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.
steelclaw wrote:
Felneymike you seem to be buying a lot of comics recently, you must have a big collection?
It's alright XD. Trying to get dad to put some more shelves up! And i have assorted padded envelopes containing odd issues of things, mainly Union Jack, laying around. I take those to work to read.
I was tempted but at a starting price of £25 when the description contains the word "shabby" I think I'll pass
Yeah they're not fantastic, but it'll do. The other two still for sale were reported as having the odd missing page. Oh well if they're still around when i get paid next...
the history of the beano only £12.99 from the book warehouse thanks to steelclaw telling me it was down camden town they had about 3 0r 4 left.
also roy of the rovers world cup special and this weeks beano & dandy
the history of the beano only £12.99 from the book warehouse thanks to steelclaw telling me it was down camden town they had about 3 0r 4 left.
also roy of the rovers world cup special and this weeks beano & dandy
big bad bri wrote:the history of the beano only £12.99 from the book warehouse thanks to steelclaw telling me it was down camden town they had about 3 0r 4 left.
also roy of the rovers world cup special and this weeks beano & dandy
Well done you found it, I should have bought it at £9.99 when I saw it, but £12.99 is still cheap.
Neither are strictly comics, but still interesting. I got "Tomorrow Revisited", a book about Frank Hampson with several pages of his Dan Dare artwork (and shockingly little of anything else, unfortunatley) reproduced from the original boards so you can take in the crazily detailed detail and superfine linework. There's also art for several other strips that were began as ideas for Eagle that never saw the light of day. And information on the 1970's "Next Eagle" (the readers wanted if if the publishers didn't) called Thunder, which was never produced.
But, amazingly, that's not the nicest thing to look at which i got today. That being a small landscape-format booklet called "This England" which resembles (but is not) a comic free gift. Every page contains absolutely beautiful paintings of scenes from around England with little poetic odes to the location underneath, along the lines of "Where loveliness surrounds the steps of youth, and learning passes on the torch of truth" for Trinity College in Cambridge. The seller estimated it to be from 1910 but judging by the cars visible in one picture i'd say early 20's is a better bet. Not bad for a quid!
Ahem, that's because the actual title of the "Next Eagle" that never appeared was Lightning, not Thunder. Ahem.
The economic climate of the early 70's meant they couldn't afford to risk so much money on a new publication that children might not buy out of simple lack of money, even if they wanted to. So it got shelved "for later", which never came.
Yesterday I went to Border books in Todmorden as recommended by Phoenix. I often go to Tod but never noticed it before. Very hard to choose what to buy! I got the 1972 and 1973 Dandy books, 1959 Knockout annual and 1976 Hotspur book. Plus some proper books, because he sells them too. Thank you Phoenix.
Then I went to another excellent Todmorden bookshop, Lyalls, which is having a 25% off sale, and got- besides more proper books- the 1963 Beezer book for only £2.50. (£1.88 in fact, if my maths are correct). The low price was due to childish crayon scribbling (and not just in Baby Crocket's diary, which was meant to look like that). I don't mind the scribbling at all, but I love low prices, so whoever who owned it before has my gratitude. Plus it matches my similarly damaged 1961 book.
Is it weird to have no interest in keeping or collecting free gifts?
One of them deals with "aliens" coming to Leeds and taking the jobs of the men who work in the factories, resulting in a violent strike. Highly unusually the sympathy of the story is with the strikers (in most strike stories in these sorts of papers they are either led by criminals or Soviet agents, depending on the age). Various left-wing revisionists who have never read one of these stories in their lives but delight in decreeing to the rest of us how terrible we all are would have you beleive that these story papers had this kind of BNP-type propaganda every week. But this is the first time I have seen anything like it, and I own and have read hundreds!
The other two are a general story of adventure in India, possibly during the (or just a) mutiny. And a story that deals with another sort of aliens - Martians! Yes it's a science fiction story! The last space travel story from this age of Amalgamated Press story papers that I read was, ahem, not very good (to put it mildly). Let's see if this one is any better...
Aand today I got an annual called "Our Boy's Best of All", it's undated but has an inscription dated Christmas 1945, and a little logo inside saying it meets "wartime production standards", so it was probably published earlier that year.
Also a bound volume of School Friend from July-Dec 1960. By this time it's about 75% strips to 25% text stories. They are all serials and the strips are detailed and compressed into 2-3 pages each. Each issue itself has 24 pages so there's a lot to read in each one, must have been great value. There's also colour (ish) stories on the covers. Amusingly the logo is put over at one side of the front page in a red square... trying to compete with somebody?
Today I got 2 3d issues of The Boys' Friend Library, They had tags in them saying they were from 1942 and 1944, which is absurd. The Boys' Friend Library was ancient history by then and would have been at least 7-8d! They're more likely from the 1900's. By guesswork from about 1908-9.
I also got an issue of a very obscure "Dick Turpin Library" in which this seventeeth century knight of the road helps out an Indian rajah! o_O It's published by some company called Richard Clay & Sons. It's also 3d.
But most interesting is the second (and final) volume of a story-paper called Boys from 1893-4. It's an official yearly volume (the cover calls it "Boys Illustrated Annual") and the 'covers' of each 'issue' inside are modified so that they have no date or price on them, and the number is relegated to tiny type in the bottom corner. The front and back both carry announcements that the title is to be merged with The Boy's Own Paper. I wonder if it was briefly called "The Boy's Own Paper and Boys" XD
felneymike wrote:The front and back both carry announcements that the title is to be merged with The Boy's Own Paper. I wonder if it was briefly called "The Boy's Own Paper and Boys" XD
I have some Boy's Own Papers from early and late 1894 and there's no mention anywhere in those of it having incorporated 'Boys.'
