DavidKW wrote:As regards the Sue Brewer book, Mary Wynter's intro was the best bit about it - it was more disappointing in that a lot of space got taken up by comic merchandise, Girl leads in humour comics (for both genders) and American stuff, including support characters like in the Peanuts cartoons. Was not enough space on the UK comics or more details on the various characters that passed through.
I must admit, David, that when you first mentioned Mark Wynter's
Foreward I assumed you didn't like it. Hence my rather tongue-in-cheek question,
Were these the only pages that disappointed you, David? Now it seems to be the only bit you did like.
I think it is disappointing too, as will most comicsuk members whose main interest in comics and story papers is the story content. But that doesn't in any way mean that the general public will necessarily have been disappointed by it. Susan will have discussed her project with her publishing company, who may well have insisted on the inclusion of themes that Susan wasn't planning on writing about. After all, they will have put up the money. Such compromises are rarely satisfactory, but one can assume that the resulting book is a compromise of some description.
I do see some real positives. The cover is striking. It's a pity that room could not be found for a
School Friend, a
Jinty and a
Tammy because all eleven featured titles are from DC Thomsons' output, which might instantly make devotees of those IPC titles put the book back on the shelf in the bookshop. Inside there are many pages of excellent covers in colour, and many more illustrations of different items in black and white. Most of these will have been evocative of the past for many girls, including those who collected the free gifts occasionally included with the papers, and those who joined the clubs. She also makes a decent job of seeing the various story papers in their historical progression, no real depth but certainly enough context for the general reader.
Negatives for me would be the chapter on Part-Works, and the one on the Newspaper Strips could easily have been put in an Appendix. I don't feel strongly either way on the Tie-Ins or her chapter on Collecting Comics - What's Next? I do think, though, that story papers from IPC should have had a greater presence. Overall, the only issue for me is that those potential readers wanting a lot more detail and analysis of their favourite papers, and the stories within those pages, will feel short-changed by this book. However, I believe it would be unfair of those of us who have collections of these story papers, and certainly know more than Susan is revealing about them, to criticise it too aggressively because she didn't write it for us, and if her writing has led to a few hundred more women buying in the ones they remember from their childhood, then her efforts have certainly not been in vain.
