Comics UK

Phoenix wrote:I'm quite fascinated by the two images of a black girl on the adverts that Phil posted. Was she a character in Sparky, or just a cartoon figure who could be startled by the Crack Bang, and open-mouthed in childish amazement watching the Spinner? Either way, she gets a similar presentation to that of the inhabitants of Spadger Isle.

Prepare to be amazed, Phoenix. Despite the earrings, bracelets, skirt, ruby red lips and curvy figure, that's a male! It's Sparky himself in fact, who appeared as a cover strip for the first few years.

He was an updated version of Sooty Snowball from the Magic Comic.

Lew Stringer wrote:Despite the earrings, bracelets, skirt, ruby red lips and curvy figure, that's a male! It's Sparky himself in fact

Well I would never have guessed that, Lew, in a month of Sundays. The mind boggles. It feels like April 1st. Cross dressing black boys in our comics heritage! Did he look like that every week? Whatever next? Alf Tupper in women's clothes? Well, that did happen once but that's another story.

The spinner promo starred Sparky himself (ah, Lew beat me to it.)

Well! Thanks to Lewis then. All photos such as those are most welcome indeed!

Amazingly! In the second issue of Sparky comic- Sparky, the character is spouting `Cod` english, a bit like the characters in the old `Bamboo Town` strip! He spoke `regular` English thereafter though!

I believe that he is loosely based on a character in the short lived (1940-41?) comic `Magic` called `Sooty Snowball` Might have got that name wrong-not sure!

The one Sparky comic free gift I should love to get is the 1970s "Flicker-Pics" set! That, to my tastes, is the finest comic Free gift I ever came across.

Magic ran from 1939 to 1941, for 80 issues, before falling victim to wartime paper rationing. Lew beat you to it with the Sooty Snowball info.

Its something that I didn't put in my `Sparky-File` - trouble is the 1965 portion is so large now if I add it-it won't `post` as attachment even with `Large Attachment facilities! Sadly, sometimes one is forced to omit things!

Phoenix: if you mistook the character Sparky for a woman, ---well as a kid I thought he was a visitor from Outer Space.....


This character has took a lot of flak for it's stereotypical elements, the pneumatic rubberized lips often singled out for criticism.....


---However, anybody who takes the time to look through pictures of real African tribespeople will see that reality threw up much more exaggerated imagery than the comic ever did:




I could also add equally alarming pictures of tribeswomen with multiple rings around their constricted necks, permanently, to the extent that they couldn't remove their rings, or their necks would break. This real-life imagery is quite disturbing to Western eyes, and in fact goes much further in it's visual extremism than the Sparky character ever did, or did Mammy Two Shoes out of Tom and Jerry.


No doubt tribespeople like this still exist in deepest Africa today, and this is partly where the inspiration for the Sparky character comes from......I see nothing wrong with African customs---they don't offend me personally, this is part of human history, one of my relatives proudly displays primitive African artefacts in his house since working out there-----------though clearly many readers don't want to see this sort of imagery depicted within comics .

If anyone is offended by the above picture, well, they should start a campaign to airbrush out African History---but I myself don't want to start interfering with peoples' customs. I think it's a striking and hard-hitting image, but I don't find it offensive.

If black people find this historical image offensive: well, this is beyond my comprehension, and is like saying that primitive peoples never existed.

----and just to even out the score, here's a depiction of my primitive ancestors: this is what they probably looked like , maybe they were even more extremely primitive than this.




This is what we come from, and I see no sense in trying to deny the past.

ISPYSHHHGUY wrote:No doubt tribespeople like this still exist in deepest Africa today, and this is partly where the inspiration for the Sparky character comes from.

But the person in your photograph is clearly a woman, Rab, not a man wearing women's clothes and decorative jewellery. I could have mentioned Sparky's rubberised lips but I didn't feel that aspect of his appearance, although exaggerated, was that much different from that displayed by the characters on Spadger Isle, more an identifier really, chosen by the cartoonist. However, what I would like to know is why Sparky was presented in that way, whose concept it was, and why it was simply accepted by the comic's readers. Did nobody ever complain, or express unease. Did the presentation of Sparky alter at any time, become more masculine? I don't know a great deal about humour comics in general, and even less about Sparky, so those who know the answers must forgive me if these questions seem naive.

Back in the early 1960s I remember that the adventures of 'Little Black Sambo' were among the most popular stories for teachers to read out loud to young children. Nowadays these wouldn't be allowed to see the light of day but, having recently found an old copy at a boot sale, I was surprised to discover nothing in the story that's the slightest bit racist - except the name of course.

What's more, the bit about tigers turning into butter is decidedly weird!

- Phil Rushton

For what it's worth I do remember being confused about Sparky's gender when the comics were originally published!

- Phil R.

Although it's technically not a comic, today I received a storybook of 'Morgyn The Mighty'. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a publication date in it, so I don't know when it was made (although all the pictures are signed by Dudly D Watkins, so this may narrow it down a bit).
I don't suppose anybody would know whether or not this was a one off book, or maybe there were others made? Any help with finding the year would be greatly appreciated

EDIT:

I was just doing a little Googling to try and find this book and came across an old topic on this site : http://comicsuk.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.p ... 89&start=0
So I can now see that the book is from about 1950/51 and that I got a very good deal on it, as I only paid just below £5 and it's in very good condition, apart from missing it's dust jacket.

Yes, those book-form reprints of some of the famous DCT story paper stories are incredibly rare, I think there's less than 20 known copies of the Wilson one still in existence

Of course, most of the stories should have been given book-form reprints in the millions, and sold cheaply, to keep them in the public eye and allow them to be read and appreciated over and over, even after the weeklies had been used as cheap firelighters.

I have just managed to `insert` a line or two about `Sparky-re- Sooty Snowball` in my file! HOORAY!!

On another point- I picked up a truly strange comic in one of my local Charity Shope this morning! It's called `Z` and I think was an `in-house` publication by a Toy company called `Zodiac Toys` It features the `Scare Bears` `Miami Mice` `Colin and his Blob` etc1 Truly weird! I just cannot get scans on to this site so brief description has to suffice! I think it dates from 1986! Has anyone heard of it?