Final issue of Hurricane.

[stevezodiac]

Here is the final issue of Hurricane (found in storage) plus a four page ad for the new Tiger & Hurricane.

[Digifiend]

It says 40 pages, 12 more pages, so Hurricane's page count must've been 28. Did Tiger always have 40 pages, considering Hurricane was only one of six comics it amalgamated with (the others being Champion, Comet, Jag, Scorcher and Score & Speed)?

[stevezodiac]

I think Tiger went up to 40 pages for a year or two in the mid to late 60s. Think Lion did also. I know June and School Friend had 40 pages at one point.

[Digifiend]

Thought it seemed a lot, considering The Beano and Dandy only had 16 pages each in the 60s. So they probably all increased page counts due to amalgamations (Tiger and Hurricane, Lion and Champion, and I assume you meant June and School Friend post-merger as well).

[Lew Stringer]

Thought it seemed a lot, considering The Beano and Dandy only had 16 pages each in the 60s.

There was no standard page count back then. The Thomson funnies had 16 pages, the adventure comics had 32. Other comics such as TV Comic and Wham had about 24.

So they probably all increased page counts due to amalgamations

No, it was due to a sales push by Fleetway on all their titles, and included Valiant and Buster as well. They increased to 40 pages but lost the back cover colour, resulting in only the front cover being in colour.

1965 was the year TV Century 21 was launched which became a massive success. Rather than compete with TV21's 20 glossy high quality pages, perhaps Fleetway decided to offer more for the money instead. The Thomson boys' and girls' comics of the time had 32 pages so, again, Fleetway's 40 pages might have seemed better value to some. Although it has to be said that some of the extra pages were reprints.

The experiment lasted for several months - maybe a year or so, I can't remember, - before settling down to the 32 pages which became the norm for most comics.

Lew

[Digifiend]

Including, eventually, the present day Beano.

[philcom55]

Here's the last issue of Tiger with the same 'message':

Though Tiger was technically the publication that, in the long run, chewed Hurricane up and spat it out the merger was a sad day for both titles. Up until that point Tiger had stood apart from the other Fleetway comics in a similar way to Beezer and Topper at DC Thomson in that it had larger pages, but less of them (24 in this case - and that includes 4 pages of 'great news'! ). Admittedly the size difference wasn't anything like as great, but I always felt that it made the art and stories that much more impressive.

- Phil Rushton

[Kashgar]

June and School Friend merged in Jan 1965 and became in size and appearance like a girl's version of Tiger & Hurricane which it, in fact, predated by four months. Lion and Champion merged in June 1966 to become a title in the same format (Valiant without the benefit of a merger also adopted this format in 1965). The 40/44pg chunky issues were produced up until early 1968.

[Digifiend]

In other words, I was right about amalgamations being the trigger for the change.

[Lew Stringer]

In other words, I was right about amalgamations being the trigger for the change.

If it makes you happy to believe that, fair enough. The truth is completely different, as has been pointed out. Valiant also received a page increase to 40 pages in 1965. Buster changed its format to a smaller, thicker comic in 1965. Neither involved mergers. It was a decision to make all their comics look better value for money. Perhaps partially due to the fact that new rival comic TV Century 21 had arrived a few months earlier and was selling spectacularly well.

Lew

[Kashgar]

I may have helped fuel DF's amalgamation theory by mentioning Lion & Champion's merger in Jun 1966 as though this was the start of Lion's run of 40pg issues when it wasn't. For the record Tiger, Lion and Valiant all went to 40pgs in May 1965 and of these only Tiger was amalgamated with another title at the time ie Hurricane. They all remained in this 40pg format (although in 1966 Lion, after its absorption of Champion and Valiant, with the help of a pink 4pg football insert, each sported 44 pgs for a time) until May 1968 when they were all reduced to 36pgs.
So only Tiger & Hurricane and June & School Friend saw an amalgamation accompany their rise in page count to 40pgs.

[Digifiend]

Thanks for the clarification Kashgar. So the original example, Tiger and Hurricane, was partly to do with amalgamation, but this wasn't the case with all of them.

[AndyB]

From what Kashgar said, it may have been that both were planned and it was decided to do both at once, rather than the merger leading to the page count change.

[Kashgar]

I think that's right Andy. Obviously the 40pg format was going to happen with these titles in 1965 in any case and it was relatively coincidental that two of the titles, June and Tiger, absorbed other failing titles as part of the process. I'm pretty certain that had not School Friend and Hurricane been about to be suspended as stand-alone titles June and Tiger would still have adopted the 40pg format regardless.

[stevezodiac]

Meanwhile accross the pond a brief experiment with a larger page count also went on but a bit later than ours. DC Comics went up to 48 pages and a price increase from 12 to 25 cents. I remember the Kirby titles having Boy Commandos/Sandman reprints at the back which was great as they were very rarely seen. Marvel followed suit but only for a couple of months. With the mystery titles it was easy just to bolster them with earlier stories from House of Secrets, House of Mystery and Unexpected. They all went back to 32 pages but now with a 15 cent rather than 12 cent cover price. I liked the larger issues and i think the price increase on our side wasn't so drastic - something like 1/- up to 1/3d?. Happy memories.