Talk here about just about anything associated with British comics or story papers and the industry that does not fit in any other forum.
There are separate fora open to registered members for discussing specific comics, artists, websites etc.
stevezodiac wrote:Not sure but I seem to remember Peter Cushing reading TV21 in the first Dr Who movie although it might have been a publicity shot. I know they featured it in the comic. Issue 28 was the movie tie-in.
In an episode of 'Joe 90', Joe does read a puppet size edition of 'TV21'!
A tenuous link but one of my favourite films, Hue and Cry, actually features a boy's paper as the catalyst of the film's plot. As I grew up in London's docklands in the 60s and me and my gang had a bomb site as a "playground" this film is very appealing and nostalgic for me. Here is a brief plot summary off the web: (Its actually a boys paper called The Trump).
Charles Crichton, 1947
Film Description
The first Ealing comedy. A group of boys discover crooks have hidden coded instructions in their favourite comic and take exception to such cheek. Sim is naturally superb as the avuncular, amiable and yet still slightly menacing writer. Blitz-decimated London is the cleverly used setting and the final scene with the crooks being chased by thousands of boys through London's Docklands is memorable.
stevezodiac wrote:Oddly in the Morecambe and Wise Sketch the masthead of the Dandy Eric is reading has been redone so looks nothing like the actual Dandy masthead - it was probably due to DC Thomson's attitude in those days of not wanting their publications exploited.
Nothing to do with Thomsons Steve (after all why would they baulk at some free advertising on such a prime-time show) but more to do with the legal small print in the BBC's own policy on non-advertising. At the time it was against BBC policy guidlines on advertising to promote any product on screen in any of its shows but, as Eric is seen reading a comic and uses the line 'Desperate Dan's good this week' most viewers at the time would have known that the comic he was reading was the Dandy.
But as they couldn't show him reading an actual real copy of the Dandy which would have infringed the BBC's promotional code they got around the problem by mocking up an ersatz copy of the comic which by dint of a legal nicety bypassed any possible infringment. Daft really but there you are!
My memory may be playing tricks on me, but as I recall it, Eric was actually reading a Beano with a fake Dandy label stuck over the title. I think I've got that sketch on DVD somewhere. I may find it one day.
Kashgar wrote:As this strand has slightly wandered over into movies I remember Bernard Bresslaw
reading a copy of the Topper in the 1958 film 'Too Many Crooks'.
Topper also makes an appearance in 'Here we Go Round the Mulberry Bush' (1968).
Although it's only a set designed for television it's very convincing and does look very much like newsagents of the period. I don't think a real 1977 newsagent would have quite so many shelves devoted to comics though. I suppose the comic aspect has been emphasized because it's a kids show and of course the material that would really have been on the top shelf is absent in this alternate universe non-porn world.
Note the Marvel Treasury Edition of Howard the Duck on one of the shelves too.
Digifiend wrote:That stand may say Fleetway Libraries, but it seems to actually be DC Thomson on there, specifically My Weekly.
Things like that happened back then. Perhaps in this sanitized tv version of a newsagents they felt that war picture libraries would be too much for them to cope with.
Raven wrote:Did you notice the TV Comic in scene one of The Kids From 47A? (Look Back 4 DVD.)
I didn't notice the TV Comic, wasn't he reading a football comic? Or was that TV Comic.
Lew Stringer wrote:Although it's only a set designed for television it's very convincing and does look very much like newsagents of the period. I don't think a real 1977 newsagent would have quite so many shelves devoted to comics though. I suppose the comic aspect has been emphasized because it's a kids show and of course the material that would really have been on the top shelf is absent in this alternate universe non-porn world.
Note the Marvel Treasury Edition of Howard the Duck on one of the shelves too.
They really should have had less comic shelfs but more comics.
I mentioned that Howard the Duck in the other thread. It's not the Treasury Edition, though. I reckon it's definitely issue 8 of the regular comic - the Howard For President cover - out in the UK in early '77.
and the Howard comic is smaller than it. But what's that 1973 book still doing around?
Incidentally, despite the lack of porno mags, the gritty, working class Tyneside-set Paper Lads didn't present a sanitised world at all - people get beaten up, and someone is bricked in the head by a thug in that first episode.
Raven wrote:I mentioned that Howard the Duck in the other thread. It's not the Treasury Edition, though. I reckon it's definitely issue 8 of the regular comic - the Howard For President cover - out in the UK in early '77.
I recently got a Janette Scott (Unofficial) dvd box set and yesterday I watched the film "As Long As They're Happy". L-R: Topper, Lion and Dandy. The boy in the middle has his Lion upside down.
If it's upside down how come the front cover is still on our right? It looks like an issue of Knockout to me but you've seen the film and I haven't so I'll take your word for it.
