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 »

30/03/2011 by admin.

A new series of posts looking at the early days of science fiction stories, as seen in story papers and comics. I’m going to roughly aim for pre-1950 stories as, of course, that was the year that Dan Dare bought futuristic space-travel right to the front pages!

Anyway, lets kick off with a tale from 1929, called…

The Doom of the Martians - John Hunter

This story appears in a book called “The World’s Best Boys’ Annual”, a bold and unfounded claim. The annual isn’t dated, but my copy has an inscription from 1931. However this story mentions 1929 so I presume the annual originally appeared in Septemberish 1928.

As the name of the story implies it’s about battles in space, but before all that you get what is, for my money, the best opening passage I have ever read. Just look at it! I still get chills…

This, gentlemen, is how you open a story!

After that epic opening, the story… erm, actually goes off the boil and becomes a lukewarm stew. I can’t help but see it in my head as one of those film montages where you are expected to follow the plot by vague clips alone… like the scenes of progress in “Things To Come”. Or the battle scenes of numerous modern war films where they spend millions on huge recreations of battles and then run through them with a handycam so you can’t even see anything.

Anyway, the story says that it was humans who first forged out into space and bought technology to other beings… probably a natural attitude for Britons to take in the days of empire. It also mentions intelligent life being found on the moon (with which earth forges “the first great space alliance”) and Saturn… both of which we now know to be impossible for varying reasons. But of course it is Mars that the story is mainly concerned with. Oddly the Martian ”canals”, a scientific fact of the day, are not mentioned.

A Human scientist called Brunwold shows his friend Zatun, the king of Mars, a new “radio wave of terrible power”, which can be fired as either a narrow beam or a wide wave, and cause terrible destruction. The Martian wants to learn the secret of this ray so he can use it to conquer the universe. As this is a story from 1929 “radio waves” are the cutting-edge of technology, as as well as being used as weapons they are also mentioned as being the power source of spaceships. This isn’t entirely unlike the “Impulse Field” of Dan Dare, or indeed the proposed spaceships that are “pushed” into space by lasers on earth.

Brunwold refuses to build the ray, and is imprisoned in Zatun’s palace. Luckily his cell has transparent walls and he is able to use his glasses to flash a Morse code message to a passing earth ship. Zatun catches him in the act, tortures his secret out of him and then kills him.  The pilot of the earth ship, Dick Trevor, received the message and turns back for earth, chased all the way by a Martian cruiser. It is finally destroyed over India by Earth ships.

Television back then was newer than “future technologies” such as hydrogen fuel cells are now!

The actual mechanics of space flight and space battles are kept deliberately vague. At one point in the chase Dick feels an “electric ray” trying to “disrupt his drive mechanism”. The Martian ship is destroyed by “something leaping aloft at such gigantic speed that it seemed to simply draw a steel line across the blue of the heavens”. I should also point out that in this story outer space is described as “the blue” rather than black. Well, as nobody had actually been there at the time…

 Whilst politicians from all of the other planets hold a great meeting (once again using “radio”, which this time produces holograms so it appears they are all in one room together). Dick can’t wait for that so calls on his friend Captain Hunsen, a Norwegian, who takes off in a space cruiser with Laroche, a Frenchman and Varney, an American. The story also briefly predicts night vision as “television rays” that reveal everything to watching eyes in the darkness.

That’s either the biggest building in the universe, or the artist has seriously underestimated the size of Mars!

Once the two ships arrive at Mars, four Martain fighters come up to attack them. Dick is somehow able to break the beam that connects them to their power stations on the ground. For some reason breaking the beam “earths” the power station and blows it up. See what I mean about vagueness? The Martains aren’t helpless as they also have rocket engines, but they are destroyed before they can recommence the attack.

They then spot a Saturnian scout ship racing away, and break it’s beam too. For some reason this damages the ship, and the pilot flings up his “speed hood” and struggles with his oxygen supply, which has stopped working. Varney climbs out of the cruiser and rescues him. This scene is given a coloured plate…

Every spaceship needs headlights and a leather bench seat!

This scene dates the story pretty badly, as you can see! Apart from the fact the spaceships have open cockpits (well, except for in all the other illustrations) and space is blue the ship is on fire(!) and producing smoke(!) and the big cruiser has rotor blades(!!). Oh well, I suppose at least they didn’t do anything silly like put this picture on the cover of the book.

Oh.

Now the Martian Air Navy flies up in full force to meet them. One of the ships “crosses the path” of Hunsen, though I don’t know if this means it somehow cuts off his power or actually collides, but either way Hunsen’s ship bursts into flames and dives down towards Mars, with a large store of explosives on board. Dick’s ship is hit by an electric ray but the insulation “asserts itself” and he only recieves a minor shock. Eh? Insulation doesn’t “assert itself”, it either works or it doesn’t!

Hunsen transmits his control code to Dick, who begins to direct the cruiser by remote control. Luckily the Martians don’t understand the Earth’s codes. But at one point a Martian crosses the radio control beam and Dick realises if they “guess the length” of it (eh??) they can take over the cruiser themselves. But in the end they are too late, and Hunsen’s machine obliterates the palace and Zatun with it. Dick turns for home, and so do the Martains, seeing the rest of Earth’s navy coming up “out of the blue”.

In the end there is no war with mars, or any more wars in the known universe, the people look at the “blackened and awful crater” and the warlike spirit died out of them. It’s a shame the “blackened and awful craters” of London, Coventry, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima &c didn’t have the same effect!

On the summit of Mount Everest (still unclimbed in 1929, remember!) a large statue of the three men on the cruiser has been built, with the simple inscription “they saved the world”.

Posted in Allied Newspapers, 1920's | 3 Comments »

26/12/2010 by admin.

I did this before, right back at the start of the blog. My collection has expanded quite a bit since then, so it’s time for another gallery of Christmas covers!

Ho Ho… ho?

Starting off right back in 1874 with Chatterbox. That’s not actually the fourth issue, the numbers were restarted for every volume. As you can see the cover is not particularly ‘festive’, but the 1870’s were puritannical times and perhaps a bird dying in the cold was supposed to remind readers to be miserable. The cover refers to a long poem taking up the first two inside pages of the issue within.

Chatterbox was one of the first story papers, starting in 1866. I distinguish these from the penny dreadfuls that were most popular from the 1830’s to 1890’s by the fact that story papers were not horror-focused, and often had more than one story in them (the penny dreadfuls were just a chapter of one long story - of course it was not only ‘dreadful’ stories that were published in this way, the work of Dickens was originally too!). Of course most, but not all, of the early story papers were Christian focused, or else they had only the loosest credibility by being published by the same people who were churning out the penny dreadfuls!

Chatterbox was a bit different, it had more high-minded, ’straight’ adventure stories without ghosts or ghouls. It also had informative articles and shorter stories about naughty children repenting. It was started by a reverend - J. Erskine Clarke, M.A. so in a way anticipated the Boys’ Own Paper of 1879 and The Eagle of 1950. This 1874-5 volume is of course loaded down with Jesus, but later volumes became more secular, reflecting the attitudes of their age. The first really old book I bought was the 1908 volume of Chatterbox which is a great deal less pious. Chatterbox actually ran all the way up until 1955, though by the end it was just a series of adventure story annuals, and virtually indistinguishable from any of the other “Grand Book for Boys” publications.

By Jingo!

It’s 1897 now, and this is the Christmas edition of The Marvel (which began in 1893 as The Halfpenny Marvel and gave us Sexton Blake). Where the older story papers were content to just be an alternative to the penny dreadfuls, Alfred Harmsworth’s halfpenny story papers were a clear shot across the bows of these gruesome horror stories. By 1900 the penny dreadfuls were holed below the waterline. Though in the early days of the Harmsworh papers the stories were not all that brilliant, and one wag wrote them off as “Halfpenny dreadfullers”.

Another way that Harmsworh’s story papers differed from the older story papers was their jingoism. By the 1890’s church had been replaced by state in the affections of the people and the empire had become something to be widely celebrated. Harmsworth’s papers captured the mood of this age, and  how better to show it but than with this cover? Santa does not introduce us to presents, or a dickensian scene, but to a host of British troops on the march, “Jack Tar” to the fore and surrounding Britannia on a white charger. We’ll not see the likes of this again until… well until i do a Christmas issue of one of my comics.

Oops, no cover

Into the twentieth century now, with the 1901 Christmas issue of The Boys’ Friend - except the cover is missing! The Boys’ Friend only had black and white printing most of the time, but relatively frequent “double numbers” (the Christmas and Spring ones being regular fixtures) would have a beautiful colour cover, and double the page count (pst, and also double the price!). Double numbers were also chosen to introduce new serial stories.

The serial was the stock-in-trade of the tabloid-sized Boys’ Friend which started as a halfpenny paper in 1895. The serial stories, large size and cheap paper make collecting The Boys’ Friend very difficult today, may I add! Each issue also had a long complete story of 10,000 words, though, and many of these are great reads. The large size of the paper and tiny type used allowed for very long stories to be told, and also for large and lavish illustrations. To my mind this is one of the greatest of all British comics!

How, um traffic was a nightmare

Now it’s 1913 and time for another lavish Boys’ Friend double number. This one with it’s wonderful cover intact. The content inside was much the same, a long complete story, ongoing serials, new serials with extra-long opening instalments, and the Editor’s page. I ought to say something for the editor’s page of the Boys’ Friend (and very-similar Boys Herald and Boys’ Realm, which started in the 1900’s and were cancelled in the 20’s), the editor would give well-meaning, and well-researched advice to his readers. He would also give long and friendly replies to readers, try to help them with problems (usually this help involved the purchasing of other Amalgamated press publications or books, ahem) and regularly advise on the dangers of smoking, drinking, gambling, rash emigration to the colonies and going to sea “for an adventure” without thinking it through - all pitfalls that it was all to easy for children to fall into in those days!

Compare this for a second to the letter’s pages of the comics i was growing up with in the 90’s - that is The Beano, The Dandy, Sonic the Comic and a bit later the Judge Dredd Megazine - in those readers were lucky if the reply to their letter was more than a single line. And that single line usually just contained some terrible pun. The Boys’ Friend - Best British comic ever.

Anyone for footer?

Followed closely by this one! The Union Jack started in 1894 as a virtually-identical story paper to The Halfpenny Marvel. In 1904 it became “Sexton Blake’s own paper” and that detective featured in every issue from then on. Now 10 years later Europe is in the grip of a huge war that many people predicted would be over by Christmas. It wasn’t, as this issue shows! The story revolves around a gentleman falling into disgrace and joining up as an ordinary soldier to seek his own death.

This paper gives the lie to the oft-repeated notion that “popular magazines” during the World War 1 would portray the trenches as a grand life of camping, cricket and then short, easy battles where you would get to “account for” scores of the beastly Hun. This was only the case for the first month or so of the conflict, as it drew on writers became a lot more realistic. The stories in this issue certainly don’t make life in the trenches sound desirable - if anything they exaggerate the horrors! One passage talks of soldiers “fighting for hours waist-deep in freezing water”, which they couldn’t have really done, it’s biologically impossible! Unless you want your legs sawn off afterwards. It’s not exactly discouraging either though. There was after all the need to actually win the thing, so the story emphasises that whilst you may not like your duty, every patriotic Briton must do his best to discharge it.

For the glory of the School Soviet, comrades!

Now it’s 1921, and the Nelson Lee Library. This was an odd one - a size roughly equivalent to the modern(ish) A5 and with quite a high page count, it carried complete stories about Nelson Lee in each issue. Nelson Lee was a detective who first appeared in the 1890’s, and was not greatly different to Sexton Blake at the time. However by the 1920’s things have rather changed a bit! Nelson Lee is now working as a schoolmaster at St Frank’s boarding school. He isn’t undercover - everybody knows he is a detective, and his boy assistant, Nipper, is a pupil at the school.

This unique setup allowed for the stories to waver between “Billy Bunter”-esque dorm feeds and practical jokes, to serious stories of solving murders and foiling gangs, with ease. Often these two elements would coexist in the same story, and the various boys of the school (not quite the fantastic characterisations of Charles Hamilton, but very close) would often take a hand in the solving of the mystery. Another remarkable aspect of the Nelson Lee library was that it was one huge serial - for decades the main story (it also carried more conventional serials - often 2 or 3 at a time!), while complete in each issue, followed on from the previous one and anticipated the next. Of course these were split into ’series’ too (in the same way as some, but not all, Sexton Blake stories in the Union Jack were in the 20’s and 30’s) but even then a minor plot element in one series would become a major focus in another.

Oh, yeah, this particular issue is part of one of the more famous series in the Nelson Lee’s history - the “Schoolboy Soviet” series, in which a few boys, inspired by the revolution in Russia, turn the school into a communist state! Of course this descends into tyranny and starvation and they eventually welcome their rightful ‘rulers’, the teachers, back. Unfortunatley I don’t own the whole of this series, so i can’t read it, yet! Anybody got the issues that came directly after the one that was actually named “The Schoolboy Soviet”?

The flash and old ink is only partly responsible - the cover really is that gloomy!

Now it’s 1925 and we’re back with the Nelson Lee Library. “Snow on the logo” is a long-standing British Comic tradition but in some of these old publications it looked like the wrong kind of snow - not the  soft white stuff you can look out at from your warm room on Christmas day, but the freezing, slippery stuff that your car skids on as you slowly crawl to work on a gloomy November’s morning.

The story in this issue is rather more lighthearted (well from the quick flick I had when i took it out to photograph it, anyway). Several of the boys from St Frank’s end up at an uninhabited stately home for Christmas, with only one butler and no food! But they suspect the castle is haunted - especially when a huge feast seemingly appears by a miracle on the dining table that was completely bare only half an hour before. I doubt it’s worth betting that the ‘ghost’ turns out to be Nelson Lee playing a Christmas prank and that a jolly holiday of crackling fires and gigantic cakes ends the tale.

Christmas in space

Now it’s the 1950’s and we’ve never had it so good - Photogravure printing of art and writing that well deserves it, a genius artist firing on all cylinders and a minutely-researched science-fiction tale where British pluck, and not technobabble, reversed polarities and sonic screwdrivers wins the day! This is the first Christmas issue of The Eagle - a title that hardly needs introduction. It was created by a Reverend and intended to kill off the popular horror comics of the time. Sound familiar?

Of course I don’t own the actual issue, this is just a reproduced cover in a book about the comic’s most famous character - Dan Dare! They really pulled out all the stops on ‘decorating’ this cover, with holly between the panels!

Ahh the festive tradition of poisonous gas - bring back the dying Robin!

Now it’s 1952 and Dan Dare still adorns the cover of The Eagle, which is still at the top of it’s game. It hit the ground running and barely faltered for 10 years! This issue isn’t quite so christmas-ey, no holly between the panels. Mind you the snow on the logo is now present and correct.

 Dan Dare and The Eagle copyrighted, trademarked and sole property of The Dan Dare Corporation PLC LTD KGB NKVD 1950-perpetuity. No infringement, expungement or disengagement of the copyright solely owned by the Dan Dare Corporation is hereby expressed, implied or implicated. Use of photographs of covers of The Eagle, copyright of the Dan Dare Corporation 1950-perpetuity, complies with the fair use law regarding critcism and/or review.

And I managed to make a whole post that didn’t involve Chums!

Posted in Frank Hampson, Eagle, Dan Dare, Wells Gardner & Co, 1870's, Rev Erskine Clarke, Hulton Press, Boys Friend, Nelson Lee, Chatterbox, 1910's, Sexton Blake, Halfpenny Marvel, 1950's, 1890's, Alfred Harmsworth, 1900's, Amalgamated Press, Union Jack, 1920's | 1 Comment »

23/05/2010 by admin.

Everybody remembers where they were when they heard Roy Race had been shot. For instance i distinctly remember not being born yet.

But who remembers the other high profile attempted murder case from that “large, old fashioned town” located “about sixty miles from London“? The attempted murder of the chemist Leonard Jardine by the town’s respected doctor Edward Sharlaw? This case, as it developed in 1928, caused no end of sensation in the newspapers of Amalgamated Press Land. After an investigation by the famous detective Sexton Blake the doctor was cleared of the charge, as the chemist had been injured by accident and confessed all after the doctor’s son, himself a spinal expert, saved his life.

Despite the naming coincidence, i’d say it’s pretty unlikely that anybody involved in Roy of the Rovers, despite the fact it was published by IPC which was a descendant of AP, had ever read this story. It’s just one of those things… (also it seems fairly likely that the Melchester of Roy of the Rovers is supposed to be a lot further north).

Posted in Roy of the Rovers, Amalgamated Press, Sexton Blake, 1920's | 2 Comments »

16/05/2010 by admin.

Today i went to a book fair at a village in Norfolk called Hilgay. The village is just off the A10 but the road leading to it is very narrow and bumpy. When i got into the village itself there seemed to be people out and about everywhere, not all just for the book sale but also for various sales of household stuff people had set up in thier front gardens… apparently this was an unrelated event to the book sale, what a community spirit!

Having winded my way down the long narrow road that ran through the village i found a small makeshift car park on a bit of muddy waste ground. Equally old fashioned and wonderful. The sale itself was in the village hall and packed with endless rows of books in plastic boxes on tables with very very narrow walkways between (made the UK Webcomix Thing - of which there will be no more, by the way - look like Pyongyang!). It was also very well attended. A lot of the books i bought didn’t have prices on, but i’d taken £100 so wasn’t too worried. Here’s what i bought:

The total for that little lot? £8!

The big red book is called Fifty Enthralling Stories of the Mysterious East and it seems to date from some time during or just after the first world war. The first story in it is by Sax Rohmer, famous for the Fu Manchu stories. The tales are mainly about Arabs or Chinese, with the odd Indian one (as India was controlled by Britain it was perhaps less ‘mysterious’!).

The Chatterbox annual, still with a similar covers to the first official Chatterbox annuals from the 1870’s (the paper started in 1866) is from 1921 and must have looked very dated by then. The content is pretty Victorian in tone too, with the usual mixture of a long serial story running through the whole volume (and thus a whole year when the papers were published weekly) as well as shorter stories in 1-3 instalments, pictures (no comedy cartoons), informative articles and poems. Chatterbox was aimed at younger readers than the ’similar’ paper Chums was… and lasted (though by the end only in yearly annual form) right through until 1955! So they must have been doing something right.

There’s also Our Own Schoolboys Annual which is fairly predictable fifties stuff of adventure stories revolving around detectives, sport, boys on scouting trips falling into adventures and mild sci-fi. It’s mainly text stories with lots of line drawings but there’s also a comic strip.

The other thing relevant to the blog is Stories for Boys which dates from 1961 (the first edition anyway, i have a fifth edition from 1967). The inside of the dust jacket promises stories set all over the world from “the stirring days when Englishmen and Spaniards battled for supremacy on the high seas” to “the sky lanes of the future“. (I’ve been to the sky lanes of the future and they’re pretty boring really… and the food is horrible). The back cover promises “many exciting sketches” but there’s really only a few full-page illustrations which aren’t all that good.

The other stuff i got includes a few Edge novels by George G Gilman, these addictive and fun westerns are shot through with black-as-night humour and extreme violence. Apparently there was comics based on them made in Italy… if the “fan subbers” can tear themselves away from Japanese stuff for a minute i’d love to read one of those! Gilman also created a character called Adam Steele but i only got one of those… one thing at a time! There was also at least two Edge Steele books in which the pair teamed up to dispense lead-flavoured justice.

The final item is pretty interesting, it’s a nuclear conspiracy thriller with elements of small boat sailing… a 1990’s Riddle of the Sands? I was reading the foreword which, setting the scene for the story, implied that the striking coal miners, anti nuclear environmental protesters and Middle Eastern oil pipeline saboteurs were all one organised body in the pay of the Soviet Union… i like this guy’s style! (especially as the Mark Trant stories in my own comics will work on a similar idea, though in those the organisers will be British-based socialists).

Posted in World Distributors, Odhams, Golden Pleasure Books, Edge, George G Gilman, Wells Gardner & Co, Chatterbox, 1970's, 1950's, 1990's, 1960's, 1910's, 1920's | 1 Comment »

09/12/2008 by admin.

As everybody else is doing it, here are some assorted covers of christmas issues from my collection. Most of the suff i had to hand is in bound volumes, so these are photos. Though i suppose i could properly scan the Victor’s at a later date (when/if i have that strange thing called “free time”).

The Union Jack Christmas Double Number 1906. This is actually the first page, as when this volume was bound the covers were removed, seemingly a common practice with these old papers. The story is, as ever, a Sexton Blake tale, seemingly revolving around a VC-winning soldier now being literally “left out in the cold” and appealing to an old officer for help. I intend to read this one on Christmas Day this year, and a review will eventually appear in the UJ Index blog.

1925 now, and Sexton Blake is still going strong in his golden era. The UJ by this time had colour covers, and was entirely crime-and-punishment related (the 1906 issue also contained a serial story set in the Zulu wars), containing a “detective supplement” with real-world crime information. The serial stories and “Tinker’s Notebook” feature were also firmly rooted in the world of detection. Nirvana was, if i remember the sextonblake.co.uk site correctly, a friend of Tinker’s whom he had known before he became Sexton Blake’s assistant.

Back to 1906 now, this is an issue of Chums, a storypaper published by Cassel & Co. A company which also published the New Penny Magazine (a 1901 “volume” of which i recently bought, and which contains many fascinating articles). This paper is a curious size, being slightly under the tabloid size used in the Boy’s Friend, but still bigger than the “average” (if the huge variety of sizes in use at that time allows for such a word to be used!) comic. Aside from christmas wishes along the top, and a message in the editorial section within, there’s not a great deal to distinguish this issue. Unlike some publications which featured the traditional snow on the logo…

…like this! This is the Christmas issue of Adventure for 1948. Adventure was the first of DC Thomson’s “Big Five” adventure story papers. In the early years it looked like any other story paper, but with the coming of comics it began to adapt, with these “full colour” strips on the covers. The interiors were still entirely taken up by text stories however. Wartime paper shortages continued into the late 40’s, so the paper was only published on alternating weeks (i beleive by this time it was moving back towards a weekly, though). The paper is very thin too, it’s no wonder so few wartime and 40’s issues of these papers have survived. A shame as many of the stories are excellent… the DCT papers had a way of always having serial stories, but each instalment was a good enough story on it’s own. Re-caps were often expertly fitted into the text where they would provide enough information for a new reader, but not irritate regulars. Getting the stories for these papers ‘just right’ must have been a supremely difficult task, which makes the complete lack of credits all the worse.

10 years later, and Adventure now features much more detailed comic strips on the cover, with better art and bigger captions to describe the action (speech bubbles and sound effects did not exist in this paper!). The issues were a lot thicker too, and frequently boasted of “four extra pages this issue!”. Additionally a further comic strip, in the same style but using red spot-colours rather than full colour, could be found on the centre pages. The stories kept thier brisk and exciting style, but the days of the story-paper where coming to an end as the comics took over. The Adventure name, merged with Rover, would continue into 1963, when the merged paper reverted to being called The Rover once again.

The Victor was another DCT publication, a comic this time (though i beleive early issues in the 1960’s featured a single text story). DCT liked to re-use characters who originally appeared in text form as comics, and Alf Tupper was one such character who made the transition. In typical British Comic style he never appeared to age but at the same time his “past caught up with him”. Some of these issues feature a story called “The Boyhood of Alf Tupper”, which appears to be set in the 1970’s. However in The Rover, where he first appeared, he was 18 in 1949! I originally found this selection of issues (in amazing condition) in a charity shop in Lincoln. However as most of them are Christmas issues i decided to wait until i was making a post such as this before posting them. They have colour covers and black and white interior work, the artwork of a lot of which appears to be (whisper it) a bit rushed. Then again the artists probably wanted to get finished in time for christmas! Some of the art styles are actually recognisable from my 1958 issues of Adventure, though in that they only had to provide one or two illustrations per story, so could take a lot longer over it. Victor was the last remaining of the “boy’s own”-type of weekly adventure comic, an attempted revamp with a lot more colour stories in the early 90’s failed to lift the slumping sales and it vanished from the shelves. The next generation along (of which i was a part) had to resort to creating thier own adventure/war comics (i even remember trying to start my own text-only storypaper! before i even knew what such a thing was), or else become superhero addicts. Thanks a lot, late 70’s/early 80’s-born people.

Just another picture i had kicking around for size comparison

Posted in Cassell & co, DC Thomson, Chums, Victor, Adventure, 1980's, 1900's, 1970's, 1950's, 1940's, Union Jack, Amalgamated Press, 1920's | 2 Comments »

07/11/2008 by admin.

Pocket Libraries, despite the claims of War Picture Library being “the first” on the back of “Unleash Hell”, have been around since the early 20th century. Of course, the first comic strip ones in the “Commando” style most likely appeared post-war in the 1950’s, the earlier ones where text stories. These usually came in the form of reprinted (and edited or shortened) serials from the weekly papers.

By far the most common size for these books was 64 interior pages, on black and white newsprint with colour covers and features/adverts on the inside covers. This format is continued today in Commando. However other libraries where reduced in pages during times of war and shortages. Others came in larger sizes - i beleive some “Holiday Special” editions of the Fleetway libraries such as Air Ace ran to 225 pages! (but those may have been in another format)

More pocket libraries than you might think survive today. But they can still be counted on one hand - Commando, The People’s Friend library**, My Weekly library, Fun-size Beano and Fun-size Dandy. Crossword/wordsearch/sudoku books of roughly the same size exist also.
This example is a Boys’ Friend library, which ran from 1906 to 1925*, reprinting either original stories or serials from the weekly Boys’ Friend. The book is in remarkable condition for it’s age (due to some ebay wrangling, a US collector was supposed to get ‘my’ good one. But never complained about the knackered example that was meant for me, so the seller sent me the good one). Also despite a general disintrest in / ignorance of storypapers in this day and age issues of the BFL which show up on Ebay always attract bids, often very quickly too. I’d hardly say there was a price war going on though, they show up for 99p - £2.00 and get bids. And as i’m not especially interested i normally let the ones with bids already on them “escape”. (If i ever see “The Black Squadron” i’ll chase it though).

I havent actually read the issue in question yet, but it appears to be about some film-makers going into the jungle and finding some lost civilisation and “more than they bargained for”. The book is un-dated, but the cover illustration has a 1920 date, it also doesn’t say if the story is a reprint of a serial or one written for the library

One of the most desirable issues of the Boys’ Friend Library must surely be that containing “Sexton Blake in the Congo”, an important story in the history of that character which originally ran over several issues of the weekly Boys’ Friend in 1908.

*- http://www.philsp.com/data/data046.html

**- Incedentally The People’s Friend must surely be the last surviving storypaper which has remained in regular publication right since Victorian times. Though today of course it is “the best-selling (only) story magazine” and also contains articles on holidays, cooking and many ads for ’silver’ cruises and life insurance. I suppose i had better cobble up an entry before all of it’s readership pass away.

Posted in Amalgamated Press, 1920's | 1 Comment »

30/09/2008 by admin.

All comic fans (or at least the ones with sense) lament the modern trend of “decompression”, also known as “ripping readers off and at the same time stretching out one good idea over loads of issues until everybody is bored of it” (they didn’t label me a “fence sitter” over at Comics UK for nothing!). Anyway, examples of this trend stretch back further than you might imagine, just look at this strip from a 1933 issue of The Gem! this gag could easily fit two panels but has been stretched to six, leaving the poor artist to draw virtually the exact same thing five times over!

New Acquisition

Rick Random: Space Detective

A collected edition of 10 Rick Random stories from the pages of Super Detective Library (which also once featured a Sexton Blake story). It’s the same sort of thing as those big Commando books. The pages are reproduced from copies of the comic, like the War Picture Library books are, but the quality is astonishing! though some pages are better than others

Posted in Super Detective Library, 1950's, Rick Random, Howard Baker, Charles Hamilton, 1920's, Gem | 2 Comments »