Too 'orrible for Odhams!

Over on his Kazoop! blog, Irmantas has shown Ken Reid's page of Dare-A-Day Davy that even the editors of Pow! considered too repulsive to print back in 1968. For the full story of this banned episode, visit this link now...
http://kazoop.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/banned-dare-day-davy-episode.html

Horror in the National Archives!

There's some fascinating revelations about the 1950s British anti-comics crusade over on the Down the Tubes blog today. No point in me reiterating it, so take a look for yourselves here:
http://downthetubes.net/?p=23475

You may remember that a few years ago I found some news items about the campaign that had appeared in the Daily Mirror in 1954. If you've never seen them they're hilarious in their paranoia, with the Bishop of Coventry comparing comics to Satan! Click on this link:
http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/1954-year-britain-got-horrors-over.html  

The Very Best of Black Bob

The collection of classic Black Bob strips mentioned here in May has now been published and, like the Dandy Wonder Dog of the title, it's a champion.

The Very Best of Black Bob is a solid value for money hardback with 208 pages for £9.99. Compiled by ex-Dandy editor Morris Heggie, who also provides an introduction and background info, the book reprints a good selection of Black Bob strips from the 1950s wonderfully illustrated by Jack Prout. Comic expert Ray Moore provides an index at the back of the collection with story titles, dates, reprint dates etc.


Inspired by the success of the MGM film Lassie Come Home the adventures of Black Bob began as a text story written by freelancer Kelman Frost in The Dandy in November 1944 and then as a picture-strip story in The Weekly News from 1946. These strips were later reprinted in The Dandy.

Black Bob was one of my favourite adventure strips as a young child and my Mum used it to teach me to read before I started school. Even back in the early 1960s the strip looked archaic and seemingly permanently set in the 1940s, but to me that was part of its charm. That and, of course, the clever collie known as Black Bob. I grew up in a house where pets were part of the family so the fictitious Black Bob became a friend along with the dogs and cats of my childhood.


Collies are apparently the most intelligent breed of dog, and I can verify that with the collie-cross dog I had for 18 years whose memory and understanding of language was superior to that of some children. However Black Bob exceeds them all, with his sharp mind and skills able to resolve dangerous situations in tales to delight and amaze. In his very first picture strip we're told "he knew very well how to open a car door" and later goes on to stop a runaway horse, fetch a fire hose to put out a burning rail truck, and fashion a crutch for a disabled tramp.


These heartwarming tales of selflessness and bravery from a dog were, I believe, inspirational for readers of The Dandy. If a "mere" dog could be so noble then surely we, as "superior" humans, could aspire to be the same or even better. Such stories of self-sacrifice and basic goodness were the backbone of Thomson adventure strips, particularly in the Black Bob tales.

Bob is a very sympathetic figure too. Often he becomes separated from his master Andrew Glenn, sometimes lost miles away, and the stories deal with his plight to be reunited with his owner. In this way the stories really pull at the heartstrings, which is not a bad thing to bring out feelings of compassion from the readers.



Of course, all this is assuming the readers actually like dogs. Those vain souls who are indifferent or hateful of animals probably never got the appeal of Black Bob at all and won't see the point of this collection. Perhaps people who don't like "old fashioned" looking strips won't like it either. That's their prerogative (and their loss in my opinion).

However for the rest of us The Very Best of Black Bob is a marvelous book for children, dog lovers, and collectors of nostalgia. I hope it proves to be a success and perhaps, just perhaps, will inspire D.C. Thomson (and Waverley Books) to produce The Complete Jonah next year.

The Very Best of Black Bob published by Waverley Books. £9.99 r.r.p.
ISBN 978-1-84934-028-1

Lowbrow redtop calls for Beano ban

The media's at it again. Redtop Sunday paper the News of the World is today attacking the new Beano character Uh Oh, Si Co because it may allegedly lead to the bullying of children with mental health problems. Although the newspaper fails to provide a shred of evidence that comics incite bullying, it manages to rant on about it for several paragraphs, roping in mental health organizers for soundbites.

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/scottish/scottish_showbiz/852506/Outrage-at-comics-new-angry-schoolboy-character-as-call-is-made-for-a-ban.html?postingId=854751

The article uses the usual method of dryly describing situations from the strip to create an alarmist story. It's a disingenuous technique because one could make any slapstick situation sound horrific by describing it in cold print. (I can just imagine such killjoys describing the old banana skin joke as "A banana skin was placed on the floor whereupon a young child slipped on it and other pupils cruelly laughed at his discomfort, caring nothing for the permanent back injuries that may have been sustained.")

In truth, Uh Oh Si Co (a spoof of the name Yu Go Oh from Japanese Manga) is exaggerated cartoon fun, drawn so over the top by the brilliant Nigel Parkinson that I fail to see how anyone could be offended by it. It's not mocking people with mental heath problems, it's just a lively cartoon strip that exaggerates Simon's reactions for comic effect.

Rich Johnston posted an excellent item about it on his Bleeding Cool site today, saying "Of course, if the Beano withdraw the character as a result of the tabloid whipped up outrage, the next week will see an article with the publishers criticised for “kow towing to the PC police.”

Uh Oh Si Co has only been running in The Beano for two weeks. Along with two other new strips, it's part of the latest Comic Idol feature where readers vote for their favourite to become a regular series. Presumably the strip will soon be rested to wait for the votes to come in, at which point the News of the World will presumably claim victory for "banning" the strip. So it goes.

Let's hope this latest pathetic media outrage leads to lots of extra sales for The Beano as people investigate to make up their own minds instead of believing the knee-jerk reactions of a downmarket gossip rag. Unfortunately I don't have that much faith in human nature and I suspect it's more likely the paper's 2,900,000 readers will believe what they're told to think. (Update: Yes, in retrospect that last sentence was a rather silly generalization for me to make, although the response from one commentator below was quite disproportionate in my opinion.)

1954: The year Britain got the horrors over comics

On 23rd September 1954 two Glasgow policemen were called out to witness an alarming sight: hundreds of children, some armed with knives and sharpened sticks, were patrolling a graveyard hunting a vampire.

Thus began the legend of the "Gorbals Vampire" and although, naturally, no vampire was found, a scapegoat for the children's behaviour was: imported American comic books. After this, the floodgates of paranoia opened and the church and media began attacking comics relentlessly.

Now the BBC are to revisit the story and expose some of the myths of the anti-comics propaganda of the Fifties. The programme, The Gorbals Vampire, will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 next Tuesday, March 30th, at 11.00pm.

Just how intense was the anti-comics crusade in the UK? Fierce and hysterical. American "horror comics" became completely demonized in the media and church leaders condemned the stories as being "evil" and actual products of Satan.

Other blogs are also reporting this news today so I thought I'd research it a bit more and find a few of the actual clippings from the newspapers of the day. Here are a sample, just from September to November 1954, starting with the Daily Mirror's reportage of the incident (above) and then the reports and opinions of the Daily Express as the paranoia swiftly reached fever pitch. Click on the clippings to see them in a larger and more legible size.








The tragedy of the story is that there was never any foundation that comics were the incentive for the churchyard incident. Not a shred of evidence that comics "warped" children. Millions of comics were sold, yet millions of readers grew up to be normal rational adults. But the seeds of doubt were sown, nasty malicious rumours spread by church leaders and newspaper editors that damaged the reputation of comics forever. The hysteria caused parliament to react. In 1955 the (Children and Young Persons) Harmful Publications Act came into force to forbid the importation or publication of horror comics in the UK that are likely to fall into the hands of children. (Although it didn't seem to prevent the resurgence of the imported horror comics in the 1970s.) Even to this day some people still think there was some truth to the "dangers" of comic books and even amongst some British comic collectors there is an attitude that American comics are inferior and vulgar.

The establishment loves to create demons. A century ago it was "Penny Dreadfuls", in the 1980s it was "video nasties", then video games, and now it's the Internet that's the current scapegoat. Religious leaders and the media are always exploiting the paranoia of the public to hide the unpalatable truth: that humanity is flawed and the dark side comes from within. It's easier to blame external forces that "warp" people rather than face the fact that humans are nothing more than animals one step up from savages.

As readers here may know, several years ago Martin Barker wrote a fantastic book on the UK anti-comics crusade entitled A Haunt of Fears. Exposing the anti-American propaganda behind the campaign it's a fascinating read and well worth tracking down if you can.

The BBC news item on the forthcoming Radio 4 programme:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8574484.stm