This week in 1934: THE JOKER No.363

I'm not going to see Joker, DC's darkest movie on their Batman villain. Everything I've seen of it is too nasty for my tastes these days, and, apart from Ceasar Romero's version, I've never actually liked the character anyway! 

So... let's look at a cover of the British comic called The Joker instead! (How's that for a segue?) Published by The Amalgamated Press (who later became Fleetway), this was one of the classic weeklies of yesteryear. This is No.363, which was in the shops exactly 85 years ago this week in 1934. 

The cover strip, Alfie the Air Tramp, was drawn by John Jukes, one of the many artists encouraged to draw in the style of A.P.'s top artist Roy Wilson. And, of course, the story ends with a reward of food, a definite treat in those days of the Great Depression!

These days, this material is opened by Rebellion, although I doubt we'll ever see a collection of Alfie the Air Tramp strips as it just wouldn't be commercially viable. Most readers who'd be nostalgic for these 1930s comics have sadly passed away by now. The strips are most likely too old-fashioned to appeal to modern kids, so it's only a few of us who are interested in this era who'd get a kick out of it. I hope you're one of those enthusiasts. Enjoy! 

The JOKER - Easter 1929

Hop on board the Blimey-Timey Machine and let's go 'way back in time to Easter 1929 to see a popular weekly of the day. The Joker was a black and white tabloid consisting of 8 pages, much like most of the other comics published by Amalgamated Press back then. 

Advisory: The Jim Crow and Oliver Twitter cover strip is very much a product of its time with its racial caricature, and should be seen in that context. It's a weak, contrived story but the artwork by Percy Cocking does the job. 

As with all A.P. comics back then, the centre pages featured five shorter strips. Here's a couple of them. Our Wandering Boy is by Albert Pease...

Tilly Tappit the Typist is by Louis Briault...

Here's another strip using stereotypes that would be considered unacceptable today. (There was a lot of this stuff around in those days, and for decades afterwards unfortunately.) O'Doo and O'Don't - The Irish Two. I'm not sure who drew this...

Again, as with the other A.P. comics, the 8 page format featured a 50/50 division of prose stories and comic strips. Here's one of those prose stories, a complete tale called The Spurtfire's Easter Eggs!

On the back page, The Cruise of the Winklepin, drawn by H.C. Milburn...

These early British comics are mainly ignored and overlooked by most fans and the news media now but I think it's good to remind ourselves of our comic art roots. I hope you've enjoyed this brief look back. Happy Easter!

This week in 1929: THE JOKER No.86

I recently bought a run of issues of The Joker from 1929 so you can expect to see a few more samples on my blog from time to time. This is issue No.86, dated 22nd June 1929, the issue that kids would have been reading 86 years ago this week.

Published by The Amalgamated Press, the comic's format is typical of the early 20th Century: tabloid, no colour, 8 pages equally divided between comic strips and prose stories. Thanks to the research by the late Denis Gifford I'm able to identify the artists of these strips.

Firstly that cover strip. Very racist by today's standards, Jim Crow and Oliver Twitter are a typical twosome of comics of the time, unemployed, sometimes homeless, wandering from one situation to the next. The name Jim Crow is particularly jarring as it derives from the slang term describing anti-black laws in America. Despite some of it being uncomfortable to read today the strip has excellent artwork by Percy Cocking.

Inside, one of the text stories was Burke, Chief of Police, a complete mystery tale. 

As with other comics of the time, he centre pages feature an array of short strips. Here are two of them, Our Wandering Boy by Albert Pease...

...and Tilly Tappit the Typist by Louis Briault. Note the blatant plug for two of The Joker's companion comics... 

On the back page, The Cruise of the Winklepin by H.C. Milburn. It's yet another variation of the wandering twosome that had been popularised by Weary Willie and Tired Tim in Chips. This time the spin on the theme was that the wanderers had a boat.

I know posts on pre-war comics aren't very popular amongst most visitors to this blog but I think it's important to show the history of British comics and to bring the work of those early artists to modern readers.  I hope some of you enjoy seeing them anyway. Please leave a comment below with your thoughts/opinions. 

Alfie the Air Tramp

It's probably not intentionally symbolic.

It's mostly forgotten now, but Alfie the Air Tramp was a popular humour strip published by The Amalgamated Press that enjoyed a 22 year run from 1930 to 1952. It was originally in The Joker from 1930 to 1940, then transferred over to Chips when the two weeklies merged.

Humourous tramps had been a staple feature in British comics since the debut of Weary Willie and Tired Tim in Chips in the late 19th Century. Many imitations followed, often with variations on the theme. Combining a funny tramp with aviation was inevitable. It was a good strip though, thanks to inventive scripts and the artistry of John Jukes who drew many of the strips.

Here are a few examples. (Click images to see them much larger.) Firstly from 1934 when Alfie the Air Tramp was the regular cover star of The Joker...

Now a few from 1942 from the combined Chips and The Joker, although I think one or two of these may be reprints. Even as popular as he was, Alfie was never going to replace Weary Willie and Tired Tim from their established cover position but he did manage the next best thing, appearing on the back cover of the comic instead...

Great slapstick strips from a bygone age. Anyone interested in seeing more 1930s/40s classic characters sometime? Or don't they float your boat? Leave a comment and let me know.      

KNOCKOUT No.1 (1939... and 1971!)

  
The original Knockout comic (or The Knock-Out Comic to use its initial hyphenation) was launched by the Amalgamated Press with issue dated March 4th 1939. It was clear from the outset that, like A.P.'s Radio Fun, Knock-Out was intended to be a rival to D.C. Thomson's relative newcomers Dandy and Beano. The size was similar, as was the page count (28), the mixture of humour strips, adventure serials, and prose stories, the arched logo design and the price. Knock-Out even featured animal stars on its cover to rival Korky and Big Eggo, although Our Crazy Broadcasters lacked the charm of the characters that inspired it, despite nice artwork by Walter Bell. 

Inside, Knock-Out No.1 led off with Kiddo the Boy King, a sort of higher ranking Lord Snooty but not as appealing. Good art by Frank Minnitt though. Beneath it was the more original Stone-Henge Kit, who would prove to have much more longevity, running for 701 issues! Art on this first episode is by Norman Ward. 

On the facing page was Knock-Out's own page three girl, Merry Margie - The Invisible Mender, drawn by Frank Minnitt. No doubt this strip was inspired by The Dandy's Invisible Dick, and I'm sure readers could see through this character as she only lasted for 34 weeks. 

Robots (or 'Mechanical Men') were becoming popular in pulp magazines and Knock-Out had its own in the form of The Steam Man (great name). This precursor to Robot Archie was illustrated by Joseph Walker. Sadly the series ran out of steam with issue 50.

Frank Richards' Billy Bunter had been running as a prose series in The Magnet for years so it seemed a natural to feature him in Knock-Out as a comic strip. Initially drawn by Charles H. Chapman, Billy Bunter became the comic's biggest success, running in every issue (taking over the comic as Billy Bunter's Knockout at one point) and continuing into Valiant for many years when the two comics merged in 1963.

The centre pages of Knock-Out No.1 featured several short strips, including Simon the Simple Sleuth by Hugh McNeill.

 
Sexton Blake was another popular prose fiction character (originating in 1893) who had a comic strip series in Knock-Out. This also proved very successful for the comic. The artwork in this first episode is by Joseph Walker.

One of the best remembered Knock-Out characters was Our Ernie, Mrs.Entwistle's Little Lad. It seemed anything was possible in this strip, with the plots taking surreal turns. Later, the strip would always end with the catchphrase "Daft, I call it!" Artwork by Charles Holt originally.

The free gift in No.1 was a Paint Box and Brush (or alternatively a bag of sweets). An ad for No.2 showed the readers what they could expect the following week; a Popeye mask, an edible pipe, and spinach made of sweets! Popeye wasn't a character in Knock-Out but he was extremely popular at the time due to the movies and newspaper strips.

The original Knock-Out lasted for 24 years before merging into Valiant in 1963. Eight years later, IPC decided to revive the title with the un-hyphenated Knockout in June 1971. The cover strip was The Super Seven, drawn by Mike Lacey. 

Like its predecessor, the new Knockout was again trying hard to imitate Dandy and Beano. Those two weeklies were then 20 pages for 2p so IPC followed suit with their new launch. Unlike other IPC comics of the time, Knockout had every page in colour, - albeit mostly single colours (known as spot colour) but it still looked bright and cheerful. 

One of the strips I liked most in Knockout was Pete's Pockets, drawn by the prolific Mike Lacey. As schoolkids we did tend to have all sorts in our blazer pockets, and this strip took it to ludicrous, and amusing, extremes.

The editorial page was a bit... bland in its design to say the least, but at least the advert for the next issue looked lively.

The centre spread featured The Toffs and The Toughs, drawn by Reg Parlett. Unfortunately the off-register colour doesn't do it much favours but it's an enjoyable strip and Reg's work was of course a pleasure to see. This sort of upper/lower class rivalry was always a good theme to use in humour strips.

In one of its more blatant imitations of a D.C. Thomson character, Knockout had its version of The Dandy's Dirty Dick with Mucky Mick, drawn by John Geering...

The only adventure strip in Knockout No.1 was Barry and Boing. I really disliked this strip I'm afraid, but I'm showing it here for the benefit of the many who did enjoy it. D.C. Thomson could do light adventure strips perfectly (eg: General Jumbo, Billy the Cat) but although IPC were masters of straight adventure stories (The Steel Claw, Hook Jaw, etc) they seemed to veer too far into silliness when they attempted more juvenile adventure strips. (Thunder's Steel Commando for example.) The plot of Barry and Boing is fine, but a crying robot and his annoying "Boing" sound effects? It all seemed a bit wet and made me cringe. Nice artwork on this first episode though. Mike White perhaps?

Joker became Knockout's most popular character, and here's the first episode, drawn by Sid Burgon...

New comics always start out as 'dummy' issues before publishers give them a green light (or consign them to oblivion). Subsequently, by the time a comic appears in print, using the dummy strips for its first issue, its artists may not be available to draw following issues. I think this may have been the case with The Katts, with this first episode drawn by Leo Baxendale but taken over by other artists from issue two.

The new Knockout didn't fare as well as the original version. After just two years (106 issues) it folded and was absorbed by Whizzer and Chips. 

Comparing the two versions of Knockout it's evident how comic styles changed between 1939 and 1971, just as styles of today are often different to those of the 1970s. Yet the objective of comics always remains the same, - to entertain!   

This week in 1937: PUCK, THE JOKER, and CRACKERS

  
A bumper post today with no less than three Amalgamated Press comics from my collection that were all on sale this week in 1937! I've a lot to cover so I'll try to keep it brief.

Let's begin with Puck No.1,717 and an excellent cover (above) by Roy Wilson to illustrate Don and Doris. The strip had begun a year earlier as Don the Day-dreamer about a boy who dreams of having great adventures, but by 1937 the everyday realities of ordinary but amusing antics had taken over...

Long before Black Bob amazed us, was the real life canine superstar Rin-Tin-Tin whose life was later fictionalised in radio, films and in the pages of Puck. 

Compared to the other two comics showcased today, Puck was the old-timer, having been around since 1904. The contents of this 12 page issue were mainly adventure based, with exciting serials such as Captain Moonlight. The three panels showing the decent of the windmill sails not only break away from the traditional layout but feature artwork that is more sequential than most UK adventure strips of the period. Artwork by Walter Booth.

Booth was also the artist on Rob the Rover, Britain's first adventure strip. This particular strip is quite eerie because it features the fiery fate of an airship just six weeks after the real-life tragedy of the Hindenburg disaster! Dozens of airships had exploded over the years (including the British R-101 with the loss of 48 lives in 1930) but the proximity of this strip to the Hindenburg tragedy seems a little too close for comfort. The schedules of publishing comics back then usually meant that strips were drawn six to eight weeks ahead of publication so this was presumably bad timing rather than bad taste.

Moving onto The Joker No.504, there's a wonderfully illustrated masthead (by who, I do not know) above a lively Alfie the Air Tramp strip by John Jukes I think.

Inside, Buck Tupp and Flannelfoot draw comedy from the then-popular craze for cowboys and Indians.

 
Bright and Gay was a feature based on the sort of comedy patter seen in variety hall double acts of the time...

On page 6 of that issue, an ad for Jolly Comic, which at the time had the UK license to publish Popeye by Elzie Segar (as seen in a previous post)...

The back page of Joker brought us the serial Chang The Yellow Pirate (the sort of racist description that's quite rightly embarrassing these days). Art by Colin Merritt.

Finally, here's Crackers No.436. This comic was 2d for 12 pages and ran from 1929 to 1941. The cover strip features The Adventures of Bob and Betty Britten, drawn by Alex Akerbladh. According to Denis Gifford's Encyclopedia of British Comic Characters this was the first full colour British adventure strip!

Inside, there was a busy mixture of more adventure strips, text stories, features, and a couple of humour strips.

One of the humour strips was Happy Harry and Sister Sue by the great Roy Wilson (whose style influenced so many artists of the day). Beneath it, a feature that would inflame sensibilities today. Editors nowadays would have a fit at the notion of encouraging children to be interested in such items, yet even up to the 1960s activity pages such as Mr.Knowall in Smash! would show kids how to play tricks with matches. 

On the back page, Terry and Trixie, The Stars of the Circus. Like the cover, this was also drawn by the Swedish born Alex Akerbladh. You may have noticed that several few strips I've shown today feature a boy and a girl in equal billing. An early indication of equal rights in comics perhaps?

Below is a photo of how part of a newsagent's counter display may have looked this day 75 years ago, back in the times when comics were beside the till, making them look smarter and more attractive to customers instead of being rammed into shelves as they are today.