Comics UK

My favourite comics of childhood were film fun , eagle,tv fun and later the short lived top spot.l think I prefered these to the iconic beano/dandy which were one gag pages.wandering the carboots I've noticed
lately the 1950s annuals are getting harder to find.I also find it strange
that the thousands of US comics around in the 50s have disappeared altogether.Finally since collecting is a matter of choice l prefer to collect comic books with complete stories rather than those that are serialised.

abacus wrote:My favourite comics of childhood were film fun , eagle,tv fun and later the short lived top spot.l think I prefered these to the iconic beano/dandy which were one gag pages.wandering the carboots I've noticed
lately the 1950s annuals are getting harder to find.I also find it strange
that the thousands of US comics around in the 50s have disappeared altogether.Finally since collecting is a matter of choice l prefer to collect comic books with complete stories rather than those that are serialised.

Those fifties issues haven't disappeared, they're just sitting in people's collections, I think.

Perhaps you are right there are more collectors than I thought.l, m still hopeful that at some carboot I, ll find a golden age US comic or a british 1940s comic book (at a giveaway price) it would be like winning the lottery.

abacus wrote:I also find it strange
that the thousands of US comics around in the 50s have disappeared altogether.

They turn up on eBay all the time. I've bought a load of them over the last few years, including Ringo Kid No.1, an early Kid Colt, a few Crime Does Not Pay, various Marvel Western and Crime comics etc.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/Golden-Age-1938-55-/66/i.html

A lot of Fifties US material has been reprinted in recent years too, by Yoe! Books, Fantagraphics, PS Publishing and others. The ones from Yoe! Books are my favourites. The production quality is excellent. They also do regular reprint comics (Haunted Horror, Weird Love, and Popeye):
http://www.yoebooks.com/

The 1950s are slightly before my time (I was born in 1959) but I find it a great period in comics history, with some excellent material.

Golden age comics can be read online at at comic book+ and fury comics, although this is not quite the same as owning them.As for ebay I know there are some available but this depends on the price you wish to pay to follow your hobby, there are bargains to be had but also serious prices.

a british 1940s comic book (at a giveaway price)

Have you heard of The Wonder Book of Comics? That's fairly easy to get hold of, and is possibly from 1949. It's also pretty big and features some of the top British talent of the era.
Mind you, it depends if you consider story papers to be comics, there's a lot of text stories in it too!

http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2007/ ... ok-of.html

Thank you yes i have.1 do try to collect annuals that are mainly comic strip.

Highs of collecting , finding that rare comic or book at an amazing low price.The lows, getting home with the annual you,ve bought only to find a page missing or some budding artist has been let loose with coloured felt tip pens.

abacus wrote:Highs of collecting , finding that rare comic or book at an amazing low price.The lows, getting home with the annual you,ve bought only to find a page missing or some budding artist has been let loose with coloured felt tip pens.

I agree completely! I also would like to add another high, when you get an annual or comic which completes a gap in your collection. Today, I received The Beano Book 1956, which now means I have every one from 1953 to 2014 I've been looking for it for a while, but kept finding they were either too high or in poor condition (or in some cases very high and in poor condition).

Haha, I found The Dalek Book from the 60's for a song in a lesser-known charity shop (Blue Cross, or something), and grabbed it up quick. Shame about 20 pages are missing!

The funny thing is the book you would like usually turns up sometime or other.
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r3tr0_gam3r wrote:

abacus wrote:Highs of collecting , finding that rare comic or book at an amazing low price.The lows, getting home with the annual you,ve bought only to find a page missing or some budding artist has been let loose with coloured felt tip pens.

I agree completely! I also would like to add another high, when you get an annual or comic which completes a gap in your collection. Today, I received The Beano Book 1956, which now means I have every one from 1953 to 2014 I've been looking for it for a while, but kept finding they were either too high or in poor condition (or in some cases very high and in poor condition).

I have done a similar thing with The Dandy Book. I already collected it from 1972 as a kid but then decided to collect it from the year of my birth which I have thanks to eBay.

I was born 1989 and began collecting somewhere in the mid 90s. I found that when I was going to car bootys as a kid, I would find some comics or annuals almost all the time then, but not so much now. They seem to be a lot smaller now. I collected all the 90s and most of the 80s Beano and Dandy annuals as a kid, as well as some older ones and other titles. Thanks to eBay and sites like this, I have managed to fill a lot of gaps and even find out about titles I either wasn't interested in then or, in some cases, didn't even know about!

I don't know how you folks get on with storing comics and books as they take up a lot of room, it's for this reason I put more thought into what I buy these days and concentrate the pre-70s annuals/comics if I can, whereas to start with I bought nearly every annual I saw.

abacus wrote:I don't know how you folks get on with storing comics and books as they take up a lot of room, it's for this reason I put more thought into what I buy these days and concentrate the pre-70s annuals/comics if I can, whereas to start with I bought nearly every annual I saw.

I have no idea how I do it either! I still with my parents, so only have my bedroom for storing them. I did have 3 bookcases in my room for the annuals (plus other books) but recently broke one when trying to move things around. It was quite old anyway, so wasn't gonna last much longer. Now, I have piles of the annuals stored around the room taking up space. I have comics under my bed in boxes, boxes around the room and more comics/annuals arriving most days at the moment! I do have a lot to sell as well though so will hopefully make some more room soon (unless I swap with someone).
All I can say is, when my sister left home when I was very young, I'm so glad my brother said he wanted her room, as mine is the second biggest in our house!