Comics UK

Hi, Phoenix, as regards your labour; where does the labour lie? I can imagine the time that is spent on perusing the physical copies of story papers in your hand in order to deliver reviews, synopsis and such. Is it the layout or the actual prose that you have to combine with the layout that creates the labour, or both. I imagine that the labour of editing provides a bit of a headache as well. I'm always fascinated on how an author works. I have visions of publishing a book in the future as regards a book (or books) devoted to comics but nothing that blights your visionary line; so no toes being treaded on here. After all that is said and done, it's a labour of love

colcool007 wrote:Do we know if the artists who redrew the stories were ever given copies of the original publishing run as part of their reference material?

As I understand it, Colin, the file copies of all the company's publications down through the years were always available for consultation by all members of the staff whenever they needed to do so, rather like a reference library.

geoff42 wrote:Hi, Phoenix, as regards your labour; where does the labour lie?

I've always understood the expression division of labour to mean that everyone concerned in the production of whatever is given some tasks or role for which they are primarily responsible. One example in relation to our work on This Was The Victor should suffice. I am writing all the synopses, Ray is cataloguing all the front cover topics, and is creating a section that we didn't use In This Was The Wizard, that being for listing all the repeats and adaptations of every serial in whichever publication they appeared, and indicating the whereabouts of all the earlier text versions, which were then used by The Victor's writers and artists. Take Johnny Appleseed as a small example. It appeared in The Victor 27 (Aug. 26 1961) - 40 (Nov. 25 1961). Ray would then refer to its earlier text version in The Wizard 1263 (Apr. 29 1950) - 1282 (Sep. 9 1950), and would then focus on the spinoff picture strip Jenny Appleseed, featuring Johnny's granddaughter and her Indian blood-sister Shining Grass in Judy 541 (May 23 1970) - 549 (Jul. 18 1970). He would then inevitably need to look at Slocum Of The Six Knives, the story about Johnny's 'protector', in The Victor in 1963, before focusing on the original text serial with the same title in The Wizard in 1953. As all my synopses will again be three lines long, it should be obvious that in the three lines I would not be able to summarise the plot and give details of all the above repeats, so this is why we are creating a section just for the repeats. It was Ray's idea, and I heartily approve of it.

Phoenix wrote:... I am writing all the synopses, Ray is cataloguing all the front cover topics, and is creating a section that we didn't use In This Was The Wizard, that being for listing all the repeats and adaptations of every serial in whichever publication they appeared, and indicating the whereabouts of all the earlier text versions, which were then used by The Victor's writers and artists. Take Johnny Appleseed as a small example. It appeared in The Victor 27 (Aug. 26 1961) - 40 (Nov. 25 1961). Ray would then refer to its earlier text version in The Wizard 1263 (Apr. 29 1950) - 1282 (Sep. 9 1950), and would then focus on the spinoff picture strip Jenny Appleseed, featuring Johnny's granddaughter and her Indian blood-sister Shining Grass in Judy 541 (May 23 1970) - 549 (Jul. 18 1970). He would then inevitably need to look at Slocum Of The Six Knives, the story about Johnny's 'protector', in The Victor in 1963, before focusing on the original text serial with the same title in The Wizard in 1953. As all my synopses will again be three lines long, it should be obvious that in the three lines I would not be able to summarise the plot and give details of all the above repeats, so this is why we are creating a section just for the repeats. It was Ray's idea, and I heartily approve of it.

And for fans such as myself, this section on the reprints alone will be invaluable.

Just thinking of one character alone Union Jack Jackson, you would be cataloguing the run in The Victor circa 1986/1987, the original run of the story in picture format in Warlord circa 1974/1975, the repeat run in Warlord circa 1982/1983 and the original publishing of the story in text format circa 1950's.

Then you have the Alf Tupper serials, Morgyn The Mighty and so on.

And as Derek has already mentioned, the use of the stories in the girls comics of which I am woefully ignorant of.

Now here is a question, were any of the stories adapted from a girls' comic to a boys' one?

colcool007 wrote:Now here is a question, were any of the stories adapted from a girls' comic to a boys' one?

As far as Thomsons' output is concerned I can't recall any offhand. In fact the general direction for repeats was from the text story papers to the picture strip papers for boys and/or the girls' titles, all of which presented the vast majority of their fiction in picture strips. The writers of the picture strips originally seem to have had recourse to the file copies of the earlier text papers to get ideas for new stories but were then seduced by the idea of simply converting whole serials into strip form. Naturally just as each text paper periodically repeated its own serials, and even reprinted some that originated in the pages of a rival, the picture strip papers followed suit. To take Alf Tupper as an example, three of his ten series, which were published in The Rover between 1949 and 1957, were repeated in the same paper between 1958 and 1960, but when Adventure and The Rover passed into history as individual entities in January 1961 to become Rover And Adventure, Alf was promptly dropped. By 1962 we knew why. He was to become a picture strip hero in The Victor, a story paper whose pages he was to grace for thirty years. Obviously his original stories were converted into pictures but he then went on into completely new adventures which themselves were repeated, and not just once, and sometimes with a change of title. If anybody is curious about the exact whereabouts of these serials I can recommend Adrian Banfield's Victor and Hornet website where all the titles are listed in chronological order. Ray and I did help him a little bit some years ago, mainly with artist identification and the presentation of it, but Adrian has done all the work and it is a valuable resource. There are, of course, many serials in the girls' titles about athletes, including really gutsy, determined ones like Alf. and whose stories were repeated there. Examples could include Lady Augusta Barchester in Bunty's Gorgeous Gussie, Jenny Coney in Judy's I Want To Be A Swot!, and Jenny Smith in Mandy's The Children Came Too!.

Blimey, Phoenix, with all the cross-reference and indexing, you must need to have every copy at hand, which must have been expensive. And then, you will have to peruse every issue, which is a labour of love... I would think. So much labour, but worth the while of course. By the way, your book has arrived in quick time from "Border Bookshop". I'm still waiting for the "Daily Dredds" from 2000 ad after a week! From a general "flick" your book will need time to digest. I've set aside tomorrow night and, I feel, will need more time to read. I'm already eager to inhale the comic industry and its stories that I never knew. I couldn't start today as I have just finished night shifts but... its cover is beckoning seductively.

geoff42 wrote:Blimey, Phoenix, with all the cross-reference and indexing, you must need to have every copy at hand, which must have been expensive.

The expense has been spread over thirty years, Geoff, and when I started my research work on The Wizard in about 1990 although I had a complete post-war collection, which I had started in 1985, I didn't own a single pre-war issue, so I joined the British Library in order to consult their bound volumes. My initial aim was simply to produce a kind of companion volume to Colin Morgan's 1982 50-page, A5-size The Rover Index 1945-1973, so I would simply have listed all the stories with their starting and ending issue numbers, the date of the first issue, and the number of instalments, with brief comments about the overall content for every year. I was to adjust my aim in 1989/1990 after meeting Colin, partly because he was already in touch with Ray Moore, who offered to provide us with the names of the artists of the heading block illustrations in The Wizard, and partly because that meant that there was no real need to restrict the scope of the index to the post-war period. During my research in the British Library I made hundreds of photocopies, including all the heading block illustrations, so I was eventually able to send these to Ray for him to identify the artists. To be fair, the photocopies I took were expensive, and the pile is the best part of a foot high. The best deal on offer was a card costing £40, which worked out at about 18p per pass, at a time when they were only costing 10p everywhere else. But of course I couldn't have got the photocopies anywhere else so it had to be teeth-gritting time. I was still working full time then of course, so it was easier to absorb the expense.

As far as the picture strip papers for boys is concerned, it was Ray's enthusiasm for them that persuaded me to start that collecting process, which little by little gave us more common ground. Although Colin had not collected any of them, he did have a decent collection of Thomsons' story papers for girls, mainly Bunty, Mandy, Judy and Debbie, all of which I bought from him in the late summer of 2000. He had originally bought them weekly for his young daughters, who were under instructions to be very careful with them, and not to write on them. When they had read them he took them back! I developed my collection from then on, which has been, and still is, very important because even if the copies I don't have are in the British Library in St. Pancras, the fewer I need to consult the better. Even more so if they are stored in Boston Spa, because that would mean several nights bed and breakfast over there.

Addendum:- I have since realised that I don't need to go to Boston Spa. I can just order in the British Library the items I want to consult. If they are stored at Boston Spa I will need to wait two or three days for them to be transported to St. Pancras.

Hi, Phoenix. I was busily reading your book until the next door neighbour decided to have an impromptu party, which drove me straight out to my local pub in refuge. But I did manage to read the first twenty pages of the introduction from which I engaged with the characters: Thick-Ear Donovan, William Wilson, and V for Vengeance - characters with whom I have no previous history. So, already, you're on to a winner when you can achieve that with a curious reader. I certainly will be reading more after I've wrapped my neighbour's neck in a tourniquet

geoff42 wrote:From the latter posts between Col and Phoenix, this is the reason why we need solid, reference books on past publications. Wikipedia is all right up to a point, but it can never deliver "what we really want". Well, not what I want.

Wikipedia is very unreliable on its info on British comics. I've corrected some entries in the past but every time I look on there I notice more misinformation and assumptions posted as fact. It's not worth bothering with.

Exactly, Lew. That's why I feel that you need to have every copy of every publication in order to challenge Wikipedia. And then, there are solid reference books that are needed to pave the way just like "This was the Wizard". It's a small step, but we'll get there.

geoff42 wrote:Exactly, Lew. That's why I feel that you need to have every copy of every publication in order to challenge Wikipedia. And then, there are solid reference books that are needed to pave the way just like "This was the Wizard". It's a small step, but we'll get there.

Well, Wiki is a group effort so one person doesn't need to have every issue. There just needs to be enough people with sufficient knowledge to put things right. But it's an ongoing problem and there are just too many mistakes on Wiki so personally I prefer to ignore it now. Life's too short.

Going back to the original premise, I would include Hurricane. Not the best comic in the world to me but a nice read plus it didn't last that long.

So the comics I would get are:

The Dandy
Eagle
The Hotspur
Hurricane
Lion
Valiant

SID wrote:Going back to the original premise, I would include Hurricane. Not the best comic in the world to me but a nice read plus it didn't last that long.

So the comics I would get are:

The Dandy
Eagle
The Hotspur
Hurricane
Lion
Valiant

This is the first time I've seen this thread. Great question!

Valiant would be first and foremost for me
Then Commando, Lion, Tiger, TV comic, Hurricane, Hotspur, Hornet, Wow! and maybe the occasional Look and Learn. 1964 by the way.

Vaguely related to the topic, I'll tell you a story about the pile of Eagles that turned up at the local markets earlier this year. That week I'd had a really bad dose of lower back pain which had paralysed me for a couple of days. It's the first time back trouble has confined me to bed. So I'm looking through the Eagles, and as luck would have it the batch includes the 1959 issue which was current the week I was born. The splash panel on the cover shows the hapless Digby being paralysed by a jolt of electricity to his lower back. OUCH!!

On the actual topic, I'd buy the Beano.

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