This week in 1916: SPARKS No.126

Here's a comic that the kids of 1916 were reading, exactly 100 years ago this week. Sparks was published by James Henderson and Sons Ltd. and ran from 1914 to 1917. Like most comics of the time, it consisted of 8 tabloid pages, although by the time this issue appeared the format had become shorter, almost square in shape.  

The cover strip, clearly inspired by Chips' Weary Willie and Tired Tim, was The Funny Adventures of Lemon and Dash. Like Willie and Tim, they were two wandering tramps getting into amusing situations every issue. The artwork was by Louis Briault (1885 to 1944), who also drew for comics such as The Funny Wonder, Comic Cuts, and Comic Life.

Like most comics of the day, Sparks carried a 50/50 split of prose stories and comic strips. The centre pages featured numerous short strips and gag cartoons crammed across the spread. Here are just some of them. as always, click on the pages to enlarge them.

One of the text stories, The Arch Rogue, featured Superman's catchphrase over 20 years before the Man of Steel even appeared. Up, up, and away!

On the back page, another mixture of strips and cartoons. Daniel Dauber was drawn by Walter Booth, who had a long career in comics throughout the first half of the 20th Century. I'm afraid I don't know the identities of the other artists, who are sadly all anonymous.

This week in 1929: THE JOKER No.86

I recently bought a run of issues of The Joker from 1929 so you can expect to see a few more samples on my blog from time to time. This is issue No.86, dated 22nd June 1929, the issue that kids would have been reading 86 years ago this week.

Published by The Amalgamated Press, the comic's format is typical of the early 20th Century: tabloid, no colour, 8 pages equally divided between comic strips and prose stories. Thanks to the research by the late Denis Gifford I'm able to identify the artists of these strips.

Firstly that cover strip. Very racist by today's standards, Jim Crow and Oliver Twitter are a typical twosome of comics of the time, unemployed, sometimes homeless, wandering from one situation to the next. The name Jim Crow is particularly jarring as it derives from the slang term describing anti-black laws in America. Despite some of it being uncomfortable to read today the strip has excellent artwork by Percy Cocking.

Inside, one of the text stories was Burke, Chief of Police, a complete mystery tale. 

As with other comics of the time, he centre pages feature an array of short strips. Here are two of them, Our Wandering Boy by Albert Pease...

...and Tilly Tappit the Typist by Louis Briault. Note the blatant plug for two of The Joker's companion comics... 

On the back page, The Cruise of the Winklepin by H.C. Milburn. It's yet another variation of the wandering twosome that had been popularised by Weary Willie and Tired Tim in Chips. This time the spin on the theme was that the wanderers had a boat.

I know posts on pre-war comics aren't very popular amongst most visitors to this blog but I think it's important to show the history of British comics and to bring the work of those early artists to modern readers.  I hope some of you enjoy seeing them anyway. Please leave a comment below with your thoughts/opinions.