TV Comic underwent quite a few changes over its 33 year run. It started out as a comic for very young readers in 1951, aged itself up a bit in the 1960s to compete with Dandy and Beano, changed to a tabloid sized comic (as Mighty TV Comic) for a while, and by 1978 its emphasis was more on adventure strips due to absorbing the failed Target comic. (Target had lasted just 18 weeks and you can read more about that here:
https://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/this-week-in-1978-target.html )
Here's a few pages from TV Comic with Target No.1397, dated 22nd September 1978. The cover strip rotated its characters and this week it was the turn of Kojak, drawn by David Lloyd early in his career before he went on to find fame with V for Vendetta. (Today, David is the publisher of digital comic Aces Weekly. http://www.acesweekly.co.uk )
TV Comic had been printed in the slick photogravure format for years, until changing to web offset in 1971. However, by 1978 it had downgraded to cheap newsprint and, as you'll see, a very limited approach to colouring. Charlie's Angels was illustrated by John Canning...
The Doctor Who strip in TV Comic by this time was a reprint from earlier issues. In the case of this story, it originally appeared in 1974 featuring the third Doctor, with art by Gerry Haylock. For this 1978 reprint, John Canning redrew some of the figurework to replace Jon Pertwee's Doctor with Tom Baker's!
The Kicktail Kid wasn't related to any TV show but was instead publisher Polystyle's attempt at a superhero strip. (Perhaps trying to compete with the numerous Marvel UK weeklies around at the time.) David Lloyd had been the original artist on the strip but this work is by someone else and I don't recognise the style.
TV Comic with Target also featured several humour strips of course, as the comic always did, mostly based on cartoon characters. One of the longest running in the weekly was Tom and Jerry, drawn by Bill Titcombe, which was on the back page of the comic that week.
With only 20 pages, TV Comic was relatively expensive at 10p, but it was still popular enough to survive for a few more years (when its print quality would improve again).
I've shown some pages from TV Comic recently, so here's a few from its rival, Look-In. Launched in 1971, Look-In was an immediate success and its content of pop culture features and strips was a template that many children's mags still use today.
This 1978 Christmas edition of "The junior TV Times" as it called itself kicks off with a cover by Arthur Ranson showing a mixture of the festive TV highlights scheduled for that year.
Inside, the contents were not actually that festive, but it's still worth showing some examples here. First off, a Christmas Benny Hill strip by Bill Titcombe...
Next, a non-festive but very dynamic Six Million Dollar Man strip drawn by Martin Asbury...
I can't pass up the opportunity to show pages from my favourite artist of adventure strips. It's the Famous Five, illustrated by Mike Noble...
Look-In was notable for its four-page pop-star pull-out, and this edition featured a stunning Kate Bush poster...
Although cringeworthy today, Mind Your Language was a sitcom about a classroom of racial stereotypes learning English. The comic strip version was drawn by Bill Titcombe who captured the actors' likenesses perfectly...
As it was "The Junior TV Times", Look-In was solely focused on ITV shows (and was even published by ITV back then) as this was before the TV guides included all channels. So, Look-In's three page feature on Christmas TV highlights only covered ITV, but it still gives you a good idea of what we were watching back then...
There'll be another festive comic tomorrow! Stay tuned!
In the previous post I showed an issue of TV Comic from 1952. This one is from 1977 and it's significantly different to the one from 25 years earlier. There are obvious changes in the content of course, as the nature of TV Comic was to reflect children's television of the day, but other changes, such as it no longer being a nursery comic, are also evident.
The biggest change in this period was its format. Although outwardly it looked like an A4 size comic, it actually folded out to a 16 page tabloid-sized A3 comic. This format had been instigated the year before (along with a temporary name change to Mighty TV Comic) and perhaps this was the publisher's way of trying to compete with Thomson's Beezer and Topper. If so, it was an odd, and perhaps misguided, notion. Tabloid comics were very much on their way out by this time and this experiment didn't last.
The cover of this issue isn't particularly Christmassy unfortunately, although the Basil Brush story gets a bit more festive when it continues onto the back page...
Opening the comic to its full A3 size, the first strip inside is Rod Hull and Emu, drawn by Bill Titcombe...
Mighty Moth, by Dick Millington, was never a TV character of course, but he still proved to be a favourite with the readers and ran in TV Comic for many years...
This issue featured various strips, such as Barney Bear, Popeye, Pink Panther, and more. Some new, some reprint from earlier issues. In the centre pages was Star Trek, not exactly using the massive format to its best advantage. By only reprinting two pages from the American Gold Key Star Trek comic every week it would have taken about three months to tell the full story. Art by the brilliant Alberto Giolitti.
The other adventure strip in this issue was Doctor Who, with art by John Canning. It'd be another two years before Marvel UK launched Doctor Who Weekly with a strip more in tune with the TV show...
On the inside back page; Tom and Jerry, one of TV Comic's most popular and long-running strips. Art by Bill Titcombe...
Any thoughts on this issue or Christmas comics in general? Post your opinions below!
Published on the very same day as the issue of Tiger I showed in the previous post, here's TV Comic No.993, being the Christmas issue for 1970. Tom and Jerry had taken over the cover position in the previous year and remained there for a long run. Artwork by Bill Titcombe, with the story continuing on page 2...
TV Comic featured several strips that were not TV shows and which were created specially for the comic. Mighty Moth was one such strip, enjoying a very long run drawn by Dick Millington...
Catweazle was a popular children's tv show at the time, starring Geoffrey Bayldon. The strip version in TV Comic was illustrated by Bill Lacey, father of humour artist Mike Lacey...
Texas Ted was another strip originated just for TV Comic, and was stylishly drawn by Frank McDiarmid...
Running across the top half of the centre pages at this time was Basil Brush, the popular TV puppet. The strip expanded the theme, setting Basil in his stately home and giving him a butler. Artwork by Chas Sinclair...
The comic often featured newly drawn strips of American cartoon characters. Here's The Bugs Bunny Show, again with art by Bill Titcombe I believe...
This doesn't have a festive theme to the story but I thought you might like to see that week's episode of Doctor Who, drawn by John Canning. Within a few weeks the strip would transfer over to Polystyle's new weekly, Countdown, who would give the Doctor a more sympathetic and sophisticated treatment...
On the back page, Popeye, drawn by Bill Mevin. It could have been easy for TV Comic to reprint the American Popeye strips (and they did, in the Popeye Holiday Specials) but to their credit they originated brand new pages for the weekly.
The final festive flashback is tomorrow! See you then.
