To take our minds off the oncoming snow storm, let's go back to 1968 to see which issue of TV21 was out exactly 50 years ago this week. It was issue 163, and by this time the newspaper-style covers had been replaced with comic strip and Captain Scarlet dominated the comic.
The Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons TV series had debuted on TV a few months earlier so it made sense to make him the star of TV21. It was easier than producing a spin-off Captain Scarlet comic and it gave TV21 a boost. I do wonder though if revamping the comic so much was counter-productive to sales? I presume they must have been sliding anyway, so it was worth a shot.
What's notable about comics of the 1960s is how lively they were; full of movement and action, and no one did it better than Mike Noble...
The newspaper-style cover that TV21 had for its first 154 issues was now an interior feature as TV21 Stop Press. Perhaps for the best, with alarmist headlines like this. Ha!
The centre pages featured Frank Bellamy's stunning work on Thunderbirds, and this was the week where this memorable panel of the Hood first appeared...
Full colour printing was still a luxury for most British comics in the 1960s. Adventure comics such as Valiant and Victor only carried one or two pages of full colour for example and were printed on newsprint. TV21 had top class glossy photogravure printing, allowing for painted artwork (as opposed to the flat colours of Lion or Buster). Artist Jim Watson used it to its best advantage with his vibrant colour work on Zero X. (Incidentally, the cliffhanger of this episode must be one of the strangest ever!)
There you have it. Just a few pages from this issue of TV21 from this week in 1968 (or 2068 as they preferred). Don't forget that you can click on the images to see them much larger to study the artwork.
Snow's a'comin'. Wishing you all a safe week!
True War No.1 was published by IPC Magazines in June 1978. The 40 page comic magazine was quite unique in that it was clearly aimed at an older reader than IPC's usual fare. Also, instead of the traditional anthology format it just featured two long 15 page complete stories, both of which were based on fact rather than fiction.
The first strip, The Battle of El Alamein, was superbly illustrated by Jim Watson. True War used a better paper stock than other IPC comics and it allowed good reproduction of painted artwork and photographs. Watson's grey wash technique really emphasized the qualities of his work. Here are a few examples...
The centre pages of True War were, like its covers, on glossy paper. In issue one the centrespread was used to show two cutaway illustrations of WW2 aircraft...
The second strip in issue one was Douglas Bader, Legless Legend. I have to say that even by 1970s standards I found the term 'Legless Legend' pretty tactless, although Bader himself would probably have been amused by it. The comic strip was a sympathetic and respectful tribute to his life, and featured excellent artwork by Ian Kennedy. Here's a few pages...
Some of you may have never heard of this comic, which wouldn't be surprising as it ran to a grand total of... three issues. So what went wrong? A few observations and speculations...
It was neither fish nor fowl. The cover design of True War looked like the top shelf sleazy crime mags such as True Detective. My guess is that the sort of readers the cover would attract would be put off to find it was 'only a comic', but the people who read comics would bypass it thinking it was a magazine. Also, that cover image isn't very dynamic is it?
The price! In 1978, 30p was incredibly expensive for a comic. The imported American comics such as Savage Sword of Conan, Eerie, and Creepy may have been around 25p to 30p at the time but they had around 76 pages. True War only had 40 pages and its format was quite small (185mm wide by 250mm high). 2000AD back then was only 9p, with other British comics being around the same price.
The presentation. The idea of telling true war stories in comics form is a good one, and had been employed on the covers of DC Thomson's Victor for years. However, the text-heavy strips in True War really slowed down the narrative, which kind of defeated the object.
Frequency. The mainstream British comic publishers usually shied away from doing monthly comics back then. A senior editor once told me the general feeling was that a weekly frequency maintained the interest, but a four week gap between issues would lose readers who'd forget to keep up with it.
Lastly; distribution. I don't remember seeing True War in many places. Was it well distributed? Perhaps newsagents didn't know where to put it, - next to the comics or up with True Detective etc?
Whatever the reasons for its failure, True War was a worthwhile attempt to attract an older comics reader and it did feature great artwork, so it's worth picking up if you ever come across copies second hand.
