07/03/2010 by admin.

After my last post, suggesting that perhaps Classics Illustrated were going to start using a more sensible colour scheme in Macbeth, i couldn’t wait to get the comic - well i did yesterday, and it appears that i was premature with my praise. The preview picture on the back of the issue had evidently been taken from an old issue, as they hadn’t finished ruining “modernising” the artwork for publication. Here is what the previewed page actually looks like:

As you can see the bright primary colours have returned with a vengeance! Just look at this page from elsewhere in the issue:

Pink and yellow fields? Purple mountains? Green and yellow castle walls? Based on the preview image on the back of this one, the next issue, The Invisible Man, is going to be back to abnormal too.

New items!I’ve actually bought a great deal of new stuff since my  last post, which will hopefully be described in future posts. But here are some of the more recent and interesting items:

Sexton Blake: A Celebration

This is a book from 1994, published by “Museum Press”, which details the history of Sexton Blake in exhaustive detail (though not as exhaustive as the recent radio documentary… but that also made a few mistakes / deliberatley twisted details to ‘fit in’ with the awful “comedy” series / read out period adverts in a ridiculous voice). I paid £25 for it and i haven’t seen it before, which suggests it’s pretty rare. Perhaps “self published” in a small print run? The end of the book mentions a planned TV series, which ended up never being made.

A TV series could be well-done today if producers put thier minds to it - taking Doctor Who for inspiration they could jump around Blake’s extraordinary lifespan, setting one episode in the 1890’s and the next in the 1950’s, for instance. Mind you i wouldn’t trust many people in the ‘meedja’ to do such a series correctly… they’d probably turn it into unfunny trash just like with the radio series. (And apparently the 1978 TV series was pretty bad too)

James Bond Omnibus

This is a beautifully-reproduced collection of several of the James Bond newspaper comic strips which existed before the films. They are products of their time rather than being, well, products of their time like the films are. This means that Bond thunders around in a pre-war “blower” Bentley rather than an Aston with loads of comedy gadgets. I certainly know which one i’d prefer! The collection is enticingly numbered 001 - are they aiming for a ‘complete run’ of all the strips eventually?

The Gem issues 1-15

Wha-a-a-a-a-t?, as Quelchy himself might say. These aren’t the originals, but facsimilies, seemingly sold individually just like the real issues were (only on much thicker, better paper) and bound privately by a collector, as opposed to the W Howard Baker preprint books which collected ‘runs’ of issues as a book.I didn’t know there had been individual facimilies issued… perhaps they were sold through the now-defunct “Old Boys’ Book Club”? (well, i beleive it continues as a Charles Hamilton focused Yahoo group… but i was summarily thrown out after, i suspect, they looked at the other groups i was a member of - gay/swinging ones - and got rid of me) Either way there was several of these being sold on Ebay, the Gem in blue covers and the Magnet in red covers, all beautifully bound and certian to last down the generations, it’s a shame the collection was being broken up really, but i couldn’t have afforded them all! Still it’s a shame i didn’t buy more as several would have looked great on the shelf together:

Oh, and like Batman, the most famous character from this comic didn’t actually appear in the first issue! Here he is appearing in the third:

Tom Merry & Co certianly took over in The Gem a lot more quickly than Sexton Blake did in the Union Jack. In issue 11 he moved from his initial Clavering school to St Jim’s, where he would remain for almost 40 years (erm, best not think about it, it just works!) and from then on the main story in each Gem was about this school and the boys and masters in it. Once the Magnet had been launched and established crossovers between the schools and characters of the two papers (and later other schools from The Boys’ Friend, and girls schools from papers such as School Friend) became commonplace. Other AP characters including Sexton Blake also made appearances from time to time.

Posted in Classics Illustrated, 2010's, Museum Press, James Bond, Amalgamated Press, 1990's, Charles Hamilton, Howard Baker, Sexton Blake, Gem | 1 Comment »

17/01/2009 by admin.

Announcement:

The British Comics Wiki is launched! Go to www.crystal-knights.co.uk/

The Post:

Having built up quite a collection of food, i was able to save some money recently. And, trying to ignore my need of new shoes (”the weather’s warming up anyway, it won’t rain much”) i decided to buy a Chums volume i’ve had my eye on. It was £45 (well, 40 as the woman very kindly gives a student discount), as opposed to £2.99 (and £10 delivery) for the 1906/7 volume… but then again that was from Ebay, which is often cheaper, and in horrendous condition. It even smells like it’s been near a fire at one point, my more adventruous nature would like to think it narrowly escaped the blitz, but more likely it was in an attic near where the chimney went up for many years.

Anyway, Chums was initially started by Cassell & Co. in 1892, pre-empting the perhaps better-remembered Boys’ Friend for a large-format story paper with serial instalments, in addition to a complete story of decent length, and the odd factual article. Then again Chums was most likely a penny when it started, whereas the Boys’ Friend was a halfpenny in the 1890’s, that would have accounted for sales success.

Following the style of the times, the size of the paper was what we’d today call arbitrary. Or perhaps “two thirds tabloid”.

Volumes of The Boys’ Friend 1903-4, Chums 1906-7 (the covers are only very slightly bigger than the comics within)  and a typical “half tabloid” (roughly A4 give or take a few mm’s - though older ones described as the same were actually a little bigger, especially in height, due to cheaper printing quality needing more ‘run off’ room.) comic.

The 1907 (i’ll call them by the later year now to save myself so much typing!) volume, despite being very rickety (it needed repairs i may cover in another post), contains a lot of fascinating material. The typical content of an issue seems to have been longish instalments of at least two serials, a complete story, sometimes a second complete story, as well as an “editors chat” (sometimes a page, sometimes two columns). At least one humourous comic strip, usually with it’s panels “scattered” on a text page and miscellaneous oddments of knowledge or snippets of interesting news and events.  A bit like a less-childish Chatterbox, really. Some issues would include a longer article in place of the second complete story, these articles usually profusely illustrated with photographs and related to some subject of direct interest to the readers, such as scouting.  Still more issues didn’t feature either, though, simply taking up the room with a lot of small articles or jokes.

The 1907 volume also reproduces the covers and adverts, in fact it’s just the same as the paper that was sold individually in the shops. There is, actually, the possibility that this is a bound volume of the paper that was bought every week by somebody and then bound together using the “official covers” that could probably be bought seperately. However the beginning of the book (mainly the bit of ‘tracing paper’ over the contents, as was the style of the times) suggests otherwise. I’m sure the advertisers and cover illustrators didn’t complain about the extra exposure anyway.

Two typical spreads from the 1907 volume. Note the comic strips (and the sometimes “scattered” layout of them), the short articles with bold headings and the adventure stories. Aside from the comic strips, covers and heading pictures for the stories (in a lot of serials this seems to have been the same each instalment) illustrations of the text stories are actually quite few and far between. The odd complete story seems to have quite a few, though. Perhaps it was just what would fit in once the story was done… or if the illustrators had time to provide any!

Photographs are actually a more common sight in the older volume than the new. Several articles on ships (this the HMS dreadnought, the insitigator of a whole era of naval warfare) and monarchs / heads of state feature them. The reproduction is actually quite good compared to the high-contrast, murky reproduction in some other papers. (It’s certainly better than the flash makes it look in this picture!)

Onto the newer volume now, covering 1932 to 1933 (the volumes start from roughly September). This one features no covers or adverts reproduced, and judging by the contents the quantity of factual articles, sage editorial advice, comic strips and amusing snippets had been reduced to almost nothing, a whole issue could seemingly pass without any of those. To make up for this, the quantity of exciting adventure stories was greatly increased. Serials were still the norm, with complete stories appearing in every issue. The number of illustrations, especially in the complete stories, was greatly increased too.

The reason for the apparent vanishing of the factual articles and such-like may be down to the fact this is a bound annual sold by the publisher, and not the individual issues. The articles may have been left out, providing only the stories. Or else the page count of the issues themselves may have been drastically reduced. The reasons for this are not too hard to work out - by this time Chums was published by the Amalgamated Press, presumably they had bought Cassell & co. out, and they wanted to run this “rival” into the ground. Or else sales were just dropping off anyway. That said the paper did seemingly continue into 1941 (so says a book i have), so perhaps it avoided “Graveyard week”. I bet the final volume, with inevitable war stories, makes fascinating reading! Another interesting note is that Chums’ seeming ‘main rival’, the Boys’ Friend, had actually vanished in 1927 (though if you ask me, from the limited exposure i have had to both, the Boys’ Friend was better!).

(Also - from the brief flick i had it appears that none of the AP staple characters of Bunter & co., Sexton Blake, Nelson Lee etc appared in Chums. I did notice the familiar styles of Eric Parker, illustrator to Sexton Blake’s golden age, illustrating a story though)

The spines. Actually a terrible pic but you can just make out the publisher’s names - as well as the shiny new card of my home-made repairs to the 1907 volume. The spine was just a sheet of cloth and some very crumbly 101-year-old card when i recieved it.

Two typical spreads, the short factual articles and anecdotes are now reduced to tiny box-outs that can be ignored. Comic strips are replaced by single “gag panels” too (not that the 1907 volume didn’t feature those in great number too, but in the 1933 one they are rarely seen at all). The rest of it is wall-to-wall swashbuckling adventure! The choice of these two spreads was actually not brilliant, as there’s hardly any pictures. They are a lot more common in this volume though - honestly!

Another thing that is a great deal more common in the 1933 volume is coloured plates. Some do appear in the 1907 volume though, and not in an “even pattern” either, so it’s probable that they were lost (i’m sure there’s the odd page missing too, i havent read a great deal of it yet. Despite immense quantites of PVA glue not all the pages are attached). In the 1933 volume though they are all present. I don’t know if they were sold with odd issues of the weekly paper (Chatterbox was apparently often sold with an optional plate - and only some of these plates appeared in the published annuals, meaning private-bound volumes had more) or just specific to the annuals. Photographs seem to only appear on the rear of the coloured plates too, and not in the actual comics. 

The content of the adventure stories in the 1933 volumes has two overriding themes when you turn to a random page. Flight is the first, the 20’s and early 30’s being a golden age of aerial navigation, without ground control or radar anybody who could afford a flying-machine could take to the skies whenever the fancy took them, and charge about at leisure. A close encounter with another aeronaut being the occasion for a friendly wave and maybe a little stunt display - and not terrified screams from air-traffic control, perhaps the scrambling of fighters and a front-page headline “NEAR MISS DEATH MANIAC! - It wouldn’t have happened if we all had ID cards” on every paper the following day.

The other common theme is war, most especially “The World War”. The stories are somewhere between later reflections on the horrors of the trenches, and the stories of “Let’s get ‘em! hurry up it’ll be over by christmas (notice we don’t say what christmas)!” that appeared during the conflict. So whilst the stories still provide the right amount of thrilling adventure and characters devoted to duty and doing everything they can to fight the enemy so long as they have breath in thier body, the tales still muse on the horrible toll, and the fact that not all of your friends, or you, will ever return home. Which if you ask me is the perfect balance - because if you want realism, go outside.

As an aside, just look at the picture below, taken from the very last complete story in the book - wouldn’t look out of place in Charley’s War, would it?

A final oft-seen theme in the book, primarily in serial form, is the boarding school story. This was, after all, the age of the Magnet and Gem. No obvious Charles Hamilton spotted… but he had his hands full writing for the Magnet, Gem, Penny Popular and who knows what else each week. So i doubt there is any.

Another interesting thing that appeared in the 1907 volume is this fold-out coloured plate, that was just tucked in near the back. It appears to be from the Boys’ Own Paper? I might frame it one day, even with that crease.

Posted in 1930's, Eric Parker, Chums, Cassell & co, Amalgamated Press, 1900's, Blog | 2 Comments »

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 »

31/10/2008 by admin.

I have been in other Oxfam Book shops up and down the land, but i can confidently say Lincoln’s is amongst the best. Where others will provide you with endless novels for middle-aged women, most likely with beige an overpowering theme to the covers/spines, old poetry books or Beano and Dandy annuals that are scarcely 4 years old, Lincoln’s never fails to supply interesting paperbacks from the 60’s and 70’s, old “Nelson Reward” books (an entry on which is forthcoming) and adventure comic annuals from the golden age. (That’s Britain’s golden age, which isn’t set in stone but 1955 to 1985 tends to be the boundaries people will agree on). Even more amazingly, they sometimes have actual issues of comics! and that is what i bought yesterday.

It’s Tiger Tim’s Weekly, a “nursery comic” intended for very young readers, and (cover*) dates to March 30th 1940. Of course, them being better times it’s highbrow literature compared to comparable titles today. Paper shortages where obviously beginning to bite, for it is a mere 12 tabloid sized pages on thin newsprint. Still the cover is very colourful and other pages are two colour “black, white and red”. The content is a mixture of short instalments of serial stories, and some other serial adventure comic strips. The centre pages are filled with short ‘humour’ strips in the old-fashioned style of blocks of text under the picture to describe the story, as well as speech bubbles. Pretty borders and little ornate pictures in the margins abound throughout the pages.

The issue isn’t in the best condition, and a large chunk has been torn from the cover. It has also been folded for many years and the ’spine’ of the cover page is more air than paper… but considering the drive for paper recycling during the war, and the “worthlessness” of comics and storypapers, it’s amazing it has survived at all.

*-British comics often had ‘odd’ attitudes to cover dating, some dated the first day the issue would be sold, others the last. And seemingly some companies dated an issue to the day after it would first go on sale, for reasons best known to themselves.

The colourful front cover, with a serial strip instalment and also a small “funny picture” with different jokes in it. Note all the fancy borders and little details, this is something they had in the olden days called “pride in your work”.

A mixture of text story and comic strip. With other little strips thrown in wherever they will fit! Adding in little comic strips all over the place is, incedentally, how they used to be presented in the “proper papers” too. Nowadays they are all on the “funny page”, often with the stars. Wonder why the astrologers haven’t picked up on that little detail and complained…

The centre pages, a large spread of short comic strips. The “black, white and red” helps to give them a little more life and detail but save the all-important ink for the war effort. This type of colouring on the centre pages would last much longer, though. I have some 70’s Victors with exactly the same thing being done! Again, notice the little borders and details.

In these days of the tie-in “advertainment”, corporate execs would reel back in shock and seeing 12 large pages of paper being read by children containing only two adverts! and one of those is for a another publication by the same company. Playbox was a companion to the venerable Chatterbox, a publication which ran for many years. An entry about that will also be added in the future.

Posted in Amalgamated Press, Tiger Tim's Weekly, 1940's | 10 Comments »