Over on the Down The Tubes website, John Freeman has interviewed Leah Moore and John Reppion on the revival of The Steel Claw, The Spider etc for their book Albion. Click here to read it. While you're there, check out the rest of the site, which carries loads of info on British comics and includes listings of comics that are in the shops now. Who sez the UK comics industry is dead?
It came as a nice surprise to find that there's a plug for this site in the pages of the new Judge Dredd Megazine (No.255, £2.99). "Excellent comics blog" sez Matthew Badham. Therefore in the spirit of mutual back-slapping here's a reciprocal plug from me for the latest Meg.
For my money, the Judge Dredd Megazine is now better than it's ever been. No, seriously. I thought that before they gave my blog a free promotion to thousands of their readers. Honest! And I'd take a Judge Dredd lie detector test to prove it.
I must admit that up until a few years back the Megazine was never on my must-buy list. It was one of those comics I wanted to like, and would buy it occasionally to support it, but it always seemed a poor cousin to 2000 AD. Don't get me wrong; I've always been a big fan of the Judge Dredd concept and its social satire. (I even wrote one of the first, if not the first, retrospectives on Dredd 'way back in 1978.) It was the rest of the Megazine that didn't grab me too much.
What hooked me was the revamp the Megazine had several years ago, when it was boosted up to 100 pages and began including more new material plus articles on other pop culture. At last it seemed the title was finally living up to its Megazine status plus evolving into the sort of European-style comic I've always admired.
Unfortunately, a lot of the feature material did seem like padding, as did the choice of reprint material. My respect for the anti-war strip Charley's War is second to none, but it was incongruous in the pages of a Judge Dredd comic. (Though I urge you to buy the splendid Charley's War hardbacks from Titan Books.) Presumably falling sales brought about a budget cut and last year the Megazine dropped down to 52 pages. But you know what? It's better for it.
With the resizing, the price also dropped and editorially the comic is tighter and seems more confident. The strips are mostly new, (only six pages of reprint) and the articles more relevant. One admirable new addition is a spotlight feature promoting small press and upcoming talent (hooray!), - although those contributors are apparently not paid (boo!). Even so, it's a great showcase for the small press and even raised the curiosity of a cynical old veteran like me enough to buy some of those new titles from Smallzone and the like.
The current issue of the Megazine has a great cover by Steve Roberts, whose work improves with each contribution, even though a few blinkered fanboys scream "Ew! Too cartoony!" when it appears. (Take it from me Steve, when the day of Ragnarok comes all the people who like "cartoony" comics will become Space Gods and those that hate it will devolve into cat litter.)
Steve also draws one of the interior strips, Black Atlantic, written by one of the Dan Abnetts. I say that because Dan Abnett writes so much stuff that he must be working alongside a bunch of Dan Abnett clones or Dan Abnetts from the future or something. Either that, or he's just hyper-talented and organized. But he works in comics for Crom's sake. He's not supposed to be organized! ;-)
Other strips include the Judge Dredd lead strip by Robbie Morrison and Lee Garbett, a Dredd reprint by John Wagner and Greg Staples, the Trilithon small-press strip by Stephen Prestwood, Devlin Waugh by John Smith and Peter Doherty, and The Simping Detective by Simon Spurrier and Frazer Irving. Plus articles on current tv crime shows, film reviews, and a guide to self-publishing.
Anyway; Judge Dredd Megazine No.255. £2.99. Available in all good newsagents and even some bad ones. Buy it.
In a few weeks 2000AD (and Judge Dredd) celebrate their 30th anniversaries. I'll be spotlighting the early days of the comic here at the appropriate time.
Official 2000AD / JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE website: http://www.2000adonline.com
Not to be confused with the Polystyle comic with the same name which came later, the 1972 weekly Target was a glossy magazine published by The New English Library Ltd.
The intention of Target, as proclaimed in the editorial of issue one, was to "incorporate all the facets of popular reading into one magazine". The reasoning being that instead of buying separate magazines on football, music and cinema etc the kids would get their fix from one mag, - and have some comic strips thrown into the mix too, presumably so they wouldn't bother with Lion or Buster.
The strip content was low; only six pages in total, but at least there was one bold idea there: Bovver Boy. In the 1970s, before punks became the new hate figures, media outrage was directed at skinheads (and the violent and racist aspect of their culture was rightly condemned). Other comics had shied away from reflecting this aspect of society but Target turned a Doc Martin-booted "bovver boy" into the lead character of his own strip. From what I've seen, the racism aspect wasn't mentioned, and the character became little more than a traditional comic bully, but even so Bovver Boy seemed very contemporary for 1972.
(A couple of people have asked me if Bovver Boy was an inspiration for my Tom Thug character. Basically no, as I only had the first two issues of Target and didn't give him any thought when I created Tom twelve years later. But maybe there was a subconscious influence all the same.)
With Bovver Boy, and articles on Hells Angels and The Who, Target was clearly trying hard to be streetwise. However, the magazine seems to have been most remembered for its free gift. It became known as "The mag that gave away those fish eggs". In issue one "The Powder of Life" was attached to the cover. This contained "microscopic eggs of a small marine animal - the Artemia". Adding these to water eventually hatched them out! (The scan above explains the full process.)
The free gift for issue two was a sachet of food for the fish. Yep, if you didn't buy Target No.2 the fish would starve to death! (Surely a sales gimmick that today would have the magazine condemned immediately.)
The fish did indeed "come to life"; the largest being about 2cm long. What I didn't know then was the Artemia were the creatures we'd seen advertised in American comics for years: Sea Monkeys! (No, unlike in the ads, they didn't have limbs or human domestic habits.)
The concept of Target as a magazine wasn't bad, and it was certainly slick, well designed, and intelligently written, but it didn't survive much longer than a year as I recall. (If anyone knows exactly how long it ran for please let me know.) Perhaps the problem was that readers preferred magazines for their specific interests rather than skipping past articles that didn't interest them? Another factor must have been the cover price. At 10p it was twice the price of Look-In, its nearest rival, which was in exactly the same format.
In a way, Target was ahead of its time, as the concept of a youth magazine with a minority of strip content is the norm today! A case of missing its target audience by thirty five years perhaps? ;-)
A curious item in the history of British comics is the weekly comic Wonder published in 1968/69. I first saw this title whilst visiting the Royal Show in 1968 as it was on sale at a stall there (presumably Esso's). Anticipating buying it from my local newsagent when I returned home, I unfortunately never saw it again! What I didn't know then was that Wonder was only available at Esso garages.
I did eventually find a copy at a comic mart several years ago, albeit only half complete with the centre eight pages (of sixteen) missing. However, what can be ascertained from those pages is that it was a high quality product.
Little seems to be known about the comic. It was published weekly on Fridays, cost 6d (2 and a half pence) carried a number but no date, and was edited by Roberta Leigh, creator of sixties puppet series Space Patrol. In fact another of Leigh's puppet creations, Wonder Boy and Tiger appeared as the cover strip. (Esso had been using imagery of a tiger for many years to denote roaring power, and the phrase "Put a tiger in your tank" was a popular slogan of the sixties.)
As these pages from Wonder (issue 13) show, the approach was very much in the Buster/ TV Comic style, along with rhyming couplets for strap lines of the kind associated with DC Thomson comics. Apparently the comic only ran for a year, although whether that was due to poor sales or the limitations of a 12 month contract is unknown. However, it remains an interesting oddity and a title well worth seeking out.
If anyone has any more info on Wonder (particularly what appeared in the centre pages which I have missing) please add a comment below.
In its continuing intention to spotlight British talent for the benefit of its American readership, the latest issue of Image Comics' Elephantmen (which came out yesterday) carries a three page colour article on the artist Mike Noble (b.1930). The feature is well illustrated with art from Noble's Fireball XL5 pages from TV Century 21 so today's blog will focus on his other work, as a companion piece to the article in Elephantmen. However, I'll be linking to other websites that feature Noble's work so click on the links for more information.
I've been an admirer of Mike Noble's artwork since I was six years old when, in 1965, he took over the art task on the Fireball XL5 strip in TV Century 21 from issue No.6. Although it's often Frank Bellamy's work that fans love most from that comic, for me the standout talent was Noble. Mike's work had a dynamic energy and excitement that made even the most ridiculous plots compelling to read. Most importantly, although he never cheated on detail, his layouts were clear and easy to follow: an essential element of any children's comic.
Mike had a long run on Fireball XL5, but he also had a stint on the Captain Scarlet strip for TV21, producing some striking covers (such as the one shown on this blog). He also illustrated most of the Zero X strips for the same comic during the same era (late sixties). One of those strips that made an impression on me was the one shown here; an implausible episode on the "Planet of Bones" featuring a living dinosaur skeleton. Again, Mike turns a daft script into a dramatic and memorable scene.
As TV21 began to wind down, Mike did less for the title, but did have a respectable run on the Star Trek strip, producing some eye-catching covers such as the one I've scanned here. In 1971 he moved over to the new Look-In comic (edited by ex-TV21 editor Alan Fennell) to produce fantastic work on the two page Timeslip strip. (Samples of which can be found at this site.) The strip offered Noble an opportunity to move away from futuristic settings and illustrate various periods in history. His next strip for Look-In, Follyfoot, was set firmly in the present day with no sci-fi whatsoever. I'm showing a centrespread from that series here. Unfortunately this page was printed slightly off-register but it's a great example to show how busy yet easy-on-the-eye Noble's layouts were, and how he was able to expertly draw any environment, from inter-planetary action to domestic adventure.
As can be seen from these few examples, Mike was a master of colour art, and in the days when most British comics were in black and white he was rightly given the opportunity to shine on the few colour pages they had. However he did produce black and white too, notably on the Robin of Sherwood and Worzel Gummidge serials for Look-In and also on a mostly-forgotten strip for Cor!! (Four Alone on The Abandoned Island was one of Cor's rare adventure strips and I think Mike only drew the first three chapters or so. The example above is from Cor!! No.1)
Mike Noble is mostly retired now although he did return to the world of Gerry Anderson in the 1990s drawing covers and colour pin ups for Fleetway's Thunderbirds comic (and their companion comics Captain Scarlet and Stingray). The pages were as vigorous as ever. In November 2004 he was one of the guests at the Bristol Comic Expo, (incredibly his first comic convention) and in his interview he came across as a true professional. Afterwards it was an honour to meet and shake the hand of someone that I (and I'm sure many others) consider to be one of the most talented and versatile comic strip artists of any generation.
As I said at the top of this item, I've been a fan of Mike Noble's work since 1965, but he's been in the business for longer than that. For a great interview with the man visit the excellent Technodelic website here.
Update: 3/2/2007: Due to it being such a memorable scene for old readers of TV Century 21 I've uploaded a scan of the "ring of snowmen" page from the Fireball XL5 strip from 1965. One of Mike Noble's greatest!
