Hi everybody
Posted: 23 Jan 2022, 16:58
Looong time comics reader here. Earliest comic memory is reading Jack and Jill which my parents used to get me in the mid-fifties. Not the other more popular comic Playhour though. Or did I get them mixed up and it's the other way round? Whatever, Sonny and Sally from Happy Valley with their pet lamb Pet sticks in my mind. There's also something about Sammy Stoat, with an otter and a third animal. I know I could look it up but where's the fun in that?
The next comic I remember was The Victor. Pretty sure that I started that on issue No 1 but nothing specific. I remember the first episode of Alf Tupper - The Tough of the Track where his boss goes missing. Now that was plotline that was never followed up.
Next was Ranger. Again from the first issue with the wonderful Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire. By this time I was getting interested in artwork and found the Don Lawrence drawings, paintings really, absolutely wonderful. Inside were several other art strips and text stories. Again I remember something being penned by Captain W.E. Johns, the creator of Biggles. Possibly accompanying the Johns story I remember a drawing which I found fascinating as it used pointillism to render depth. I never followed the Trigan Empire to its finish but I do remember that it reached the end of the first book while I was still reading Ranger.
Next comic was the wonderful TV21. Again I was blown away by the artwork especially Ron Embleton's. I also bought the spin-off Lady Penelope comic when it launched despite it being targeted at girls.
In amongst all the above I would buy, on an irregular basis, The Dandy, The Beano, Topper and Beezer comics.
When I was about 11 my father used to go and meet his mates in a pub on a Saturday afternoon. He would leave me in the car with a packet of crisps and a soft drink (can you imagine that happening nowadays!) while he was inside. I got bored of course and went exploring. In one of the shops I went to there was this rotating rack of comics with exotic characters like Superman, Batman . I had discovered American comics but that's another story!
Much later, after I had fallen out of love with comics in general and then back in again, I read and collected Dez Skinn's Warrior comic. This tied in with my discovery of Alan Moore, hiding under the pseudonym of Curt Vile, in the music weekly Sounds. In fact I kept buying Sounds just for Moore's strip long after I had lost interest in the way that music had changed direction. I have the first 12 months Warrior in the dedicated binder that was available at the time. I intended to buy a second binder for the next 12 issues but by that time the comic was on creaky legs and the binder was NLA. The loose issue are still around somewhere but I'd be hard pressed to find them whereas the first year's bound issues are in my bedroom.
Strangely enough, despite it being a British comic I was never tempted by Judge Dredd even though it featured many of my favourite artists and writers.
I suppose I should explain how I've ended up here. I've been doing some indexing on the GCD and I decided to improve the biographies (or even create them) of some UK creators as I went through Dandy and Beano creators. One I was interested in was Jimmy Hughes as information on him is very scarce and Googling lead me to the posts by his nephew here. Once I've proved my worth here I'll try contacting him if he's still around.
OK, that's enough of a ramble around Memory Lane.
The next comic I remember was The Victor. Pretty sure that I started that on issue No 1 but nothing specific. I remember the first episode of Alf Tupper - The Tough of the Track where his boss goes missing. Now that was plotline that was never followed up.
Next was Ranger. Again from the first issue with the wonderful Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire. By this time I was getting interested in artwork and found the Don Lawrence drawings, paintings really, absolutely wonderful. Inside were several other art strips and text stories. Again I remember something being penned by Captain W.E. Johns, the creator of Biggles. Possibly accompanying the Johns story I remember a drawing which I found fascinating as it used pointillism to render depth. I never followed the Trigan Empire to its finish but I do remember that it reached the end of the first book while I was still reading Ranger.
Next comic was the wonderful TV21. Again I was blown away by the artwork especially Ron Embleton's. I also bought the spin-off Lady Penelope comic when it launched despite it being targeted at girls.
In amongst all the above I would buy, on an irregular basis, The Dandy, The Beano, Topper and Beezer comics.
When I was about 11 my father used to go and meet his mates in a pub on a Saturday afternoon. He would leave me in the car with a packet of crisps and a soft drink (can you imagine that happening nowadays!) while he was inside. I got bored of course and went exploring. In one of the shops I went to there was this rotating rack of comics with exotic characters like Superman, Batman . I had discovered American comics but that's another story!
Much later, after I had fallen out of love with comics in general and then back in again, I read and collected Dez Skinn's Warrior comic. This tied in with my discovery of Alan Moore, hiding under the pseudonym of Curt Vile, in the music weekly Sounds. In fact I kept buying Sounds just for Moore's strip long after I had lost interest in the way that music had changed direction. I have the first 12 months Warrior in the dedicated binder that was available at the time. I intended to buy a second binder for the next 12 issues but by that time the comic was on creaky legs and the binder was NLA. The loose issue are still around somewhere but I'd be hard pressed to find them whereas the first year's bound issues are in my bedroom.
Strangely enough, despite it being a British comic I was never tempted by Judge Dredd even though it featured many of my favourite artists and writers.
I suppose I should explain how I've ended up here. I've been doing some indexing on the GCD and I decided to improve the biographies (or even create them) of some UK creators as I went through Dandy and Beano creators. One I was interested in was Jimmy Hughes as information on him is very scarce and Googling lead me to the posts by his nephew here. Once I've proved my worth here I'll try contacting him if he's still around.
OK, that's enough of a ramble around Memory Lane.