered slightly. I’d actually intended to re-draw a few of the worst panels, but didn’t get time in the end. Oh I also added unobtrusive “previously published” labels - more as an excuse than anything, it’s not like many people ever saw them the first time around!

I’m planning several “fictional people in real events” stories to make the comic “educational”. Including the Falklands War, Taisho / Showa-era Japan and the Great Storm of 1987.

Joining the two old strips is a new one - The Gun. It’s actually based on my  “first” (not really, but the actual first one made no sense at all) adventure comic, which I created from the ages of about 11-15. In the old version the world has been randomly carved up into two weirdly-named armies, who are fighting World War 3 (in the vein of all those war toys with “goodies” and “baddies” from no specific country). The new version is, of course, more realistic.

Oh wait, no it isn’t! Instead a huge, brainwashing cult has captured a huge territory stretching from Zimbabwe to western China, and is now aiming to take over Europe, Russia, the Arabian Peninsula, China and Korea. No doubt certain people will take the concept of a “huge, brainwashing cult” centered around the Middle East threatening the world the wrong way. But actually the enemy are going to be more based on that sort of smug, ivory-tower, “this is the correct way to live, you uneducated plebs” person, than on Muslims (who are not all the same anyway, if you’d bother to spend 5 minutes wiki’ing it). The first part of the story just introduces the main character and explains how the war starts - the enemy are called Intersoc, and have been inspired by Eurosoc, an orwellian dictatorship that briefly takes over the EU. World War 3 in this story is fought more like World War 2, but with jet planes and cooler tanks. The lack of nuclear weapons blowing everybody back to a radioactive stone age in 10 minutes is explained away unconvincingly - but if you want to read that, buy the comic!

There will be an Etsy shop eventually. OR I may syrup-ticiously have a small quantity on sale at the Saturday of this year’s May MCM.

Of course, the main attraction of the comic is the complete detective story in each issue. The first one is around 11,500 words long and introduces Norman Saxon. The early continuity of Sexton Blake (in fact, quite a bit of the later continuity too!) was very confused and contradictory. As I’m coming up with a new character, I have given him a solidly-defined age, house, assistant and skill set right from the start! My old Sexton Blake stories jumped around, ranging from 1900 to 2007. Norman Saxon, though, is going to be firmly set in the Victorian / Edwardian period. The first two RWB stories are set in 1900. The first Trident story will be set in 1899.

I think I need to work on scene composition

And, of course, there is that article! The version currently available under the History tab is version 2, the print version is actually version 2.1 - it has a few minor spelling and grammar corrections. There are a few others required, though. The next online version will be 2.2 - and will also contain pictures! The only picture in the printed version is the title. The aim of the article is to give the readers (who will mainly be at these conventions for US / Japanese comics) a new enthusiasm for British comics, and so it is a bit biased and ‘fluffy’. That said I took care to make sure all the facts were correct, and certainly avoided “the Dandy was the first British comic with speech balloons”-type waffle.

In the far future an absolutely corrected version may be printed as a book with lots of colour pictures and sold seperately.

Oh and the back page contains profiles of the characters in the RWB, both in the current issue and those coming in the near future. That’s near future issue numbers-wise anyway!

Hopefully by the time I get to the football story I’ll be a bit better at drawing distinctive faces!

With the comics printed and packed (and my huge stack of Roy of the Rovers sorted out, finally), it was time to pack and sleep. I even got everything into one case!

It weighed a bit.

I’d also been attempting to record a Camcon video diary, but have scrapped it for two reasons. One, when I’m “talking to myself” (or machinery) my voice goes even more high pitched and pathetic than it already is. Two, I blu-tacked the camera to the dashboard of my car and made several ‘amusing’ comments during the journey, but I’d forgot there was a delay before it started recording, so all of those clips were of me turning the camera off again! I decided to just quit while I was ahead.

In the spirit of promoting British adventure comics, I also decided to create my own T-shirt with a Phoenix reference. I also took the latest issue and showed it to a few people on the day. Conveniently my 1p comics (always a draw, once you tell people the price) and the latest Phoenix both have rampaging dinosaurs on the covers! So let’s hope the guys and gals in Oxford have a few more subscribers before long.

I’ll wear it at the MCM later this month too!

I’ve never been one for Cosplay, though I’ve since had a few cool ideas that might not be too difficult to make. But promoting The Phoenix comes first!

Anyway, having arrived at the venue decently on time (fortunately some horrible roadworks right in the middle of Cambridge have now been finished) I went around and started to get set up. As well as RWB issue 1 I also had the only issue of my old Scum Slaughter comic and a couple of 1p comics. I needed some “padding” so took various duplicates from my collection, including a load of 80’s Roy of the Rovers, and some older Union Jacks. Also a couple of volumes of The Windsor Magazine, a Victorian Strandalike. A few people had a look at them but didn’t buy them - far too heavy!

The only picture I took at the con proper. The table closest to the camera was for an enigmatic “Cielia” who never turned up XD.

As you can see, the room was rather small, and so the walkways were very narrow. The tables were extremely close together, me and the girl behind me kind of had to take turns sitting down because we couldn’t both do it at once XD. But then again I prefer to stand up at these sort of events, you can engage the customers on the same level. Some “general anime memorabilia” merchants were next to me, and appear to have booked “back to back” tables so they could sell to people passing on either side of them.

As I didn’t have quite so much stuff I was set up in only a few minutes. I decided to start drawing some better signs for my table, though only got one of them partly done before the doors opened. I didn’t exactly have a decent range of pens either! It’s Cambi, the Camcon mascot, with Britannia fighting off clutching zombie hands. Or would be If i’d had time to draw them. I also forgot Cambi’s glasses and boots.

 Next time I’ll make the effort and watercolour up something proper

The con was underway! And as usual I got generally ignored XD. A few, ahem, “older” guys came to the table. attracted by the Roy of the Rovers’s. But in the end I only sold 3 RWB’s, 1 Scum Slaughter (the guy loved the look of it, wonder what he thinks now?), 2 penny comics and a couple of secondhand items. Oddly I assumed the really old ones would go like hot cakes but they didn’t sell at all, I did dispose of a Union Jack from 1932, though.

I was opposite Sweatdrop Studios, which is not the best place for an obscure comic to be! Their table(s) were mega-busy virtually all the time. Still in a quiet period Emma Vieceli did actually realise who I was from some odds and ends I’d posted on thier forum XD. I was also able to collar a Thai girl who I’d previously been talking to (along with other Sweatdrop members Sonia Leong and Morag Lewis) at the previous week’s Hanami Exhibition. She’s interested in the history of the comics of all nations, and so I was able to sell her an 80’s Roy of the Rovers. I bet “I sold a Thai girl an 80’s Roy of the Rovers” is a googlewhack and a half. She later came back to ‘complain’ that it was full of football stories XD. But I was able to persuade her to part with hard-earned money for a certain other publication with a big article about comic history in it.

Other amusing incidents include some old guy who asked me how long I’d been interested in “manga” and didn’t seem impressed with the answer of “since May 2009, and I only read one!”. Some other guy also bought an RWB off me but then seeded my table with a load of leaflets for a tabletop RPG convention. I quietly shifted them before I had people coming and asking me about it XD. Also saw a few people from my Japanese classes, but didn’t sell anything to them. They were well-warned in advance!

The room was cold in the morning, but later in the day I discovered the painful way that one whole side of it was made of thick glass - it was like an oven! At least I wasn’t facing the window, I felt sorry for those guys. As time went on the number of visitors dwindled away and I went on a buying run of my own. I didn’t get much as there was a “last flicker of the candle” rush of people just as I’d extricated myself from behind the tables XD.

 

The 9th Art book I actually got for free, it’s a regular(ish) anthology of comics creators from Cambridge and Oxford. I doubt they’d like what I’d send them, though! “White Violet” is one of Sweatdrop’s most interesting sounding comics, but one I’d somehow not bought until now. Vampire Freestyle is an adorable and amusing series by Jenika Ioffreda, who is insanely dedicated and attends ALL the cons! Even otherwise-unrelated craft fairs and goth conventions XD. I’ll do a proper review of the series one day. Sidekick appears to be a series of comics in which the main character keeps jumping genre (and mocking them). In the first one it’s a slice-of-life type story, but in another issue he finds himself in a sci fi space battle. A western looks to be on the cards too! Also there’s Fantasy World, which I’ve barely looked at (good, clean art though), a Sonic sketch and the conbook. The conbook also contains a short strip and a one-page cartoon about comic collecting, by me! There’s a few other bits of incidental art and loads of little Cambi designs.

Oh and I got kitty/squirrel ears. They make my own ears look even bigger!

After the con closed down there was a break of an hour or so, in which I took my case back to the car (that was fun, I had to drive out of the space, chuck the case in, and then park again - in a multi storey! Lucky it wasn’t busy). After that I ate, did a bit of drawing on a big roll of paper, saw some other friends and watched a little anime in the tiny, boiling hot screening room. I don’t normally like anime but, well, there was nothing else going on. Also Dominion Tank Police has entered my “must watch” list. It’s cheesier than Space Mutiny!

Later on there was some singing and that. Zonic, aka Ziggy Newman, the organiser of the con, performed some of her own songs. Some of these involve putting words to music from the Sonic the Hedgehog games! Then the Cambridge-based clubnight Psychocandy rounded off the night with a load of geeky music including club remixes of the Nyan Cat music, a metal version of the Ghostbusters theme, Twilight by ELO and of course The Timewarp XD. Didn’t hear the Mandelbrot Set song, but you can’t have everything, eh?

Posted in Sweatdrop Studios, Jenika Ioffreda, Vampire Freestyle, small press, Conventions, Me!, 2010's, RWB | 1 Comment »

The Young Ladies’ Journal

01/05/2012 by admin.

I’ve wanted to so a series of “overviews” of comics for ages now, but held off because I wanted to have a “good range” of issues from a title’s run before writing the article. BUT that was taking too long, and for some papers may prove nearly impossible, as they are very rare. So I’m just going to go for it!

These overviews are really being created so that people googling the name will have some big pictures and general information to look at. They aren’t going to be super-in depth, I’ll leave that for looks at individual stories, or titles that I do have large runs of.

The Young Ladies’ Journal

Not much has been written about girl’s comics, in comparison to those aimed at males. Most of what has been written writes off everything that came before Misty (or, if the author is feeling particularly risqué, Jinty or even Tammy) as worthless. Of course,I’m not going to be toeing the right-on party line, so lets look at a girl’s comic from 130 years ago!

 

No title or price on the ‘cover’. It’s possible that the individual issues were sold wrapped in another cover, which might have been covered with adverts.

The Young Ladies’ Journal, published by E. Harrison from 1862 (NB: Assumed from the fact Volume 20 came out in 1882)  contained 3 serial text stories, with large instalments of 2-3 pages, as well as complete stories of a similar length. Scattered around these were small articles on random subjects, for instance about animals or tidbits of foreign culture.

 

Small article about Sardines at the bottom.

The stories were not exactly profusely illustrated, some had no illustrations at all. Apart form the large picture on the cover, it seems to have been standard practice to only have one other story illustration inside. They were usually well-drawn, though all in the same style. At the time there appears to have not just been a ‘house style’ for illustrations in story papers / penny dreadfuls, but an “only style”, that everybody used!

 

Not always of a very exciting incident, either.

While the story illustrations were few and far between, every issue contained a two-page spread with pictures of the latest fashions on one side, and patterns, decorations and furnishings on the other. The illustration style probably not-entirely-unrealistically depicting the hourglass figure women acheived with dangerously tight corsets. I’ve seriously only ever seen one person with a shape like that naturally (well, I’m presuming naturally), if it was as ‘common’ then the manufacturers of such torturous devices must have been doing a roaring trade.

Still such pictures might appeal to “loligoth” fashion devotees. Well they’re not going to be playing the loligoth-themed videogame Rule of Rose any time soon, thanks to sickening aintellectual articles in the false-patriotic Daily Mail, written by knee-jerking, sub-telligent underscum who see “lolita” and assume “sex with children”. Yet these supposed ‘defenders of Britain’ allow no-win, no-fee companies, the real threat to this country, to advertise in the paper as much as they like.

 

Anybody want any more?

Other regular features included “One Thing and Another”, a joke column with short gags and longer funny anecdotes. There was also “Grains of Gold”, with uplifting moral advice and examples, and short poems. A section called Pastimes contained word puzzles.

 

Wall o’ text. I ought to have called this a story paper blog with occasional comics XD

Also, as with many periodicals of the era, there was a “correspondence” column. These contained replies to reader’s letters, omitting the letters themselves. Readers often used pseudonyms, to whom the replies would be addressed. Even these names can be an interesting insight into the era a paper was published in. In Boy’s papers of the 1900’s you frequently see names such as “electric” and “photographer”, for instance. The advice given in these columns was always wide-ranging. Often it would be of a general nature, and so the reply would go into detail about, say, a famous musician or craft technique. Though other times would be a vague “there are cases where applications of the kind are useless”.

Of course, today’s “answers to correspondents” is called Google!

 

Readers could also buy “patterns” from the office, presumably those of the dresses featured in recent issues.

On the back of each issue is some music, occasionally with words, but more often just a tune. At the time the accomplished middle and upper class daughter was expected to at least be able to play the piano, entertaining the family in the withdrawing room after tea. I wonder if I could bung some of these tunes into a MIDI-making program and see how they sound?

 

Most I can play on the piano is the Jaws theme.

I’ve not yet read any of the stories (and there’s an admission you’ll never see in any of those other articles that write off all pre-70’s girls’ comics as worthless), but they all seem to revolve around the couple who face endless obstacles coming between them and true love. One of these obstacles being held prisoner by Malay women, for some reason or other. This one is written by George Manville Fenn, a well-known writer of Boys’ Own adventure stories! In fact he wrote the lead serial in another paper that I’ll get round to reviewing sooner or later.

Those are the most casual guards ever

Other stories are the more commonplace “country gent” style popularised by the Bronte sisters earlier in the 19th century. Still I’ve read a similar story from the 1920’s that could easily have been written in 1802, so little reference does it make to telephones or motor cars (the use of which would have wrapped up the plot in about 5 minutes, mind you).

 

 ”Frightfully sorry, I thought I’d hide in the bushes and make pheasant-like noises, knowing that the hunt was coming this way. I don’t see any way in which that could be dangerous.”

Mind you I do fancy reading one story, called “His Prettiest Daughter”. Mainly because the woman in it has short, boyish hair. It must have been very unconventional for the time, but it’s the sort of thing I go for, so I’d definitely consider her the prettiest!

 

The attention to detail on that furniture isn’t half bad either. Furniture companies these days don’t put in half the effort the artist has put in to merely draw it.

 Occasionally the fashion pages would have several “modeled” dresses arranged in one illustration. The backgrounds to these were often brilliantly done, though the average reader probably hardly even noticed it.

 

The frontispiece to the volume mentions that it contains colour plates, but these are missing from this volume. It’s been privately bound in a marbled cover, so must have been left out. Though I understand some papers such as Chatterbox charged extra for their plates, so whoever bought these originally may simply not have bothered. The “full size patterns” don’t seem too  ”full size” either. Perhaps they were some sort of folded sheets included with the issues that have also since gone missing.

 

“Toilet” at the time referred to washing and putting on make-up (for women, or disguised detectives).

Just as an additional bit of information, like Union Jack, The Boys’ Friend and so on, the serial stories were not contained within one volume, but could begin in one and end in another. For instance the story about the woman held hostage in Malaya actually started in volume 19. That’s for sale on ebay right now, should anybody fancy it XD (Especially if they live nearby and we can swap ‘em at some point).

 

Mind you, there’s an empty space right there.

Posted in Young Ladies Journal, G.M. Fenn, E. Harrison, 1880's | 1 Comment »

New format for Commando

30/04/2012 by admin.

No, don’t worry, they haven’t added any colour to it! (Mind you, if Commando sales are increasing and if The Phoenix can establish a bridgehead, could a re-launch of The Victor, “The new colour weekly from the makers of Commando!” be an outside possibility?), instead they have improved the printing dramatically.

A while ago, DC Thomson closed down their in-house printing operation to save money (this also bought about the end of the Beano and Dandy libraries). The new outside printers seemed to have trouble with Commando, with issues becoming creased along the spine.

 

An old “in house” issue, a new printer issue and one of the latest.

As you can see, the most recent change has made the issues much thicker, with a good, square spine and no creasing! In fact the 64-page Commando issues are now as thick as 96-page issues of The Boys’ Friend Library from the 20’s and 30’s!

 

Alongside a BFL from 1937.

The paper the new printers had been using was also slightly “crinkly”, but they have now switched back to a more ‘pulp’, newsprint type that really allows the ink to stand out.

 

An old issue, note the creasing up at the centre and shiny paper.

 

Now, much better!

Commando is not included in the ABC sales figures (in these dark times for British comics, they are eagerly scruitnised and speculated over!), probably because it’s “four every two weeks” schedule is “weird”. But according to information from the Commando CO there has been an increase in sales recently - no doubt due to the reprint books, publicity surrounding the 50th anniversary and the National Army Museum exhibition. Commando pages also work perfectly on the screens of digital readers such as iPads, where it has also proved popular. Perhaps the profit from the digital version is being invested back in the paper editions? It’s an encouraging sign.

Also encouraging is the fact that, on a few recent occasions, I have complained about the “stupid” WH Smith staff only putting out three of the four issues. But when I went to buy the most recent batch I actually got the last issue of the (non reprinted) Falklands War story. They weren’t failing to put out certain issues - they were selling out! In fact on occasion, when I have gone into Smith’s on the ‘other week’ there has been only 2-3 comics left in the box! May be feel some cautious optimism?

Incidentally another batch of 3-in-1 reprint books has been released. But I appear to have accidentally deleted the picture I’d taken of them!

Posted in British comics industry, 2010's, DC Thomson, Commando | 1 Comment »

Penny plain, Tuppence coloured

11/04/2012 by admin.

I recently found a cool blog about Japanese comics (mainly!), Three Steps Over Japan:

http://threestepsoverjapan.blogspot.co.uk/

The writer likes to collect and make “papercraft” free gifts, which regularly come with comics over there. This got me thinking about the “penny plain, tuppence coloured” toy theatres that used to come with the Penny Dreadfuls, and which were the origin of the free (and not so free) gifts in British comics. Of course many people think that the trend of gifts has gone too far in British comics, often it’s more like you are paying for the toys and the comic is the “gift”! Still The Dandy included some cut-out cardboard papercraft items for Christmas a few years ago, which ought to be applauded, as at least it gave an artist a job!

Anyway just today I took delivery of 6 month’s worth of The Boys’ Friend from 1909. And what did that give away for Christmas that year? A model theatre and “actors”!

 

The cover of that issue - a double number!

The “theatre” itself. It’s on glossy(ish) paper and was difficult to photograph decently.

It also came with comprehensive instructions and a bit of extra background scenery. The story was in prose form, as that issue’s complete. Every issue of The Boys Friend contained at least one, of around 10,000 words in length.

 

Posted in Boys Friend, 1900's, Amalgamated Press | 1 Comment »

Complete scans of rare 1940’s British comics

09/04/2012 by admin.

The late forties was an interesting time for British comics. Much of the “old guard” had been swept away by Graveyard week in 1940 and the American “slicks” had become incredibly popular among kids lucky enough to get some from a friendly G.I. Any wheeler-dealing spiv who could get his hands on a load of paper would hastily set up a “publishing company” and produce a comic, it was the one thing guaranteed to sell out (sadly that’s far from the case today). The small print runs, irregular schedules and lack of respect for comics in Britain have all contributed to making these comics incredibly rare today.

But they are also one of the most important parts of British comic history, marking the point where adventure strips really started to take over from text stories. The process had been going on since Rob The Rover in 1920, but really got underway at the end of the war. Even DC Thomson began to put simple strips on the covers of Adventure. Many artists who would go on to become legends of the fifties and sixties got their first ‘break’ in these small comics too.

Because of the huge array of small, obscure companies producing these things, tracing copyrights is virtually impossible. This prevents them from being reprinted in large numbers. They were also all different sizes, making a comprehensive book a difficult thing to create.

BUT then the internet was invented. Working on the assumption that the owners of the copyright on these two comics either:

- No longer care about the comics

- No longer remember the comics

- Are no longer alive

I’m just going to post up full scans anyway. It’s possible that these are the only copies in the world, not even the British Library has a full collection of these short-runs and one-shots. I think it’s far more important to make these stories available for people around the world to read and remember, that to “protect the livelihood” of some anonymous person who is probably long dead.

The Tornado in OH BOY! No. 5  - 1948/9 - Paget Publications

The main story in this comic is about The Tornado, a superhero who in his day-to-day life is journalist Steve Storm. He becomes The Tornado by “exerting his mighty will”. The story manages to pack in three fights against giant creatures in only 4 pages! Oh, it’s also drawn by somebody called Mick Anglo.

The second story is called Post Atom, and is about a man called Jungle Jim, who is a super-strong adventurer. It’s actually the first part of a serial, so if you own the other part and despaired of ever reading the first, this is your lucky day, eh?

 

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Secret Service Series No. 4 - The Forgers (A Headline Halliday Story) - 1948 - Hotspur Publishing

This comic is slightly smaller, and is also printed in blue and red (may

be there was an abundance of those inks around?). The seller on Ebay said that this was really number 1, though I have since found a website selling Secret Service Series No. 3. In addition the comics.org “grand comics database” lists three issues of this. Also the lead story begins with the heroes talking about a case they had solved before. The whole comic is drawn by Bob Wilkin, who might very well have been the writer and publisher too!

 

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As you can see, both comics were just 8 very thin pages. The use of red and blue an attempt to look more “colourful” and thus “American” than the black and white fare from DC Thomson and Amalgamated Press. Though full colour comics would not become the norm in Britain until the nineties. As an aside, here’s a size comparison against comics available in Britain today.

 

Posted in Hotspur Publishing, Mick Anglo, Bob Wilkin, Paget Publications, Headline Halliday, Oh Boy, Secret Service Series, The Tornado, 1940's | 3 Comments »

Progress Report

03/04/2012 by admin.

After far too long, the “new” 1910 Press website was launched recently. It’s the third or fourth “revamp” it’s had which is not actually a revamp at all, just a few small alterations that took 6 months.

 

And even then it’s not finished!

The URL is http://www.felney.co.uk/

It actually needs further edits, as I have decided to cancel The Small Press Digest and The Sentinel before they even began! As they are both “newspapers” my typical working speed meant that by the time they got printed the news in them would have been hilariously out of date. I’ll stick to the blog for that!

I originally intended for The Sentinel to join “The 22 Club” and merge with The Red, White & Blue at a later date. I may instead just add a one-page “The Sentinel Says” article to the RWB, containing news of small press cons and new British Comic releases.

Marcus Morris wouldn’t have liked this

Speaking of The Red, White & Blue, it’s bi-monthly publishing schedule began at the start of 2012, meaning the first issue is dated Jan-Feb 2012. So where is it? Horribly delayed! Virtually all of the artwork is done, but the “Complete history of British adventure comics 1777-2012″ article turned out to be rather long, for some reason. An early draft of the article, with huge numbers of spelling and grammar errors, and not a small amount of factual errors, can be read under the History tab. It is being slowly revised, the Norman Saxon story will also be re-read and corrected and the first issue will hopefully “go to press” on Friday, in time for it’s unofficial “launch party” on Saturday.

The party that the RWB will be “hijacking” is actually a premeeting for Camcon, the first Comic/Sci-fi/Anime/Cosplay/Roleplay/My Little Pony (all the cool kids are going mad for it, seriously) convention to be held in Cambridge!

 

www.thecamcon.com 

I have decided to prepare the first two issues of the RWB in time for Camcon, in May, and put them both on sale there first. After that I’ll sort out an online shop, probably using the arts and crafts website Etsy.

The first issue of the RWB, including the overlong article, is going to be a “mammoth” 40 pages! From issue 2 it will be 32 pages and from issue 3 (after various ’setting up’ articles and editorials are out of the way) will contain:

One colour comic strip (4 pages)

Three black and white strips (5 pages each)

One complete text story about Norman Saxon (7-8 pages)

One text serial instalment (3 pages)

Plus other short complete stories/strips, articles and filler.

Unless I can find somebody to help with artwork (and who in the UK small press cares about jingoistic boys’ own comics?) the page count will be drastically reduced in future. Probably shedding the colour strip, one black and white strip and the text serial. Of course I will try to keep the  ”full size” comic going for as long as I can manage!

As for the release date of the first issue of The Trident… your guess is as good as mine! If I can manage to get ahead of myself on the Red, White & Blue I’ll take a week off work and pummel the keyboard until it’s finished! The story in Issue 1 is going to be the “actual” first Norman Saxon story, set in 1899. It will be a heavily-revised version of an old Sexton Blake story I wrote, which can be found here: http://www.felney.co.uk/web/blake/hong.html  (warning: long and terrible!).

 

And now, in light of the cancellation of The Sentinel, here is Black Widowe, the comic strip that was due to appear in it! I will continue this one day, I’m just not sure where or how!

 

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Posted in Conventions, small press, The Sentinel, 2010's, Felney Productions, RWB, Trident, Me!, Sexton Blake | 1 Comment »

Stan Dare: Boy Detective

29/02/2012 by admin.

 

Could he have been the grandfather of the famous Dan? Well his adventures were began in the Amalgamated Press story paper Pluck in 1903. And the descendants of Amalgamated Press eventually came to possess Eagle too!

Pluck was a paper that was founded in 1894, and was in a similar style to the Halfpenny Marvel and Union Jack, 16 half tabloid pages for a halfpenny. The other two began with a complete story and an editorial page (occasionally less than a page), I presume Pluck was the same. However by 1903 all three featured a complete story and 1 - 2 serial stories. In these issues of Pluck (I have the first 6 months of 1903) there are two serials running, the “newer” one being given longer installments than the “older” one.

Pluck’s complete stories, whilst being complete in each issue, were also organised into loose ’series’ with recurring characters, and that is the form in which Stanley Dare appeared. I own the first five stories, though his adventures appear to have continued sporadically into at least 1911. All five of these first stories appear to be written by Alec G. Pearson (though the first is uncredited) and feature a few recurring characters. Apparently in later stories he was helped regularly by a Professor MacAndrew, though that character does not appear in these five.

The five stories are also a fantastic microcosm of the tropes of the detective stories of the day. Our hero roams around “large, old fashioned houses” with “queer, rambling passages”. These regularly burn down, their “elderly timbers” being “as dry as brushwood”. We meet a young apprentice criminal who wants to go straight, we sneak into the meetings of masked and robed secret societies. Stan is flung from a speeding train, trapped in endless secret chambers and drowned in a murky swamp yet always shows up in time to frustrate the villain’s plot. Not bad for somebody who today would only have been out of school a year!

The Shadow of Guilt - Pluck issue 431, 23/02/1903

“Pluck” is an old-fashioned word for bravery

Stanley Dare is  a clerk at the Capital & District bank when we first meet him, he is falsely accused of stealing a large quantity of money from the vault of the bank, having been the only person to be left down there on his own. However most of the managers and staff don’t really believe he is guilty, but the evidence is too strong. They don’t press charges in the hope he can get a job somewhere else. He decides to do some detective work and try to discover the real criminals.

He investigates the vault and finds footprints that are made of clay, as you’d find on the shoes of somebody who had been digging a deep hole. He searches the surrounding area for evidence of digging, but can’t find any. Then he spots a man with the same sort of clay on his boots and follows him. This man goes to a house, then appears at the window looking completely different! He must have been walking around in disguise, which nobody honest would be doing.

Stan sneaks into the empty house next door, and discovers that the criminals have found an old Roman aqueduct under their house, and are using it to get around London unseen. He makes his own way down into the aqueduct, but the rope he is using snaps. He then blunders into an ancient well but is rescued by a mad old man who also found his way down there somehow. This man then leads him right into the clutches of the criminals!

The criminals know who he is, but ask him to join them, because he knows about bank vaults and their locks and so on. He pretends to be considering it, while they make a plan for a second robbery on the Capital & District. Then he smashes the lamp they are using in the room (which is an ancient and dried-up Roman bath) and escapes.

 

That could be an ancestor of Judge Dredd in the black hat!

Stanley runs around the tunnels for a while, but is trapped in a dead end, which was once a secret room. The criminals shut the door and leave him to starve. However the ceiling has fallen in and he is able to escape back to the tunnels after many hours of crawling. He then creeps up into the criminal’s house and out into the street. He tells the managers of the Capital & District of the coming robbery, and the criminals are caught in the act. The inspector who had originally arrested him helps him to set up as a private detective.

Shadowed! - Pluck issue 435, 28/03/1903

Hey modern American comic makers, THIS is how you do a cover!

A man called Harper Wayne receives a coded letter in a mysterious manner, and then loads of people try to kill him. His cousin, who looks similar to him, is murdered. He had given this cousin a little watch chain ornament he had found, a black snake. Stanley realises that the coded message belongs to a gang called “The League of the Black Serpent” (NB - Actually this name is not used in the comic, but is far cooler than just “The Serpent Gang”, which is!). All the police forces of Europe have been trying to capture this gang, but none have succeeded.

Stanley decodes the message and finds it relates to a secret meeting, which he attends in disguise. The League all meet in black masks and hooded robes. However when “too many” members show up Stanley is exposed, but is able to brand a man with a red-hot poker before he escapes. Oh and the house is set on fire in the initial struggle and burns down.

 

For a while at primary school a load of us wanted to be “gangsters” (inspired more by Grease than gangsta rap). We ought to have called ourselves The League of the Black Serpent!

He later tracks the branded man down on a train, but the man see’s through his disguise. After a struggle over a poison dart gun Stanley is thrown off the train, directly into the path of another! The League arrive at their destination. Walsingham Grance, which they intend to rob. They creep in and, having overpowered a man sleeping in the same room as the safe, are about to finish him off when Stanley shows up with a posse of constables!

Stanley had escaped by twisting as he fell, and then had laid huddled up between the two rushing trains. As he goes to walk out of the tunnel he was dropped in, he finds the poison dart gun. It’s handle is a storage compartment which contains a piece of paper with a message relating to “the broken post”. By some contrived luck he discovers that there are some valuable diamonds at Walshingham Grange, he also discovers a broken post nearby and is able to ambush the Serpents. Their leader, Michael Scarfe, escapes at the last minute. He says he’ll meet Stanley again, but doesn’t in any of the stories I have.

The Vanished Heir - Pluck issue 437, 11/04/1903

The amount of clinging fog rolling across the scene is left for you to imagine.

The description calls this “The Boy Detective’s Strangest Case”, actually it’s probably his most ordinary one! Colonel Thurston calls Stanley in when his son mysteriously disappears. He was dressed in a fancy costume for a party, but a servant claimed to see him in the grounds dressed normally only a few minutes after he was last seen, which is impossible. The colonel leaves and Stanley returns to his room (which is in a “rambling” and “old fashioned” hotel). He spots a shadow and a secret panel in the wall, somebody had been listening to the meeting!

He visits the colonel the next day, and that man says he was attacked while driving home from the hotel, but drove off his assailants. They then investigate the grounds and Stanley discovers and obvious clue, one that the original searchers ought to have found. It seems that the missing son was still in the house to start with, and was taken away afterwards. They walk further and see an old mansion which is now being used as a school. The headmaster passes by, Stanley notices strange dust on that man’s clothes. He decides to investigate the school later that night, but is tricked into an old shed, knocked out, and thrown in a nearby stagnant pool.

The story then switches to a school story for a bit. A new boy called Samuel Flopp arrives at the school, which is not a very good one and rife with bullies. The new boy beats up most of the bullies single-handed, which earns him respect from the other pupils. After being at school for a while he goes for a midnight wander to an unused, forbidden wing of the mansion. There he finds somebody is being held prisoner. He is almost caught by the one other teacher, but escapes into the night.

Later Stanley is back at the colonel’s house, explaining that he landed on an old tree that was submerged in the pond, and his dog rescued him. He also says that the colonel’s new footman, who claimed to see his son in the garden on the night of the disappearance, is one of the villains! They surprise this man as he is trying to destroy some evidence, and he is arrested.

Samuel Flopp shows up at the school assembly the next day, and accuses the headmaster of being a kidnapper! The police them march in and Samuel Flopp is (surprise surprise) revealed to be Stanley Dare! The headmaster ruses off to murder his captive, but Stan is quicker because he rushes around the outside of the building and climbs a ladder into the room where Harold Thurston is held. He arrives just in time to save him from the headmaster, who throws a bottle of chemicals onto the floor that burst into flames.

 

The headmaster goes mad and then collapses on the fire. Stanley picks up Harold, shoots the lock off the door and collapses into the arms of the policemen, waking up again outside as the burning school collapses.

The Crimson Clue - Pluck issue 438, 25/04/1903

More secret rooms and trapdoors

A farmer called John Norton brings Stanley a note he found tied to the foot of a pigeon. It is addressed to the boy detective by a dying man, and is written in his own blood! The man writes that his daughter is in peril and mentions a grey house. He also says he has been mortally wounded by “an awful, unaccountable thing”, adding to the mystery.

Stanley and the farmer track down the rough direction the pigeon came from, and walk until they hit upon a village, where a badly-mauled body has just been discovered. The victim appears to have been bitten in the throat by some sort of huge wolf, yet there are no tracks of such a creature. Stanley does, however, find horseshoe-shaped impressions several hundred yards apart along the road. Tracing these back he finds a grey house occupied by a Mr Moreland, and tricks his way inside past the hideous, hunchbacked servant. The pair hear a girl’s scream, but Mr Moreland says it was actually a Hyena that he keeps as a pet. Stanley notices revolvers bulging in the man’s pockets and they leave.

At midnight he and John Norton return and break in. They sneak into the cellars, but are suddenly dazzled by a bright light. Moreland and his servant are behind it, covering them with revolvers. However the current is interrupted and Stanley and John run further down into the cellars, where they are attacked by huge wolves. They fight these off, but are shut in the cellar.

 

Screentone!

John Norton says he could easily break the door down, but then a panel opens and a gun is fired through it. John is wounded and Stanley, dodging, trips a secret trapdoor and falls into a deeper cellar with no exit! He is knocked out, but comes around many hours later and finds a note from Mr Moreland, saying he likes to keep people down there to see how long it is before they go insane. Stanley spends the whole day there, but when the servant comes to feed him he pulls that man down through the trapdoor, and climbs out.

He explores the house, and while looking through a window spots a huge bat-like creature landing in the garden and walking into the house. He hides as it passes him. He then steals some food, and also some “queer-looking apparatus”. Then he comes across John Norton, who is locked in a room but not badly injured. Together they rescue the woman, Marguerite Woodward, and escape the house.

By the time they have got the police, the criminals have discovered the prisoners have escaped, and have escaped themselves. However Stanley tracks them down to a dodgy guest house in London’s docklands where they are arrested. He explains that the “awful, unaccountable thing” that had been murdering people in the district of the grey house was Moreland, using spring-loaded shoes and bat-like wings to glide with.

The Clue of the Painted Face - Pluck issue 442, 16/05/1903

Stanley is accosted by a Ramsay Marshall whilst out walking. Mr Marshall has been expecting a Niece, who he has never met or seen, to visit from Australia. However when her ship arrives he is told she left it in France, since then she has vanished. Then suddenly he gets a letter in her handwriting, telling him to go to a house in a run-down district. He does and finds a woman in a trance. He rushes out, runs into Stanley Dare and returns, only to find her missing!

Whilst the pair are looking around the room a painting is removed into the wall and a ghastly, corpse-like face stares out at them. Suddenly all the candles go out and by the time they are re-lit, the face has disappeared. Mr Marshall leaves the house, whilst Stanley searches further. He discovers a secret room, leading off from the room where the woman vanished. He climbs down into this and discovers an obvious secret door with a button to press, however the button is a trap, and a mechanical claw grabs his arm!

Is he supposed to look Chinese or Jewish?

The man of the corpse-like face emerges from the shadows, and prepares to kill Stanley with a blow-pipe. However Stan has been fiddling with the secret door mechanism and it swings open, blowing out the candles. Stanley escapes through into the next room, which is a cellar with a window, and from there into the yard. He finds a lost wallet as he makes good his escape.

The next day he returns with John Norton, that worthy man itching for a rumble. The house is apparently back to normal. Suddenly “the real owner” walks in and threatens to call the police. Stanley tells him to go ahead as “we are anxious to meet with your late tenant, who took a great deal of trouble to try and murder me last night!”. No more clues can be picked up at the house, so Stanley then tracks down Jim Slideaway, the owner of the lost wallet. It was he who, whilst trespassing in the back yard of the house to find something to steal, was given the note by the captive woman.

Stanley then tracks down the man of the painted face and the woman to a seaside village called Rottingdean. This “old eccentric and his invalid niece”  are looking for a housekeeper, which job Stanley’s landlady Mrs Bowen applies for and gets. Slideaway Jim is posted in a tree outside the house, and Stanley soon has confirmation that these are the people he is looking for. However the man with the painted face, now “Doctor Marengo”, visits him in another disguise, as “Reverend Ingram”. The worthy reverend is going to prick Stanley with a poisoned needle hidden in a cigar case, but it is stolen from his back pocket by Jim, who is hiding in the cupboard.

John Norton is called in, and together they kidnap Ann Parsons, the mystery woman’s jailer. They then rescue her. As Stanley goes to leave the house he runs into Doctor Marengo, who throws a jar of chemicals to the floor, which burst into flames. Stanley, probably muttering “not again”, daringly escapes the blazing building and Doctor Marengo is consumed in the flames. The mystery woman turns out to be Violet Forsyth, the missing Niece. Doctor Marengo had planned to use her, in a hypnotised state, as a sort of remote control burglar. She is restored to her family, who also give Slideaway Jim the chance to “go straight”, working on their farm.

Posted in Alec G Pearson, Pluck, 1900's, Amalgamated Press | 1 Comment »

A comparison

26/02/2012 by admin.

…of Japan’s best weekly adventure comic and Britain’s best (only!) weekly adventure comic.*

It’s no secret that I hold Japan up as an example of how the comic industries of all countries ought to function. Thick, cheap weekly anthologies with exciting serials, which are then collected into better-printed book form for fans to collect. I’m not suggesting that Britain ought to start copying the Japanese art style or stories, though. And our comics don’t need to be as thick either, if we’re going to stick with detailed Commando-type artwork. But they do need to exist!

With sales dropping or barely holding across the board (mind you The Beano did recently gain just over 1000, which is a step in the right direction.) some drastic gambles may have to be taken. And of course comic fans all need to do their bit to promote the art form to non-readers in everyday life.

But enough of that, on with the comparison!

 

The Phoenix issue 8 and Shonen Jump issue 12 (for 2012)

Here are the covers, and I think The Phoenix easily wins out,  with a big bold image and minimal text, as opposed to the “bit of everything” Japanese clutter. Some otaku hold that Japanese writing** is “more artistic” and so cluttered covers work better in that language. Well actually in Japan it’s considered “artistic” to scatter odd English around designs (usually it makes no sense). Cluttered covers are just ugly whatever language they are in!

Of course, the ideal is to have a strip on the cover. But we just aren’t getting that these days.

But enough of the fronts, lets look at the sides…

 

That’s about the size of it.

Yes, Shonen Jump is still a weekly! It can be such a huge size partly because of the style of manga art, with many panels featuring only talking characters with basic backgrounds. Also manga usually uses screen tone to add shading, rather than time-consuming cross hatching. Oh and of course (at least if Bakuman is anything to go on) artists and writers only work on one story at a time, for which they are paid a decent wage and also receive royalties from sales of the collected books. This means they can concentrate on “their” story entirely. Most if not all of them also have assistants doing the donkey-work of, say, drawing the windows on distant skyscrapers. It is in effect the famous “studio system” used on Dan Dare raised to a state of perfection.

This particular issue contains 21 stories in about 500 pages (most of them aren’t numbered). The Phoenix contains 11 stories in a mere 32 pages. Though of course the length, style and pacing of them is so completely different a direct comparison is meaningless. Also the Phoenix’s editorial content is a ’story’ in itself!

 

Like so

Starting off, we have the latest information on “Phoenix land”, with the ongoing case of the missing feathers. One of the fictional editors of the comic has been arrested on suspicion of stealing them, which has not gone down well with the rest of the team. And then we’re into the first story. The stories in The Phoenix are all full-colour and the paper quality certainly beats Shonen Jump hands down. Mind you I’m wrong in the head so I actually prefer thin newsprint, but I’m not going to start claiming it’s better!

The first story is Pirates of Pangaea, which is actually pretty close to the “sort of thing” you’d see in manga! A fantasy world of dinosaurs and crazy pirates. Mind you though Pirates of Pangaea doesn’t feature a mysterious child with an ancient power locked within him, or elaborate, wordy mind-games. No it features shooting at rampaging raptors with flintlocks and then running like mad!

 

A blonde guy teamed up with a “dumb animal” that’s more intelligent than him, shades of Tintin eh?

The other ’serious’ adventure story in The Phoenix is The Lost Boy. This one is actually drawn in a kind of combined British / Japanese style. And it also features a seafaring adventurer on a mysterious island!

 

Sweet sugar lumps!

The other “flagship” adventure story is the more comedic Long Gone Don, created by The Etherington Brothers. This pair are for my money not just the most talented writer and artist working in British comics at the moment, but are among the best in the world! The complex and detailed art is a joy to behold, the dialogue is fantastic and the stories rattle along at a good pace. The one criticism I can perhaps offer is with art that deep and detailed they ought to go about including some “where’s wally?”-style mini visual gags. That’d make their work just about perfect, and would encourage people to stare at it for longer, too!

Crazy invention time!

The Phoenix also contains some purely comedy stories, such as this one by Jamie Smart. To put it diplomatically Jamie is a “marmite” artist. A little like a modern version of Eric Parker, in fact, in that he sure can turn ‘em out. He’s almost made The Dandy his own of late - which has bought about some highly polarised opinions. I’d better reserve my own judgement on the matter, lest accusations of jealousy start flying around.

What would the Rev’d Marcus Morris have made of this?

One of my favourite parts of The Phoenix is the educational Corpse Talk. The basic premise is that the skeletal, rotted remains of famous historical figures are dug up and interviewed about their lives. Like ya do. This week it’s the Suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst, and previous bodies in the chair have been Marie Curie and Genghis Khan. I should think more than one kid has got better marks on their history homework as a result of this! Plus just look at how many panels have been crammed in, it’s like 1950’s Jonah!

The feature content of The Phoenix includes the usual “letters and pictures from readers” section that has long been a staple of British comics (though of course the best letters sections appeared before 1930). I can’t see anything that looks similar in Shonen Jump. The Pheonix also contains a series of articles about creating your own comics, and encourages children to have a go themselves.

 

 Mind you this one is about sound effects, which are overused, over dramatic and over here!

To my mind this is the most important part of the comic. It will hopefully instill in the readers not only the desire to try it for themselves (all kids draw, but if my own experience is anything to go on very few of them attempt to make comic strips. Though to my own young mind it seemed the logical thing to do.) but also an appreciation of the art form of comics and of the effort that goes into making decent ones. If The Phoenix can be sustained (apparently it’s secure for two years… are you doing your bit to make it run beyond?) and if those kids can inspire others at their schools to draw comics too we might see the long-wished-for comics “revolution” in Britain within the next 15 years!

 

More Etheringtonism

The Phoenix also contains puzzles, including the ongoing series The Dangerous Adventures of Von Doogan. Some of these are harder than others and really require you to get yer brain in gear. This issue’s are a bit easy though. Readers are invited to “help” the adventurer by sending in the solutions to the puzzles, and if “chosen” by him receive prizes.

 

Yep!

Finally one thing Shonen Jump definitely does not have is text stories! Text-filled story papers were the predecessors of British adventure comics, and even once the adventure strips started to appear in the late 30’s there was a long crossover period of mixed text and strip content. By contrast I’m not sure Japan ever had what could be considered an equivalent to story papers. But then most histories of manga begin in the late 1940’s and ignore everything that went before as being “too nationalistic”. Mind you certain ivory-tower preachers are attempting to act like British comics only began in 1976 and nothing that came before is worthy of note.

Possible candidates for Japanese story papers include books called ‘Yellow Covers’ that first started to appear in 1775 (the first British story paper was possibly The Young Gentlemen’s Magazine in 1777, but very little information is available on it). After these there was a genre of serialised stories called ‘Books for reading’. I’ve also seen an issue of a 1920’s “comic” (as described by my girlfriend of the time) called Boys’ Club. But I can’t find any information on it, and it was locked in a cabinet at a museum with all of the other information about it in Japanese.

Anyway, the Phoenix text stories are often extracts from children’s books, which means I don’t bother reading them as I won’t be buying the books. Occasionally however they run complete stories or mini-serials (including an adaption of The Minotaur). More of those, please!

The Phoenix is completely free of advertising, because it is funded by “anonymous backers” (why anonymous though, surely not ’shame’ at being involved with ‘mere comics’? Stand up and be counted, true patriots!). By contrast Shonen Jump has quite a lot of adverts, even in the form of fold-out “colour plates”!

 

 FURUKOOOOOOOOOOSU!

These adverts are generally for action figures, videogames or anime DVD’s. Almost all of which are based on the stories that have appeared in Shonen Jump! And yet in this country when a British comic character is adapted into another form (rather than a TV show being made into a ‘comic’ with hardly any comic) it’s generally either ignored or is met with a disgraceful shower of hate from hack journalists who have suddenly ‘discovered’ that the comics they read as a kid 30 years ago have changed since then. And this from supposedly ‘patriotic’ newspapers.

 

Hand!

By contrast to The Pheonix, Shonen Jump contains only 3 pages of comic in colour. They are the first three pages of Haikyuu!!, a school and volleyball strip. It’s apparently a new strip, so this could be the very first part and the colour pages serve to introduce it. Of course in issues where a new story is not beginning it’s probable that a popular one is randomly chosen for the colour pages.

The Phoenix does not have any sport stories, but they were once a genre that ebbed and flowed through British comics. The Boys’ Realm became a sport-themed paper towards the end of it’s life, and even launched a smaller spinoff called The Boys’ Realm Sports Library, which I recently bought 6 months of. This issue of Shonen Jump has two, Hakyuu!! and Kuroko no Basuke (Kuroko’s Basketball).

 

 Is a small tsu in Katakana also a ’sound extender’ like a line is?

Of course the staples of shonen manga (boys’ comics) are the adventure stories. There’s some comedic ones such as Toriko, which is about a “gourmet hunter” who tours the world looking for ingredients to create “the ultimate meal”. If British TV companies want to save a few bob they could always combine I’m A Nonentity Get Me Back On Telly (are you sure that’s right? -ed) and Masterchef into one show in this way.

 

Also it has Mexican wrestlers

Another comedy adventure tale is the famous One Piece, which is about a crew of pirates captained by “Luffy”, who has some sort of superpower. In this issue we have the 657th (O_O) chapter…

 

 With some English

…and you thought Varney The Vampyre ran for a long time! Like the early-mid 19th century Penny Dreadfuls, a successful manga will be extended and extended to make more money rather than allowed to end at the point the writers probably hoped it would. This of course usually leads to people beginning to describe long-running stories as “annoying” or “crazy” as the writers just stick in whatever they think up first, probably having long since given up caring.

Of course in Britain from about the 1860’s - 70’s onwards stories had a set length and finished when they finished. It didn’t do our industry any harm for the next hundred years! And of course a story ending doesn’t mean that the same characters can’t come back in a new tale later, but it does free up the creators to think of something totally different if they want.

The main stock in trade of the shonen story is, of course, giant monsters, giant lasers or, er, both.

 

Oroboros? It always makes me think of Red Dwarf!

Some stories actually have quite a lot of detail despite still being 20-30 pages a chapter. There must be quite a crew of assistants working on Nurarihyon no Mago.

 

Fields of swords!

And of course there’s the epic battles with magic energy beams. I wonder how people don’t get tired of this stuff… but then again somebody who can’t read English would probably consider every Commando comic to have the same story XD.

 

 DOGOOOOOO. Mind you if the Treens were watching this they’d know not to mess.

Shonen Jump also contains a few examples of other genres, including one which was once very popular in Britain… up to World War 1 anyway, the “work” story. The Boys’ Friend used to be crammed with tales about boys who worked in mines, factories or shipyards. And the immortal Sexton Blake used to regularly go undercover in all sorts of industries. In today’s Shonen Jump we have Bakuman, a story of kids working their way into the manga industry. The old work stories in Britain were usually detective stories at their heart, with the hero overhearing some villainous plot and working to foil it.

Bakuman is instead basically a romantic story at it’s heart (well there’s not much scope for villainy in the manga industry, a serial pencil thief is not that threatening). Moritaka Mashiro dreams of being a manga artist, he loves Miho Azuki who wants to be a voice actress. They promise that when Moritaka has made a successful manga that is animated, Miho will play the woman in it, and then they can be married. But apart from that it also contains many other amusing characters and offers many insights into how the manga industry in Japan works (which is how I’m even able to write posts like this!). The Japanese books are currently up to 16, the English have just reached 9. This chapter will probably be part of book 17.

 

“Everybody Listen!”

Other styles of stories include the purely humorous story, as we’d see in The Beano. Just longer, black and white and probably serialised to a degree (and later made into an animation without mouth-foaming, traitorous ravings in the papers).

 

Teacups for heads? It’s PC gone mad!

One of the longest running comedy comics in Shonen Jump is called, and breathe in here: This is the police station in front of Kameari Park in Katsushika Ward. It’s been running continuously since 1976, and in fact the artwork still looks more like 70’s manga than the modern kind.

 

“I’m gonna try and do 3 rotations!” “Aagh stop rotating!” …or something like that .

The story is probably more like Only Fools and Horses (or maybe Stop The Pigeon) as the characters try to use the latest fads or wierd inventions to either get rich quick, or catch criminals more easily. Of course these always go wrong. Also like the stories of Billy Bunter or Sexton Blake the main characters never age even though the world is changing around them. But actually in this story a few characters do age. A baby born in an early story is now a teenager, but his parents are still the same age.

This particular story appears to involve a pushy journalist constantly interfering with police work by trying to interview everybody. However he then helps them arrest an armed robber by popping up at the resturant he is holed up in and trying to interview him. While he is still wondering what’s going on he gets arrested!

 

Myootsukee.

There’s also a school story apparently told from the perspective of the teacher. The only British example of that I can think of (except for maybe “Singled out: Teacher” Bash Street Kids episodes in The Beano from the 2000’s) was in The Captain in 1899!

You will probably have noticed that most of the print quality in Shonen Jump is not fantastic. That’s because these weekly anthologies are seen as ‘throwaway’, in fact the trains and stations in Tokyo usually have discarded copies laying on the seats. Of course in Britain for most of history comics were also seen as “throwaway” and were used to, say, light the fire once the kids were done with them. This has found it’s ultimate expression in the replacement of the printed US Shonen Jump (which was monthly and had half the page count… somehow) with “Shonen Jump Alpha”, which is at least weekly but ‘expires’ and deletes itself. Of course any comic that goes purely digital from print ceases to exist as far as I’m concerned. But having them ‘expire’ really is a step too far. I haven’t bought a videogame since 2009 because of the Orwellian excesses of that industry. It cannot be allowed to creep into comics too!

Of course, it’s okay to dispose of the weekly anthology copies in Japan because the stories that the readers like will come out in better-printed book form. Virtually every story will be printed in this way, whether they sell or not! It is of course these collected books that we get in foreign countries.

 

But a little bigger

Of course this can help with Japanese study… an aspect of comics that must also be promoted by fans to the unbelievers, and a reason why it is essential that more countries begin to produce a wide range of varied stories in the manner of Japan, and export them!

Imagine the proliferation of enthusiasm for learning other languages and the cultures that go with them if all nations produced interesting-looking picture stories that people wanted to understand. Comics have advantages over plain books in that the pictures help to explain what’s going on, and the dialogue and descriptions are “broken apart” clearly.

  - 

The English words actually seem to fit some of those bubbles better!

Of course book form reprints of stories from British comics are starting to proliferate now. But only haphazardly and occasionally in “best of” type books rather than full reprints. They’re also usually hardbacks with thick glossy art paper… even if the original artwork has been lost and the reproduction would have been just as good in lower-quality paperback. Of course this drive for quality of printing and binding drives the prices up to prohibitive levels, especially in a recession, and people stay away. Then series are left incomplete because of “poor sales”. Still if everybody reading this made up their mind to buy just one of the British comic reprint books this week…

 

Serving suggestion

Of course it’s far more important that the risk is taken and that ‘vanished’ stories are once again reproduced thousands of times and distributed to the ends of the country, so that they may survive into future decades in an easily accessible form. But as usual those who “know the cost of everything and the value of nothing” win the day. Mind you unsympathetic shopkeepers don’t help. Classics From The Comics was just really getting into it’s stride, switching from purely reprinting 1/2 page humour strips to a little bit of everything from DC Thomson’s extensive back catalogue, even reaching back into the twenties! But bad distribution killed it off in it’s prime. It was probably the closest thing we have had to Shonen Jump, actually. Though only 100 pages and entirely reprints.

One other book Britain has had which was a bit like Shonen Jump was this one from 1989

Intended as an annual, mind you.

It was a paperback reprint of a random selection of IPC / Amalgamated Press adventure comics from the 50’s and 60’s. It even had Jump-like print ‘quality’!

 

A highwayman story probably originally from The Thriller Library

Even in 1989 this apparently didn’t sell well enough to be reprinted. But really it ought to point the way forwards, if the quality of the reprints is not going to be very good because of missing/deteriorated original artwork, cheapen the paper to match and knock it out for as low a price as possible! And of course all of us will then have to let other people know it’s out there!

It’s one thing to wish that we had regular big wedges of comic like Shonen Jump (not that thinner wedges of full colour like The Phoenix are a bad thing, we ought to be able to do both, really). But if we want it, all comic fans and creators have to stand together and do their bit!

*- Actually Doctor Who adventures is also weekly, and Doctor Who is an “acceptable” licensed character. But it only has 4-5 actual pages of comic strip per issue, the rest is dumbed-down articles with big pictures and “ooh scary!” captions.

** - The ‘fancier’ characters are actually almost all Chinese, though!

Posted in Foreign Comics, Hawk Books, Phoenix, Etherington Brothers, British comics industry, 1980's, 2010's, Doctor Who, 2000's | 1 Comment »

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

09/01/2012 by admin.

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

 

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

The Phoenix 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 Phoenix, 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 »