British Comics - a short history
Gerry Anderson Comics
TV21 Comics
TV21 Comic Covers
Lady Penelope Comics
Lady Penelope Comic Covers
Countdown Comics
TV Action Comics
Look-in Comics
Scorcher Comics
Commando Comics
By popular convention it started in 1884 with the arrival of Ally Sloper's Half Holiday, a popular paper with strip cartoons, featuring a recurring character, the eponymous Ally Sloper. Before that there were story papers
(containing text stories and colloquially known as penny dreadfuls) and comic strips in newspapers and so on. But Ally Sloper was the first comic character to feature in regular strips in his own comic.
Interestingly, Ally Sloper (as described by wiki) was an archetypal lazy schemer often found "sloping" through alleys to avoid his landlord and other creditors. It is perhaps fitting that the first comic character
was not of good character; idle, feckless and devious, a type that recurs throughout comic history, and not a million miles away from a more recent comic creation, Homer Simpson.
Perhaps it is partly these less than glorious characters that have given comics some of their lasting appeal. Though British comics, after the first few years when they were aimed at adults (though ill-educated
ones according to wiki), have been predominantly aimed at children, they still have an appeal to the adults who grew up with them. Partly certainly for nostalgia, but also perhaps for their slightly anarchic view
of the world which we all tend to lose a little as we grow older.
Other than Ally Sloper though, there was less of this sort of thing is most early comics. Boys Own and Girls Own Papers were full of mainly worthy stories of good moral characters, triumphing over adversity
in stories much like those in the story papers, based around school life, and playing up and playing the game, but with some strip stories thrown in as well. In fact the text story appeared in comics well into the
latter half of the last century in popular titles like
Wizard and Hotspur, though I was never a great fan of them myself, preferring children's writers like Enid Blyton and Malcolm Saville to read. Maybe the text stories were more for the adults who bought the comics
for their children, to make them believe they were giving them something wholesome and worthwhile.
The United States had its own 'comic books', as opposed to 'comics', which is a useful distinction to make. British comics have always been firmly rooted in British life. The common themes for strips throughout the
1900s were school-life (particularly boarding school, though few of their readers attended them), sport (particularly football, but with a smattering of cricket, athletics and motor sport) and war
(particularly the second world war, mainly because it was so recent in the 'golden age' of comics, roughly the 1940s to 1960s). There have not been many superheroes in British comics that I can recall. A few
sportsmen derive super powers from inanimate objects (Billy's Boots in Scorcher), but on the whole stories are rooted in a prosaic, though distorted, view of British life.
So British Comics have a distinct content compared to American comics, which were mainly based around science fiction and fantasy superheroes. Nothing wrong with that of course, but the only American comics
I read in the 1960s were the occasional Batman (who also did not have super powers) and Mad Magazine, of which more later. This was probably not uncommon for British children at the time. The kind of British comic
that I remember is mostly gone now (even The Beano is now only online with an occasional flurry at Christmas), while the American comics thrive, particularly since the arrival of the 'graphic novel', many of which
are aimed at older, more mature readers.
British comics have also suffered over the years from derision as children's entertainment, which of course they mainly are. I'm not sure how Americans view their comic books, but I suspect they are not as condescending as the
British establishment have always been. Certainly my teachers in the 1960s spent considerable effort in trying to wean children off The Dandy and onto more substantial books, even if it was only stories of
The Famous Five or Billy Bunter. It's odd really, when most adults spent a lot of their time watching similar tripey entertainment on television. There's a time and place for a little diversion, so I always resented
a little that comics were viewed so warily.
The British Comic didn't change that much for the first forty years or so. The stories were mainly worthy and wholesome, and aimed at a slightly older audience than they were from the 1930s onwards. It was the arrival
of D C Thomson as a major player in the comic market that changed everything. The Dandy in 1937, soon followed by Beano, started a huge popular movement in comics that lasted well into the 1970s.
The circulation figures of comics are hard to come by, but estimates are that around 3 million comics a week were often sold in that period, which gives some idea of their popularity. My sister and I had at least one each,
and we read probably another half dozen or more borrowed from friends every week. As a source of literacy their effect is probably under-estimated. Although they were mostly strip cartoons, you still had to be able
to read to understand them. It is quite conceivable now for a home to have little or no reading matter at all ( I saw a figure recently that over half the population has never read a book), so maybe the educational
establishment worried a little too much about the effect of comics on children's education.
After the arrival of D C Thomson, the war slowed down the comic business for a while, and it wasn't until 1950 that the next major comic hit the news stands. 'The Eagle' was the idea of Rev Marcus Morris,
an Anglican vicar who wanted to create a wholesome comic based on good Christian British values, partly to counteract what he saw as the bad influence of some of the more lurid American comics which were popular at the time.
The comic was a huge success, selling 900,000 copies in its first week, not least because of the artwork of the prodigious Frank Hampson who drew the Dan Dare strip. It was more upmarket than the D C Thomson titles
and particularly appealed to middle class parents who could see it as a safe haven from the perceived less worthy titles. There was the PC 49 strip with a bit of detective work by a younger version of Dixon of Dock Green,
and the back cover featured some bible stories which Morris agonised over a little as he was unsure of using comic strips to spread the gospel. The girl's comic Girl soon followed, as well as Robin and Swift for younger readers.
Meanwhile D C Thomson was producing new titles such as Lion and Tiger. Lion has a traditional school strip (Sandy Dean's schooldays) but the new vogue was for war stories as the second world war was still a recent memory.
Tiger soon followed, and introduced a new character who was to dominate for the next 30 years - Roy of the Rovers.
Football strips has always been popular in comics, but Roy Race became an iconic figure, and ushered in a new era of football stories which exploded in the 1970s with the new comics Scorcher, Striker and Score and Roar. Roy Race
went on to have his own comic in due course as well.
If the 1950s belonged to Eagle, the 1960s belonged to a new kind of comic, mainly based on popular television programmes of the time. Radio Fun started in 1938, based round characters from radio shows, and it was not surprising
that as television took off from the mid-50s that similar comics would feature series from that medium. TV Comic started in 1951, and was initially aimed at a very young audience, featuring characters like Andy Pandy
and Muffin the Mule. Later on it featured the early TV shows of Gerry Anderson, such as Four Feather Falls, Supercar and Fireball XL5. In the mid-1960s Gerry Anderson launched his own comic, TV Century 21 (soon to become
simply TV21) which was an enormous success, riding on the back of his hugely popular TV shows Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and Joe 90. Lady Penelope ended up with her own comic for girls as well. TV Tornado
has its own list of shows, many of them American such as The Man from Uncle. The 1970s saw Countdwon (later TV Action) continue in the same vein, with new shows like UFO, as well as reprints of the TV21 strips.
By the end of the 1970s the world was changing for children. Television was by far the dominant medium. There were a few huge successes, such as 2000AD, a science fiction title more akin to the superhero comics from
the USA, but far more flops and as the 1980s progressed most comics merged or closed completely. The Beano and Dandy lasted longer than the others, but by the 2010s the traditional British comic was all but gone.
Still, they left a generation of children with a lot of happy memories, and a market for many cheaply produced, ephemeral items that would stagger their creators now. British Comics have always seemed the poor relation
compared to their American counterparts, but they have a charm of their own, and many are still available at a very reasonable cost. We are interested in most British comics, and do take a look at our latest items for sale
by clicking the links on the left.
