Preview: ROY OF THE ROVERS Best of the 1960s

I'm currently reading The Best of the 1950s edition of Roy of the Rovers and it's truly superb with great reproduction, so I'll definitely be buying this 1960s follow-up. 

Roy of the Rovers: The Best of the 1960s actually begins with a story that begins at the end of 1959 which leads into 1960. There are also selected stories from other issues of Tiger from the early sixties when the series was on peak form. Sadly the collection only reaches 1966, which was before the ones drawn by Yvonne Hutton in 1967, one of the few women artists who worked in boys adventure comics of the time. Hopefully there will be another collection that will include some of her work. 

Nevertheless, this book does still contain superb work from cover to cover from the best in the business, beginning with the often undervalued artwork of Fred Holmes shown in the samples below. Joe Colquhoun returns to the strip later and we can see how his work became more dynamic and robust compared to his early style in the previous volume. 

Oh, and Bobby Charlton listed in the credits? Apparently he wrote the series for a while. I always thought it was just a sales gimmick and a staff writer actually did the scriptwriting but the book maintains that Mr.Charlton did it so there you go.

To use a football phrase, I'm over the moon that Rebellion are reprinting these strips as I've never read them before. (My reading of Tiger began in 1969 when Jag merged into it.) I have no interest in football in real life but I enjoy these strips very much. Strange that,... or more likely it's simply that Roy of the Rovers is more exciting than reality! 

Roy of the Rovers: Best of the 1960s goes on sale from 22nd August. Under review restrictions I can only show the first few pages of the book but these dramatic images by Fred Homes give you a great taste of comics of that era. Don't miss it!

• CREATIVE TEAM: Joe Colquhoun, Derek Birnage, Bobby Charlton  (w) Joe Colquhoun, Fred T. Holmes (a)
• RELEASE DATE: 22nd August 2019
• HARDCOVER, 148 pages
• PRICE: £19.99 (UK)
• ISBN: 9781781087183

The sixties are a defining decade for Great Britain. London is becoming the cultural mecca of the world, the Beatles are dominating the music charts, and in 1966 England will lift the World Cup for the first time. It’s also a period of great turmoil for Melchester Rovers and their super-striker captain, Roy Race; from a saboteur within the club burning down the dressing room, an obsessed fan trying to ruin their cup run and the Rovers crash-landing on a small South American Island, the team will have to face down problems which threaten their very existence! But with Roy Race at the helm, Melchester Rovers are always equipped to overcome the odds.The skipper’s leadership, experience and all-important left foot keep the Melchester faithful singing, and may just secure the Rovers a place in the 1966 F.A. Cup Final against the mighty Eastoke! The swinging-sixties come to life in this action-packed footballing epic! Experience the highs and lows on and off the pitch with Roy and Melchester Rovers, brought to you by comics’ legend Joe Colquhoun and World Cup winner Sir Bobby Charlton.

Available in print from: book stores, Amazon, and UK comic book stores via Diamond Available in digital from: Treasury of British Comics webshop & apps for iPad, Android and Windows 10

Christmas comics: LION (1973)

Sometimes, British comics that are heading for closure tend to deteriorate in quality, but even a year before its end, Lion was still full of good material. Even so, it obviously wasn't appealing to most readers but even at 14 (as I was then) Lion was still one of my favourite adventure comics of the time. 

Here are a few pages from Lion's final Christmas issue, published this week in 1973. The front cover is by Geoff Campion, one of IPC's best artists, illustrating a scene from that week's Spellbinder episode, written by Frank Pepper and drawn by Campion...

TV impressionists were very popular at the time, so Lion reflected this by having an impressionist who was also a spy! Marty Wayne, He's Heading for Fame, was drawn by Fred Holmes. (I don't think a Rolf Harris impersonator would be welcome at a children's party today though!)

It's a Fact was an irregular feature. Can anyone identify the artist? 

A Christmas theme wasn't appropriate to fit into all the adventure strips, but Robot Archie managed it. Art by Ted Kearon...

Time-travelling Adam Eterno found himself on the frontline on Christmas Day. Art by Solano Lopez...

On the back page, Lion's only remaining humour strip, Mowser, by the brilliant Reg Parlett...

Another trip back in time tomorrow! Which year will we arrive in? 

A look back at JET No.1 (1971)

In the 1970s IPC Magazines were determined to become the dominant force in British comics and produced numerous titles to achieve that aim. Sadly, many were relatively unsuccessful and short-lived, such as the boys adventure weekly Jet which managed just 22 issues.

Launched at the end of April 1971, Jet is perhaps most memorable today for being the comic where Ken Reid's excellent Faceache strip began. However, it's arguable that the fantasy serial Von Hoffman's Invasion was another very notable strip. Here's the first episode, with great artwork by Eric Bradbury...

Jet's 40 pages were a good mixture of adventure and humour strips, with the emphasis on the former. The strips were fairly traditional fare for the time, featuring sport, war, and suchlike. Here's the first page of football strip The Sludgemouth Sloggers by Douglas Maxted, another IPC regular...

Partridge's Patch was a gentle detective story about a rural copper. Art on episode one by Mike Western...

Sergeants Four, by Fred Holmes, featured four stereotypical English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish sergeants in lighthearted war stories.

Paddy McGinty's Goat, taking its name from a song popularised by Val Doonican at the time, featured a shape-shifting alien who spent most of his time as a goat. Not IPC's finest hour...

The full colour centre pages featured a humour strip, with Mike Lacey doing his best Baxendale impersonation drawing The Kids of Stalag 41. (Toni Goffe took over the art with No.2.) Here's Mike's splendid first episode...

Crazy Car Capers was clearly inspired by the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Wacky Races that was on TV at the time. Artwork by Solano Lopez...

Ken Reid's Faceache was the strip that proved to have longevity, continuing into the merged Buster and Jet and remaining a favourite in Buster for many years afterwards. Here's the very first story from Jet No.1. It's evident the page was originally drawn for the narrower IPC size (like Cor!! and Tiger) or someone gave Ken the wrong dimensions. There's been some resizing by an art assistant for Jet's wider page format and it throws the composition off a bit but it's still classic stuff... 

Bertie Bumpkin, by Terry Bave, was the other single page humour strip in Jet. Much of the humour came from Bertie's exaggerated accent and phrases, which were translated in footnotes...

Bala the Briton was a rousing historical/mythological saga in the style of Jason and the Argonauts. I'm unsure of the artist on this. Here's page one of the first four page story...

Other strips included Carno's Cadets, Kester Kidd, Adare's Anglians, and, from issue 2, The Dwarf.

Personally, I never found Jet that inspiring. I had every issue, as I bought just about every new IPC comic back then, but I didn't keep them for long. (I recently purchased this issue again.) Obviously the intended readership didn't care too much for the comic, as it merged into Buster after 22 weeks. It always felt like a diluted version of Valiant to me, (as did Thunder, another short-lived IPC weekly). Apart from Tiger, and to an extent Scorcher, I felt that IPC never really got to grips with boys adventure comics in the 1970s until the new wave of Battle, Action, and 2000AD came along. It took editors with vision, Pat Mills and John Wagner, to bring IPC up to date to reflect a changing culture.    

That said, I know Jet was appreciated by some, and despite any weaknesses in its scripts and direction it did contain some top class artwork. I hope you've enjoyed this glimpse through the the first issue.

The Valiant Book of Mystery and Magic 1976

The 1970s saw a rising interest in fiction dealing with horror and the occult. The Exorcist and The Omen in the cinema for example, The Pan Book of Horror being a popular series of paperbacks, and the relaxation of the Comics Code allowing vampires, werewolves and other horrors in American comics that were reaching more UK newsagents than ever before. Teens, adults, (and kids if they could access it) enjoyed nothing better than a good scary story. 

How could British comics join the fun? The Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act 1955 had forbidden the production of horror comics in the UK due to alleged effects on children, a kneejerk reaction to 1950s horror comic imports (see here). However, stories of the supernatural had continued to appear in British comics occasionally, although they tended to be very tame.

In 1975, IPC decided to publish a one-off hardback edition called The Valiant Book of Mystery and Magic. The closest thing they could get away with to a horror comic without being too graphic. Most of the stories featured The Spellbinder character; the old magician who had been the lead strip in Lion weekly. (By this time Lion had merged into Valiant.) However the book also contained several one-off mystery stories illustrated by IPC's top artists.

The book had 144 pages, mostly in black and white. The full colour lead strip, The Hand of Tuthoon, written by Frank Pepper and drawn by Fred Holmes, reintroduced readers to The Spellbinder, revealing how Tom Turville had awakened his ancestor Sylvester Turville from suspended animation.

The book also included one of the Spellbinder serials from Lion, edited into a 33 page adventure. The rest of the book featured all-new material. Perhaps the most intriguing strip was The Final Victim, an early collaboration between Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun several years before they created Charley's War for Battle. In The Final Victim, Colquhoun drew himself as 'Albert Weems', a comic artist down on his luck. Presumably the comic's managing editor 'J.J. Legrun' was based on IPC's Jack LeGrand. Here's the whole story...

Joe Colquhoun also illustrated some other material in the book, including two text stories, The Red House and Nightmare and the short comic story The Man on the Road...

Other great talent in the book included Eric Bradbury...

...Fred Holmes...

...and of course Geoff Campion, the main Spellbinder artist who also contributed some art for text stories and the endpapers...

The Valiant Book of Mystery and Magic was a one-off, which suggests it either didn't sell very well or IPC decided to shy away from the subject. It's a fantastic book though, as you can see from the examples I've shown here. Well worth seeking out if you don't have a copy. 

There's one hugely important thing about it that you may have noticed; the stories all carry writer/artist credit boxes. Hats off to the editor for doing this as it was definitely not usual IPC policy at the time, and wouldn't be seen again until 2000AD started publishing credits a couple of years later.