Classic Superheroes

[Kashgar]

Lew has previewed the current 'Superheroes' issue on his blog so their is no need to go into too much detail here. I can however answer one question that he poses on his blog with regard to the seemingly unnecessary 'squashing' of the Jack Flash strip by Dudley Watkins. The reason they have done this, although one could question whether it was necessary or not, is because this Jack Flash strip, the very first from Beano No 355 in Feb 1949, was published in the comic at a time when its actual page dimensions where not the usual A4 size with, in particular, the page width being significantly narrower by 1.5ins. Therefore in order for the original to fit the Classics standard A4 format they've had to stretch the frames accordingly. They could, of course, have left the artwork as it was and just allowed for wider, blank margins but this they obviously chose not to do.

[Peter Gray]

Got it today the Dennis the Menace one looks different to me..is it by Bill Ritchie ghosting?

Loving the early stuff beyond 1959 in Classics..and next Month looks good showing 1956..
I'm off to the park to read it in a minute..

[AndyB]

It's definitely not Bill, but I haven't a clue who it is... I was going to ask too!

[Peter Gray]

Loved Jack Flash more please..
Really captures an era...ahhh!
Great little details in that...loved the dog and bird eating the pies..the old telephone which you can use at the bakers..the old ambulance..ships..police car..it all looks lovely to see..


Maybe Dennis is drawn by Malcolm Judge..lots of whizzzzzing...

[Digifiend]

The text captions were redone for Jack Flash. They could've had the pictures at the right proportions simply by making the text smaller. The text on the Mr X story was slightly smaller (and was exactly as it appeared in 1944) but perfectly readable.

Is Screwy Driver a reprint? It claims to be from 1971 (the date in the last panel says DAN 31.7.71) but the strip mentions the wireless, which should surely be called the radio by then. It's four years after the launch of BBC Radio 1.

[tony ingram]

The text captions were redone for Jack Flash. They could've had the pictures at the right proportions simply by making the text smaller. The text on the Mr X story was slightly smaller (and was exactly as it appeared in 1944) but perfectly readable.

Is Screwy Driver a reprint? It claims to be from 1971 (the date in the last panel says DAN 31.7.71) but the strip mentions the wireless, which should surely be called the radio by then. It's four years after the launch of BBC Radio 1.

Wireless was still in fairly common usage in the late seventies, at least. Same as the terminology for pre-decimal currency was still frequently being applied to new coinage by older people up until the eighties.

[AndyB]

From discussions on this forum, it appears that Screwy was being reprinted in the early 1970s but new strips were being drawn in the late 1970s (which surprised a few people here, but Classics eventually proved me right!)

The two key things are that Screwy has been redrawn in the newer strips, and the handwritten and handdrawn speech balloons in the older ones.

[Digifiend]

And this one had handwritten speech, so it appears I was right, it's a reprint.

[felneymike]

My granny still calls it "the wireless" in 2010!

I definitely liked the part text part picture stories in the current issue, i know this thing was common on the cover of Adventure for many a year but did it turn up much in the "funnies" or were they well on the way to being "all funny" by the time text stories were replaced by these kinds of stories? (excepting the obvious Black Bob which i understand lasted into the mid 70's whilst still looking like it was from 1950!)

Speaking of text stories i hope more are in the pipeline! I liked the Dixon Hawke one a few isues back. V for Vengeance ones would be good too but we only 'recently' had the comic strip version

[Digifiend]

That's because the 1968-82 Black Bob stories were reprints. Jack Prout was never replaced as artist. Was it dropped because they'd been using reprints for so long and they were now too dated, or because of the fact they were running a story set in the Falklands when the Falklands War broke out, which upset readers who were concerned for the collie's welfare?

The Beano didn't go all funny until 1975, and the Dandy until the 80s (albeit carrying adventure strips again in 1997 [Tricky Dicky's something, about a boy whose family owned a toy factory during World War II] and 2000 [superhero The Comet]). The Beezer and Topper had adventure strips almost until their merger (most notably Topper's long running stories Danny's Tranny and The Whizzers from Oz). I think they started moving the captions into the picture panels in the late 50s - the Beano even did this with a Shipwrecked Circus reprint in 1958.

Apart from a serialisation of Dick King Smith's book Mr Ape in The Beano in 1998, the all text stories stopped there in the mid 50s. I assume that goes for Dandy too.

[AndyB]

Danny's Tranny was pure comedy and never a serial. Don't let the artist fool you!

I think that Black Bob finished for good when Albert Barnes retired and Dave Torrie made fairly swift changes.

[Digifiend]

He often stops bullies and other baddies though. I'd class Danny's Tranny as "comic adventure". I can think of a few other adventure and comic adventure strips which weren't serialised.

Timing does sound right for Black Bob's demise being linked to the editorial change, I hadn't thought about that.

[Kashgar]

The Screwy Driver strip in the current Classics, although reprinted in 1971, had first appeared in Dandy No 755 dated 12th May 1956 (the first series of Screwy ran from 1955-1959). The original differs in that the prices for entry to the match are given in old money with six prices instead of three appearing on the poster ( the top price of 35s (1.75) being greater than the top price in the 1971 reprint of £1) and the loose stake caption is also more explanatory in the original.
Also the large Biffo picture on the cover was part of the Biffo strip that appeared on the cover of Beano No 1405 dated 21st Jun 1969.

[Digifiend]

That explains the use of the more recent date then, thanks.