For this penultimate Christmas post I've cranked up the Blimey-Timey Machine to travel back in time 80 years! This is the issue of Bubbles that was published this week in 1936.
Published by The Amalgamated Press (Fleetway), Bubbles was a weekly comic for the very young that ran from 1921 to 1941. As you can see, like many comics of the period, its content was full of racial stereotypes and references that may cause offence. In its defence, the characters are presented as equals to the white children, despite being caricatures. It was trying to promote racial harmony, albeit somewhat clumsily, and I can't help feeling it was more likely to exaggerate the differences between races.
I don't know who drew the cover. Herbert Foxwell was the original artist of The Bunty Boys but he died in August 1936 so this must be by someone ghosting his style.
This issue had 12 pages and was a mixture of prose stories and strips, as was the norm in British comics of the time. Here's one of the text stories; Dick the Boy Inventor. You don't hear anyone named Richard use that an an abbreviation these days do you?
On the facing page were two strips. According to Denis Gifford's books, The Children of the Forest was drawn by Vincent Daniel, and Tony the Orphan Boy by Anton Lock.
Bubbles featured quite a few adventure strips. Lonely Nan was by H.C. Milburn...
The centre pages, using spot colour, had a mixture of short humour strips. Here are some of them, artists unknown. (Did children really receive hedgehogs as Christmas presents in the 1930s?)
Here's another of the unfortunately-titled strips of the era. Art by P.J. Hayward...
On the back page, Peter the Paleface Brave and his chum Redflower. Art by Anton Lock again. Some of this is cringeworthy today, such as Redflower's pigeon English and the notion that "a White Redskin" should rule over Native Americans, but it is of its time and no malice is intended. That said, I hope we never go back to such stereotyping!
Tomorrow; the final blog post in this series!
Bubbles ran from 1921 to 1941 and this was the issue that was on sale exactly 80 years ago in 1936. Published by the Amalgamated Press (who would later become Fleetway), Bubbles was aimed at the 'nursery' age group that today would be called "pre-school comics".
Unfortunately, being a product of its time, there are quite a lot of racial caricatures in the comic. I found it somewhat disturbing because of it's very young demographic, indoctrinating infants to use racist slurs practically from the cradle. I'm sure it wasn't intended to be malicious, but it's still unsettling to read it from a 21st Century perspective. I've chosen not to show the more alarming strips but even the cover features some stereotypes. It could be argued however that the cover strip has a positive aspect in that it shows kids of all races being friends.
Inside the comic, there's an advert for a free gift in the following issue. I wonder if adults of 1936 saw free gifts as "tat" in the way that some modern collectors do? I'm sure the kids enjoyed the toy anyway, just as they do with today's gifts.
Bubbles had 12 pages (4 more than most A.P. comics) and a good variety of humour and adventure strips, plus prose stories. Here's one of the adventure serials, Lonely Nan, with a firework theme. And yes, if you owned a dog you had to have a Dog License back then.
The centre pages featured several short humour strips in spot colour. Fun at Mr.Croc's School seems to be a spin-off from Tiger Tim in The Rainbow comic.
Piggy and Wiggy, The Porker Twins...
Molly and her pet puppy Peeko. Keep the fireworks away from your dog, Molly! Good grief, nineteen thirties, you were reckless.
One thing you'll notice is how fireworks were treated so carelessly in these old strips, as though they were harmless lights rather than miniature explosives. All that would change a few decades later of course as the comics behaved more responsibly. These days, the Halloween issue has replaced the old traditional Firework issue of a comic. I can understand why times have changed, but firework comics made for some good visuals in comics.
I'll be showing another classic firework edition in my next post.
