Starting next Saturday, 12th September, The Guardian newspaper will be giving away a reproduction of a classic British comic every day for a week. As there is no Sunday edition of the paper, The Observer will also be involved in the scheme on September 13th.
The classic reprints all come from the Egmont and D.C.Thomson stable of comics, and appear to be mostly 1980s editions. Kicking off with a copy of girls' comic Jackie next Saturday, followed by The Beano No.2000 (from 1980) on Sunday, the rest of the week will see copies of Roy of the Rovers, Bunty, Dandy, Tammy, and Whizzer and Chips presented with the paper.
Although the free comics don't begin until next Saturday, today's edition of The Guardian begins their celebration of British comics with an article in the Guardian Weekend magazine supplement. The article, by Jon Ronson, tells of his visit to the offices of D.C. Thomson and his task of writing an episode of The Numskulls for The Beano. The nine page feature also includes the reactions of a few of today's kids to the classic comics The Guardian will be giving away. Quite pleasingly, they all seemed to enjoy the stories of yesteryear, which perhaps suggests that if such comics were revived in some form or another there might actually still be a market for them.
The articles can be read online at The Guardian website:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/sep/05/funny-business-free-comics-jon-ronson
Monday Sept.14th will see The Guardian Media section run a feature on the recent nostalgia wave for comics (specifically the Egmont Classic Comics quarterly which will soon be publishing a Misty special) with interviews with Paul Gravett, myself, and others.
Whilst American comics and adult graphic novels are rightly praised by the media these days, the same respect is usually missing for children's British comics, as if producing entertainment instead of thought-provoking narratives is somehow less important. I'm about as far removed from being nationalistic as one could be, but we are in danger of forgetting the history of our own comics, which would be a huge loss because there has been some fantastic material produced over the last 100+ years. Will this week-long celebration of UK comics have a knock-on effect to give such comics greater respect? Will it stir publishers into testing the market with a new all-comic title for children? I'm not entirely optimistic but time will tell.
In a bold development for the fanzine of British comics, Crikey! has boosted its page count from 48 to 84, increased frequency from quarterly to bi-monthly, and has upgraded from black and white to glossy full colour stock for just a one pound increase in cover price. Most welcome of all, from the current issue (No.11) Crikey! is now available in Borders bookshops and selected newsagents across the UK.
The latest issue came out last week and I was pleased to see that even my corner shop had a copy. Contents of Crikey! No.11 are a good mixture showcasing the variety of British comics. There are interviews with Dez Skinn on his career, Steve Holland on his new Bear Alley Books venture, Pete Nash on Striker, and a talk with Euan Kerr on his long stint as editor of The Beano.
Other features include David A. Roach expertly writing on the life of artist David Wright; Tony Ingram's third part of the History of Marvel UK; Pat Mills on Tammy (corrected from the article in a recent issue); William Rudling on Jeff Hawke; Stephen Poppitt on Charlie Peace, and much more. Plenty to read for £4.99.
It's a vast improvement on some of the flaws of the earlier issues. It's lost most of the "Oi, do you remember when..." type of material that relied on hazy memories instead of proper research and it's good to see the writers adhere to the wise adage "Write about what you know" instead of making wild assumptions about the gaps in their collections. There are still a couple of mistakes but as far as I could see, nothing alarming. (Odhams began their Marvel reprints with The Hulk in Smash! not the Fantastic Four in Wham! as one article claims.) The coverage of a wider variety of comics suits Crikey! well and editors Glenn B. Fleming and Tony Ingram are to be congratulated on their accomplishments.
Filling 84 pages every two months is quite a task and I hope Crikey! continues to prosper and live up to its potential. If you don't have a Borders near you, or your independent newsagents don't stock it you can still order the magazine online directly from the publishers, and subscribe to future issues:
http://www.crikeyuk.co.uk/ed.html
A few days ago I posted a blog heralding the publication of Gerry Anderson's Century 21 Annual - a 96 page hardback (cover above) priced £8.99 that looked set to be a real nostalgia treat. Sadly, it's not happening. My thanks to Geoffrey Ellis who forwarded me this post from the Fanderson Yahoo group, written by Chris Bently...
"Sorry to put a dampener on expectations but the annual project was actually
cancelled a couple of months ago. Pre-orders from retailers (always the make
or break for books in the publishing business) were minuscule so the plans
had to be dropped. Although we did have the contents all mapped out, the
Century 21 team have done no work on this whatsoever beyond the cover, which
was designed back in March. I don't know why Amazon and other retailers are
still advertising it.
'Century 21 Volume 3: Escape from Aquatraz' IS still happening though and
we've already started work on it. Should be out at the end of November -
just in time for Christmas!"
Bank Holiday Monday always used to feature movie clip-show Disney Time on tv so maybe it's appropriate that the breaking news for today is that Disney are to acquire Marvel Entertainment in a shares and cash deal for $4 billion (£2.5bn). Yes, Mickey Mouse and Spider-Man under the same roof!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8230504.stm
More details from the link above and also thousands of other websites as the internet cracks in half with speculation about what this surprising business deal will mean in practice.
My guess is it'll be business as usual for Marvel Comics with hardly any visible changes. Don't worry, - Goofy isn't going to join the Fantastic Four anytime soon.
...OR IS HE?
Once again comics are in the news and, once again with monotonous predictability, it's the right-of-centre papers that are exaggerating another story into "political correctness gone mad".
This time the subject is the new Dennis and Gnasher cartoon series which starts on CBBC on September 7th. The Sun revved up its readers into purple faced rage on August 12th with an article entitled "Dennis De-Menaced" which claimed that for the new cartoon the BBC have "banned" catapults from the tv show, that Dennis would no longer be slippered by his Dad, and "even his dog Gnasher has been targeted. He will no longer sink his teeth in people or engage in his trademark wanton destruction".
The Sun's story followed a traditional psychological redtop technique: printing alleged political correct quotes from anonymous "insiders" and "sources" to get their readers revved up, then a counter-claim from a named source at the end of the article. But by the the time the readers have reached the final quote they've already absorbed the myth and the red mist has descended.
This news was picked up by other sources, including The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Digital Spy, and right-wing organizations such as the loathsome National Front, all seeing the story as another indication that Britain had gone to the dogs. And their readers believed them.
Numerous angry comments online followed the reports. One poster to the This is Bristol news site said:
"When will the BBC stop employing Guardian reading socialist luvvies who pander to the weakest and wooly of the middle classes? The world has gone man." (sic)"One of the best characters from my youth - destroyed!" stated a contributor to The Sun's forum, whilst another declared "this p.c stuff is going mad and must be stopped!!! soon we wont be able to breathe without it being either racist or bad for children!!"
If only any of these half-wits had bothered checking their sources before falling for another myth they'd have seen a different story. For a start, corporal punishment isn't in the cartoon because it hasn't been used in the comic for a generation! Hardly the fault of the BBC if society moves on.
As for the other complaints, if The Sun's readers had looked at the CBBC Dennis and Gnasher website instead of being played for fools they may have noticed a few things in the trailer which crush the myths outright.
"Gnasher... will no longer sink his teeth in people".... WRONG!
"They have banned The Beano's bully from using his trusty catapult" - WRONG!
"Dennis also looks less menacing, with his scowl replaced by a charming boyish grin" - WRONG! (Of course he does have other expressions too, including a grin, - but it'd be pretty dull animation otherwise!)
Some papers even claimed Dennis was no longer a "menace", despite the Dennis and Gnasher website describing him as "the Number One menace in Beanotown".
Today The Daily Telegraph moved the panic-mongering up a notch by quoting the daughters of the late Davy Law (Dennis the Menace's original artist) as saying their father would have been "horrified by the transformation". This is exactly the same technique The Daily Mail used two years ago when it wrongly claimed Desperate Dan was being toned down, quoting Dudley Watkins' daughter as saying her father would have been "horrified". Quite a distasteful practice to involve the families of the artists in this way in my opinion.
The way in which the national press can so easily and rapidly manipulate their readers with disinformation is quite disturbing. Yes, the "new" Dennis does look different to the way he was in the 1950s, but what these media reports ignore is that any changes have happened gradually over the past 50 years, not overnight by the BBC as they suggest. But if they admitted that they wouldn't have a story to pad out the pages of their bulging papers, and they wouldn't be achieving their usual remit - winding up "Little Englanders" into such a beetroot-faced apoplexy that they feel the right-of-centre papers are their only comfort zone.
Of course there have been some changes made for the transition to tv, but they mainly seem to be cosmetic ones for the new art style. The Beano will be reflecting any changes in style from the issue on sale this Wednesday. The Dennis and Gnasher strip expands to four pages (drawn this week by Nigel Parkinson) and a souvenir booklet about the new tv cartoon is one of the free gifts. The Beano website has also had a makeover recently, with more inside info and other tweaks.
The official Dennis and Gnasher website is here:
http://www.dennisandgnasher.com/
...and the Dennis and Gnasher Annual 2010 will be in bookstores next week.
What a shame none of the newspapers reported the positive aspects of the story: being proud of Dennis the Menace, a character that has endured for over 50 years by only making minor concessions to a changing society. A British comics character that is once again crossing over into television instead of the other way around. And perhaps, just perhaps, they might wish the tv series well and hope it boosts the sales of The Beano, - a long established British comic that those same traditionalists would be "horrified" to see go.
