Comics relaunched with a new "first issue"

[felneymike]

Mind you I bet the comics historians of the 2090's will be bewildered by all the re-names Eagle went through as it merged with endless failing papers in the 1980's!

[Tin Can Tommy]

No it means there were 1404 issues starting from issue 40. I spent a lot of time and brain cells trying to fathom it out.

Okay yeah that makes sense, the way it was written just confused me, sorry.

[Adam Eterno]

The Nelson Lee Library I'm not so sure of, but I think it started in 1917, got re-launced twice over the twenties and thirties (one of them was in 1930, but I don't know which) and ended some time before the war.

I hope this helps, FM. Issue 1 of Nelson Lee Library was published on June 12th 1915, the free gift being a General French button.

Hi Phoenix, I don't suppose you have an image of the General French badge do you please? Or a link to an image? I can't seem to find an image anywhere.

[paw broon]

I'm a big fan of Nelson Lee and so couldn't resist posting this link to the cover of #1, 1915. No pic. of the button, only a mention on the cover.
http://www.friardale.co.uk/ESB/NLL1-001.JPG

Anyone who wants to read the story can find it here:-
http://www.friardale.co.uk/ESB/Nelson%2 ... es%201.htm

And Friardale has dates for each series and you can find them here:-
http://www.friardale.co.uk/ESB/Nelson%20Lee.htm

Please bear in mind that Nelson Lee appeared in The Detective Library prior to gaining his own title. TDL was a weekly publication from AP and if any of you can provide dates, that would be great as I'm embarrassed to say that I haven't a scoobie
The author of the Nelson Lee stories in (some of) those issues was Maxwell Scott, who is listed as inventing the character. That is a pen name for Dr. John William Staniforth, according to Lofts and Adley.

Hope you don't mind my butting in.

[Phoenix]

Hi Phoenix, I don't suppose you have an image of the General French badge do you please? Or a link to an image?

No, I'm sorry I don't. My general records of story papers and their free gifts do go from the year dot as far as the middle of 1940, at which point the vast majority were producing their final issue and going to the wall. The nearest AP paper I have to that date is The Dreadnought for May 1st 1915, which is obviously five weeks too early for a possible advert. I rang Carole Collinge and got her to check her catalogue for me, not just for the Nelson Lee Library but for any other AP paper, such as Union Jack, The Scout, The Dreadnought, The Gem etcetera, for a possible advert in the previous week's issue. She didn't have the relevant issues of any of them. The comicsUK member who might be able to help is felneymike. He hasn't posted much recently but he is very interested in that kind of paper in that period. An email might energise him. He was a bit unsure of his ground in 2011 but he could well be more clued up now. If you have no luck let me know because the next time I go to the British Library I could check the relevant bound volumes of both The Nelson Lee Library and The Dreadnought. Of course there may not be an illustration even in the former.

[Adam Eterno]

Hi Phoenix, I don't suppose you have an image of the General French badge do you please? Or a link to an image?

No, I'm sorry I don't. My general records of story papers and their free gifts do go from the year dot as far as the middle of 1940, at which point the vast majority were producing their final issue and going to the wall. The nearest AP paper I have to that date is The Dreadnought for May 1st 1915, which is obviously five weeks too early for a possible advert. I rang Carole Collinge and got her to check her catalogue for me, not just for the Nelson Lee Library but for any other AP paper, such as Union Jack, The Scout, The Dreadnought, The Gem etcetera, for a possible advert in the previous week's issue. She didn't have the relevant issues of any of them. The comicsUK member who might be able to help is felneymike. He hasn't posted much recently but he is very interested in that kind of paper in that period. An email might energise him. He was a bit unsure of his ground in 2011 but he could well be more clued up now. If you have no luck let me know because the next time I go to the British Library I could check the relevant bound volumes of both The Nelson Lee Library and The Dreadnought. Of course there may not be an illustration even in the former.

Thank you so much for checking and you've really helped as I hadn't thought of checking the other AP comics. I've just checked Gem #383 and there is an advert for #1 of the Nelson Lee Library but no image. I'll try and locate copies of the others now.

The reason I ask is that I have a small badge with an image of General French on it and I don't know whether it was the gift or just a 'normal' badge.

[paw broon]

More on Nelson Lee. This info. thanks to crashryan on CB+

"Nelson Lee first appeared in The Halfpenny Marvel in 1894. He was the creation of Maxwell Scott, the pseudonym of a Yorkshire medical man, Dr. John Staniforth (1863-1927). When Amalgamated Press sought to purchase the rights to the character, Staniforth at first refused. However, Hal Meredith, the creator of Lee's nearest rival, Sexton Blake, agreed to sell the rights to his character and Sexton Blake rapidly gained a recognition that Nelson Lee, when Staniforth finally yielded, never again equalled. In 1915 the detective was given his own story paper - The Nelson Lee Library - and Edwy Searles Brooks was an early contributor. Within a year, Brooks was writing all the stories, a situation that continued until 1933. In 1917, with the introduction of St. Frank's School and Lee's conversion to a schoolmaster detective, his popularity increased to such effect that the stories also appeared in a number of other publications."

Don't know if that's of interest to anyone, but it is to me

[Phoenix]

For anybody who would like to discover more about Nelson Lee and St. Frank's, I can recommend this informative volume. See below. It is a symposium produced by Museum Press in 1977 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the creation of St. Frank's. Contributors include Lionel Searles Brooks (son of author Edwy), Mary Cadogan, Bill Lofts, Norman Wright and Robert Blythe. If eBay doesn't turn up trumps, try Border Bookshop in Todmorden.

[SID]

How about a couple of more modern examples:

DCT's The Beezer->The Beezer and Topper.

Name and issue number reset initiated by a merger with The Topper.

IPC's Donald and Mickey->Mickey and Donald->Mickey Mouse.

In this example the issue numbering reset when the comic became Mickey Mouse.