It was the Sixties, man!

The Cloak ©Mike Higgs

For the next issue of Comic Scene (out later this month) I've written a brief history of Pow! comic. I supplied a bunch of images too, but sadly this one wasn't used which is a shame. No worries though, because Blimey! readers now get to see it anyway. It's a fantastic panel from The Cloak by Mike Higgs, where the titular hero and Lady Shady engage in a clash of magic spells with the villain The Warlock. 

This is the sort of scene that made Pow! stand out from "ordinary" British comics of the day and was a big influence on my Combat Colin strip years later. Mike's artistry here is great, and so contemporary for the era. Mike always liked hand-lettering his own sound effects too (another thing that influenced me) and he went to town on this panel! 

The Cloak always delivered the unexpected. A spy strip that could include monsters, witchcraft, space travel, or anything! For many of us this was one of the best strips of the 1960s! 

BBC to celebrate 50 years of UK comic cons

Mike Higgs, creator of The Cloak, tells me that The One Show will soon be running an item to celebrate 50 years of comic conventions in the UK. It might be even scheduled for tonight's programme, Wednesday 4th April, so check it out at 7pm, BBC One. 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007tcw7

UPDATE: The item wasn't included in the 4th April show. Soon though, hopefully!

Mike was interviewed recently with Phil Clarke (who organised the first UK comic con back in 1968 in Birmingham) at the MCM Comic Con at the N.E.C. and although it's only likely to be a very short segment of The One Show it's still good to hear it's being covered on a prime time TV programme. No doubt the focus will be on cosplayers but hopefully there'll be some comics history in there too!

The late Steve Moore was also an organiser of that very first convention, and as he was on the staff at Odhams at the time he was able to get it plugged in the news pages of Smash!, Pow! and Fantastic. Mike Higgs was one of the guests.

...and while I'm at it, here's an example of The Cloak by Mike Higgs, from Pow! No.53, 20th January 1968. One of the most distinctive and enjoyable series in British comics...

The Easter POW! (1968)

The Cloak, by Mike Higgs, was one of my favourite strips of the 1960s so I was over the moon to find myself working as Mike's assistant for a while in the early 1980s. I'm proud that I can call Mike a friend and still see him regularly when we put the world of comics to rights over a pie and a pint. (Not necessarily a pie.) Here's Mike's brilliant Cloak strip on the cover of the Easter edition of Pow! back in 1968. 

The strip continued inside. (The depiction of the natives wouldn't be permissible today but it has to be seen in the context of the times.)

The rest of the issue also had an Easter theme to the humour strips. Here's Ken Reid's incredible work on Dare-A-Day Davy...

The Tiddlers and The Dolls, drawn by Mike Lacey...

Georgie's Germs, drawn by Cyril Price, a veteran artist who had been illustrating comics since the 1930s and was still producing great work in the 1960s...

...and, on the back page, Sammy Shrink by Terry Bave...

Pow! also contained two Marvel reprints (Spider-Man and The Fantastic Four) and a few home-grown adventure strips. You'd be forgiven for thinking that the X-Men never had a strip in Pow!... except for this issue, when an edited version of a strip was used to promote that week's issue of Fantastic...

The 1960s were good days for British weekly comics. As with all things, times change, but the UK comics industry continues to evolve and survive (see my recent article on that here). Happy Easter!

POW! and WHAM! - First merged issue (1968)

The merging of Pow! and Wham! in January 1968 was a clear indication that all was not well with the Odhams line of 'Power Comics'. Other mergers would follow and by the end of the year only Smash! would remain out of the five titles. A sad state of affairs for a much-loved line of comics but they continued to deliver the goods right up until the end.

The merged Pow! and Wham! actually resulted in a fairly strong line-up. Here are examples from the 32 pages of that first issue (No.53, retaining Pow's numbering)...

Pages two and three served as a great introduction to the strips, bringing new readers up to speed...

Reprints of Spider-Man had proved to be Pow's most popular strip so naturally that continued in the merger. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko at their finest...

Georgie's Germs was one of the handful of strips to survive from Wham! and fitted into Pow! perfectly. Art by Cyril Price...

After Spider-Man the second most popular strip in Pow! was Mike Higgs' The Cloak. A fantastic humour-adventure spy/fantasy serial in Mike's distinctive style. I've never met any fan of Pow! who didn't like the strip, and it's easy to see why from this excellent spread. Anything could happen in The Cloak strip!

Horror/sci-fi serial Experiment X featured in the centre pages. That logo is one of my favourites. Very eerie.

Pow! often reprinted some of the complete five page sci-fi strips from Marvel's early sixties Tales of Suspense, Strange Tales and the like, resized into two page stories. This issue gave us The Little Green Man by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko...

The ad for the next issue promoted the free stickers. Remember those? 

Sammy Shrink by Terry Bave was another survivor from Wham! Although perhaps one of the more conservative strips in 'Power Comics' Sammy Shrink proved very popular and was even revived for a much longer run years later in the IPC funnies. 

This first merge issue also saw the start of a brand new adventure thriller; The Two Faces of Janus. A gripping but somewhat daft tale about a man wrongly accused of a crime just because he looks evil due to a curse. Francisco Fuentes was the artist of the strip but I'm not sure he drew this opening episode as it appears to be signed "Ayhau". 

The Tiddlers and The Dolls was an unusual merging of two strips into one! The Tiddlers from Wham! joined Pow's The Dolls of St. Dominics for a weekly battle of the sexes. Art by Mike Lacey... 

Reprints of The Fantastic Four also came over from Wham! into the merged comic. Script by Stan Lee, art by Jack Kirby. (For some reason, Odhams deleted the credits on the Marvel reprints. Probably because it wasn't a tradition in British comics to run credit boxes at the time.)

On the back page, the brilliant Dare-A-Day Davy, another Pow! favourite, by the fantastic Ken Reid...

So there you have it. A good comic full of variety, and a favourite of many in the sixties. Evidently not too many though, as it only lasted another 36 weeks or so before merging into Smash! but while it was around it was a memorable comic!

New Year SMASH! (1969)

Here's the cover to the New Year edition of Smash! dated 4th January 1969, so it'd go on sale on the 28th December 1968. The popular Swots and the Blots were the regular cover strip by this time, drawn by Mike Lacey. The strip continued over the page...

Not many of the strips were actually celebrating New Year. Some of the humour strips just seemed be be using the cold weather as a plot. However, Bad Penny combined references to the New Year as well as a plot involving snow. "Jumping jellybabies! It's 1969!" Artwork by the ever-brilliant Leo Baxendale...

The Cloak began a new adventure that week. No Hogmanay reference as such, but it did feature a Scottish villain, - The Phantom Piper! It also contained the return of the stunning Lady Shady who became a regular member of The Cloak's team. Creator Mike Higgs also introduced The Cloakster in this episode, giving us males an excuse that we were only buying it for the car articles and not to gawp at Lady Shady's cleavage. 

Smash! had a good mixture of content in those days. Sadly it was the last man standing as regards the five 'Power Comics' and the recent merger with Fantastic had brought in reprints of Marvel's Thor by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby...

...along with reprints of Lee and Kirby's The Fantastic Four, which had arrived via a merger with Pow! As you can see, the panels had been rearranged and edited from the original American format to fit approximately two US pages onto one of Smash's large pages.

With this being Smash! it also featured Batman of course, reprinting the American newspaper strips of the time.

A few home-grown adventure strips were also in the comic, including Brian's Brain, drawn by Barrie Mitchell...

Ken Reid was getting into the swing of his run on The Nervs with this excellent two pager. For me, these strips represent Ken at his greatest.

On the back page, Sammy Shrink in a post-Christmas story about a late present. Nice clear storytelling by Terry Bave, who would soon become very prolific when IPC launched their own humour comics.

As you may have noticed from the indicia on page 2, IPC Magazines were now in charge of Smash! instead of Odhams. Sadly, a few weeks later, they'd make their presence felt and they'd transform the comic into an unrecognisable form as a traditional boy's adventure weekly. As readers at the time we didn't know that of course, enjoying The Cloak, The Nervs, Batman, and the Marvel reprints, unaware that they'd soon be gone from the comic forever. The sixties were definitely ending. 

...but 2015 is about to begin! My thanks to you all for following this blog over the past 12 months and may I wish you a Happy New Year and hope that you continue to read (and comment) for as long as it lasts. We can never predict what a new year will bring us but we can only hope for happiness, good health, and prosperity. Here's all the best for 2015!      

Brickman meets The Cloak

When I was 8 years old in 1967 my favourite comic strip was The Cloak, the humour-action spy serial that ran in the pages of Pow! weekly. Written and drawn by Mike Higgs in his own distinctive style, it felt very modern with its references to pop culture and something of a cool semi-underground look to it. Most other strips in British comics at the time still had something of the late fifties/early sixties about them, but The Cloak felt right up to date. Pow! sometimes carried the strapline: "Wow! It's Pow! The Comic of Now!" - well, The Cloak certainly fitted the bill. 

I've blogged about The Cloak here before, such as at this link:
http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2007/01/enter-cloak.html

Thirty years ago I was fortunate enough to become Mike Higgs' art assistant for several months during the early stages of my comics career. It was excellent experience and Mike has been a good pal ever since. (One of these days I'll show some of the art from the children's books we worked on.) 

Several years ago, Richard Starkings of Active Images in California put together a collection of my early Brickman strips and had the good idea of adding all-new pages by guest artists. Richard contacted people such as Tim Sale and Ian Churchill for contributions and I got in touch with a few people too. Naturally, Mike Higgs was on my list, and he produced the fine page you see at the top of this post. The Cloak! Back in print, - and with Brickman too! 

The completed book, Brickman Begins! was published by Active Images in 2005. It's digest-size, has 152 black and white pages, and features all my Brickman strips from 1979 to 1996, plus a new four pager by me, plus loads of guest artist pages, unused art, and more. Alan Moore, from an introduction he wrote for a Brickman comic I did in the 1980s. 

If you're interested, I still have some copies left. Swing your cursor over to my website here if you wish to order a copy by PayPal: 
http://www.lewstringer.com/page7.htm