Whilst fondly remembered British comics such as TV Century 21, Eagle, and Valiant have rightly received the acclaim they deserved it seems there's one comic from that era that hardly gets a mention. I recently bought some old copies of Express Weekly / TV Express and I was pleased to discover what a quality product it was.
As information on the comic is so hard to come by I don't know a great deal about the publication. From what I can gather it started life as Junior Express (No.1 dated 4th September 1954), changed its title to Junior Express Weekly with No.39, simplified itself to Express Weekly with No.74, and finally settled upon being called TV Express from No.286, jumping into the fad of tv-inspired comics. (Its final issue was No.375, dated 6th January 1962.)
The issues I have are from the latter part of the run; a handful from 1959 to 1961. I have no idea what its early years were like but by this time it was obviously modeling itself on Eagle, with its large size, photogravure printing, layout, and mixture of strips and features. I'm usually of the opinion that imitations never live up to the original, but from these examples Express was a worthy opponent to Eagle.
As can be seen from the samples above, Ron Embleton provided many covers for the publication. (There is actually quite a bit of info on Embleton on the internet at least, such as this page which shows a little bit more of his Express artwork.) His Wulf the Briton strips were later reprinted by Marvel UK in their Forces in Combat weekly.
Embleton of course later worked on Stingray strips for TV Century 21 and illustrated the end title boards for the original Captain Scarlet tv show. (Those boards can be seen here.)
Another artist who worked on Express Weekly prior to TV21 was Mike Noble who illustrated The Lone Ranger comic strip (seen above). This strip shared the centre spread of Express with an educational feature (another idea copied from Eagle). Mike's work however had a great vitality to it even back then.
From what I can see, all of the artists on Express were highly talented, not least Mike Western. Mike is better known as the artist who drew The Wild Wonders for Valiant in the 1960s and Darkie's Mob for Battle in the 1980s, to name but two, but the sample shown above (from the No Hiding Place strip) proves his sharp style was well developed as early as 1960 at least.
When the title changed to TV Express the tv-inspired strips included Gun Law, Yogi Bear, No Hiding Place, a series of Danger Man text stories, and later Alfie and Bill (Alfie Bass and Bill Fraser from The Army Game). Not to forget Biggles, a 1960 tv series based on the books by W.E. Johns. (See www.biggles.info).
TV Express eventually merged into TV Comic in 1962. I'm mystified as to why the history of the comic doesn't seem to be as thoroughly documented as that of Lion, Hotspur, or many other adventure comics. Perhaps I just haven't come across the articles that have been written about it. As it underwent several changes in title and direction I assume sales were continually declining. Why? Perhaps its characters just didn't hook the readers? Perhaps it was considered to be an inferior imitation of Eagle? Perhaps its frequent shifts in direction cost it more readers than it gained?
Whatever the reason for its eventual demise, from what I've seen, Express was one of the best British weeklies of the period and it was certainly as good, if not better, than some of its more popular contemporaries.
Update: Thanks to Shaqui Le Vesconte (whose Technodelic website is well worth checking out) I've learned that the classic British character Jeff Hawke first appeared in Junior Express. Also, how could I have forgotten that Express was the home of Jet Morgan and those strips are currently being reprinted in the excellent Spaceship Away comic. .
I must admit I've never been a fan of war comics (mainly 'cos I'm not a fan of war!). However at least the seventies comic Battle Picture Weekly did go some way to try and portray the grittier side of armed conflict. (The marvelous anti-war story Charley's War being one standout strip of course.)
Now an enthusiast of Battle comic has just launched an impressive new website dedicated to the title. Over at Captain Hurricane's Best of Battle there are scans of some of the stories and articles on the history of the comic. It's a fine tribute to one of the best British comics of that era and well worth a visit.
http://www.bestofbattle.sevenpennynightmare.co.uk/
Following the successes of Wham! (1964) and Smash! (1966) Odhams were keen to expand their line of weekly "Power Comics" in 1967. In January they launched Pow! with Spider-Man as the lead strip, and a month later saw the arrival of a comic that was almost entirely Marvel reprint: Fantastic.
Fantastic No.1, which launched on Saturday February 11th 1967, had a different format to its three predecessors. Slightly smaller in size and on better paper, it featured a whopping 40 pages and a higher cover price (9d, compared to Smash's 7d for 28 pages). This made it three times more expensive than the 3d cover price of Thomson's perennial Beano and Dandy. Could it sustain a profit in the increasingly-crowded market of sixties comics? Sadly not for long, but it did gain a faithful following and served as a good introduction to Marvel comics characters.
The contents of the first year featured a set line up of Thor, X-Men, and Iron Man reprints, starting from their first appearances. As the X-Men stories themselves ran to 20 pages or more, each story was edited to run over two weeks. The same applied to the other strips depending on space. (This format set the template for US reprints in UK comics. It was later used by the early Marvel UK weeklies throughout the 1970s. Today the closest equivalent to Fantastic would be Panini's Marvel Legends monthly, which by coincidence even uses an almost identical line up: Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America, with complete unedited stories.)
The fourth strip in Fantastic was brand-new: The Missing Link. This Hulk-like creature was discovered in the African jungle by big-game hunter "Bull" Benson, brought back to England, and subsequently went on a rampage in central London, to be calmed only by beautiful sixties dolly-bird Lita Munro. All very King Kong obviously, but Luis Bermejo's artwork made the strip something special.
Perhaps the editor of Fantastic (Alf Wallace, pictured) felt the Link had limited possibilities story-wise, or perhaps the rumour that Marvel complained about the creature's similarity to the Hulk was true, but whatever the reason a change came about with issue 8. Resting at a secret research station, The Link was evolved by radiation into apparently a normal 20th Century man. Yet he still possessed the Link's strength, albeit now coupled with above-normal intelligence and the ability to fly. After a series of misadventures with the authorities this "man of the future" adopted the identity of "John Foster" and a dual existence as superhero Johnny Future, complete with costume.
Bermejo continued as artist throughout the run of the strip, which ended with issue No.51 with an extra-length 7 page story. Overall it was a very entertaining series and one which deserves reprinting. More on the strip can be read at this link.
Fantastic had some unique free gifts. Issue one gave away a soft plastic pendant (with cut-out pictures to slide inside) whilst issue two presented free stick-on scars. (Quite a gory gift for the period, but we wore them at school anyway!) Issue 53 had a "free Apollo Space Craft" in the form of a flat cardboard kit that when assembled showed details of the Apollo space capsule under a series of tabbed layers.
Another thing Fantastic is remembered for are the weekly superhero pin-ups that appeared on the back cover. Most of these were existing Marvel images, but some were drawn by Barry Smith and Steve Parkhouse right at the start of their careers. The drawings were not much better than fan-art but (as the Balder image shown here demonstrates) Smith's potential was beginning to surface.
Eight weeks after Fantastic appeared, Odhams launched a companion comic, Terrific. This actually presented a bit of a problem for the editors. In The Avengers strip in Terrific, Iron Man was wearing his red and gold armour, but he was still wearing his original clunky gold suit in the earlier Iron Man strips running in Fantastic. Obviously editors "Alf and Bart" felt this would confuse readers so they brought the story of Iron Man's new armour forward, and in the classic stories that followed they had his gold armour redrawn to look like the newer design. Unfortunately with awkward looking results, illustrated by the scan shown here comparing an original Tales of Suspense cover to a redrawn Fantastic cover.
With the "Power Comics" now at five titles, it proved to be too many comics for most readers to afford. Terrific folded after 43 issues, and with issue 52 Fantastic and Terrific became a merged title, featuring Thor, X-Men, The Avengers and Doctor Strange. As Wham! had merged into Pow! only a couple of weeks earlier, the writing was on the wall for the Power Comics. A desperate attempt to lure football fans was attempted with a football booklet pull-out but this was an unharmonious addition to a superhero comic and must have cost them even more readers. (Me for one!)
With the publishing giant IPC looming on the horizon like Galactus waiting to eat a planet, Odhams were doomed. All of Odhams remaining comics merged into one publication, giving it the awkward title Smash! and Pow! Incorporating Fantastic.
In the final issue of Fantastic the editors were cheerfully fatalistic: "It all has to come to an end SOME time! That's life!" Although one can't help thinking they expected it to last more than 89 issues! Still, it was a good run compared to some comics, and even today Fantastic is still highly regarded by fans of sixties comics.
40 years ago today the Daily Mirror ran this ad for Fantastic, the new weekly from Odhams. British kids were about to be introduced to the X-Men for the first time (assuming they hadn't already seen the imported Marvel Comics which some newsagents stocked in limited quantities). Not only that, but Fantastic was about to set a template for US reprints that Marvel UK would follow years later. More on the comic tomorrow; the 40th anniversary of Fantastic!
Click here and scroll down Shaqui's excellent web page to see the trade ad for Fantastic, plus find out what else was happening in the UK comics industry around that time.
(Click on the ad to see it larger.)
For those who asked to see more of my early work, here's a brief look back at one of my first regular professional strips from the days before "troll" was the name coined for social inadequates who post abuse on newsgrops. Derek the Troll started life as a submission for a cartoon competition run by Games Workshop. If I recall correctly although I didn't win the competition, the editors were interested in running the strip in their gaming magazine Warlock and paying me a contributor's fee for it. (The particular strip is the one shown here, titled It's Tough to be a Troll which appeared in Warlock No.7, dated Dec /Jan 1985/86.)
I should say here that I've never had any interest in role playing games so it felt a bit odd when the editor of the magazine asked me to contribute a full page Derek the Troll strip on a regular basis. Not that I was complaining, as it meant I was reaching a different audience than the children's comics I contributed to plus I retained the copyright on the character.
Derek the Troll had a relatively short run. I was asked to draw vignettes of the character to accompany their book review page in issue 8 (with Derek reacting with emotions ranging from joy to disgust, depending on the reviewer's opinion of the books) and the regular strip began in issue 9 (shown here) and ran until issue 13 (the final issue). Luckily by then the popularity of Derek meant the strip was shifted over to the company's leading magazine White Dwarf where it appeared every other issue for some reason (Nos. 87, 89, 91).
I can't remember why the strip ceased after that. There were a minority of readers who considered it "childish" and "immature" (probably teens who'd just grown out of Whizzer and Chips and didn't want to be reminded of that style) but it was popular with the majority of readers and the editors. In a letter to me in 1987 editor Mike Brunton said "Do you know that all work stops in the editorial and design offices when a package arrives from you? You really outdid yourself this time. That is the single best Derek I can remember seeing."
It's most likely that I stopped producing Derek because I was too busy on other comics. In 1987 Oink! was in full swing and I was contributing numerous pages per issue,(often writing scripts for others to draw in addition to my own strips) plus working on regular material for Marvel UK.
Whatever the reason was, I stopped drawing Derek the Troll 20 years ago. I intend to revive the character one day, when I find the time and suitable outlet. Curiously, after I dropped the troll strip a similar-looking character began appearing in Swedish comics under the name Herman Hedning (or to give him his English name, Marwin Meathead). Now I should point out that any similarity is pure coincidence. I've met Herman's creator, Jonas Darnell, and he was completely unaware of my character when he created his strip.
Here's another coincidence: Herman Hedning is the Swedish / Norwegian comic I contribute to with my strip Suburban Satanists! Funny old world innit? (And a good job too, or us funnybook creators would be out of business.) More on the Satanists, and the Norwegian comics scene in general, in another blog.
