Morgyn the Mighty annuals?

Discuss or comment on anything relating to D.C.Thomson's second longest running comic. The home of Dennis the Menace. Has been running since 1938.

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Phoenix
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Re: Morgyn the Mighty annuals?

Post by Phoenix »

Tin Can Tommy wrote:Is this the same strip as Invisible Dick in Sparky or is it just the same name but unrelated.
All I really know about Invisible Dick in Sparky I have gleaned from Alan Smith's The Sparky File, which I assume is still available on comicsuk for free download. On the basis of what Alan wrote, I can confidently say that the stories in The Rover were far more inventive and interesting. The offerings in Sparky were trivial in comparison, not worth mentioning in the same breath, really. Just to correct an assumption in your question, Tin Can, the stories in The Rover, and by extension in the Invisible Dick hardback book, were text stories, as opposed to the picture strip presentations in Sparky. It is possible, I suppose, that if I were ever to read one or two of the strips, I might find myself disagreeing with Alan's assessment, in which case I would have to think again, but I don't think that is very likely. To answer your question, it would appear that only the titles are similar. There is no torch in The Rover's stories, but the hero, Dicky Brett, does become invisible whenever he takes a sniff from the brass bottle. Perhaps it's a good job that he is never then minded to pop into the girls' changing rooms at his school. :lol:

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Re: Morgyn the Mighty annuals?

Post by Digifiend »

Phoenix wrote:
Tin Can Tommy wrote:Is this the same strip as Invisible Dick in Sparky or is it just the same name but unrelated.
All I really know about Invisible Dick in Sparky I have gleaned from Alan Smith's The Sparky File, which I assume is still available on comicsuk for free download.
No mention on the homepage - either Al forgot to leave the link there, or it went down with the rest of the site.

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Re: Morgyn the Mighty annuals?

Post by Phoenix »

Digifiend wrote:No mention on the homepage - either Al forgot to leave the link there, or it went down with the rest of the site.
Presumably Al and Alan have back up copies, so it shouldn't be a problem putting it up again. I've got the downloaded copy on my desktop, if it's needed, although I haven't gone to the trouble of printing it out for myself.

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Re: Morgyn the Mighty annuals?

Post by Tin Can Tommy »

You can still find the sparky file if you search for it on google, it has been posted in it's entirety on a number of forums, well two, including this one and Wikipedia (where it was deleted but they have article history so can be got from there).

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Re: Morgyn the Mighty annuals?

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Tin Can Tommy wrote:...Is this the same strip as Invisible Dick in Sparky or is it just the same name but unrelated.
I think we may find after investigation that the original Rover story served as an inspiration but otherwise unrelated. But then again, I could be talking absolute bo...er I mean balderdash. :D
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Re: Morgyn the Mighty annuals?

Post by felneymike »

I didn't know about those "classic stories in pictures books" at all, neither did I realise how rare and expensive Red Dagger books are! Bang goes the dream of finding one in a charity shop for a pound!

Speaking of composite reprints, a book from 1991 called "The Golden Years of Adventure Stories" reprints half of a short Braddock series as a text story, and then halfway through switches to the comic strip version!


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Re: Morgyn the Mighty annuals?

Post by colcool007 »

Tin Can Tommy wrote:Are you referring to Dandy Beano : Great Stories From The First Fifty Years
Tin Can, it's a totally different book that concentrates on the Boys' papers rather than the funnies. A nice little introduction into that side of the house, but alas, it just did not sell in the numbers that DCT hoped it would and was never followed up on.
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Re: Morgyn the Mighty annuals?

Post by Tin Can Tommy »

I should probably have googled The Golden Years of Adventure Stories it came up immediatly. it's just that beano-dandy one was from 1991 so the same year felneymike was on about and its main focus was on adventure stories. Hence the confusion.

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Re: Morgyn the Mighty annuals?

Post by stevezodiac »

Here's an advert for the first four Red Star Libraries. The ad is from The Victor issue 53 dated 24/2/1962 so will give an indication of their release date.

Image

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Re: Morgyn the Mighty annuals?

Post by Tin Can Tommy »

colcool007 wrote:
Tin Can Tommy wrote:...Is this the same strip as Invisible Dick in Sparky or is it just the same name but unrelated.
I think we may find after investigation that the original Rover story served as an inspiration but otherwise unrelated. But then again, I could be talking absolute bo...er I mean balderdash. :D
There was another strip (well a text story) called Invisible Dick in the first Dandy Monster Comic (i recently got a facsimile version). Im assuming all these strips with the same name are conicidence. I haven't actually read the Dandy's Invisible Dick because i find those text stories quite unreadable but from the illustrations i know it involves stage magicians.

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Re: Morgyn the Mighty annuals?

Post by Phoenix »

stevezodiac wrote:Here's an advert for the first four Red Star Libraries.
There were only four books in the Red Lion Library, Steve.

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Re: Morgyn the Mighty annuals?

Post by Phoenix »

Tin Can Tommy wrote:There was another strip (well a text story) called Invisible Dick in the first Dandy Monster Comic (i recently got a facsimile version). Im assuming all these strips with the same name are conicidence.
The text story in the first Dandy annual looks as if it might just be a reprint of a much earlier story from The Rover. On the other hand, the double-page, twenty-four panel picture strip of Invisible Dick in the first ever Dandy comic is a complete reimagining of the way Dicky Brett got the bottle. The strip ran for 96 episodes until September 30 1939 and was more similar to the stories in The Rover than the ones in Sparky were.

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Re: Morgyn the Mighty annuals?

Post by davidandrewsimpson »

Re: The Famous Books In Pictures adaptations by Dudley Watkins of Kidnapped, Oliver Twist, Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe:

Weren't these originally serialised in a newspaper (The Peoples' Journal, I think)? Certainly, they ran in colour, witjh a lot more panels to the page, in Topper in the 1950s. What annoys me a little is that Watkins drew other classics adaptations in this series, but only these four were published as books.

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