Back before the days of the Summer Special, weekly comics had a holiday theme to their regular issues. One of which being Comic Cuts No.1735, dated August 11th 1923, which was re-named for this week as Comic Cuts Seaside Holiday Number. Let's take a quick look at some of the content.
The cover strip was The Adventures of Jolly Tom, the Menagerie Man, and was drawn by Percy Cocking, one of Amalgamated Press' top artists. (He also illustrated Weary Willie and Tired Tim on the cover of Chips at this time, along with many other strips.)
The format of this "special" was exactly the same as any other week; 8 tabloid sized pages in black and white. (The standard format of comics of the time.) There was an equal balance of prose stories and comic strips, with the centre pages featuring lots of short strips. Here are three of them...
Page 7 had a busy layout of humourous stories, cartoons, ads, and the "Orfice Boy" recounting his trip to Margate...
On the back page... an sad reflection of how black people were regarded back then, re-presented here for historical purposes and to help give younger readers an inkling of what they had to put up with. I believe the artist of Comic Cuts Colony was Julius Stafford Baker. I'm sure the intention was just a "bit of fun" with no intended malice but it's still dehumanising a race. I've heard the argument that "everyone was caricatured back then, including white people". No. Not to the extent of the grotesque exaggerations of black characters, as one can see by comparing Comic Cuts Colony to the strip beneath it. In comics back then, white characters had slight exaggerations, whilst non-whites were completely distorted and depicted as almost sub-human (and referred to in racist terms). We need to ensure we never return to those days.
Our final destination in the Blimey-Timey-Tour through the Christmas comics of the past sees us land in the year 1947 and the issue of Comic Cuts that was on sale this time back then. It was a time of post-war rationing, and this was reflected both in the flimsy 8 page format and in the strips themselves. There's something very appealing about the orange and black cover though, which makes a change from the more commonly used red spot colour of other comics of the time. The cover strip, Sammy and Shrimpy, was originally by Arthur Martin according to Denis Gifford's reference books, but I'm convinced this one is by Albert Pease.
As always, the centre pages really packed in the laughs with a variety of strips. I usually select a few samples from spreads like this but as it's Christmas I thought I'd show the centre pages in their entirety. (In case you didn't already know, click on the pages, and click again to see them at full size.) I'm not sure who to credit for all of the strips but Big Ben and Little Len is definitely the distinctive work of Bertie Brown...
Here's one of the four text stories from this issue, along with an advert for Mars bars, then promoted as a healthy food!
On the back page, Pinhead and Pete, and I must warn you that, typical of the era, it's quite racist. The two characters are shown as equals, and as friends, but... aagh, that caricature and the racist language mars an otherwise nice strip. Art by Bertie Brown. The mini-strip at the foot of the page looks like Cyril Price's work to me.
...and that's it for this Christmas! I hope you're enjoyed all of the classic festive strips I've shown you this year. By the way, today (23rd December) is the 10th anniversary of this blog! Yes, on this day back in 2006 I decided to start blogging and you can read that first post at this link:
https://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2006/12/blogs-are-for-egotists.html
Over the past ten years I've written over 2,000 posts, shown thousands of vintage pages, previewed hundreds of new comics. I've also encountered a handful of trolls and sociopaths before realising they were best avoided, but the thousands of comments from decent folk have made blogging worthwhile. My thanks to everyone who has supported Blimey!, including readers, publishers, and fellow creators.
Where does this blog go next? Well, I never planned to be blogging forever, so I'm taking a few days off to think about it. My main intention for Blimey! was to focus on old comics (and creators) to help prevent them falling into obscurity. Hopefully I've achieved that in some small way. It's likely I'll be blogging less in 2017. I'll still be showing previews of new comics but the vintage stuff may be scaled down a bit in the future as I focus on work and other matters. Don't be too disheartened though. With over 2,000 posts over the past ten years it's likely there's some you've never read (or may have forgotten about) so use the search facility to see if your favourite UK comic or creator has been covered.
I'll be back before the end of the year with previews of my new Beano strips and more, but until then, I wish you a very Merry Christmas!
Just time for one last post this year, and here's the issue of Comic Cuts dated January 1st 1949. Yes, this issue would have been in the shops 66 years ago, at the end of 1948. Long-time visitors to this blog may remember the cover from when I showed it a few years ago, (which I think may be by Reg Parlett) but I'm showing a few more pages from it tonight. Some dialogue in that cover and the character's attitude to foreigners is pretty bad by modern standards.
Like several comics of the time, Comic Cuts had only 8 pages, which were 50/50 text stories and strips. Here's a text story for New Year's Eve with Kenton Steel, Ace of 'Tecs...
With only 8 pages Comic Cuts had to give value for money, and its centre pages were crammed with short strips. I usually show just one or two individually but to demonstrate just how packed it was I've scanned the entire centre pages this time. Click to enlarge, and you may have to click again to see it full size...
That's all for 1948, er, I mean 2014! See you again next year!
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A quick plug for the Comicraft New Year's Day Font Sale which takes place all day on Jan.1st. Comicraft produce the best comic book fonts in the business, so if you're doing your own comic, or you want comic style fonts for whatever project you might be working on, go to the best! (I use them for the Blimey logo and bits in the sidebar.) Buy the fonts, download them, and start using 'em!
http://www.comicbookfonts.com/
We hurtle back in time 77 years today, to 1935 and the 'Grand Xmas Number' of Comic Cuts. The cover strip is Tinker and Tich and looks like the work of John Jukes to me.
Printed on green paper the 8 page tabloid-sized Comic Cuts featured the usual Amalgamated Press formula of four pages of prose sties and four pages of strips. One of those strips starred the robot (or 'Mechanical Man' as the term was then) Mac Hinery. I'm not sure who drew this one...
Percy Cocking was the artist on The Terrible Twins. Nice solid figure work. Mr.Cocking was also the artist on Weary Willie and Tired Tim over in Chips...
Dusky and Dando was unfortunately one of the strips that reflected the very different attitudes of the time. Presented here as a historical document, such stereotypical caricatures of black people have thankfully long since vanished from comics. No idea who the artist was...
Tucked in the corner of page six was an advert for a Waddington's card game Bobs y'r Uncle. Bob looks a very dodgy uncle if you ask me. (You can see the cards on this website.)
On the back page, the serial Plum and Duff manages to fit in a Christmas party at the end, although that spy obviously had nefarious plans for the New Year. Artwork by Albert Pease I believe...
The 1940s aren't faring very well so far in the poll but I hope you'll enjoy this posting. Here's a wartime edition of Comic Cuts (No.2,663) which was on sale 71 years ago this week in 1941.
Wartime cutbacks were taking hold and had already caused the end of Larks comic, which had merged into Comic Cuts in 1940. The price of the comic had also risen. No longer the penny comics of the 1930s, Comic Cuts now cost 2d for just 8 tabloid pages.
The cover stars are The Crusoe Kids and this example is a smashing piece of work by Cyril Price. A slick inking style and lots of background detail pull the reader into the story, - and is 'The Pig and Faceache' one of the funniest names for a pub or what? This is top quality work printed on very cheap paper but it has been preserved by some careful owners over the years so is still immaculate. As for the bits of wood chip and greyness of the paper, - that's how it is. The paper is actually as grey as cardboard, but the orange spot colour livens it up considerably.
Inside, one of the various strips across the centre pages was Waddles the Waiter. This strip's first series ran from 1912 to 1925, drawn by Alexander Akerbladh. Later, the editor obviously thought it still had legs so it was revived from 1938 to 1947 by Terry Wakefield.
Here's a typical wartime strip which sees Plum and Duff resourcefully deal with the enemy, in this case, Italian soldiers. Sadly, a sign of the times mean it's any excuse to use offensive nicknames for foreigners. Artwork by Albert Pease.
The League of Ovaltineys was the wartime equivalent of social networking, with kids eager to be a part of it. No video games to partake in back then though of course but instructions on how to make a paper plane would still provide entertainment...
On the back page, Pinhead and Pete drawn by Bertie Brown. Again, there's some racist language used casually here, but Pinhead (the big white guy) and Pete (the little black chap) are clearly good friends and equals, which hopefully was the message that filtered through to readers.
The somewhat surreal strip at the foot of the page, Dizzy, was another fine Cyril Price job. All in all, a great issue with some of Britain's top humour comic artists of the era.
It all seems very optimistic now. A UK publisher investing £1,000,000 to reinvigorate its line of comics. However that was the situation in May 1990 when this issue of Dez Skinn's Comics International revealed Fleetway's big plans.
Fleetway were taking a risk back then, as sales of comics had been sliding for some time. Rather than abandoning comics, they decided to try and reinvigorate what they had and launch a couple of new titles. Ah, how the comics industry was buzzing over the publication of Revolver and the new Judge Dredd Monthly (or the much-better titled Judge Dredd Megazine as it was renamed before its launch).
What high hopes we had for the 30th anniversary of Buster, which editor Allen Cummings said "deserves to be talked of in the same breath as Beano and Dandy". Little did we know then that Buster would be axed just under ten years later, and that the new publishers would focus more on children's magazines than comics.
Here then is the news of 22 years ago, when it seemed that British comics were on the verge of a renaissance. Noble thoughts, but of all of the Fleetway titles mentioned in the article, only Judge Dredd Megazine is still running (now published by Rebellion).
For those critics who think that the drop off of comic sales are a recent problem (and that modern content is to blame) it's worth considering the words of Fleetway's group managing director Terry Humphreys in 1990 when he spoke of falling sales being a "long and steady decline". The million pound investment back then was their way of trying to fight the increasing disinterest in comics, and today publishers try other ways and other investments to try and turn the tide. In some ways it may be seen as fighting a losing battle that's been waged for decades, but hopefully publishers will continue to fight and keep British comics alive.
PS: It's a good article by Simon Rogers but the bit about Tom Browne introducing comic strip narrative to the UK is quite an exaggeration. Browne was brilliant, and his style was (and still is) massively influential to British comics, but he didn't invent the comic strip.
