For some reason, outside of Eagle and The Beano, postwar and 1950s British comics are sometimes overlooked by collectors but it was an important decade for the industry. It was a time when comics broke free of the traditional formulas and more independent companies surfaced. Adventure comics began to hold their own instead of being a back up to the funnies, and the influence of American comics encouraged UK artists to create more dynamic page layouts. Basically that postwar/1950s period set the scene for decades to come. Captain Future is a perfect representation of those times.
If you order The Complete Captain Future before publication you'll get a discount. (I've just ordered my copy.) Here's the Bear Alley Books page where you can discover more about the book and how to order it:
http://bearalleybooks.blogspot.co.uk/
Why Captain I wonder ? Captain America, Britain, Marvel, Victory, Future and I recently heard of a Canadian one called Captain Canuck.
ReplyDeleteI think it simply adds an air of authority without sounding too high ranking. To be a Captain sounds young and cool, but a General or Colonel sounds like an older, more establishment figure.
ReplyDeleteCaptains Kirk, Hurricane, Scarlet, etc. The list goes on.
Captain Underpants....there's an authority figure for ya! ;-)
ReplyDeleteIt's true! He'd have less authority as plain Mister Underpants. :)
ReplyDeleteThis is yet another one I hadn't heard of. There are lots of hidden gems from the 50's. Thank goodness for the likes of Steve and yourself for bringing them to our attention!
ReplyDeleteWhenever I meet up with Mike Higgs we usually end up talking about this era. It sounds like a very interesting time when readers never knew what gems they'd find in their local newsagents. Sadly it'd never happen today as the distribution system is so different.
ReplyDelete