The Victor, no spoils!

[Jon]

As far as I know, branches of Waterstones are now selling this The Best Of The Victor collection for "up to half price" - so that could be anything from the list price of £16.99 down to £8.50. It's still not cheap enough to tempt me (my knowledge of The Victor is somewhat limited and my collection embarrassingly thin), but more serious Victor fans may be persuaded.

[Phoenix]

Phoenix, I am surprised to read The Victor described as a storypaper. In as much as it was full of comics, as in stories told and progressed through connected illustrations with word balloons and the odd text panel to add flavour and a bit of explanation, I can't see that it could be described as anything other than a comic.

Like Lew, I don't plan to resurrect the lively discussion about the matter that we had here a year or so ago. I'm sure you will be able to find it on the forum, paw, if you are sufficiently interested. It may help, though, if I just outline my position, since you have queried it. I now accept that comic is a reasonable way of referring to all the papers that I have been calling story papers, such as Adventure, The Rover, The Victor, The Hornet etc, as well as those, such as The Beano and The Dandy, that I have always referred to as comics. It isn't really any big deal, I suppose, but the truth is that I do see a significant difference between the essence of a text story paper like The Rover, on the one hand, which presented serial stories, and a comic like The Beano on the other, which presented humorous cartoons. They were attempting different things, giving a child different types of experience. Neither was preferable, they were simply different. So, given that the word comic is inextricably bound up with the concept of humour, the word can quite properly be used for papers like The Beano, but it doesn't really work for papers like The Rover. As a consequence it cannot then sensibly be applied to The Victor or The Hornet etc either, because they were doing exactly the same thing as Adventure and The Rover, in other words presenting serial stories, the only difference being that these serials were presented in pictorial form. If I were so minded, I could put together a list of all the serials in The Victor, The Hornet, The New Hotspur etc that originally saw the light of day in text form in Adventure, The Rover, The Wizard etc, and the list would run to hundreds and hundreds of titles, especially if I were to include Thomsons' girls' papers. To be fair, some text serials from The Rover etc were featured in strip form in The Dandy or The Beano, but these tended to be humorous ones like Jimmy Johnson's Grockle and Invisible Dick. Some more serious ones appeared such as Morgyn the Mighty and The Smasher, but then the indigenous serials about Black Bob were serious too, so The Dandy and The Beano were not entirely made up of humorous strips. Some serials, like King Kong Charlie actually went the other way, that one to Adventure, where it was presented on the cover in strip form. Ultimately, it comes down to a question of emphasis. I think I'm right in saying that the only difference of opinion I have with Lew on this matter concerns The Victor and its family. We both agree that The Beano is a comic and that The Rover, in that it is similar in presentation to The Magnet, is a story paper. To me The Victor is a story paper because it tells stories, to Lew it is a comic because its presentation, in drawn picture strips with speech bubbles, resembles that of The Beano far more than it does The Rover. However, the position I have taken up means that I am seen as pedantic by some members, given that comic is the universally accepted word for all the above papers. As I said earlier, I have accepted this but I feel sure that I will largely continue to refer to all papers that predominantly present serial stories as story papers, not because I refuse to follow everybody else like a sheep but because calling a story paper a comic is, in my opinion, the result of lazy thinking.

[colcool007]

Oh my goodness, oh my gosh! I can't belive that I forgot about this. As a run for a UK anthology paper, I will be very surprised if The Victor is ever beaten. After all, it was only in the last year or so that 2000AD surpassed the issue count. It's interesting to look at how it changed over the years from the mix of text and picture stories up to the Scouting posters and glossy feel in the later years. For me, the Victor will always be redolent of hoping for a queue in the barber's during the 1970's as I could sit down and read the pile of comics without getting dragged up for a short, back and sides! Many of the characters kept going off and on for the full run, but I think that most people will always associate The Victor with Alf Tupper with Pete Sutherland's artwork being there for the first decade or so. But the artist that I will always associate with The Victor would be Matias Alonso. From 1967 until the last, Alonso must have contributed something every year, well at least there was art of his in there! And who could forget the amount of Annual covers done by Ian Kennedy. My favourite is still the 1977 cover of the soldier skiing down the hill with sten gun in hand. Brilliant stuff. The roll-call of artwork in the Victor is amazing as well when you consider they had Leo Rawlings, Ted Rawlings, Ted Kearon, Matias Alonso, Harry Farrugia, John Cooper, Graham Bleach, Alacantes, Mike Dorey and C D Bagnall to name but a very few.

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

I once 'created' a character called:





VICTOR VICTORIOUS




which I filed under
'possibilities'


but I had to 'knock it on the head' as some other bright spark had copyrighted this name before I did.

[felneymike]

Haha, at school we wanted to create a comic called "Speed", which was to have been mostly humorous but was primarily stories about racing in some form or another. Unfortunately somebody copyrighted the name before we were born.

[Digifiend]

Yeah, that would be IPC in 1980.

[Phoenix]

Yeah, that would be IPC in 1980.

Extremely doubtful, Digi. I imagine it would have been done much earlier by Pepys for their card game Speed, sometime in the 1940s at a guess.

[presterjohn]

I was never a major league fan of the Victor it was always worth picking up but only if I had spare cash. I had the annual three or four years in a row mind you and always enjoyed them. The recent hardcover collection was terrific though and has inspired me to try and locate a few more annuals from the 70's and 80's. As for the debate about what or is not a comic for me at least a comic is exactly what the average person thinks they are. A comic that had text only stories was just called a disappointment.

[stevezodiac]

I posted this cover before but can't find the original post so here it is again.

[paw broon]

I've tried twice now to post a reply thanking Phoenix for his reply and airing some other thoughts and on both occasions, it's disappeared. Not trying again, so, thank you , Phoenix.

[Lew Stringer]

As I said earlier, I have accepted this but I feel sure that I will largely continue to refer to all papers that predominantly present serial stories as story papers, not because I refuse to follow everybody else like a sheep but because calling a story paper a comic is, in my opinion, the result of lazy thinking.

I think you may be in the minority of one there but whatever floats your boat.

comic. a: children's peroiodical, mainly in the form of comic strip,
b: similar publication aimed at adults
comic strip: a series of drawings in a newspaper, comic etc telling a story.
- Oxford English Dictionary.

[Captain Storm]

I think we are all in danger of being rather too pedantic when it comes to describing the media we all love so well. If we could agree on one thing then let it be thus: a comic is made up primarily of picture strips and a story paper is made up primarily of text stories. As a famous "compare the meerkats" ad proclaims - Simples!

The Cap.

[Lew Stringer]

I think we are all in danger of being rather too pedantic when it comes to describing the media we all love so well. If we could agree on one thing then let it be thus: a comic is made up primarily of picture strips and a story paper is made up primarily of text stories. As a famous "compare the meerkats" ad proclaims - Simples!

Exactly. When a perfect distinction like that which you describe already exists why confuse the issue with pedantry?

[Digifiend]

Yeah, that would be IPC in 1980.

Extremely doubtful, Digi. I imagine it would have been done much earlier by Pepys for their card game Speed, sometime in the 1940s at a guess.

That's the first I've heard about that.

[Phoenix]

I think you may be in the minority of one there but whatever floats your boat.

comic. a: children's peroiodical, mainly in the form of comic strip,
b: similar publication aimed at adults
comic strip: a series of drawings in a newspaper, comic etc telling a story.
- Oxford English Dictionary.

I don't mind being in a minority of one, if such be the case, but I must say I'm surprised that you felt the need to respond, Lew, given that I stated clearly in my post that I was simply explaining my reason for calling The Victor a story paper rather than a comic for the benefit of pawbroon, who wasn't a forum member when the original discussion took place. Like yourself I made it clear that I wasn't reopening the debate. However, since you have done, may I point out that the Oxford English Dictionary definitions of comic and comic strip that you have provided do not support your opinion that I am wrong. I assume we both agree that (b) is irrelevant in this instance. Before writing this post I looked up the equivalent definitions for (a) in my New Oxford Dictionary of English, which are clearer, more precise than yours, and which do support my view. These are:-
comic - a children's periodical, containing mainly comic strips.
comic strip - a sequence of drawings in boxes that tell an amusing story, typically printed in a newspaper or magazine.
Nowhere in the above definitions does it state that text story papers are comics. Nowhere does it state that the type of serial that predominated throughout the run of The Victor would lead to a classification of comic for that paper. Of course there were humorous serials there but they were swamped, as they were in The Rover, by non-humorous stories of war, sport, adventure, wild west, science fiction, school etc. In fact, the definition of comic I have given here could easily be describing The Dandy and The Beano, particularly on their introduction and throughout their early years when Thomsons saw them as having a completely different emphasis from their text story papers, with mainly comic strips along with a couple of prose tales. Indeed, in the fullness of time the prose tales were phased out, thus taking these comics even further away from the text-based story papers. Hopefully, on mature reflection, you will realise that my terminology, supported by the New Oxford Dictionary of English, is more accurate than yours.

P.S. I have just read Captain Storm's post. I like the Cap and consequently it hurts me to point out to him that he too is guilty of lazy thinking. As I hope I have proved, Cap, it just isn't that simple. Sorry.