chapter XVII - comics

Why I am devoting a whole chapter to these colourful wonders? Because they were an important part of any kid's childhood, and they were usually read with a lollipop, a bag of sweets or roll of candy in hand. 

I was recently transported back to a wonderful time in life, as age of innocenc, a time when life was full of exciting new discoveries, when everyday seemed exciting. This plethora of nostalgia was brought on by walking into a local charity shop and being confronted by annuals of all my favourite childhood comics. Pages and pages of my favourite childhood characters, none of which had aged a day. From Desperate Dan to Biffo, they were all there. 

Once a week we would get a comic, always hoping this was the week there would be some free gift inside. Maybe a pea shooter, a plastic gun that fired elastic bands, all manner of politically incorrect and dangerous items! Squirreled away in our bedroom, we would laugh at or with our favourite characters, fill in the puzzles, enter any competitions in the hope of winning some awesome prize or to see if our joke or letter we sent in the previous week had got published. We stashed them, we loaned them, we swapped them with friends who's favourite comic was different to ours, so we got to enjoy other comics. And whats more, they were a wonderful medication, when we were home in bed sick. 

There were comics for boys and girls, and other aimed purely at one sex or the other. The boy's ones filled with war stories, sports and all things boys enjoyed, while the girls ones had features on ponies and girlie stuff. After reading them, they were stashed away for a rainy day to be read over and over again. Our bedrooms, our wardrobes, somewhere every kid had a spot in thier bedroom that had piles and piles of our comic collection. Every Christmas we would get the annual of our comic as one of our presents. 

beano

This is the cover of the original; published on 30th July 1938. A year before WWII, when my mother was just eight years old. Rather politically incorrect character on the cover, by today's standards. But it was the birth of all my favourite characters, as this was the comic of my choice. 

• Dennis the Menace, his dog Gnasher and also his female counterpart Minnie the Minx
• Billy Whizz the boy that ran at superspeed everywhere
• Roger the Dodger, who spent his time getting out of his chores
• Biffo the Bear
• Lord Snooty; a kid that wore a top hat and tails 
• The Bash Street Kids; a gang of naughty school kids like Plug with goofy teeth, Fatty, Smiffy and many more. That were the bane of their teacher, always referred to simply as Teacher or Teach. 

dandy

This was probably the rival of The Beano. Both were small A4 type size. First printed in December 1937,  six months before the  Beano, but by the same company; DC Thompson & Co. 

Unlike other publications at the time, The Dandy was the first to do away with speech captions under the pictures and introduced the speech bubbles. Both the Dandy and Beano were originally due to be weekly publications, but were forced to become fortnightly (alternating week by week) due to the wartime paper shortages. Both had weekly sales of over 2 million in the 50's! 

The two most iconic dandy characters were Korky the Cat and Desperate Dan. The latter being a superman meets cowboy type character, a huge guy, that ate huge cow pies and had the inevitable big square jaw that was a must for all heroes. His chin though, was apparently the result of it being modelled on the original editor Albert Barnes (coincidentally the name of my great uncle, who was a brilliant artist). Albert remained its editor for over 50 years! 

beezer

The Beezer would have to been number two in my list of favourites. Unlike the Beano and Dandy it was published using a much larger paper, more like a newspaper size. 

Another DC Thompson publication, that was launched in 1956. It had a sister comic; The Topper. Favourite characters included

• Pop, Dick and Harry; a dad and twin sons 
• Ginger .... enough said! 
• Nosey Parker, who originally featured in a comic from 1925; Rover 
• Calamity Jane
• Little Mo; a Tomboy that was always getting into trouble or warring with her male counterpart; Mugsy

topper

The Beezer's sister A3 comic, launched on 7 Feb, 1953. It never really held my imagination, but was the favourite of a childhood pal, so I still got to read it. 

Beryl the Peril, was just Minnie the Minx by another name, but one strip in it that did catch my imagination were the Numskulls. It featured those little 'men' that live in all our bodies that work or eyes, ears, nose, digestive system etc and all the escapades they get up to having to deal with their host's day to day living and habits 

sparky

This one launched on 23 Jan, 1965 and was aimed at a slightly younger readership than the likes of the Beano, Dandy etc. 

Its title character; Sparky, was a "african american" boy who wore a grass skirt. But like many of these comics, they had characters of a similar ilk to the others but names were changed and looked different but for the most part were a re-hash of other characters; Minnie Ha Ha Or featured characters that had been retired from other comics; Nosey Parker. 

It was a sad day though, when one of your favourite characters was retired to another comic. Much like adult characters getting killed off in popular soap operas. 

buzz

This was a short lived comic of the 70's; 1973-75. By this time of course I was more into teenage music rags, but still read it in secret if I got the chance. 

buster

From a new and rival company; IPC Magazines, published first in 1960. The title character was said to be the son of the infamous Andy Capp, and wore a similar flat cap. In fact he was never seen without the cap, until the final issue in 2000. 

Other characters include 

• Chalky; who drew things that came to life (from memory) 
• Junior Rotter; a type of Dennis the Menace
• Ivor Lott and Tony Broke
• Fuss Pott
• Joker

whizzer and chips

Also from IPC Magazines. Launched in 1969, with the novel idea of being two comic for the price of one. They managed this by literally having two sections; Whizzer and then a pull out called Chips. 

The characters in each, were said to be deadly rivals, with a character from one strip often raiding the story line from a rival's strip and story line. The leader of the Whizzer characters was Sid and his snake Slippery, while over at Chips it was headed up by Shiner, the boy that always managed to end up with a black eye. 

knockout

First launched in 1939 to rival the Beano and the Dandy. The characters in it, while comic strip like, were definately I'd say originally aimed at boys. Characters such as 

• Billy Bunter
• Buffalo Bill
• Hopalong Cassidy
• Kelly's Eye
• Robin Hood
• Johnny Winco

These characters were later absorbed into 'boys own' comics like Valiant and the Magnet. It was then revamped in the 70's, and re-introduced with characters more in line with the more popular comics, and we had characters resembling those found in other comics

• Boney
• Stinker
• The Toffs and the Toughs

others
There was of course a plethora of US comic imports. We in the UK were stuck with cartoon characters like Plug and Dennis the Menace, while our US cousins were being super cool with the DC Comics and Marvel with the likes of superman, batman, spiderman and all the other slick US superheroes.

But from the early 70's onwards, we were starting to be introduced to specialised comics based on TV series, mostly from the Gerry Anderson camp like Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlett, Stingray, Joe 90 and Fireball XL5. Then a lot of other TV shows started putting out their own magazines; Countdown, Blue Peter etc