Today's Daily Mirror begins reprinting the 1995 Garth story Sub Mission, written and drawn by Martin Asbury, with new colours by Martin Baines.
The serial originally ran in the Mirror from 8th June to 16th August 1995. As the paper reprints two strips a day it means Sub Mission will only run for about a month before the next story starts. For reasons best known to the Daily Mirror, they're not reprinting each serial in sequence so it's anyone's guess which story will follow it. Not that it really matters of course as the serials are self-contained stories.
I'd still like to see some Steve Dowling Garth strips reprinted, but the Mirror only focuses on Frank Bellamy and Martin Asbury reprints.
You can follow the Daily Mirror comic strips every day in the newspaper or online at the website:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/cartoons/
Time was when the Daily Mirror had so many new strips they couldn't all fit onto one page, and that was back in the 1940s when the paper only had 8 pages a day. Comic strips were considered high priority then, to boost the spirits and provide escapism during World War 2. These days, the public (and publishers) have a lower opinion of comic strips, with them fighting for space on the Mirror's horoscope page and with six of the strips being reprint.
Garth has been a reprint for several years now, and this week the Daily Mirror began reprinting the Scourge of God serial from 1989. The script is by Jim Edgar, the art by Martin Asbury, with new colours by Martin Baines.
I've compiled the story so far for you above from the Mirror dated 23rd to 26th January. (Click on it to see it full size.) After reading that you can check out the latest episodes in the Daily Mirror today and every day or online at their website...
http://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/cartoons/garth/
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!
The original run of D.C. Thomson's The Wizard (as a prose story paper) was from 1922 to 1963, before merging into Rover. Seven years later, Thomson revived the title as a comic (or "picture story paper" as they preferred) on 7th February 1970. Here's a few pages from that first issue...
The cover was quite simplistic but it certainly grabbed the attention. Inside, the first story was a sci-fi serial Soldiers of the Jet Age, set in the then-futuristic world of 1990! It was drawn by Martin Asbury fresh off his stint on TV21. Even back in 1970 I remember thinking how old fashioned this strip felt for a SF story. The 'Jet Age' sounded very dated to kids who had watched man step on the Moon a year earlier.
The next strip was Scrappy, A Boy All Alone. A waif and stray pursued by the Welfare Officer. Publishers D.C. Thomson did this sort of strip really well and the art by George Ramsbottom captured the right atmosphere. Here's page one of the three page story.
The sole comedy strip in issue one was Trooper Bo-Peep - He's After a Sheep. It's ok, - his intentions were honourable. A ram accidentally has a satchel of important plans hooked to its horns and the soldier tries to retrieve them every week. Not the best strip to have appeared in a comic, but good art by Geoff Jones.
Like Whizzer and Chips, The Wizard had a middle section; The Wizard Football Special. However it ran over 13 pages so couldn't be removed without missing a page. The section featured several football stories including Cool Kragg...
...a prose story illustrated by Mike Lacey...
...and every week a footballer's life story in the centre pages. Art by Barrie Mitchell...
The Voice That Ran the Rangers was an intriguing football mystery, with nice strong art by Bill Mainwaring. Here's page one of the story...
Back to the main part of the comic with Out Of The Ice He Came; an odd story of a failed self-sacrifice/suicide in the Antarctic preserving someone in ice for years, after which he becomes a guardian of explorers. Art by Alan Pollack.
The final strip in issue one was Slave of the Ring. A boxing story of a youth and his cruel step-father. The artwork is fantastic, but I don't know who drew it. Anyone out there have any ideas?
On the back page, an ad for No.2...
...and here's the very gift that was given away the following week...
This incarnation of The Wizard lasted until 1978, when it merged into Victor. Along the way, Wizard had absorbed Rover, as though enacting revenge for that story paper swallowing up the original Wizard years earlier.
If you're interested in the history of the earlier version of The Wizard, Derek Marsden and Ray Moore authored an excellent book on the story paper a few years ago. More info here:
http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/review-this-was-wizard.html
Back in 1989 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the moon landing, Polystyle Publications gave us a comic themed around science fact and fiction. Its name was Zero-G.
Of course Polystyle were famous for publishing TV Comic, Pippin and Countdown / TV Action but Zero-G may be new to you. It'd be understandable if you missed it as there was only this one issue published as a Holiday Special. After the summer of 1989 it vanished from the shelves as though it had never existed.
The contents of this 48 page special contained a mixture of factual articles on space exploration and a good selection of complete adventure strips. However, the strips were all reprints from the 1971 comic Countdown.
Although most of Countdown's strips had been based on TV shows it also sometimes featured all-new complete sci-fi stories with no connection to any television series. It was these strips which were collected into the Zero-G Holiday Special. Great material too, with artwork by Brian Lewis and Martin Asbury.
There was also a four page text story Dangerous Friend reprinted from the Countdown Annual 1972 that had been laid out differently. This Martin Asbury illustrated tale featured the cast of the Countdown ship, the originated strip from the comic of that name.
Talking of layouts, the strip Murder on Ice bizarrely broke its continuity halfway through to feature a few joke cartoons, which seemed a bit foolish and unnecessary.
Was Zero-G intended to spin off into a regular comic? Possibly not, as there wouldn't be enough non-TV reprint left to fill the pages of an ongoing title, unless Polystyle would be willing to finance new material. That seemed unlikely, given that the Holiday Special was obviously done on a limited budget. Even the rocket icon on the cover had been lifted from the old Countdown logo. Times must have been hard not to afford a one inch drawing of a new rocket.
So the Zero-G Holiday Special was a here today, gone tomorrow publication, passing like a comety candle in the wind burning up on re-entry lost in splashdown, add your own metaphorical analogy thing. Like Polystyle's parrot it had ceased to be.
Saturday's edition (9th June 2012) of the Daily Mirror will begin reprinting the Garth story Ship of Secrets which originally ran in the paper from 17th January 1977 to 29th April 1977.
Reprints of Garth have been running in the Daily Mirror since February 2011, showcasing two old daily strips per day. So far they've featured strips illustrated by Frank Bellamy and newly coloured by Martin Baines (see interview here). Reflecting the attitudes of newspapers of the 1970s, the strips often featured nudity, and have been appearing uncensored in the modern reprints. (See example below, from the 1972 story People of the Abyss, which concluded today.)
A number of Frank Bellamy stories have appeared over the past 16 months, such as The Bubble Man and The Spanish Lady, albeit not always in the original order of stories. (Not that it matters too much, as each serial is self contained anyway.) Not every Bellamy Garth story has been reprinted yet but from tomorrow Ship of Secrets will see a run of strips drawn by Martin Asbury, who took over the Garth series when Frank Bellamy died in 1976. Whether or not the remaining Bellamy strips will be reprinted remains to be seen.
Here's how part one of Ship of Secrets appeared originally, in the Daily Mirror from 17th January 1977...
