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Saturday, July 20, 2019

50 Year Flashback: MAN ON THE MOON!

Exactly half a century ago, on July 20th 1969, humans first set foot on the Moon. An incredible achievement recorded by the world's media. I remember it well. A perfect crescendo to a fantastic decade! 

Here's how the Daily Mirror reported it the next day. As this is a blog about British comics I thought you'd also like to see the comic strips and cartoons that issue contained. As you can seem there were a lot more than the Mirror carries these days! The Daily Mirror was a great paper in the 1960s, not just for its excellent news coverage but also for its numerous strips and cartoons. We'll never see such days again.

Andy Capp by Reg Smythe.
Useless Eustace by Jack Greenall.

Garth by John Allard. Larks by Jack Dunkley. Flutters by Ian Gammidge and Len Gamblin.

Perishers by Maurice Dodd and Dennis Collins.

Playboy! by David Rowe.
You'll notice that only one cartoon, the slot usually taken for topical/political cartoons, mentions the Moon mission. That one was probably drawn just before the deadline, as most political cartoons are. My guess is that others wanted to make sure everything went well first, as the mission could have so easily ended in disaster. Thankfully it didn't, and the historic achievement is one we can look back on with happy memories.

Note: I scanned these from a facsimile edition of the Daily Mirror. It seems there might have been some tinkering with the front cover as genuine editions are slightly different. 



6 comments:

Peter Gray said...

love seeing vintage newspaper cartoons...
Wished the Larks was made into books...there was one one later book...

James Spiring said...

Last week's Sunday Mirror contained a copy of the front and back pages and pages 2 and 3... it wasn't the full issue though, and thus was missing the comic strips, so thanks for posting this.

Lew Stringer said...

You're right, Peter. There was a Larks book around 1980 or so. I think I still have it but not sure. The interesting thing about that strip is the characters grew older. The kids came along and grew into teenagers. The parents aged too. A great way to keep the strip fresh and find new potential for jokes.

I didn't know that, James. I rarely buy a paper at weekends apart from the i.

Nutty Big D said...

Why is tranquility being spelled with a double L I wonder? Is that NASA's American spelling maybe?

Nutty Big D said...

Having checked, I see that double L is in fact the English spelling of tranquility - presumably it went into virtual disuse following the moon landing, with everyone seeing the single L American spelling so much.

Lew Stringer said...

Interesting. I hadn't noticed that. Well spotted, Nutty!

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