Comics on TV

[Raven]

Another film, not TV show - though I've just watched it on my TV: the BFI released The Children's Film Foundation Collection volume one: London Tales on DVD this week, featuring High Definition transfers of three CFF Saturday matinee movies, one from the Fifties, one from the Sixties, and one from the Seventies.

http://filmstore.bfi.org.uk/acatalog/info_23714.html (Only £11 from HMV.com)

1966's Operation Third Form - offering some fascinating glimpses of a bygone era - has some nice comic moments. A high street newsagent has a rack full of the latest American comics: a shiny new copy of The Avengers is handled (manhandled - or boyhandled - in fact: these kids seem to fold their comics in half down the middle several times upon buying them), and one boy on a spying mission in Regent's Park buries his face in a copy of The Hornet which - big continuity error! - later becomes The Victor, with some nice close-ups of the latter!

Comics are obviously a big part of kids' culture in 1966, even if they don't keep them in pristine condition so they can sell them on eBay 36 years later. Some other aspects of it appear, too, like kids flicking cigarette cards in the street.

[stevezodiac]

Yes there was an article about this dvd release in the Telegraph on Saturday. I can still remember the Children's Film Foundation ident with the pigeons taking off from Trafalgar Square when I went to Saturday Morning Pictures at Deptford Odeon in the sixties. A tanner to get in.

If you google Children's Film Foundation you can read the Daily Telegraph article.

In the sixties Marvel comics sent their subscription copies out folded down the middle.

[Raven]

The boy scrunches his copy of The Avengers (#18, July 1965 issue, Fact Fans) several times over before even paying for it - and the Victor looks like a concertina!

Other US comics on display on that great newsagent's rack include World's Finest, Strange Tales, Batman, Superboy, Rawhide Kid, The Fantastic Four, Jimmy Olsen, Aquaman, and the Dell comic Toka - Jungle King.

[Niblet]

The boy scrunches his copy of The Avengers (#18, July 1965 issue, Fact Fans) several times over before even paying for it - and the Victor looks like a concertina!

Other US comics on display on that great newsagent's rack include World's Finest, Strange Tales, Batman, Superboy, Rawhide Kid, The Fantastic Four, Jimmy Olsen, Aquaman, and the Dell comic Toka - Jungle King.

Sounds like a great scene - any chance of some screen caps?

[Raven]

Sounds like a great scene - any chance of some screen caps?

No, you all have to buy the DVD so there'll be lots more volumes released!

(I've never done that before and I don't think I'm going to have time to sort it out, really.)

The DVD also features some great backdrops of Fifties London in The Salvage Gang: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei87UlJGEi0 - all those empty roads! - and Seventies London (especially if you like grim old Clapham railway arches) and ye olde London-Paris international sleeper train in Night Ferry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE81QnJkcxM&

[Niblet]

Sounds like a great scene - any chance of some screen caps?

No, you all have to buy the DVD so there'll be lots more volumes released!

(I've never done that before and I don't think I'm going to have time to sort it out, really.)

Thanks

[Lew Stringer]

Comics are obviously a big part of kids' culture in 1966, even if they don't keep them in pristine condition so they can sell them on eBay 36 years later. Some other aspects of it appear, too, like kids flicking cigarette cards in the street.

I don't think there were any fag cards by the 1960s. Are you sure they weren't bubble gum cards or sweet cigarette cards? Or the cards given away with Brooke Bond tea?

Comics were indeed popular in the 1960s. Most kids I knew read comics, even if they only stuck to the one title every week. And American comics, although not as popular as UK ones, were an exotic treat, back when Americana seemed so new and strange.

As for the CFF films, I couldn't stand them. The highlights of the Saturday morning matinees for me were the Flash Gordon serials and the cartoons.

[Raven]

I don't think there were any fag cards by the 1960s. Are you sure they weren't bubble gum cards or sweet cigarette cards? Or the cards given away with Brooke Bond tea?

I'm not sure - it does mention kids "flicking cigarette cards" in the booklet notes (I did think sweet cigarettes, surely?) but I'm not sure I understand the whole card flicking thing, anyway.

You may like the CFF output more now, Lew, simply as a slice of social history and demonstration of how much things have changed; because of all the location filming, even the backdrops can be fascinating (especially when the comics appear!).

[Raven]

Ah, a bit of research reveals that you flicked cards on the ground or against a wall, in turn, and when a card covers another one the whole lot go to that card's flicker.

See, they didn't need Xboxes to entertain themselves, back then.

[Captain Storm]

Believe it or not , there was a time in the USA , perhaps here as well , when cigarette companies had contracts with hospitals and doctors to push a certain brand. Maybe it was the 1920s or 30s. Fags were thought to calm nerves etc. Of course now we know differently. I also remember the sweet cigarettes. And of course the liquorice pipes and the liqourice fags. They had a kind of white sugar powder that when you blew through the stick it appeared as like smoke. So the public concept and the companies acceptance of smoking was the norm. When you reached a certain age , it was like a rite of passage to smoke. Thank goodness that has changed!

The Cap.

[Raven]

I remember Superman Sweet Cigarettes well from the '70s (but I don't think they had cards).

Sweet cigarettes lost the red tip and became "candy sticks" at one point, but presumably completely vanished from the high street ages ago.

[Peter Gray]

You can still get candy sticks...I've seen them in newsagents..
I love them...and I don't smoke..
I always loved in the 80's Bananaman ones...yellow candy sticks

[Niblet]

A few months ago BBC4 screened a 'mockumentary' about a fictional British film studio. The programme was called The Cricklewood Greats, and it featured a mix of genuine and spoof documentary footage. This section looked to me like some genuine film of a groovy 1960s club. Just to the left of the young man's head, with the bottom of the page level with his hairline, is what looks to me like a front page of The Beezer, stuck to the wall and surrounded by what I presume are other pages from the comic.

[Raven]

Pssst, Niblet ...

[philcom55]

Not that I normally watch that sort of thing but I noticed a photo of somebody reading Tammy on tonight's Eastenders!

- Phil Rushton