British Comics for Foreign Markets

philcom55 · Post by **philcom55** » 17 Aug 2007, 15:35

I wish the subject could have arisen in connection with less depressing news than the death of Phil Gascoine, but I'm fascinated to hear that DC Thomson are currently publishing a comic called Wendy exclusively for overseas readers - years beyond the cancellation of Bunty, which I'd previously considered to be the last of the traditional Girls' comics produced in the UK.

This leads me to wonder if there are any more comics being packaged in this way? Also can anybody think of other British strips from the past that were primarily aimed at overseas markets? Offhand I know of Bert Bus's Robot Archie stories in Vulcan which originally appeared in Europe. Similarly a number of American-style comicbooks such as Thunderbolt Jaxon were prepared in the late 1940s for Australian readers before the material was eventually reformatted and reprinted for the home market in titles such as Knockout.

The continental appetite for British girls' comics has been evident since at least the 1960s when Fleetway launched Tina as a pan-European 'supercomic', published simultaneously in a number of different languages. Though the experiment proved to be relatively unsuccessful with British readers (leading to an early amalgamation with Princess after only 30 issues) I seem to recall that it lasted much longer elsewhere.

However I suspect that these meagre instances are just scratching the surface of an important but relatively unknown aspect of British comics history. I'd be very interested to hear of any further examples people may have come across.

- Phil Rushton

Shaqui · Post by **Shaqui** » 17 Aug 2007, 15:47

While 'TV Century 21' was made primarily for the British market, it did have a Dutch equivilant in 'TV2000', launched in September 1966, and reprinting strips from both 'TV21' and 'Lady Penelope', initially in a similar mock newspaper format but then switching to a more magazine look with extra pages in spring 1967.

I've also recently been made aware of German publishers Bastei's output - I suppose you could call them their equivilant of IPC/Fleetway or DC Thomson in terms of comics and albums. I obtained some issues of a German girls' comic called 'Conny' which had some British reprint material but I don't know enough about the British girls' comic market to assess what kind of percentage was imported and which was natively produced. Certainly they reissued stuff like the American Gold Key 'Star Trek' issues as full colour albums among, I'm sure, many others.

readee · Post by **readee** » 17 Aug 2007, 18:19

I wish the subject could have arisen in connection with less depressing news than the death of Phil Gascoine, but I'm fascinated to hear that DC Thomson are currently publishing a comic called Wendy exclusively for overseas readers - years beyond the cancellation of Bunty, which I'd previously considered to be the last of the traditional Girls' comics produced in the UK.

I might be wrong but didn't they used to do a magazine not so long ago in the UK called Wendy? At the very least, I'm sure some of their girls' titles used to say 'A Wendy Publication' or something similar on them...

Best,
Chris[/quote]

colcool007 · Post by **colcool007** » 17 Aug 2007, 19:06

I know that there is a version of Commando printed for the Scandinavian market which appears to do quite well. Not seen one myself, but I understand that it has a fairly healthy market.

Captain Storm · Post by **Captain Storm** » 17 Aug 2007, 20:38

Vulcan ran in Germany under the Kobra name.Also Nick Jolly,King Cobra,Janus Stark,Adam Eterno and many more I suspect appeared in French language BD's from 1973 to at least 1983(probably later).So it is accurate to say that both DC Thomson and IPC/Fleetway have been touting their wares across the water for some time.Incidentally,Janus Stark,not only was reprinted in a French comic but had wholly new adventures not seen in a UK comic including his death!

Lew Stringer · Post by **Lew Stringer** » 18 Aug 2007, 00:29

colcool007 wrote:I know that there is a version of Commando printed for the Scandinavian market which appears to do quite well. Not seen one myself, but I understand that it has a fairly healthy market.

I've never seen it in Norway, but there is a Norwegian Toxic apparently, (and Modesty Blaise has been popular there for years), and there was a German Sonic the Comic. The practice of "reprinting" UK material abroad has been going on for decades, just in the same way that Panini and Titan do UK editions of U.S. comics or Tokyopop do English language Manga.

Lew

Cap Haggis · Post by **Cap Haggis** » 18 Aug 2007, 00:47

I used to collect a lot of overseas comics mostly for UK strips and saw lots of suspected and well as def UK strips from Ken Reid to Frank Hampson being reprintd. Aall those books are long gone now I'm afraid so lot of this is from memory but there was/is a booming trade in UK strips in Europe.

JANUS STARK was very popular in France with, as stated , several strips bing written especially for the French "pocket" editions, with authors Angus Allan and Marcus Scott Goodall - other supporting characters were also also created including various descendants of the character. The French Janus Stark comic ran for some 135 issues from 1973 to 1990. Adam Eterno also featured in reprint strips in this book (and elesewhere in Europe. MYTEK THE MIGHTY was renamed and printed again in France (and Finland) as "King Kong le Robot" the following link shows aome nice covers to this book : http://kingkongbd.free.fr/episodes.htm

ZARGA MAN OF MYSTERY (Buster and Jet) was also published in Franceand Germany (above link shows some pages along with Janus Stark)

ROBOT ARCHIE was published in Holland for a while as (LINK: http://home.hetnet.nl/~jwwoldering/archie.html )

The STEEL CLAW Claw was reptinted inmany coutries from FRANCE, Germany, Sweden,SPain Former Yugoslavia and in India where he was exceptionally popular (under varios names from Steel hand, talon , fist etc)

Don Lawrences Trigan Empire (I think) was reprinted in EPPO Magazine (Netherlands)which is also where Leo Baxendales WILLY THE KID and (again from memory I think) Swots and Blotts were reprinted

Dan Dare of course was printed everywhere it seems being particularly popular in the countires of the former Yugoslava -I also remember seeing Italy lots of UK characters (Westerns mostly with some football and War strips) in small poket books .

Shaqui · Post by **Shaqui** » 18 Aug 2007, 01:40

The 1990s Fleetway 'Thunderbirds' comic had French and Dutch editions by Semic.

steelclaw · Post by **steelclaw** » 21 Aug 2007, 11:07

India used to publish, Fleetway Super Library.

http://muthufanblog.blogspot.com/2005/1 ... s-all.html

Shaqui · Post by **Shaqui** » 09 Sep 2007, 10:54

The 'Best of Look-In' book indicates there was a Dutch equivilant in 'Jamin Junior', published in Holland during 1972.

Having just acquired a bound volume of the entire 26 issue run (annoyingly, it just stops) it certainly could be considered that, with about half the content coming from 'Look-In' (mainly strips), with the rest presumably being natively sourced and relating to Dutch television programmes.

Earl · Post by **Earl** » 09 Sep 2007, 11:38

Does anyone know anything more about this Wendy title? It's a new one on me.

Earl.

Captain Storm · Post by **Captain Storm** » 09 Sep 2007, 14:53

Bill Graham has been in touch with me recently.He used to run the Crunch and Buddy amongst other comics.The thing is...I believe he also now runs the Wendy comic.Will ask him and get back to you.

Kashgar · Post by **Kashgar** » 10 Sep 2007, 13:37

I think Thomsons have been providing most of the artwork for Wendy since its inception in the early 90's. As far as I know it is a joint project with Egmont and has several different European editions. The format seems to be to run a single strip in each issue, usually to do with showjumping or whatever.

Captain Storm · Post by **Captain Storm** » 10 Sep 2007, 20:01

Hi all,Bill Graham has been in touch and Dave Taylor will be contacting me shortly.I asked for permission to reproduce a couple of his emails sent so far.Below are 2 extracts.They are mostly to do with Starhawk which I pay tribute to at http://starhawkcrunch.tripod.com/index.html but I feel the rest of it will interest the rest of the forum members as well.Bill talks briefly about Wendy and when he has time he will elaborate on it some more.It's great to have one of the Big Fella's from D.C. Thomson on here.Kashgar as always has his finger firmly on the pulse

Bill Graham D.C. Thomson wrote:

I joined DCT back in 1963 straight from school. I worked on a boys' comic called Hornet till 1969 then I moved to the firm's newpapers in Glasgow and Newcastle to work as a football reporter. But I preferred comics and came back to Dundee in 1972. I was chief sub editor of Warlord when it started in 1974 and took over as editor a couple of years later. I edited Crunch, Spike and Champ before becoming taking charge of The Football Monthly title then Starblazer till both folded. Since 1990 I have been editing stories about little girls and ponies. They aren't published here but we have a co-production with Egmont and they are published in Germany, Scandinavia and France. They are very successful. The German edition - which covers Austria and Switzerland - does around 150,000 weekly. I have to say I preferred Warlord and Starblazer.
Now the burning question - how did Sol Rynn come into being? Well, between the ages of 9 and 13 I was an avid reader of DCT's boys papers - the ones with no pictures but lots of text. In one of those papers, The Wizard, there was a story about a guy in the Wild West who rode around helping people in need. He had a card which said - "If your cause is just but the odds are too great contact me." He left this card on various notice boards. The story was called The Equalizer but I can't remember what the character's name was. I do remember he rode a very intelligent horse.
Fast forward to the late '70's when I was putting together the stories for Crunch and I remembered The Equalizer. I thought it would transfer brilliantly into a sci fi setting. And, you guessed it, the horse became Droid. Droid was a great character to work with.
Most of the characters who appeared in the Thomson comics were dreamed up by the editorial staffs. Descriptions of the characters, their environment and a rough outline of how the story would progress would then be handed to a writer or writers. This is what happened with Starhawk.
The first episodes were written by Dave Taylor. I think I have an e-mail address for him, if you want it. Dave was a bit of a sci fi nut but I do think he made a good job of the scripts. I think some other scripts may have been written by Alan Hemus but I'm not sure. I think you have managed to list most of the artists. Well done! Dave came up with the name Sol Rynn and originally he called Sol's ship Starhawk. But I felt that would be better used to to describe Sol himself so the ship was renamed The Space Rider.
When Crunch folded, I took Sol and Droid with me to Buddy and then Spike. These titles folded but Starhawk lived on as all good characters do although I had nothing to do with the stories which appeared in Hotspur and Victor. When I took charge of Starblazer one of the first things I did was resurrect Sol.
Got to go now. I have to think up some adventures for Wendy who lives on her dad's riding school in Schleswig-Holstein. It's a funny old world, comics!
Bill

And a small piece on Wendy:

I have mailed the two writers who worked on Starhawk and told them of your interest. Dave Taylor has already replied to say that he will get in touch and I am sure that Alan Hemus will too. I see that you managed to contact Enrique Alcatena. He is one of my all time favourite artists. As is Ian Kennedy who lives not far from Dundee and still does covers for Commando.
I am happy to tell you all about Wendy but it's a longish story and I am a bit busy at the moment. After 44 years in the business I am attending a management course on Thursday and Friday so I am having to cram a week's work into three days! I'll get to it as soon as I can.
All the best,
Bill

So hopefully we will know a whole lot more about this mystery comic Wendy in the near future!

The Cap!

p.s. Shaqui,I let Bill know it was your good self and Steve Holland who supplied me with a lot of information and so on re the Starhawk character.Credit where it's due

Earl · Post by **Earl** » 11 Sep 2007, 21:30

Thanks guys.

Learn new stuff everyday as they say.

Earl.

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