Free comics in The Guardian

[Digifiend]

Even by 1979, Buster featured reprints of Ginger's Tum (retitled Ginger, losing a very good pun).

And also causing confusion with Beezer's namesake cover star. Very bad move on their part. I didn't realise Buster reprinted W&C material that early, I was thinking of after 1990, when Buster absorbed the two-in-one comic.

[steelclaw]

I feel sick.

























































Only 8p for Whizzer & chips.

[Digifiend]

Coincidentally, the same price as the free Beano 2000, which had less pages, but is more recent. If only you could buy comics that cheap now!

[Phoenix]

Obviously there is no way of telling how useful or relevant this information is because it only relates to my experience in one city during one specific period but, for the record, between 1950 and 1958 Adventure and The Wizard were only made available for sale on a Tuesday, The Rover and The Hotspur on a Thursday, as stated on their respective covers. I do remember, though, being told on one Monday or Wednesday by my local newsagent that he had already received them but was not going to put them out until the following day. He told me I had to learn to be patient. Again for the record, all four were dated for the Saturday of the week they came out.

[Lew Stringer]

Don't like Tammy far to bleak not a lot of fun..

wheres the sci-fi...silly stories..magic fun stories..

Just realized that the current Crikey! has a timely article about Tammy by Pat Mills. He explains that by 1970 the girls comics were in trouble. A new direction was needed and editor Gerry Finley-Day and his writers made sure Tammy was more contemporary and socially relevant, with a anti-establishment attitude that would later influence Battle, Action, and 2000AD. (And Oink! too, thinking about it.)

Sadly, as Pat quotes socialist writer John Newsinger, it turned out to be a "failed revolution" as the influences stopped there. The later IPC comics such as Speed, Wildcat, new Eagle etc were much "softer" in tone and subsequently failed to generate much excitement. The girls' titles suffered even more, ending up as the gossip-driven shallow mags of today. What a waste.

Lew

[Digifiend]

When Bunty finished, girls comics as we knew them became extinct. Nowadays they read either gossip mags such as DCT's own Shout, licenced material, or animal based magazines (i.e. Animals and You, which is now popular enough to have an annual). Boys comics have gone the same way though. 2000AD is marketed at an older audience now, Commando libraries are the last remaining outlet for war stories, and are also aimed at the older age range, younger boys only get licenced material or a magazine where less than half the comic is comic strip. The Beano is the only remaining 50s-90s style "boys and girls" comic, Dandy having alienated it's female audience with the Xtreme relaunch.

[kevf]

The girls comics have provoked most of the response in the Guardian's letter columns, from women crediting these comics for making them the women they are today, and most lamenting their loss.

Women (or girls, whatever it's best to say) would, I think, still buy girls comic strips if they were of sufficient quality. Women make up the vast majority of the book buying public, especially for fiction.

I must get Crikey (I was skint when I leafed through it last week), the Pat Mills article sounds v good.

The Guardian comics reprints have also sparked the best debate in ages over on the Comics International Forum. (Some of my comments are rounded up at: http://bit.ly/hH41E ). Are there any other forums getting lively about Brit comics, that I've been missing? (Down The Tubes is pretty quiet, and the individual artists forums I look at are mostly concentrated on their own work).

[Lew Stringer]

I must get Crikey (I was skint when I leafed through it last week), the Pat Mills article sounds v good.

Which raises the point: how many people here have bought Crikey? I've bought it from issue one and despite its early teething troubles (like that error-ridden article on Smash! in issue 3) I think it's well worth supporting... and a fiver for 84 pages can't be bad can it?

If we can't support the only magazine devoted to UK comics, what chance of people supporting a new British comic?

Lew

[steelclaw]

I've bought every issue of Crikey so far. I like it.

[Phoenix]

Which raises the point: how many people here have bought Crikey? I've bought it from issue one

So have I and, apart from issue 6, there hasn't been a great deal of story paper content to cater for my specific interests and enthusiasms. I buy it because it ought to be bought. I have not so far bought issue 11 but that is only because the copy in Worlds Apart on Lime Street was damaged and the guy in charge at Forbidden Planet on Bold Street told me that they haven't bought any in since issue 5. I'll buy it via the Internet as usual.

[bustercomic]

Of course, Sid won in the end, because he transferred to Buster upon W&C's demise and Shiner didn't. Since Buster used a lot of reprints in it's dying days, I'm guessing they avoided using any strips involving a Whizz-kid/Chip-ite raid?

Not so, I remember coming across a letter sent to Buster in the 90s pointing out that another character was in the background of someone's strip.

Buster covered it up nicely by pointing out "Characters often pop up in each other's strips. It's often fun to try and spot them!"

[Digifiend]

That was a clever way to avoid removing the raids! I assume any speech bubble references to Whizz-Kids and Chip-Ites were edited out though.

[PaulTwist]

Which raises the point: how many people here have bought Crikey? I've bought it from issue one and despite its early teething troubles (like that error-ridden article on Smash! in issue 3) I think it's well worth supporting... and a fiver for 84 pages can't be bad can it?

If we can't support the only magazine devoted to UK comics, what chance of people supporting a new British comic?

Lew

I have every issue bar the latest one - sub expired and I haven't renewed it. Might do that now, actually. It's always a good read.

[Kashgar]

I too have every issue. Admittedly some where freebies thanks to my involvement with that particular issue, but had that not been the case I would still have bought them all. Maybe too many people get enough of a comics fix free, gratis and for nothing on web-based comic sites like this one to want to shell out on a magazine.

[colcool007]

I am also a regular subscriber. Got a double for the ones where my articles featured, but as mentioned elsewhere, Crikey has gone from a bit of a damp squib to a magazine that I really look forward to reading each month.