More than Mere Ornament: Reclaiming 'Jane' (1 of 4) by Adam Twycross

Jane was a newspaper strip that first appeared in the Daily Mirror in December 1932. Created by Norman Pett, it was originally a daily gag strip, but was redeveloped as a continuity series in 1938. It developed an increasingly erotic edge, and became the most popular British comic strip of the Second World War (Chapman 2011, p.38), with its popularity boosted by republication in a series of forces newspapers and the arrival of spin-off publications and stage shows. In 1948 Mike Hubbard replaced Pett as principal artist, and the series continued for a further eleven years before Jane’s story finally concluded in October 1959.

In both popular and academic discourse, Jane is typically remembered in uncomplicated terms. The series is most commonly assumed to offer little more than a titillating glimpse at the erotic preoccupations of a bygone era, the original appeal of which can be credited to the lusty desires of its wartime audience. Decades after Jane’s heyday the Radio Times gave a sense of the character’s cultural positioning when it described Jane as the “scantily-clad cartoon heroine who cheered wartime Britain” (Radio Times 1982, p.1). In the same era, the Liverpool Echo recalled “Jane, of the lacy bra and snapping suspenders, the legendary strip cartoon heroine of Word War 2” (Jones 1982, p.8). More recently, from the realm of the popular historiography, authors such as Virginia Nicholson and Joshua Levine have continued to perpetuate a mythology that sees Jane’s primary function as being the facilitator of male sexual desire during the Second World War. Nicholson’s Millions Like Us describes Jane as a wartime “fantasy driven by lust and loneliness” (Nicholson 2012, p.226), whilst in The Secret History of the Blitz Levine dismisses Jane simply, and with striking inaccuracy, as “a character whose clothes fell off, in front of groups of men, for no apparent reason” (Levine 2015, loc.3063).  The associative link that ties Jane so firmly to notions of erotic appeal and the gendered experience of the war are often framed within a wider wartime context, and in particular the perception that Jane’s body was used as a vehicle to both incentivise and reward male participation in the war effort. In 1994, for example, the Irish Independent published recollections of the wartime Jane, including the suggestion that

“they dropped a consignment of the papers to the troops near Caen at the Pegasus Bridge, and they made huge advances into France after that. The joke during the war was that the British Army always attacked when Jane stripped to her scanties” (Irish Independent 1994, p.4).

So ubiquitous is this vision of Jane that it persists even in academic appraisals of British comics history and in books devoted entirely to Jane itself. James Chapman, in British Comics: A Cultural History, for example, discusses Jane firmly through a wartime lens (Chapman 2011, p.38-42). He describes the series as “the most popular comic strip of the war” with an audience composed largely of “schoolboys and servicemen”, drawn in by a basic motif of a heroine routinely shedding her clothes. Andy Saunders, in Jane: A Pin-Up at War, similarly frames Jane as an icon of wartime sexual fantasy, concluding that modern sensibilities would inevitably find the series “sexist, and certainly exploitative of women” (Saunders 2004, p.16) .

Despite the near universality of this mythology, however, there are compelling reasons to question its thoroughness, and ultimately its validity. Despite being widely assumed to have been aimed at male audiences, a more comprehensive engagement with the historical record reveals that Jane appealed as much to- indeed sometimes more to- women as it did to men. Smith (1975, p.83) notes that in the decade of Jane’s arrival, the Daily Mirror was considered to be a paper aimed primarily at women, with a readership that was around 70% female. An internal Mirror survey from 1937, meanwhile, found that of these 85% were regular readers of Jane. Despite the character’s subsequent fame as a ‘forces sweetheart’ in the war years that followed, a similar poll conducted in 1947 found that Jane’s appeal to women had remained consistent with the level recorded a decade earlier. This time the poll targeted female readers specifically, and again 85% reported that they were regular Jane readers (Cudlipp, 1953, p.75-76). The continued centrality of a female audience to Jane can be identified in other ways, too. Towards the end of the series’ life, for example, in January 1955, the Mirror Group launched a weekend companion to the Daily Mirror entitled the Women’s Sunday Mirror, and Jane was chosen to front much of the in-house publicity. The new Sunday edition was described as “the new paper by Jane”, and advertising reused images from the daily strip, with new speech balloons seeing Jane address female readers directly as she exhorted them to make contact so that the new paper could accurately reflect “what makes us girls tick!”

‘Jane,’ Daily Mirror (1955)

Similarly, although Jane is usually considered synonymously with the Second World War, in truth the series was a long-lasting one. It appeared day after day, week after week for nearly thirty years, persisting through decades of huge social and cultural change for Britain and the wider world. Around 80% of Jane’s original output occurred during peacetime, and had no appreciable connection either to the Second World War or to wartime conditions. The persistence of Jane’s cultural association with the war, however, means that huge swathes of the strips’ history have been ignored and forgotten. Yet if, as Chapman (2012, p.42) suggests, Jane offers a “good reflection of wartime changes in British society”, it seems curious that so little attempt has been made to identify similar process at work in the strips’ wider history.  

Even the oft-repeated suggestion that a clear causal link can be established between Jane’s nudity and the need to satisfy a male audience of armed forces personnel (see, for example, Andrews and McNamara 2014, p.187)  does not stand up to much scrutiny. Reinforcing the conceit that Jane’s nudity was initiated as a spur to armed forces morale, it is often claimed that, after years of teasing, Jane’s first fully nude appearance occurred on or around D-Day,  the 6th June 1944 (see, for example, Daily Mail 1994). Although on the day after D-Day the Daily Mirror did indeed run a strip in which Jane appeared in the nude (fig.2), this was far from a novelty. In fact, as this article will discuss in detail, such nude appearances pre-dated the war by some years, and resulted not from a desire to satisfy wartime troops, but from an unconnected revolution in the Mirror’s editorial style that occurred during the latter half of the 1930’s.

Pett and Freeman, 1944

Much of the cultural memory surrounding Jane is, therefore, erroneous, and the story of Jane’s full history is both more complex and more interesting than popular legend allows for. This essay will begin the process of fleshing out in more detail the true story of Jane’s development, focussing in particular on the way in which the series developed during its early pre-war period.

Jane’s debut, in December 1932, occurred at a time of wider turmoil for its parent publication. Established in 1903, the Daily Mirror had survived a rocky start to become, by the end of the First World War, Britain’s best-selling daily paper with sales often in excess of two million. Throughout the 1920s, however, the Mirror had struggled under a gradual but seemingly inexorable decline that had seen its readership collapse to less than 800,000  by the early 1930s (Horrie 2003, p.45). Principally, this had been the result of chronic mismanagement and interference by the paper’s principal shareholder, Lord Rothermere, who had spent years neglecting the Mirror and siphoning off its financial resources in order to bolster other parts of his sprawling publishing empire (Horrie 2003,  p.35). Like many newspaper proprietors, Rothermere was also adept at meddling in his paper’s editorial direction, which in his own case was particularly unfortunate, for he was a spectacularly poor reader of the moral and political tides of the early 1930s. Under his guidance the Daily Mirror became a vocal supporter of the ‘strong leaders’ of fascist Europe in general, and of Nazism in particular, as well as of Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts and their virulently anti-Semitic campaign to establish fascism in Britain. Compounding this highly questionable editorial direction, the Mirror was widely derided as a dull and anachronistic, regarded in some quarters as

“a silly, insignificant little Tory newspaper that ran quaint front-page pictures of ‘girls in pearls’, county cricket matches and brass bands playing music to caterpillars” (Horrie 2003, p.45).

Although the Daily Mirror’s future therefore looked bleak at the time of Jane’s arrival, the paper’s salvation lay close at hand. Although not yet obvious, in less than two years the Mirror’s pictures editor, Harry Guy Bartholomew, would be promoted to editorial director and would embark on a dramatic reconceptualization that would transform the Mirror into a brash, irreverent, working class newspaper (Bingham 2011, p. 115). The huge resurgence in popularity that would follow would irrevocably break Rothermere’s control over the paper and cast the newly invigorated Daily Mirror as “the model for popular journalism throughout much of the rest of the world for the rest of the century” (Horrie 2003, p.45). Bartholomew was a bombastic figure who was, in many ways, entirely the opposite of Rothermere. Irascible, foul-mouthed, and only semi-literate, he also harboured a particular, though for the time being carefully concealed, contempt for the pomposity and entitlement of the upper classes (Conby 2017, p.127). He was also almost preternaturally gifted at understanding the needs and nuances of modern news-craft, and he had a particular awareness of the power of the image as a driver of sales. Later he would be remembered as “simply and solely a picture man, who used pictures in a way they had never been used before” (Pilger 2010, p.381), but of all the visual arts it was perhaps cartoons and comics that were closest to Bartholomew’s heart. He was a sometime cartoonist himself, and occasionally had even ghosted for W.K. Haselden, the Mirror’s principal cartoonist who had been providing a daily dose of light social satire since the paper’s earliest days (British Cartoon Archive 2016). Although in 1932 Bartholomew had yet to gain control of the Mirror, as pictures editor he was able to commission new material. His power and influence within the paper’s hierarchy was also growing, and it was Bartholomew who employed Norman Pett to create Jane. Up until this point Pett’s cartooning career had been somewhat unremarkable; although he had been a regular contributor to Punch since the end of the First World War, he still supplemented his income with part-time work at the Birmingham School of Art. He enjoyed a somewhat unconventional life, and in his native Birmingham had cultivated a free-spirited lifestyle in which, despite having been married for more than ten years, he was almost permanently surrounded by young women, ostensibly to model. Given Bartholomew’s later strategy, which would make cartoons and comics a central feature of the new-look Daily Mirror,  Jane can be understood as representing a ‘trial run’ for the wider revolution that would follow in its wake. Bartholomew also appears to have been using Jane as a means of verifying whether the existing audience for comics in the Mirror could be broadened and increased. Since 1919 the paper had published a juvenile strip called Pip, Squeak and Wilfred, which through the years of Rothermere-inspired decline had proved to be a rare Mirror success. As well as being a popular feature in its own right, it had provided crucial revenue from a dizzying array of spin-off merchandise that saw the central characters appear on everything from china plates to matchboxes. When commissioning Jane, several sources suggest that Bartholomew specifically tasked Pett with the creation of a series that would repeat this success with an older audiences (see, for example, Cudlipp, 1953, p.73).

Adam Twycross is currently engaged in PhD research on the development and evolution of adult comics in Britain. Between 2012 and 2019 he was Programme Leader for the MA in 3D Computer Animation at Bournemouth University’s National Centre for Computer Animation, and has previously worked as a 3D modeller, with credits including the Xbox 360 title Disneyland Adventures and the Games Workshop graphic novel Macragge’s Honour. He is co-founder of BFX, the UK’s largest festival of animation, visual effects and games.

'The Beano's' Lord Snooty (Part 4 of 4) by Dave Miller

Cartoonish toffs, memes & use of Beano characters to criticise political power 

For a couple of decades discourses of class became unpopular. In Britain the divisive labour struggles of the Thatcher era had ended and in 1990 John Major announced his plans to make the whole country a genuinely classless society. When New Labour came to power in 1997, Tony Blair declared the class war was over, and talked instead about combating social exclusion and increasing social mobility.

But in actual fact, the class war merely changed form. Richard Hoggart, the author and academic famously said that "Class distinctions do not die; they merely learn new ways of expressing themselves." This is as true now as it was 25 years ago, and 25 years before that. "Each decade," he continued, "we shiftily declare we have buried class; each decade the coffin stays empty".

Jacob Rees Mogg, aged 13

The Huffington Post’s Alex MacDonald argues that the Occupy Movement in 2008, with the 99% campaign, highlighted that the UK class divide is not shrinking, but is in fact bigger than any time since World War II. Yet the Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 2012 highlighted a total lack of class awareness, with its huge popularity and the register of approval for the Monarchy and Wartime nostalgia that came with it. The Jubilee was an immense spectacle of privilege, wealth and hereditary superiority, and the public loved it. Boris Johnson was elected Mayor of London (and now Prime Minister) based on his cartoonish toffery, a self-parody of his own immense wealth and privilege - and again the public lapped it up. Since 2008 Britain has had a cabinet of millionaires - Cameron, Osborne, Johnson, Mogg - all belonging to an Etonian mafia, Oxbridge, Bullingdon Club heritage which almost guarantees them power. How much of this popularity comes from a British attitude of deference to class superiority and poshness?

Cartoonish buffoony - Boris Johnson dangling from zip wire (Daily Mail, 2012)

Paul Mason in the New Statesman argues that “Politics, for Johnson and the entire clan surrounding him, has become a form of showing off - and that Conservative politics has become not just a game for privileged people, but a kind of catwalk on which they can display their egos”. 

Bizarrely, this showing off seems to involve these aristocratic politicians modelling themselves on comic book English toffs. For example, in 2012, referring to Andrew Mitchell, the former chief whip, and George Osborne, the Chancellor, Alex Salmond asked the SNP conference: “Why on earth do we allow this bunch of incompetent Lord Snooty’s to be in positions of authority over our country?”. In 2017, the TUC boss Frances O’Grady likened the top Tories to Beano characters Lord Snooty, and Snitch and Snatch. She labelled Boris Johnson as posh Earl Lord Snooty, and Liam Fox and Michael Gove as like Snitch and Snatch . 

How intentional is this adopting of comic personas, or is it mere coincidence? Just how much have politicians been influenced by Beano and Dandy comic characters? Is this a case of life imitating art? Is it even a form of Cosplay?  Quite possibly the politicians play up to the comparisons with comic book characters?

Politicians adopting Beano and Dandy personas

As well as politicians adopting the personas, Beano and Dandy characters are also being used as ways to criticize political power. They are easy to use - distinctively British, familiar to a certain generation (though probably not with young generations as less familiar with the comics), deeply rooted in British culture, very strong associations, instantly recognizable. 

This demonstrates that the Beano and Dandy are no longer just kid’s comics - their characters (and background stories, sometimes distorted) have become ideological and political instruments – as Lord Snooty has been for generations, as a commonly used insult. In this way Lord Snooty is no longer just a comic character or an insult, he’s a vehicle for political argument, even a weapon.

Rah Rah Rah We’re going to smash the Oiks! (Lord Snooty Meme, 2019)

Mogg is a fake Lord Snooty – Twitter (@communicipalist, 2019)

Politicians have used (Beano and Dandy) cartoon insults and comparisons as a (cheap) way to attack the opposition and tap into the civic imagination. In essence, a popular children’s comic is being adopted and adapted for political ends. In recent years, memes have been employed and deployed by audiences on the left and the right, becoming effective weapons in the new culture wars (such as Trump followers did with Pepe the Frog).   

Boris Johnson has been accused of cynically constructing his identity in order to gain power. His identity seems to be a mixture of Beano comic characters, Bertie Wooster and Billy Bunter, but most likely the cheeky and mischievous Lord Snooty. As Hitchings et al puts it: “Johnson favours a passé form of exclamation that makes him seem unthreatening. Every time he says ‘Cripes,’ it calls to mind a short-trousered scamp who has just set aside his slingshot in order to inspect a mysteriously broken window. It’s a powerful archetype in English children’s literature, from Dennis the Menace to Just William.” 

In The Telegraph newspaper —often described as the ‘Torygraph’ by the left — Moore wrote an article in 2009 on the then-Leader of the Opposition, David Cameron comparing him to the idea of Lord Snooty, a ‘toff’ befriending the poor, and argued that Lord Snooty was the ideal role model for him. However, they questioned whether Cameron was the first version of Lord Snooty, or the nasty Lord Snooty III (Moore, 2019). 

Rees Mogg is regularly compared to Lord Snooty.

Mogg is also frequently compared to ‘Walter the Softy’ - a popular character from ‘Dennis the Menace’ cartoon in the Beano. Walter the Softy is frequently pranked by Dennis the Menace and his trusted dog and sidekick Gnasher.

In April 2018 (to mark their 80th anniversary) the Beano comic even issued a (tongue in cheek) cease-and-desist letter to Mogg, claiming he has modeled himself on its character Walter the Softy. DC Thomson accused the Tory MP of “masquerading” as Walter Brown, a foe of Dennis the Menace. It listed traits including his side parting, round glasses and “snootiness” as “distinctly copying” the character.  

In the letter, addressed to the North East Somerset MP at the House of Commons, Mike Stirling, head of Beano Studios Scotland, said Mr Rees-Mogg had been "infringing the intellectual property rights of one of our cartoon characters". He said it was "evident there are numerous instances whereby you have adopted trademarked imagery and brand essences of the character to the benefit of enhancing your career and popularity".

Cease and desist letter to Rees Mogg (Daily Mail, 2018)

Mike Stirling, head of Beano Studios Scotland, said: “We were flattered when we discovered that Jacob Rees-Mogg has dedicated his life to impersonating one of my favourite Beano characters, young Walter”. 

Rees-Mogg reacted light-heartedly to the humorous legal letter, denying he was doing this and claims he has more admiration for PG Wodehouse characters … “I did read the Beano as a child but I never thought I'd model myself on Walter the Softy.” Addressing the specific allegations in the letter, Mr Rees-Mogg insisted that he was “in favour of other people having fun” and said “snootiness is really rather unpleasant.”

Conclusion 

Lord Snooty started out in 1938 as a strip in the kid’s comic The Beano. The strip taps into the humour of class difference and the idea of a lovable anarchic aristocrat who poked fun at the bourgeoise establishment, as the character joined forces in solidarity with his working class friends, to rebel against the establishment that he himself was part of. 

The Beano and Dandy comics were created during the 1930’s Great Depression, and reflected and commented on the social hardship of daily life at that time. Lord Snooty is a strip that taps into class differences with a comedic, satirical bent. 

Over the years the Lord Snooty comic and character has become part of common language usage. For generations it has been used as an insult and slur against someone posh, snobby, aloof, who looks down on people - which is actually a gross distortion of the original story and character. More recently still, some Conservative Party politicians have adopted the Lord Snooty persona (as well as other Beano and Dandy comic personas) and have started looking and behaving in daily life like those comic characters. 

At the same time, Beano characters are being used to criticise political power. This is happening in Parliament, in the newspaper media, and especially in Internet memes. Beano characters are being adopted by audiences to use as memetic warfare, and the Lord Snooty meme is a good example of this.  

These popular Beano characters are much more than last century’s comics: they have become ideological and political weapons in the digital age.

Dave Miller is a designer and artist who makes mostly satirical works through combinations of comics, graphic novels, interactive and non-linear storytelling, especially in the context of computation, the Internet and emerging media. He has taught courses in both Design and Interactive Media at London South Bank University and Bournemouth University. He currently works at the Cartoon Museum in London, and is writing a political graphic novel. This is his first writing about comics.

The ‘Remembering UK Comics’ series is curated and edited by Dr William Proctor and Dr Julia Round, both of whom are Principal Academics at Bournemouth University, Dorset, UK.

'The Beano's' Lord Snooty (Part 3 of 4) by Dave Miller

A modern parody - ‘Dave Snooty and his Pals’ (2008)

Lord Snooty inspired a parody strip entitled ‘Dave Snooty and his Pals’, featuring the Conservative Party under the leadership of Prime Minister David Cameron, and published in the Private Eye magazine. This was the brainchild of satirist Ian Hislop and artist Nick Newman.

Dave Snooty III - 2008

The strip depicts David Cameron as ‘Dave Snooty’ and Conservative politician Boris Johnson (now Prime Minister) as his nemesis, ‘Boris the Menace’, complete with red and black stripy jumper. Dave Snooty would almost always end up defeated or humiliated.  

Unfortunately ‘Dave Snooty and his Pals’ was not true to the original Lord Snooty story. At no point did the title character inspire his comrades to emulate his gentlemanly virtues, or show that he had become their leader because they deferred to his innate moral worth (as in the original version of the Lord Snooty story). This would no doubt have improved the strip enormously.

‘Lord Snooty’ usage in common language 

Nowadays ‘Lord Snooty’ is a common insult for an overbearing or patronising snob, and often directed at Eton educated politicians. Popa-Wyatt and Wyatt suggest there are many words that slur the rich and powerful, and convey considerable contempt, such as ‘toff’, ‘Lord Snooty’, ‘nob’, ‘suit’, ‘the one percent’ and ‘Hooray Henry’. 

Though the name ‘Lord Snooty’ has remained firmly rooted in the public mind, the essence of the original comic story has been corrupted. In terms of the story, it doesn’t make sense to use his name as an insult. Lord Snooty was on the side of the ordinary (poor) folk, he was benevolent and generous, and never looked down on them. Bizarrely the common usage of his name (as a slur) is the total opposite of this. 

Probably the most likely reasons are: the original comics have been mis-remembered, people haven’t read the comics for so long that they have forgotten the original story, or perhaps they never read the comics but have heard the name and (lazily) assume that Lord Snooty is true to his name - ‘snooty’ - i.e. considering himself to be better than others, especially people of a lower social class.  

Parody versions of the comic have probably also contributed to the corruption of the story, and newspapers/ media certainly use Lord Snooty as an insult. Sometimes, confusingly, they seem to be referring to Lord Snooty III. 

So why was he even called ‘Lord Snooty’ in the first place, when he wasn’t intended to be snooty? He didn’t behave in a snooty manner, though, looking through the comics, you can see he was always presented as being superior to people of a lower social class, through his inherited wealth power and privilege - but it was seen as admirable that he chose to hang out with the ordinary people, and he was kind and generous to them. He wasn’t arrogant or pompous or full of airs and graces, and didn’t behave in a ‘snooty’ manner - in fact he rebelled against his privilege. In effect, the original Snooty strip poked fun at the bourgeoise establishment, as the character joined forces in solidarity with his working class friends, to rebel against the establishment that he himself was part of. 

According to the ‘History of the Beano’, in the early days of the Lord Snooty strip, the storylines were along the lines of the Mark Twain novel ‘The Prince and the Pauper’. This story explores themes of social inequality, where two boys - one very rich and the other very poor - are fascinated by the other's life, and to get a ‘feeling’ of the other's life, they exchange clothing and swap roles.

The Beano editor of the 1990s, Euan Kerr, admitted that Snooty was an outdated character in a dated mid-20th century world that 1990’s children could never relate to. He also admitted Lord Snooty was his least favourite character to write for and commented that “I never liked Lord Snooty at all and I suppose I was the cause of his demise in the end. He was completely outdated by the time I sat in the Editors chair, though, and I could see absolutely no way of updating him. Although there were some great “Lord Snooty” strips in the 1940s, he was becoming increasingly difficult to write for in the modem era and the readers just couldn’t relate to him anymore.” 

The world had moved on a lot since Snooty was first created.

Changing attitudes to class in Britain 

Historian Arthur Marwick described a radical transformation of British society resulting from the Great War, that he saw as a ‘deluge’ that swept away many old attitudes and brought in a more egalitarian society. He pointed to an energised self-consciousness among workers that quickly built up the Labour Party, the coming of partial women's suffrage, and an acceleration of social reform and state control of the economy. He noted a decline of deference toward the aristocracy and established authority in general, and the weakening among youth of traditional restraints on individual moral behaviour. Marwick felt that class distinctions softened, national cohesion increased, and British society became more equal. 

Snooty was part of the old world, where everyone knew their place and social class - deference to class superiority was the norm, as in the famous class-conscious skit from John Cleese and the Corbetts. Snooty was born into aristocratic power, yet he remained likeable, as he chose to use his power to help the ordinary folk, something which was eccentric and comical, admirable, radical even rebellious or anarchic. He chose to be one of the ordinary people, even though he was born into a superior class and therefore he knew, and everyone accepted, that he was superior. 

The basis of the Lord Snooty story - comedy around class difference - worked well when the comic was first launched, but UK society changed radically during the Twentieth Century, and attitudes to class changed. Snooty’s behavior would be interpreted differently nowadays (perhaps seen more as slumming it or patronizing). 

The post-war Labour government worked hard to eliminate class barriers with its introduction of high tax rates for the well off, the creation of the welfare state, expansion of the public sector, free education, free healthcare, and there was a belief among much of the population in the following decades that class was no longer the barrier to success it had been before the war.

Dave Miller is a designer and artist who makes mostly satirical works through combinations of comics, graphic novels, interactive and non-linear storytelling, especially in the context of computation, the Internet and emerging media. He has taught courses in both Design and Interactive Media at London South Bank University and Bournemouth University. He currently works at the Cartoon Museum in London, and is writing a political graphic novel. This is his first writing about comics.

The ‘Remembering UK Comics’ series is curated and edited by Dr William Proctor and Dr Julia Round, both of whom are Principal Academics at Bournemouth University, Dorset, UK.

'The Beano's' Lord Snooty (Part 2 of 4) by Dave Miller

The Lord Snooty comic 

‘Lord Snooty and His Pals’ made their first appearance in issue No. 1 of the Beano, in a story titled “Son of a Duke But Always Pally - With the Beezer Kids of Ash-Can Alley” (published on July 30th, 1938).

‘Lord Snooty and His Pals’ (The Legend of Lord Snooty and His Pals, 1998, p.6)

Marmaduke, the young Lord of Bunkerton, is known to his friends and to generations of comic readers as Lord Snooty, the newest member of the House of Lords. He goes to Eton (a private school), lives in a castle, and has servants. He's a very ordinary boy who just happens to be a Lord and one of the richest people in the whole world, lives with Aunt Matilda, and is assisted by his butler, Albert.

Early version of Lord Snooty

The responsibilities of being a peer of the realm weigh heavily on Snooty’s young shoulders and he often slips into disguise to mix with his street urchin pals from Ash Can Alley. He finds his posh friends too soft and boring (and snobby), and prefers to play with his urchin pals - who he considers to be his “real pals in Ash-Can alley”, and where he has real fun. Snooty is rebellious and full of mischief, acting against his privileged life which he finds strict and oppressive. 

The Ash Can Alley kids regularly face their most bitter rivals, the Gasworks gang, and adventures often revolve around this. Other adventures involve the eccentric Professor Screwtop and his wacky inventions. Although everything in Bunkerton Castle was fun and games, world events soon provided the scriptwriters with a new theme, as Snooty and pals entered the propaganda battle in the early stages of the Second World War. Over the following years, the pals would repel many a Nazi assault on Bunkerton Castle and Lord Snooty often personally took on Hitler (Watkins, 1998).

Lord Snooty & WW2 - 1941 (The Legend of Lord Snooty and his Pals, 1998, p.31)

The Lord Snooty strip was drawn by Dudley D. Watkins until his death in 1969, but Leo Baxendale and Albert Holroyd occasionally filled in for Watkins. Watkins drew Desperate Dan in the Dandy and Lord Snooty in the Beano, and the enduring celebrity of these stand as testimony to his observant eye and witty draughtsmanship. “In Watkins, DC Thomson had found their inhouse genius. He was a devout Christian who kept a Bible near his drawing board, and in his spare time drew cartoon strips for evangelical newspapers. His great ambition, barely begun when in 1969, he keeled over his drawing board with a fatal heart attack, was to convert the Bible into what would now be known as a graphic novel. He drew the Lord Snooty strip until April 1968.”

The Lord Snooty strip was discontinued from the Beano in 1991, but it was the only remaining strip left from the first issue when it was withdrawn. 

Analysis of the stories 

Lord Snooty is a strip that taps into class differences with a comedic, satirical bent. Lord Snooty is a ‘toff ‘, a derogatory stereotype for someone with an aristocratic background or belonging to the landed gentry. His Lordship preferred to hang out with the poor urchin Ash-Can Alley gang, and he himself was not snobbish at all. He identifies with his poor friends, more than with kids of his own privileged class. Below is the theme of the first episode, where he rejects his posh friends who he is supposed to play with:

Lord Snooty - first comic - July 1938 (The Legend of Lord Snooty and his Pals, 1998)

The original Ash Can Alley gang were Scrapper Smith, Hairpin Huggins, Skinny Lizzie, Rosie, Happy Hutton, Gertie the goat and later Snitch and Snatch. The sworn enemies of the Ash Can Alley were the Gasworks Gang, a group of ill-favoured yobs. 

Snooty was an aristocratic ragamuffin, a good guy, benevolent, who identifies with the ordinary people, and they are very fond of him. He was kind to the ordinary kids, looked after them, was generous, and mischievous with them. Snooty was a popular hero, because he shared the sufferings of his comrades while adding the gentlemanly virtues which they lacked (Moore, 2019). On the other hand the story appears to follow a Dandy and Beano stereotype, i.e.  the ‘lovable benevolent aristocrat’ versus the uneducated poor/ lower orders. 

The majority of Beano readers would identify with these playful working-class kids and fully understand why Snooty liked them. Life at the castle looks like a life of discipline that lacked freedom and fun. Dudley Watkins (who drew the comic) caught this contrast beautifully; everyone connected with life at the castle had an expression of severe aloofness, whereas the gang playing in the Ash-Can Alley had happy animated faces full of energetic fun. 

It seems the story was revised early on - Lord Snooty wasn’t initially a nice person, and the story didn’t quite work, as some of these forum comments point out: 

“Marmaduke, Earl of Bunkerton (Lord Snooty) is a right nasty piece of work in the first few episodes. A forerunner of Dennis the Menace in some ways, but with added money and power. He also likes to have it both ways- slumming it in Ashcan alley but making full use of his castle and seemingly unlimited wealth. Fortunately, the writers must have realised this flaw as he becomes the good-hearted soul we're more familiar with very quickly. In comics, it's OK to be rich and OK to be a bully, but not both...One particularly nasty moment is in the fifth ever strip (fourth in the collection) dated 27/8/1938, where in revenge for the cook telling tales on him, he frames the cook so the cook is not only fired, but literally fired at with guns by the castle's hunting party.”

There are theories that the Ash Can Alley gang idea was “borrowed” from a 1930s film gang featuring Mickey Rooney, as some of the character names seem to be the same.

Over the years 1938-1991 there were different versions of Lord Snooty. He changed with the times, the themes changed, his gang members changed, to try to cater for changing tastes and a changing world, and to try to keep him relevant to his audience.

10/9/1938 was the last strip with Snooty in his ‘street urchin’ disguise. It's not clear at what point his pals in Ash Can alley stopped being a secret to his Aunt Matilda and when they started being welcome visitors, and eventually residents, at Bunkerton Castle. From there onwards, this seems to have changed the story into less of an ‘us and them’ scenario. 

In no. 10 the crazy eccentric Professor Screwtop and his inventions was introduced. From no. 13 onwards, Snooty was masterminding freelance operations against the Nazis - for example, dropping germs on them, and a desperate Hitler had to write to Snooty and beg for mercy. 

The first series of Lord Snooty came to an end in July 1949, but then Snooty returned at the end of 1950. There were character changes in the 1950s - some characters were dropped and others introduced, such as ‘Doubting Thomas’, ‘Swanky Lanky Liz’, Lord Snooty’s twin classmates ‘Snitch’ and ‘Snatch’. 

In the later years Lord Snooty’s personality took a turn for the worse. The character was eventually axed because it became outdated and difficult to write strips, readers could no longer relate to him, and in 1991 Snooty was dropped by the Beano .

But years later Lord Snooty re-appeared in a different format (in 2008), though this time the comic was about Lord Snooty III (Marmaduke's grandson), who has inherited his fortune and his Bunkerton Castle. The plot is similar: he is a mischievous boy who is extremely rich and lives in a castle; he has a butler (called Parkinson); and forms his own gang. However, there are major differences - his character is almost the total opposite of Marmaduke as he wallows in his wealth. He’s a ‘repulsive’ boy who laughs at those less fortunate. His butler is long-suffering and sarcastic. His gang consists of an adolescent named Naz, a young black girl named Frankie, Emo, and One and Three the triplets. The strip wasn’t popular and the comic series officially ended in 2011.

Lord Snooty III - 2008

Dave Miller is a designer and artist who makes mostly satirical works through combinations of comics, graphic novels, interactive and non-linear storytelling, especially in the context of computation, the Internet and emerging media. He has taught courses in both Design and Interactive Media at London South Bank University and Bournemouth University. He currently works at the Cartoon Museum in London, and is writing a political graphic novel. This is his first writing about comics.

The ‘Remembering UK Comics’ series is curated and edited by Dr William Proctor and Dr Julia Round, both of whom are Principal Academics at Bournemouth University, Dorset, UK.

'The Beano's' Lord Snooty (Part 1 of 4) by Dave Miller

The children’s classic comic character has evolved into a modern day insult.

Lord Snooty by Dudley Watkins

The Dandy & The Beano

DC Thomson Ltd of Dundee, Scotland, was established by David Coupar Thomson in 1905, and has been a major publisher of magazines, newspapers and comics in Britain ever since. The company is best known as the publisher of the Dandy comic (launched on 4th December 1937, and for decades one of the longest running comic titles in the world), and its younger sister, The Beano, launched on 30th July 1938 and still published today. .

The Beano #1 (1938)

According to Roger Sabin, the Dandy and the Beano, more than any others, have defined modern perceptions of a comic in Britain. And thanks to DC Thomson, Dundee is often referred to as the comics capital of Britain. 

The Beano is the longest running British children’s comic magazine, and one of the best-selling comics, along with The Dandy. Its most famous characters and stories include Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, The Bash Street Kids, The Numskulls, Roger the Dodger, Billy Whizz, and The Legend of Lord Snooty and His Pals. To this day the Beano is still popular; in 2018 it was selling more than 37,500 copies a week, or 1.86 million copies a year. 

Happy 80th birthday to The Beano

What was so special about these comics? According to Anita O’Brien, director curator at London’s Cartoon Museum, when comics like the Beano and Dandy first emerged in the 1930s, they were almost the only entertainment available to children.  

In Sabin’s account, the early children’s comics produced by the Amalgamated Press (AP) were popular, but staid and old fashioned. Text captions ran underneath each cartoon panel, and often the images merely illustrated the descriptions given in the text. But the text captions were AP’s way of countering critics who complained at that time that comics were a threat to literacy.

Happy Days - October 1938 (Amalgamated Press)

When DC Thomson moved into the production of comics it was already a well-established publisher, with a monopoly of Dundee's newspapers. The Dandy and The Beano appeared in the late 1930s, and were immediately popular, as Chris Murray argues.

Why were these comics so popular? The Beano and Dandy looked similar to comics that already existed (especially the AP comics) in that they were printed on cheap paper, with color covers and black/ white inside pages (as in the ‘Happy Days’ comic above). But Sabin maintains that the Beano and Dandy were years ahead of their time, and that they redefined the genre. Placing dialogue within word-balloons seemed to make a big difference; the drawings seemed more dynamic, and were no longer not tied to the rigid AP panel format, which allowed more fluent joke-telling. Murray points out the word balloon idea came from the format of American comics at that time. This new style in British comics revolutionized the comics industry, and made the Dandy and Beano household names. 

But the DC Thomson titles were also unusual and interesting in how they approached the storytelling. Murray argues that from the beginning DC Thomson drew on the tradition of political comics and social commentary, particularly Hogarth and Gillray, and their satirical prints of working class life. 

DC Thomson's comics were calculated to appeal to children rather than parents, so seemed much more unruly and anarchic than their competition at AP. AP comics were quite well mannered, while DC Thomson's were brash and featured working class characters. They appealed to children growing up in hard times, which was Dundee in middle of the 1930’s Great Depression, and were a distraction from the grim realities of the Depression and rationing.

Dundee poverty in 1930’s (Tweedie, 2019)

Dundee during the 1930’s Great Depression was a world where everyone was hungry all the time, where social inequalities were pronounced. Sabin believes this explains why there were so many comic strips about relationships between ‘toffs’ and the working class (e.g. the Lord Snooty comic), typically ending with a reward of ‘grub’, such as a plate of bangers (sausages) and mash, or massive pies - seen as a desirable reward. Curiously, this comic formula hasn’t changed much over the years.

Lord Snooty & grub - March 25th 1939 (‘The Legend of Lord Snooty & his Pals,’ 1998, p.14)

Interestingly, there are certain story/ stereotype combinations or themes which seem to be repeated in different comic strips within the Beano and Dandy. Readers in the “I love Comics forum” have identified three of the most common, namely: (1) the cheerful poor vs up-themselves nouveau riche (class difference/ social inequality); (2) hooligan idiots vs teachers pets; (3) ‘oikish’ lower orders vs lovable aristos (nostalgic idealised dream of feudalism, "all England loves a lord" etc.)

Murray believes the comics represent a kind of social history of Scotland, reflecting the character of the times, with humor and crafty japes keeping spirits high during hard times. The comic strips appealed to Scottish readers because it represented a world they recognized; though the comics also appealed, and made sense, to readers nationwide. The Dandy and Beano introduced a sharper, more knockabout type of fun and jokes, and a range of eccentric, strange but lovable characters. These included Desperate Dan and Lord Snooty by Dudley D. Watkins, Korky the Cat by James Critchton, Dennis the Menace by David Law, Minnie the Minx and the Bash Street Kids by Leo Baxendale. The subject matter and the anarchic approach made these comics special, along with the simple, appealing drawing style.

Characters from the Dandy are joined by Paul McCartney in the last ever print edition of the Dandy (published in 2012)

The Beano and Dandy were radically different in that they allowed transgression against adults, challenge adult authority and celebrate a world of anarchy and mischief-making. This probably explains the enormous popularity and extraordinary longevity, as James Chapman emphasizes. There is often a strong sense of morality at play in the comic strips, but the Beano's strength is its sense of mischief and rough-and-tumble approach to life, which is surprising as DC Thomson had a reputation for staunch conservatism. Thompson himself openly discriminated against Catholic employees, and categorized job applications by religious affiliation. He also strongly opposed trade unions. Yet DC Thomson’s family business gave us characters such as the proto-punk Dennis the Menace and riot grrl forerunner Minnie the Minx, two children whose entire lives are geared towards taking on the adult world (and therefore the establishment). As The Guardian’s Ben Myers writes: “Teachers, parents and policemen - no one is safe from their catapults, pranks and stink bombs.”

Dave Miller is a designer and artist who makes mostly satirical works through combinations of comics, graphic novels, interactive and non-linear storytelling, especially in the context of computation, the Internet and emerging media. He has taught courses in both Design and Interactive Media at London South Bank University and Bournemouth University. He currently works at the Cartoon Museum in London, and is writing a political graphic novel. This is his first writing about comics.

The ‘Remembering UK Comics’ series is curated and edited by Dr William Proctor and Dr Julia Round, both of whom are Principal Academics at Bournemouth University, Dorset, UK.

On 'The Beano': Naughty National Icons and a History of Misbehavior (Part 3 of 3) by Dona Pursall

By the time the first readers had grown up and become the parents of Beano readers, Beanotown characters had slightly fuller bellies and better clothes. By the 1950s the social context of the readers had changed, and so had the driving forces of the characters. Naughty behaviour was no longer a moralising reaction to adult’s poor values, but rather, in line with rising youth cultures of the time, a statement towards self-assertion and independence beyond the authority of the family unit. Pranking parents and dodging school were key motivations for the characters in this period, dads and teachers becoming the most common targets for mischief. This is typified by the introduction of new characters. Roger the Dodger, as the name suggests invests all of his energy into sidestepping any chores or responsibilities asked of him, and the Bash Street Kids dedicate themselves to learning as little as possible from and humiliating as often as possible their long suffering teacher. Rather than playing, as earlier strips, with the dynamics between adultishness and childishness, 1950s play positioned between looking respectfully to the past and looking rebelliously to the future.

‘Roger the Dodger,’ The Beano No. 807 January 4th 1958

The 1950's rise of the Teddy boy and girl culture marked both the rejection of post-war austerity and of earlier socialist models of community, and a move towards conspicuous consumption and the start of the neo-liberal teenage subculture. While the characters of the 30s and 40s, still confined by post-war rationing, were often happy to work for food, by the 50s economic rewards had become the norm. Beanotown children were no longer just mischievous, playing pranks for laughs, - they had become confrontational, determined to never grow into their parents and in response to their inflated rebelliousness, the punishments they received, from the very parents and teachers who were now the target of the humor, were stronger too; seeing children punished with a slipper or a cane became a common final image. This would perhaps suggest that the intended audience of these comics has moved away from the child, corporal punishment hardly seems humorous to victims. However, the joy for the child reader stems from the very violence of the punishment, which makes the risk so great, rather than from outright laughter. The characters, despite being aware of the possible consequences, continue to rebel; each week finding new, creative ways to challenge the status quo and sometimes, to the great relish of the readers, succeeding. The value in reading each week is found both in the creativity of the child characters, and the unpredictability of the outcome.

One such character appeared first in March 1951. Weirdly, in exactly the same week a character with exactly the same name also appeared in US newspapers, these were however two different, equally menacing, Dennis’. Dennis Michell is a freckled, blond, five year old who causes trouble mostly through his youthful innocence and curiosity for adult audiences and was drawn by Hank Ketcham as a single panel feature. Meanwhile, Beanotown’s Dennis had the tagline “world’s naughtiest boy” to his strips, and with distinctive black spiked hair and knobbly knees was a ten year old trouble-maker actively looking to create mischief and chaos wherever he went. His long-suffering ‘Dad’ was the most frequent victim to his antics, however anyone considered well-behaved or conforming was at risk. ‘Dennis the Menace’ has become a mascot for the Beano comic, continuing to react against rules and order to become the longest running strip in the comic.  

Just as Beano characters were getting naughtier, the anti-comics movement became stronger and more vocal. Predominantly in the US but also in the UK concern was growing regarding the power of comics to corrupt young minds, and the fear that it would raise a generation of illiterate, disobedient young people increasingly led to strong moral campaigns by activists such as Fredrick Wertham. The debate was part of a wider contemporary controversy regarding ‘high’ and ‘low’ artistic culture. Comics for children received significant attention within this discourse as their readers were considered vulnerable. That a comic could be a social menace, and that adults were actively seeking to prevent children reading them inevitably led to the opposite reaction and in comics history the 1950s is regarded, rather ironically, as both the peak of the counter-comics movement and simultaneously, as the ‘Golden Age’ of comics.

 The 1950s children grew up and their children became the new Dennis the Menace Fan Club members. The childhood of the 1970s and 80s though had moved on rapidly. Conspicuous consumption, technology and fashion, music and TV offered new and exciting forms of entertainment to challenge the comics medium. The liberated free time of gangs of kids making their own entertainment on the streets had given way to organised sports and adult supervised activities. Energy children had previously invested in mischief and rebellion was now increasingly focused in team sports and computer games, steering play away from chaotic spontaneity and towards organised and purchasable activities. The reactionary social rebellion of the youth of the 50s and 60s had passed. Who you were was increasingly defined by the things that you had and wore; rather than what you did. The dynamic of conflict between parents, teachers and children was replaced by a return to the more slapstick and surreal mischievous behavior of the early Beano characters, however with many more resources with which to play tricks. While ‘Wily Willie Winkie’ had to make do with what he could find and make in the 1930s, the characters of the 1980s had water pistols, remote control cars, football boots and trampolines easily available to them. It is often these objects, things they have or take, which become the target of the jokes, either through their destruction or finding surprising, unusual or extreme uses for things for which they were never intended.  

The new characters of this era reflected both the pace of change and developments in knowledge prevalent in this era. ‘Ball Boy’ for example only cares about football and is concerned with new kit, equipment and techniques for training, but he is plagued by the rather useless members in his team. Humor often stems from the gap between the characters' ambitions and the realities of what they can achieve, between ideas and their physical capabilities. This joyful nature of these strips lies in the characters persistence despite failure. Their disregard for the restricting limitations of reality is endearing and an important reminder to children to have big dreams. These children are no longer making fun of the constrains of social restrictions or authoritative adults, but rather of the void between the infinite possibilities presented to children that they can be or have anything they want, and the child as an erratic and unfinished being.  

The Beano is a commercial product, and as such it has always strived to stay relevant and contemporary as times have changed. Inclusion of known or famous real people as comic characters has been a continuous technique used to achieve this, as well as storylines concerning real issues. They produced for example a special souvenir issue for the wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry and for their 4000th issue in 2019 they introduced the new character Mandi and her Mobile, drawing attention to the issues children face with mobile phones.

The joy in these strips is connected with the journey characters take through the narratives, and that they remain fallible, incomplete children throughout. The reader is not guaranteed a laugh at the neat resolution of success, but because these characters are underdogs who work hard, who try and fail and grow. This style creates an honest unpredictability which is especially appealing to children because they identify with it. They accept that even though sometimes the strips end in catastrophe or punishment for the child character, the next edition has a fresh potentiality to it, a new chance.  

Adult nostalgia towards their reading experiences of the Beano as a child is fascinating, as it is the resilience, the strength, the determination and rebellion of the characters that is remembered, rather than the uncertainty of success or failure at the end of the strips. There is an energy for action, risk taking, challenging norms and unsettling equilibriums, which adult memory associates with liberation, creativity and learning and not with obstreperous, obstinate children. It is this nostalgic memory that allows the V&A to proudly advocate their Manual for Mischief, as connected with strengthening and empowering children, not with creating a deviant population of young people. Naughtiness and misbehaviour in this context is playful, pervasive and a necessary part of child development.  

This rose-tinted reminiscences inspired by the 80th birthday celebrations seems to imply that this comic about badly behaved, disruptive, unruly children represents something about British childhood and identity which is considered valuable and worthy and which has become idealised in connection specifically with the Beano. In continuing to genuinely view the world through the amazement of a child, seeing things for the very first time and not being immune to the wonder that this creates, the comic has remained joyful and innocent, and an important reminder that so many things adults take for granted can be questioned and disproved, or seen in a completely different way, when played with by an unencumbered and inquisitive child. Perhaps much of the nostalgia associated with reading these comics lies here, in how the Beano reminds us of something adults often forget. In looking through the prism of childhood we are able to see ourselves and the world around us in a fresher, freer, and more fun way.

An updated ‘Pansy Potter’ from The Beano annual 1992

Dona Pursall is a PhD student of Cultural Studies, currently embraced within the COMICS project based at Ghent University, Belgium. Funded by a European Research Council Starting Grant, the project seeks to piece together an intercultural history of children in comics: https://www.comics.ugent.be/ Dona’s research explores children, childhood, imagination and culture within the history of humorous comics. She is specifically investigating the relationship between the British ‘funnies’ from the 1930’s to 1960’s and the experiences and development of child readers within the context of wider social unrest and political change.

The ‘Remembering UK Comics’ series is curated and edited by Dr William Proctor and Dr Julia Round

On 'The Beano': Naughty National Icons and a History of Misbehavior (Part 2 of 3) by Dona Pursall

‘Tin-Can Tommy’ from The Beano No. 75 December 30th 1939

The target audience for these comics has always consciously been children, editorial comments addressed them specifically, letters and jokes pages encouraged their participation and complicity. The tone, even in the early comics, constructed a pro-child attitude, often pitching their wit and their intelligence against flawed adult characters and systems. The ‘us and them’ approach to adulthood added to the popularity of these comics from inception. ‘Pranking’ adults who misuse their power and assume authority, and shaming bullies were particularly common tropes in these strips, as in the ‘Pansy Potter’ and ‘Wily Willie Winkie’ strips featured here. In directly challenging unjust adults, these characters demonstrate their own maturity. This became especially powerful during the Second World War when a predominance of absent fathers, and the mass disruption to families caused by urban evacuation, left many children effectively in unsupervised situations. In this context Pansy Potter single-handedly fighting against invading German tanks and submarines, Lord Snooty firing Hitler out of a cannon in a defiant act of justice, and Tin-Can Tommy taking on the Germans provided relevant, reassuring and inspiring role models for child readers as well as an important chance for laughter in very difficult times. These examples perhaps typify one of the greatest strengths of the Beano’s plot tropes, their adaptability.

Beano characters, as so many other comic strip stars, exist in a perpetual present. To use Umberto Eco’s term, the ‘oneitic climate’ is a world of hazy and mostly irrelevant pasts and futures and consequently of infinite possibilities. For the child characters this creates a fresh and naive approach to every experience, despite the longevity of many of these strips and the inevitable repetition of tropes allowing strips to respond directly to the world beyond the comic. During the Second World War for example, Hitler's authority became a natural ‘enemy’ for the characters. Jokes also often ridiculed characters demonstrating unpatriotic actions in the wartime context. Unfair or unjust behaviour such as stealing, arrogance or greed were common targets.  

These strips often ended with a joke, a punchline or a pun. Although fantastical, these are not like fairy tales, narratives of character or situational transformation, they are rather joyful, playful moments, encouraging readers to look again at the everyday, the familiar with new wonder. Martin Barker has written comprehensively about how the characters serve the strips, that the notion of winners or losers in comic strip resolution is less important than the visual and linguistic ‘poetry’ of the strips’ composition. The elegance of the ‘Pansy Potter’ strip for example lies in the bullies belief that by using a phone to insult ‘Pansy’, he will be safe, and yet it is by following the very same telephone line that she is able to find and ‘educate’ him in phone etiquette. There is great joy in her total disregard of the chaos and destruction she has caused in the process of enforcing ‘good’ behaviour.

‘Pansy Potter’ from The Beano annual 1937

The social values of fairness, justice and respect remain important to the characters and the ethos of the comic. The playfulness however challenged naive expectation that children should be silent and well-behaved. In this regard these comics were genuine products of the late modernist movement, reacting against earlier Victorian restrictions, and instead following the trends in commercial and mainstream cultures of the day. They confronted the inadequacies of earlier philosophies about the  idealised purity of children and instead embraced enlightened psychological and sociological knowledge about complex individual human experience.  

Times change. What was considered mischievous behavior in 1940 cannot be the same as what is considered mischievous behavior today, and yet generations of adults unanimously agree that the comic is a poster child for childhood (mis)behavior. Although the exact nature of what is naughty or humorous has significantly changed in line with social morays, the anti-grown-up attitude, resisting seriousness, responsibility and most importantly rejecting or ridiculing tasks commanded of children by adults has remained a constant motif of Beano. Both intentionally disruptive misbehavior and chaos caused by misdemeanor seems to have remained equally popular throughout its history. The ‘enemy’ however has changed considerably through time, often in recognition of changing attitudes and social trends.  

Each story in the comic interacts with a complex world. These are not narratives simplified to focus purely on the punchline, nor idealized to encourage aspirations of adventure and conquest as the story magazines had done before, but rather they engage with the complexities of everyday action and consequence in the child's journey of discovery.

‘Wily Willie Winkie’ from The Beano No. 58 September 2nd 1939

In the ‘Wily Willie Winkie’ strip from 1939 the restoration of justice drives his inventiveness in the narrative. In the social context of the time, readers in the late 1930’s would enjoy the inversion of his position as powerless inferior to an adult of authority. The strip is about imagining how a child can make things better and what the consequences of that might be. As a comparison, the same motif of problem solving can be seen in the strip ‘Rubi’s Volatile Vacuum’ however in 2019 rebellion against abusive adults has been replaced by resistance to repetitive work and inadequate machinery. ‘Rubidium Von Screwtop’ is, like her father, an inventor. Just like ‘Willie’ she tackles challenges through innovation but often this causes trouble. Her lack of success seems appropriate however as she often tries to wrangle with the wonders of science, such as black holes, rather than just against disrespectful policemen.

‘Rubi Von Screwtop’

Dona Pursall is a PhD student of Cultural Studies, currently embraced within the COMICS project based at Ghent University, Belgium. Funded by a European Research Council Starting Grant, the project seeks to piece together an intercultural history of children in comics: https://www.comics.ugent.be/ Dona’s research explores children, childhood, imagination and culture within the history of humorous comics. She is specifically investigating the relationship between the British ‘funnies’ from the 1930’s to 1960’s and the experiences and development of child readers within the context of wider social unrest and political change.

The ‘Remembering UK Comics’ series is curated and edited by Dr William Proctor and Dr Julia Round

On 'The Beano': Naughty National Icons and a History of Misbehavior (Part 1 of 3) by Dona Pursall

What do Kofi Annan, Judy Blume and Ben E. King have in common?

They each celebrated their 80th birthdays in 2018. Born on the cusp of the Second World War, in the same year that nuclear fission was discovered and in which nylon and freeze dry coffee were introduced, they were children of another era. Superman and Lois Lane also turned 80 in 2018. This occasion was celebrated with an 80 page special edition of the 1000th issue of Action Comics and the publication of a curated collection of essays and re-prints Action Comics: 80 years of Superman The Deluxe Edition.

Front cover of the first edition of The Beano from 30th July 1938

British comic readers also celebrated an 80th in 2018, of not one character but of a whole comic, and importantly a children's comic. The ways that this special birthday was celebrated speaks loudly to the place it has in British culture and British hearts. In its honour, the V&A art museum in London hosted an exhibition entitled Beano: A Manual for Mischief, Stella McCartney produced a dedicated fashion collection for kids paying homage to the comic characters, the National Trust (a heritage charity for historic buildings and landscapes) held Beano inspired "mischief and mayhem" related events across the country, and the McManus, Dundee’s Art Gallery and Museum, was renamed 'The McMenace' and hosted exhibits such as 'Minnie Lisa' by Duh Vinci, a Mona Lisa inspired portrait of Minnie the Minx, one of the comic’s most well-known naughty characters. The event became the most popular comics exhibition in UK history. What seems remarkable about these widespread appropriations of the comic's birthday celebrations is the incongruous relationship between these prestigious and well-respected institutions, and a comic for children where silliness, ridicule and misbehaviour are central tropes. It appears that despite its irreverent and mischievous nature, the comic has become a British institution in its own right.  

‘Bean feast’ is an eighteenth century term referring to an annual formal dinner. The expression ‘beano’ originated from this and in its abbreviated form it became associated more informally with any party. As a title Beano drew from the positive associations of a festive occasion to inform the tone of the comic. It is published weekly as a gathering of fun-loving, original and energetic personalities who throw themselves wholeheartedly into celebrating life. They sometimes fail, sometimes succeed, they laugh at others and at themselves, they challenge and question, they play on the edge of the adult world, but always remain children. The diversity of characters has continually morphed throughout the 80 years of publication, reflecting real social changes which affect childhood experiences, but the feeling of a chaotic carnival has remained the foundation of the comic.

Excerpt of ‘Desperate Dan’ from Dandy No. 60 Jan 21st 1939

The market of comics for children was already richly populated both with imports and British story papers by the late 1930s. Text story magazines for children had been popular since before the turn of the century, offering serialized popular narratives of mystery and adventure. Comic strip stories were gradually included, though the magazines remained primarily textual, often drawing from literary genres. The Scottish publisher D C Thomson was already a major producer of British children's story papers when in 1937 they introduced a new humorous anthology, the Dandy comic which, unlike the existing story magazines, offered predominantly drawn comic strips, and included 'American style' speech balloons rather than captions.  

The other way this comic differed from the existing offerings was through its main content of self-contained rather than serialised stories.  It introduced completely original characters and reworked popular favourites. The first issue contained, for example, ‘Desperate Dan’, a ridiculously strong cowboy with an exaggerated square jaw and a reputation for eating giant cow pies (referring to pies made of cow meat, although the double entendre was probably intentional), and ‘Our Gang’, about a squad of unruly children based on the Hal Roach Rascals movies which had started as silent films released by M.G.M. in 1922. The publisher commissioned and employed artists and writers across the breadth of the country, many of whom who had never written for children before, to create significant and iconic characters who would become the 'stars' of the comic and thus capture the hearts and minds of the readers.   

The success of the Dandy was followed with the launch of the Beano. It built on the most popular aspects of its big brother such as the non-consecutive strip style and the original and playful characters. The heart of the Beano comic, however, was the range and energy of the child characters presented, and their engagement with real-world children's issues.

Excerpt of ‘Pansy Potter’ from The Beano annual 1940

The first editions introduced characters such as ‘Pansy Potter, the Strongman's Daughter’, a young girl with extraordinary muscles who is able to treat the great feats of human engineering, such as ships and aeroplanes, as though they are toys. ‘Wily Willie Winkie’ was an engineering genius able to challenge adult authority through his inventions. ‘Lord Snooty's’ aristocratic position enabled him to defend his pals from the harsh injustices of a socially divided society. A shared attitude of irreverence unites these strips, despite differences in age, ability and social status of the characters. The breadth of different types of character in the comics also offered readers variety enticing all children. It was launched as the first ever British children's comic for both boys and girls, a move which reacted against the very gendered magazines that had gone before, and responded to the anecdotal evidence that many girls already chose to read the 'boys' magazines rather than those marketed to them.  

 Disobedient and playful children were already a well-established trope in literature, film and comics by the 1930s in both the US and Europe. However, whilst humor in cinema tended towards inclusive, reconciling laughter to appeal to the widest possible audiences, and strip comics in newspapers often laughed at the separation between the child and the adult view on the world, the Beano comic introduced a new kind of anarchic comedy, of children laughing together against grown-ups. 

Importantly though, the child characters not only challenged the expectations of behavior but also of looks. Beano children were not the neat, cutesy, stylized children that had become popular in the Victorian era and had continued to predominate as movie stars and marketing props such as Baby Marie Osborne and Shirley Temple. Beano children were clumsy, they had knobbly knees, spiky or disheveled hair and disproportionate limbs or heads. They were often illustrated with the inelegant, unbalanced stance of real children and their clothes were unfitting or patched. Changing labor and education laws had removed children from the factories and workplaces and required them to attend primary school, often reducing the already low income of the families and leaving children often alone in the world, on the street and unoccupied. Beanotown children were equally victim of the economic depression and food shortages as real British children were, their naughty behavior often being instigated by hunger and necessity. This was not the world of the privileged and the protected, but rather of the vulnerable underdog: a character 1930's child readers would have identified strongly with.

The Beano, No. 55 July 29th 1939

Dona Pursall is a PhD student of Cultural Studies, currently embraced within the COMICS project based at Ghent University, Belgium. Funded by a European Research Council Starting Grant, the project seeks to piece together an intercultural history of children in comics: https://www.comics.ugent.be/ Dona’s research explores children, childhood, imagination and culture within the history of humorous comics. She is specifically investigating the relationship between the British ‘funnies’ from the 1930’s to 1960’s and the experiences and development of child readers within the context of wider social unrest and political change.

The ‘Remembering UK Comics’ series is curated and edited by Dr William Proctor and Dr Julia Round

Promoting Tommy Steele through 1950s UK Comics (Part 2 of 2) by Joan Ormrod

Tommy as Magic Helper

Advert promoting the new series, “The New Tommy Steele Story.” Romeo #9, November 30th 1957, Page 15.

The fan could put herself in a fantasy scenario in the picture stories in which Tommy Steel appeared as himself.  There are two significant tropes in these stories, Tommy as magic helper and the guitar as a magic object used to achieve a dream.

Tommy Steele’s “never told before” adventures in Romeo started 7th December, 1957 and continued until late 1958.  The story banner proclaimed, “This is the Tommy as he really is, the Tommy few people know anything about” thereby inferring this is a secret between the comic and the Tommy Steele fan.  In most of these stories Tommy acted as a magical helper able to elevate or enrich ordinary people through music and help people find true love.   

One such story, “So Early in the Morning,” appeared in Romeo #40, May 31st, 1958. The story simultaneously showed Tommy as magic helper whilst promoting his latest film, The Duke Wore Jeans (1957).

While making The Duke Wore Jeans Tommy sets his alarm clock incorrectly and goes on set on Sunday only to find everything closed.  However, there is a girl singing on the set.  Tommy records her and plays the recording to the director.  She is appointed to play in the film and she then becomes a singing star. This story appealed to the teenage girl’s desire not just for the star, but for recognition and fame.

Figure 7 ‘So Early in the Morning’. In the first panel the story promotes Tommy's new film. Romeo #40 May 31st, 1958, p.12.

Every fan's dream - that the star will recognise their talent, although here there is no hint of romance just stardom and fame. Romeo #40 May 31st, 1958. 'So Early in the Morning', p.13.

An example of Tommy’s ability to spin gold from little can be seen in “Ping Went the String of Tommy’s Guitar”, Romeo #19.  Chorus girl, Maisie’s dress catches and breaks the ‘e’ string on Tommy’s guitar.[1]  Desolate, she persuades Old Charlie, a busker outside the theatre, to donate his e string to Tommy. Charlie refuses Tommy’s money as reward and so Tommy busks outside the theatre with Charlie, earning a huge amount of money.  This story reinforced Tommy’s affiliation with his working-class roots, his kindness and his talent.

The guitar as fetish object. ‘Ping Went the String’. Romeo 19, December 6th, 1957, p.7.

Dual promotion of Tommy's latest hit and his star image as a down to earth ordinary person but who can magically bestow favours. Romeo 19, December 6th, 1957, p.8.

Tommy and His Magic Guitar

The significance of the guitar is reflected the story of how he became a pop star in The Tommy Steele Story (1957).  Tommy is introduced to the guitar when in hospital with a bad back.  He is taught how to play a guitar and entrances hospital staff and patients with his abilities to entertain.  When he leaves hospital, he visits a second-hand shop and buys a guitar which he takes around the world in his travels with the merchant navy. On his tour he picks up musical styles and creates rock ‘n’ roll.  The guitar eventually becomes the means for him to achieve his dream to make his own unique music.  The notion of the guitar as a means of achieving a fantasy or dream recurs in several stories. 

A story told by Tommy occurs in Roxy in which the guitar was a significant feature of the narrative.  The guitar, like that in his biopic, becomes the means for girls to achieve their less ambitious goals of love and marriage.  This story was part of an ongoing series from the first issue to 1961 in which each week, a star told a story in which they helped a couple find love.  In nearly all of these stories the inciting incident is shown in the first panel when the protagonist faces a dilemma. The star intervenes.  There is often a romantic quarrel before the star helps to resolve the dispute.   

In “Look What I’ve Won! Tommy Steele’s Guitar and Ten Guitar Lessons!” (Roxy 14, June 14th, 1958, pp.1-4) Trudy, “the shyest, quietest girl in town”, wins Tommy’s old guitar and has lessons with Dermott, a musician in a skiffle group.  The second page of the story shows Trudy trudging through town, imagining everyone is laughing at her.  She clutches the guitar which seems large and heavy in her arms (fig 12).  Gradually her guitar teacher, Dermot, wins her confidence and love and he convinces her to play the guitar in front of an audience.  Trudy buys a new dress, one that will draw instead of detracting attention from her (fig 13). Dermot tells her she is a natural born player and to believe in herself. (fig 14). “By now, so great was her love and faith in Dermot that if he’d told her to jump off the Blackpool Tower she’d have done it!” Trudy’s singing is a success.  She forgets her stammer and shyness.  The last panel delivers the coda, “If it hadn’t been for Tommy Steele’s old guitar all this would never have happened.”  Tommy wraps the story up explaining how stammers can be cured through song. 

Trudy, the shyest girl in town wins Tommy Steele’s guitar and finds romance. Roxy 11, May 24th, 1958

Roxy 11, May 24th, 1958, page 2.

Trudy turns to consumerism and fashion to solve her problems.

The stories usually end with the protagonist sending an update on their romance to the star. Tommy's guitar not only makes romance happen and cures Trudy's stammer.

There is a similar to a story in Roxy 1 (which I discussed in an article for The Journal of Girlhood Studies[2]) in which an equally shy girl is given a lucky guitar by Tommy, buys a dress and finds love. 

Marilyn's Screen Test No. 1 - Spanish romance combines the glamour of a Spanish holiday with the holiday romance. The fan can interact and daydream about the star. Note too, the record promotes Tommy's new film, Tommy the Toreador (1959).

The fan was also hailed in the Marilyn Screen Test series in which pop stars acted out a scene of dialogue on a record that could be purchased for one shilling and nine pence. The Tommy Steele record was advertised in Marilyn, 26 September 1959, and the record ephemera proclaimed, "You star with Tommy Steele in Marilyn's Screen Test! Screen Test is a game you'll be thrilled by. YOU play a love scene with TOMMY STEELE." The record story, set in Spain, where “They go in for something called romance in a very big way,” promoted Tommy’s latest film, Tommy the Toreador (1959).

A girl goes on a Spanish holiday with a group of friends. Tommy, setting up the action, says, "In the gang you went with, was a boy you liked very much. I'll play the boy and you're the girl . . . It is moonlight . . . in the distance you can hear the sea washing the shore and somewhere a guitar is playing." The dialogue refers to the daydream.

Girl: ‘It’s just a dream.’

Boy: ‘No, love. You wake up from dreams.’

Boy: ‘We only need two things to make it perfect.’

Girl: ‘Such as?’ Boy: ‘Two orders of fish and chips.’

These stories and promotional elements of the comics in these early years of teenage culture and pop music continued a tradition that started with Hollywood promotion in the early twentieth century.  These cross promotional tactics were used in exploitation of independent films in America and the UK in the 1950s.  Film companies, comics publishers, radio and later television in the late 1950s early 1960s attempted to understand the phenomenon of rock ‘n’ roll and how it could be tamed and exploited. It was in their interests to downplay the sexual and violent dark side of rock ‘n’ roll, making these new stars less dangerous to parents.  Although the stories and promotional materials surrounding Tommy Steele may appear naive and, at times, slightly comical, the promotional tactics pioneered later fan and industrial practices.  They were precursors for fanfic, DIY culture of the 1960s onwards and star promotion.  The British pop industry developed promotional tactics for stars that culminated in the mid-1960s UK pop invasion of America spearheaded by the Beatles.   

ENDNOTES

[1] Romeo #40, 4th January, 1958, pp.7-8

[2] “Reading Production and Culture in UK Teen-Girl Comics 1955-60: Consumerism, Pop Stars and Lucky Guitars,” Journal of Girlhood Studies, 11(3) pp.18-33. https://www.berghahnjournals.com/abstract/journals/girlhood-studies/11/3/ghs110304.xml

Dr Joan Ormrod is a senior lecturer in the Department of Media at Manchester Metropolitan University.  She specializes in teaching subcultures, comics, fantasy and girlhood.  She has published widely on these topics and she has edited books on time travel, superheroes and adventure sports. Her monograph, Wonder Woman, the Female Body and Popular Culture will be published by Bloomsbury, February, 2020.  Joan is the editor of Routledge’s Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics and she is on the organizing committee of the annual conference of Graphic Novels and Comics.  She is currently researching girlhood and teenage comics in the UK 1955-1975.​

The ‘Remembering UK Comics’ series is edited by William Proctor and Julia Round

Promoting Tommy Steele through 1950s UK Comics (Part I of 2) by Joan Ormrod

On November 15th, 1955 Amalgamated Press (later Fleetway) published Marilyn, a comic aimed at the late teenage, early twenties female market.  By the end of the 1950s, it became apparent that the comic had a younger readership of teenage girls, a newly identified emerging market.  Teenagers in this era were identified as a market ripe for exploitation, as there was virtually full employment and they had no responsibilities.  Consequently, teenagers had the money to pay for consumer goods, music, media and styles that differed from that of their parents.  Marilyn was the first of several comics and magazine titles that identified and developed this new market. It was followed by Amalgamated Press’s Valentine (1957–1965) and Roxy (1958–1963), DC Thomson’s Romeo (1957–1974) and Cherie (1960–1963) and Mirabelle (1956–1978) and Marty (1960–1963 published by C. Arthur Pearson (later subsumed by Fleetway).

It was estimated that at least 40 percent of teenage girls read these comics. Their circulation varied from Valentine’s 407,000, Romeo’s 329,000, Marilyn’s 314,000 and Mirabelle’s 224,000. This readership may seem small compared with film and television audiences of 15 million in this era but if a comic had a turnover of 150,000, with rereading and swapping, this potentially translated into 750,000 readers.[i]

The comics came in either comic form (printed on cheap newsprint) or magazine form (printed on shiny paper with full colour covers).  This depended on how the publisher’s presses were set up. However, all of them shared a similar format that hovered between comic and magazine with picture stories, text stories, articles (fashion, pop music), advice columns (beauty, pop music, lifestyle and relationships).  At regular intervals they also contained free gifts.  My interest in these publications is as much in the paratexts (the adverts, free gifts, the articles and advice columns) as the picture stories.  All of these reflect what publishers perceived were teen girl interests such as consumerism, pop music and lifestyle. From their earliest publication these comics and magazines contained articles on pop music and this expanded throughout the 1950s into the 1960s. Comics could also provide what television and film could not—continuous accessibility. In this article I want to analyse the development of an emerging British pop music industry through pop star promotion.    

Pop music was just one of several seductive American cultural imports aimed at teenagers. This started in the early 1950s with jazz and country music.  The British media and cultural industries soon began to exploit American style and music.  British pop stars were developed who emulated the major rock ‘n’ roll star of the late 1950s, Elvis Presley. While American stars, like Elvis Presley, were treated with awe, they remained largely out of reach. They had an advantage over the King – they were more accessible to the British teenager. British stars cultivated Presley’s look, music and snarl.

The first really big star was Tommy Steele.  He is a good example how pop exploitation was already sophisticated and crossed various media.  But it was comics where the teenage girl had ready access to the pop star through biographies, free gifts, stories and DIY.  Through these channels she could imagine herself in a relationship with the pop star.  The comics acted as a channel for her daydream and fantasy.

Comics and Rock ‘n’ Roll

In the mid-1950s rock and roll music arrived in Britain but, until the mid-1960s, it was difficult to access in the mass media. There were few television shows and films took forever to circulate on the distribution circle.  The main ways teenage girls could access pop music was either Radio Luxembourg, playing records at home in their bedrooms or, if they were lucky and lived in a larger town, they might have a coffee bar.  The bedroom was an important place where teenage girls could read comics, create a shrine to their pop idols, play records and discuss pop music and fashion with their friends.  Comics were always there and they could be reread, loaned and borrowed. 

Home grown British stars were incorporated into articles and advice columns in comics and they frequently mentioned how their visits to the publishing offices. In reading through the comics of the late 1950s I was struck by the amount of promotional stories and gifts devoted to Tommy Steele.

Tommy Steele the First Major British Pop Star

Tommy Steele's career in pop spanned 1956 to 1960.  His career went from pop in the late 1950s to light entertainment from the early 1960s.  Later he progressed to international success in Disney films and stage musicals.  His career trajectory, from pop to light entertainment, was the anticipated career path of the teen star in the late 1950s up to the mid-1960s when music became recognised as a potential career path. By 1960, in an article about the record industry for Cherie #7 (November 12th, 1960), he admitted he had, “"risen slightly above [rock and roll], and I consider myself lucky that I have.”

Tommy Steele: Britain’s biggest pin-up & first major pop star

The official version of Tommy Steele's ascent to stardom is similar to that of other stars such as Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde and Terry Dene.  He was discovered singing and playing in the 2i’s coffee bar by John Kennedy a freelance photographer.  Kennedy eventually co-managed Steele with Larry Parnes. Steele’s good nature, charisma and youthful energy made up for his lack of singing ability in a market filled with adult or middle-aged stars.  His first hits were cover versions of American songs and his appeal through the popular skiffle craze in the UK. 

Within four months of his first hit record, “Rock with the Caveman,” he starred in a biopic, The Tommy Steele Story about his career to date in 1957. The film told of his unsuccessful career in the merchant navy and how he sacrificed it for his love of music.  On being sacked by the navy, he began singing in a London café where he was discovered and became a star. This film was followed by The Duke Wore Jeans (1957) in which he played a working-class boy pretending to be a duke, and Tommy the Toreador (1958) in which a sailor, whose ship docks in Spain, becomes a toreador by accident.

The themes that were repeatedly used in comics stories about Steele often used his stint in the navy, working class origins, charm, kindness, humility and his guitar. Tommy Steele’s working-class background in Bermondsey acted as a means of making him less threatening representing him as a dutiful son. His stint in the merchant navy was used in films such as The Tommy Steele Story and Tommy the Toreador.  In the latter, foreign settings such as Spain, then a glamorous destination in British tourism, provided an exotic locale for his international appeal.

Comics, Daydreaming and Tommy Steele

The promotion surrounding Tommy Steele included pinups, advice columns, free gifts and picture stories.  Much of promotion was based on consumerism from raising awareness of his new records or films, or clothing ranges endorsed by Steele.  In, “Dig This: The Tommy Steele Story,” Roxy #10, May 17th, 1958, Mary Verney Mellor described how Tommy and his brother, Colin Hicks who had also entered the pop music industry, spent their money on clothing.  Despite their wealth, she stated that “Unlike the young Elvis Presley, Steele appears as an entirely non-threatening, asexual presence. Like Gracie Fields, he is closely identified with his working-class community, and is presented as a thoroughly decent lad who remains loyal to his roots.”

‘Tommy Talking’ showbiz advice column in Mirabelle, November 7th, 1959, p.5.

Stars also lent their names to advice columns Mirabelle’s showbusiness column of the early 1960s “Tommy Talking: The Lively column from our happy-go-lucky reporter” was purportedly written by Tommy Steele. In nearly all cases the columns were written by a staff writer, possibly the comic paying the star to use their name and image.  In many cases, the star’s advice was promotional whether selling records, films, fashions or, like Alma Cogan, beauty information and fashion tips. Such promotion also developed the star brand and star as commodity.  

Many articles, free gifts, stories and promotional materials promoted daydreaming and a fantasy of a relationship between Tommy Steele for his young audiences.  Valentine #26, July 13th, 1957, Patti Morgan’s weekly fashion column, “Be Pretty and Smart” promoted a fashion range with matching his and hers clothing with prints of Tommy’s face and autographs.  Accessories included guitar-buckled belts.

Star endorsement and fashion design in which the image and autograph inscribe the fan with his image. Patti Morgan, “Be Pretty and Smart” Valentine 26, July 13th, 1957, p.14.

The material components of comics such as free gifts and special purchases were used in promoting the star and in making him more accessible to the fan. A favoured free gift was transfers that could be ironed onto fan’s clothing or soft furnishings.  

Transfers free gift. Marty (1961)

Fans could imagine themselves in a relationship in the picture stories or act it out.  A free gift in the first issue of Romeo, 21st September, 1957, was the rock ‘n’ roll lucky wishing ring, “specially designed to fit any finger…Put the ring on the third finger of your right hand.  Turn the ring until the initial you want to wish on is uppermost.  Then wish your wish.” In this way the publisher directly addressed the fan.

Lucky Wishing Ring free gift – you put it on your right hand rather than left – the star was accessible but not too accessible. Romeo 1, 21st September, 1957 p.10.

ENDNOTES

[i] For girl comics reader practices in the 1950s see Mel Gibson (2016) Remembered Reading: Memory, Comics and Post-War Constructions of British Girlhood. Leuven: Leuven University Press, pp.145-148.

Biography

Dr Joan Ormrod is a senior lecturer in the Department of Media at Manchester Metropolitan University.  She specializes in teaching subcultures, comics, fantasy and girlhood.  She has published widely on these topics and she has edited books on time travel, superheroes and adventure sports. Her monograph, Wonder Woman, the Female Body and Popular Culture will be published by Bloomsbury, February, 2020.  Joan is the editor of Routledge’s Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics and she is on the organizing committee of the annual conference of Graphic Novels and Comics.  She is currently researching girlhood and teenage comics in the UK 1955-1975.​

The Early Development of the Comic Strip in the UK (Part 2 of 2) by Roger Sabin & Michael Connerty

Michael Connerty

That’s an interesting point about the relative depth and complexity of the Sloper world. No individual strip during these years seems to have had the same kind of impact, and I don’t think there was any merchandising associated with these characters as you say there was with Sloper. Also true that conventions around tone, repetition and non-continuity were quite quickly established in the new comics, and this did occasionally make for material that could be a bit…rubbish (let’s be honest!). You’ve got to expect that from any mass entertainment industry cranking out product at that kind of rate. Of course there’s so much good stuff at the same time, and it’s probably worth mentioning some of the star artists of the period.

Tom Browne tends to be universally cited as the most important figure during the 1890s, and, no doubt about it, he was very great, very influential, and very prolific. In fact, he was that prolific that overwork was conceivably a contributory factor in his early death at the age of thirty-nine. At the height of his fame he was doing five front page strips per week as well as other bits and pieces inside these comics. His most important series was titled Weary Willie and Tired Tim (originally “Weary Waddles and Tired Timmy”), and first appeared on the front cover of Illustrated Chips in 1896. It was immediately and massively successful. A good number of imitators- including Browne himself- produced similar strips based on down-at-heel double acts, and the figure of the tramp, already a staple of music hall and humour periodicals, became ubiquitous in the comics of this era. Browne’s chirpy tone and dynamic panel compositions characterised further series like Airy Alf and Bouncing Billy, Don Quixote de Tintogs, and Squashington Flats. You can see his influence in the work of someone like G.M. Payne, who created Curly Kelly for Merry and Bright (below)- very much in the Tom Browne mould.

Cover of Merry and Bright, including "Curly Kelly" by G.M. Payne, 5 July 1913

Tom Wilkinson was another great artist, and the strips were often very smart, and wonderfully drawn. His double act were Lucky Lucas and Neglected Jim- I like this one in which Lucas gets caught up in the works of a printing machine at Comic Cuts, emerging with next week’s strip printed all over him. He also drew a long-running series for Puck called Professor Radium that was one of a number of strips that can be viewed as early examples of science fiction in the comics. Jack B. Yeats also contributed a series focused on the intrusion of gadgetry and technology into everyday life called Dr. Patent’s Academy, also to Puck, and another about a weird automaton called The Whodidit, for Comic Cuts. Yeats is an interesting example in that he initially contributed to humour periodicals, producing work in the more heavily-worked style associated with Punch and so on, then began contributing to Harmsworth’s comics from the early ‘90s early on, evolving a stripped back, spontaneous approach more suited to the strip format. He had a lengthy career- over 25 years- as a comic strip artist, something that he appears to have subsequently swept under the carpet as a he pursued a career in the more elevated world of fine art. The fact that he was reasonably successful in this subterfuge is pretty amazing when you consider that he had produced a couple of dozen recurring characters, consumed by mass readerships in the hundreds of thousands every week.

Tom Wilkinson, “The Amazing Adventures of Lucky Luke and Neglected Jim”, Comic Cuts, May 28 1904

There were a lot of other comics knocking around at this stage, all offering similar fare- Illustrated Chips, Smiles, Comic Life, The Butterfly, The World’s Comic, Larks, and so on. One worthy of special mention is Puck- not to be confused with the American humour periodical of the same name. This was yet another Harmsworth publication which began appearing in colour from 1904 (black and white was the norm throughout the 1890s). It also included a supplement- Puck Jr.- that was an early attempt to explicitly target the very young reader. At the same time Puck was the first to overtly promote itself as a product for women, by, for example, featuring cover art that was clearly influenced by the look of women’s magazines such as Harmsworth’s own Woman’s World, first published in 1903.  

Prior to Puck Jr. there was nothing particularly ‘adult’ about the content of the strips in any of the comics- the vast majority dealt in knockabout physical slapstick, punning dialogue and humorous japes. In the 1890s, the single panel gag cartoons were much more likely to contain references to romance or excessive drinking, but the strips were definitely family-friendly. The cast of characters were, in general, drawn from the contemporary urban scene- shopkeepers, street performers, policemen, burglars, tradesmen, housemaids, and, it goes without saying, rascally kids. There was little by way of full-blown fantasy, and the streets in which the action takes place, by and large, reflected the quotidian world of the comics’ readers. Exceptions to this included series like Comic Cuts Colony by Frank Wilkinson (and later Julius Baker), set in an African jungle, and Jack Yeats’s Roly Poly’s Round the World Tour, in which the protagonist enjoys serial adventures in various far flung parts of the Empire.

There were other important publishers during the 1890s and early 1900s, though Harmsworth did dominate. Arthur Pearson published The Big Budget, which was a key title. It had more pages than other weeklies and was stuffed with serialized fiction. There were great strip artists contributing. Ralph Hodgson was the art editor- and, as “Yorick”, was a fine cartoonist himself.  He got people like Tom Browne, Frank Holland, Jack Yeats and other established artists on board from the get-go (apparently they weren’t contractually tied to specific titles). He stopped doing the strips himself around 1907, drifted away from comics, and ultimately became a moderately successful poet.

Roger Sabin 

That's a great survey. I think you've mentioned all my favourites from that later period. From the earlier time, I'd pick Charles Ross and Marie Duval, who I've already highlighted and who I've been working on for years, and also Archibald Chasemore, who had a gift for physical gestures and facial expressions, as well for depicting clothes (in his other life he designed costumes for the theatre). I guess we sound like fans of these folks - and we are! - but it's important to reiterate that a proportion of their work was vastly racist/sexist/and every other kind of '-ist, as befitting its times (you mentioned the ‘Comic Cuts Colony’ - and there's a reason we're not reproducing an image from that!). 

What you're seeing in that shift from the 1880s and 90s into the 20th century is a change in the profile of cartoonists. In the earlier period, it’s possible to generalise and say that most were middle class gents with training in illustration and painting. Later on, with the Harmsworth/Pearson/etc. boom, they tend not to have much art education, and come from lower-middle-class and working-class backgrounds. With this comes a shift in the 'aura' of cartooning from a bohemian pastime to a workaday pursuit. Most names continued to be male, but women were in there, too, hustling away. We know this because there are scattered mentions in memoirs and press reports, and even illustrations of hopefuls queuing to show work to editors. (Women cartoonists' signatures are less visible, or disguised, partly because the profession was seen as less-than-respectable. There's a lot of work for historians to do in uncovering their output.)

These cartoonists could be pretty promiscuous in terms of who they worked for - their work can turn up in several titles at once, as your survey makes clear, but also on book covers, on advertising, in theatre designs, in event programmes; basically anything to make a shilling. They had to be great artists, but they also had to be funny - to have an 'adequate grasp of the ridiculous', as Lemmy used to say. That was not always a natural combination (then as now). It's pretty obvious that one of the reasons the less polished creators like Duval and Ross could 'get away with it' was because they were great comedians.

And if you could hit that funny/skilled sweet-spot, then you could make good money. That went for Yeats, as you imply, but also for Browne and W.F. Thomas (for many years the Half-Holiday cover artist). They lived comfortable lives, and Browne was a minor celebrity. There is some evidence of bidding wars pushing up fees - Funny Cuts carried a weekly advert boasting that it paid better than its rivals. But mostly the work in comics was drudgery, undertaken by a body of pauperised freelancers, feeding the readers' insatiable habit for 'fun' every week. Reg Carter's 1908 strip from the Half-Holiday gets it about right, about a struggling cartoonist whose life revolves around poverty, booze, sex, and fights with his editor. Not much has changed, I'm sure.

Reg Carter, 'A Day in the Life of a Comic Artist', Ally Sloper's Half-Holiday, 23 May, 1908.

Professor Roger Sabin is Professor of Popular Culture at the University of the Arts London. He is the author or editor of seven books, including Adult Comics (Routledge 'Major Works') and Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels (Phaidon), and he is part of the team that put together the Marie Duval Archive (www.marieduval.org). He is Series Editor for the booklist Palgrave Studies in Comics, and 'The Sabin Award' is presented annually at the 'International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference'.

Dr Michael Connerty teaches film and animation history at the National Film School (Dun Laogahire Institute of Art, Design and Technology) in Dublin. He recently completed his PhD at Central Saint Martins, UAL, where his focus was on early British comics, particularly the work of Jack B. Yeats. His writing on comics history has been published in the International Journal of Comic Art and in the collection Comics Memory: Archives and Styles edited by Maaheen Ahmed and Benoit Crucifix (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

The Early Development of the Comic Strip in the UK (Part 1 of 2) by Roger Sabin & Michael Connerty

Tom Browne, "Weary Willy and Tired Tim", Comic Cuts, 24 July 1897

Michael Connerty

Okay, so what is there to say about the British comic strip in the final decades of the 19th century and into the early 20th? Firstly, whereas the strip in America evolved principally in the context of the newspaper and the Sunday supplement, in the UK strips came in the context of publications like Comic Cuts, The Funny Wonder and The Jester, which were much more specifically oriented around laughs, thrills and entertainment. One of the most striking characteristics of the British comics of this era is their variety of content. I think you can see the chaotic arrangement of elements on the page, all vying for the reader's eye, as a kind of metaphor for the intense vitality of urban life at the end of the century. The comic strip is just one component in amongst this jumble- though it would become increasingly dominant over the course of the 1890s, and would come to define these publications into the new century.

A big influence on this form were the hugely successful text-based publications like George Newnes's Tit-Bits and Alfred Harmsworth's Answers to Correspondents, both of which were stuffed with easily digestible factoids, anecdotes, historical tales, scientific curiosities, amusing trivia and early examples of celebrity gossip, in an apparently random flow of information, aimed at a mass readership. Some of this kind of material made it into the comics too, alongside pages crammed with humorous graphic imagery in the form of strips, but also single panel cartoons, many of which were lifted, without permission, from other sources, including American and European periodicals.

Almost all of the comics also featured literary serials- with dramatic, and occasionally lurid, illustrations, linking the comics to the penny dreadful that preceded them, but also to contemporary forms of popular fiction- tales of crime, espionage, mystery and adventure. A lot of these illustrations, in a realist rather than a cartoony style, justify the cover price on their own! The strips themselves often riff on the tropes associated with these genres and there is an intertextuality at work with formal and narrative references to a wide array of contemporary media and entertainment, including the circus, music hall (the UK version of vaudeville), popular theatre and, from the mid-1890s, cinema.

Marie Duval, 'A Nice Chat!', Judy, 4 December, 1872

Roger Sabin

We obviously share a love of the speed-freak bonkers-ness of these publications, and I agree with everything you've said, but would like to problematise it in two ways. First, strips were around a long time before Comic Cuts et al. I know you wouldn't disagree with that, but I'd like to give a shout-out to people like Heath, Cruikshank, Doyle, Leech, Tenniel, Ross and Duval, who were tickling people's funny bones with sequential panel narratives right through the 19th century.

Second, if we base our discussion of British comics around 'strips', then isn't that trying to fit them into a particular box? Isn't it more helpful to think of them as miscellanies, as you expertly describe? So, for example, Brian Maidment has tracked the history of humorous miscellany-style magazines in the early 1800s, and we can go from there to Punch and the Punch rivals (Judy, Fun, Tomahawk, etc.) then to Ally Sloper's Half-Holiday and all the imitators of that groundbreaking publication, and then to Comic Cuts and the 1890s funnies.

I guess this is a question - or series of questions - about history. Yes, there was an evolution towards the (UK) comic as a strip-based publication (if we take The Beano - founded 1938 - as our standard British reference point). But that's only one trajectory: an obvious counter-example might be something like Private Eye (founded 1961) which is a satirical miscellany in the old tradition (and which nobody calls a comic). All that leads us to the question of the moment at which there was 'genre consciousness', i.e. comics were accepted as comics. I presume from the above that you might choose the 1890s, with Comic Cuts being the archetype, and I might take things back to the 1880s with the Half-Holiday and its copyists.

Either way, there's the question of 'strippy-ness', and I know that both of us are interested in aspects beyond strips e.g. how those literary serials you mention were illustrated. If we get too focused on just one thing, then we miss... well... too much. (That's a critique that could be levelled at comics studies as a whole, I think.)

One thing we do seem to agree on is that the explosion of these publications was a product of circumstances having to do with the unique status of the UK at that time. Victoria's empire was the most powerful the world had ever seen, and by 1900 London was the largest city in the world. The infrastructure for what we might call modern entertainment capitalism was there early-on and was sophisticated compared to other parts of the world. Hence, as you mention, the incredible music hall/variety scene, the boom in photography and later film, and in cheap publishing - including comics. I'm not making any kind of nationalistic point here; just indicating that when you look over to the US, and start to make comparisons, that might not be germane because urbanisation and entertainment capitalism were taking different forms there.

Oliver Dawney, "Deep-Sea Fun", in Puck, 22 October, 1905

Michael

Yes you’re right about the perils of having too narrow a focus with these things, particularly true in the case of the neglected single panel gag cartoon. They have traditionally fallen between critical stools, but surely the most obvious scholarly home for them is within the warm embrace of an expanded comics studies. You can see all kinds of examples of comics ‘language’ on display in the gag cartoons, and they share so much in terms of graphic style and the development of the cartoon sensibility. The Oliver Dawney one above is a fine example of the noble art.

There is a self-consciousness around comics as a specific publishing category, which emerges a bit more fully during the 1890s, and is then pretty much consolidated by the turn of the century. I totally agree that the artists contributing to the comics during this period exist on a continuum with earlier cartoonists, illustrators and caricaturists (as in the US, individual artists probably didn’t distinguish much between these various activities at the time, and many were adept in all of these areas), but there are certain elements that begin to predominate- recurring characters, sequences of panels, word balloons, a particular graphic style- albeit that these weren’t necessarily appearing for the first time during that decade. It’s worth noting that a number of the comics included reprints of well-known American strips by the likes of Frederick Opper and F.W. Outcault, which definitely had an influence on British cartoonists, such as Julius Baker (below).

Julius Baker, "The Cinderella Season Has Commenced in Casey Court," Illustrated Chips, 20 January 1906

In the same way that Hearst and Pulitzer were instrumental in providing platforms for American strip artists, a future press baron called Alfred Harmsworth (later “1st Viscount Northcliffe”) was a key figure in the development of comics as a mass medium in the UK. He would go on to have great success as a media mogul, establishing the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror for example, but he achieved his earliest successes with comics. Because Harmsworth and his peers were so intent on shifting as many units as possible, there’s an open and accessible style of address at work that seems to be aimed equally at men and women, working class and middle class, young and old. There’s almost no reference at all to party politics- Harmsworth didn’t want to alienate any potential purchaser. There is plenty of flag-waving Jingo-ism, particularly during the South African War (1899-02) and later during WW1. A corollary of this is that, as elsewhere, the pages often contained ethnic and racial stereotypes that reflected the Imperialist world view predominant in British popular media at the time.

Harmsworth believed passionately that what he called “the age of cheapness” had arrived- the comics were part of the same popular commodity culture that included the joke shop novelties and mail order cures for baldness regularly advertised in their pages. One of Harmsworth’s most important moves was the dramatic reduction in the price of his titles to the rock bottom half-a-penny. Hundreds of thousands of copies were purchased every week, far outstripping the readership that had existed for humour periodicals during the previous decade. Harmsworth also saved a lot of money by skimping on ink and printing quality, and by using very low-grade paper. This has meant that surviving copies are often in pretty poor condition- tiny shards of brittle paper litter the table after even the most careful perusal through library volumes. There is an urgency around the archiving and preservation of this material. It’s all split between the British Library, the Bodleian in Oxford, and various regional and local libraries at the moment. It would be great to see a comics-specific archive of material from this period.

Roger

Oh, I agree about cartoons - so overlooked, and so fascinating. They factor into the previous point about a historical progression towards 'comics': I forget who it was that observed that in many cases they were seen as progressive/adult/forward looking, for the way you could play with the juxtaposition of word and image, and that strips were seen as clunky and old school in comparison, even looking back to the kids' books of the 1860s. Once again, there's no linear evolution. Similarly, as you hint, early creators would not have  perceived themselves as 'cartoonists' or ‘strip artists’; rather, as artists doing a job that involved several kinds of cartooning. (The word 'cartoonist' only enters the Oxford English Dictionary in 1893.) 

As a sidebar, I’ve been collecting scrapbooks from this period lately, and scrapbookers loved chopping up comics, but were not particularly interested in strips; they wanted illustrations and cartoons, because then they could customise their own pages.

I also agree about American influence. By a certain point in time, it's everywhere. But, as you say, it's often in hybrid form - a little bit like in the 1940s when bebop came over and was reimagined by London musicians. I also agree about Harmsworth. What is interesting about him, in retrospect, is the way he changed everything from the bottom up. As you say, there's his obsession with cheap ink and paper, etc., but what's less acknowledged is the way he utilised an army of street sellers. He revolutionised distribution as much as anything. The old idea of the family firm, with paternalistic ties to staff and newsagents, which was a characteristic of the Half-Holiday and its publisher, was blown out of the water in favour of a new brash capitalism that emphasised *hustle*. Harmsworth would put dozens of titles out there to see which ones survived, and would launch comics tactically to destroy rivals. So although the 'Harmsworth Bros' started out as a family firm, this model very soon morphed into something more aggressive, and faster.

That had big consequences for the content of the comics, I think, and not just in obvious ways like the kinds of characters that were foregrounded, and the 'borrowing' of stuff from the US. For example, I'm interested in the turn against world-building. Whereas previously the Half-Holiday attempted to build a universe (i.e. the endless soap-opera of the Sloper family), and invested in an albeit crude week-by-week continuity to keep people interested, now we were into an era of what I'd call 'assemblage comics' - cheapo publications thrown together from here-and-there, with the aim of being enjoyed in the moment (rather than asking the readership to put in some effort). The Half-Holiday had also built a world outside of itself - with Sloper merchandising and stage shows, which were then referenced in the comic - and this idea, too, was pretty much ditched in favour of print-focused speed and immediacy ('100 Laughs for a Halfpenny!', as Comic Cuts had it). Some of the new comics paid more attention to editorial branding and direction than others, it was true. But the idea of the 'classic' interchangeable, cheap-and-cheerful, British comic was pretty much an 1890s thing.

Oh, and on your final point, I know what you mean about archiving these comics. I was in a library looking at an historically important title called Illustrated Bits, and it literally fell to bits. Sad...

Professor Roger Sabin is Professor of Popular Culture at the University of the Arts London. He is the author or editor of seven books, including Adult Comics (Routledge 'Major Works') and Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels (Phaidon), and he is part of the team that put together the Marie Duval Archive (www.marieduval.org). He is Series Editor for the booklist Palgrave Studies in Comics, and 'The Sabin Award' is presented annually at the 'International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference'.

Dr Michael Connerty teaches film and animation history at the National Film School (Dun Laogahire Institute of Art, Design and Technology) in Dublin. He recently completed his PhD at Central Saint Martins, UAL, where his focus was on early British comics, particularly the work of Jack B. Yeats. His writing on comics history has been published in the International Journal of Comic Art and in the collection Comics Memory: Archives and Styles edited by Maaheen Ahmed and Benoit Crucifix (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

'Misty' and the Horrible History of British Comics (Part 3 of 3) by Julia Round

British girls’ comics were wildly popular throughout the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s: outselling the boys’ titles and circulating millions of copies every week. However by the 1980s circulations had fallen drastically, and very few titles made it out of this decade. The collapse of the industry and the cancellation of popular titles like Misty was likely due to a number of factors. IPC’s corporate structure was absolutely key to the demise, as in the 1970s individual titles were made into ‘cost centres’ and thus had to make a profit every week. Both Wilf Prigmore and Pat Mills agree that the company treated its creative staff as ‘the enemy’, with requests for a fairer deal constantly being ignored. No surprise then that creators sought out more appealing opportunities: leaving to work for the American or European markets, or moving into different media such as children’s paperback fiction, which offered decent advances and the prospect of reprints and royalties if stories proved to be popular. Publishers also abused their readership, as the merging of titles was a common practice. Although each title had a distinct look and identity, it was the fate of most to be merged into each other in pursuit of profit. The merger strategy, known as ‘hatch, match and dispatch’ was a popular way to bolster sales in a dwindling industry. While new titles always sold well on launch, after sales hit a certain low the comic would be merged with another title so their combined circulations would be taken into account: often devastating readers who may have followed one of the titles for years.  

Misty merged with Tammy on 19 January 1980, forming Tammy and Misty in which Misty would appear as the sometime host of the regular feature ‘Strange Stories from the Mist’ (also hosted by the Storyteller: a older male character initially introduced in June and School Friend (1965-74). However, due to Misty’s lack of regular characters and its host’s ethereal nature, her appearances quickly dwindled. By 26 September 1981 Tammy had reverted to its original title (in readiness for the merger of Tammy and Jinty on 28 November 1981), and Misty herself had all but vanished from its pages. Her last appearance in a story in Tammy and Jinty comes nearly six months later, after a long absence, when she bookends ‘The Mists of Time’ (15 May 1982). Reprints of Misty stories continued to appear worldwide: initially in the UK it continued in the annuals (1978-86) and a Best of Misty Monthly (8 issues, 1986). A French-Canadian Misty was launched in 1980 and was published fortnightly, and Misty material was also used in Canada as part of a bigger series of mystery/horror anthologies called Collection Kalédiscope (PAF Loisirs, 1976-80). As the 1980s progressed, Misty reprints continued to appear in the UK in IPC’s Barbie comic (licensed from Mattel, 1985-87) and its Swedish translation (Pandora Press, 1986-89), and Misty stories also appeared in the German comic Vanessa – Freundin der Geister [Friend of the Spirits] (Bastei-Verlag 1982-1990), with Miss T renamed as ‘Scharlotte Schock’. 

The Internet gave those who remembered British comics a new voice, and at the start of the millennium, many fan sites and blogs began to emerge focusing on these titles and begging for the return of comics like Misty. These include ‘Mistycomic.co.uk’ (Chris Lillyman, launched 2002), ‘Girls’ Comics of Yesterday’ (http://girlscomicsofyesterday.com, launched by Lorraine Nolan c.2011), ‘A Resource on Jinty: Artists, Writers, Stories’ (http://jintycomic.wordpress.com, launched by Jenni Scott in April 2014), and ‘Great News for All Readers’ (http://greatnewsforallreaders.com, launched by David Moloney on 31 August 2015). Other British comics sites and blogs such as ‘Blimey!’ (Lew Stringer, launched 2006), ‘Down the Tubes’ (John Freeman, launched 1998) and ‘The Bronze Age of Blogs’ (Pete Doree, launched 2009) are also invaluable repositories for articles and reflections on girls’ comics, alongside numerous forum threads devoted to British girls’ comics (such as www.comicsuk.co.uk) which contain lots of information for the interested reader. 

Misty’s return seemed possible when in Egmont Publishing bought the rights and released a Special Souvenir issue (2009) and the e-book Tales from the Mist 1: The Best of Misty (2012). The rights were then sold to Rebellion Publishing, who have released three collected editions to date (2016, 2017, 2018), along with new material in two Scream! and Misty Halloween specials (2017, 2018).

I’ve been researching Misty for the last four years, as a continuation of my work on Gothic and comics. But my relationship with it goes back much further, and my project was initially sparked by the recurring memory of a story I read in a girls’ horror comic when I was eight or nine years old. It was a about a girl who was not very pretty. She was given a magic mirror and told it would make her beautiful if she followed its instructions correctly. And it worked! But as she got more lovely she also became mean and vain, and one day she did something wrong with the instructions and when she woke up the next day and looked in her mirror her beautiful face was shattered and warped. It ended on the threatening words ‘After all, would you want to face yourself every morning, like this…’ 

I threw the comic away, but I never forgot that story (I remembered the final page and line nearly verbatim, for over thirty years). I now know it was ‘Mirror… Mirror’ (art by Isidre Monés, writer unknown), published in Misty #37 on 14 October 1978. When I found it during my archival research it was a pretty emotional moment. But once I started researching Misty I discovered tons of other stories that also hit and haunted me. I loved its alluring host with her poetic words, its dramatic tales of horrifying fates and karmic justice, and its incredible artwork and striking layouts. I wanted to tell everybody about this comic that continued to surprise me over thirty years later, and found myself summarizing Misty’s most shudder-making stories to anyone who would listen (which now includes you!) 

For me, studying Misty has revealed a lot about the nature and dominance of Gothic horror for girls. My book uses Misty as a lens to explore these ideas and arrive at a working definition of ‘Gothic for Girls’. It is also the first full-length critical history published on any single British comic. It brings together a wealth of primary research taken from archival visits, creator interviews, and online discussions with past readers, and reveals a great deal about the hidden history and production practices of the comics industry in this country. Many of the writers, artists, editors and associates I interviewed have never previously spoken about their work for British comics. Their recollections give a fascinating picture of how the industry operated – one that is in danger of being entirely lost due to a lack of records and the ephemeral nature of these publications.  

It has been a joy to help name the creators of these stories and to finally credit them for their work. The value that the Misty readers placed on ‘their’ comic was also apparent from all the people I spoke to and the level of active engagement in its letters page. These feelings of ownership and the emotional resonance of childhood things (including my own experience) demonstrate the ways in which readers use texts like Misty and other British comics to shape their identities. Misty’s recent revival also demonstrates the power of fandom, if made visible and granted a platform… three cheers for these aca-fans!

Julia’s new book Gothic for Girls: Misty and British Comics is available now!

Much of her supporting research is available open access at www.juliaround.com, including interviews, articles, extracts, and a searchable database of all the Misty stories, with creator and publication details where known.

Julia Round’s research examines the intersections of Gothic, comics and children’s literature. Her books include Gothic for Girls: Misty and British Comics (2019), Gothic in Comics and Graphic Novels: A Critical Approach (2014), and the co-edited collection Real Lives Celebrity Stories. She is a Principal Lecturer at Bournemouth University, co-editor of Studies in Comics journal (Intellect) and the book series Encapsulations (University of Nebraska Press), and co-organiser of the annual International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference (IGNCC). Her new book on Gothic for Girls and Misty is accompanied by a searchable database, creator interviews, and other open access notes and resources, available at www.juliaround.com.

'Misty' and the Horrible Hidden History of British Comics (2 of 3) by Julia Round

Unlike other girls’ comics, which would often have a few ‘regular’ serials that lasted for their entire run, such as ‘The Four Marys’ in Bunty (DC Thomson, 1958-2001), Misty kept its serials short (averaging around 10 instalments) and seldom revisited characters. Its serial stories revolve heavily around a mystery theme, and all follow the same rough template as we are introduced to a female protagonist who quickly develops a spooky problem of some kind. This may be the intrusion of a supernatural power (visions, telekinesis, telepathy), or the discovery of a mysterious or magical object (a box of paints, a ring, a mirror, a car, a swimsuit). Alternatively the protagonist may find herself trapped in an unhappy situation (a new family, school or world) or become aware of some deception (a secret prisoner or plot of some kind). The plot then develops as the character discovers new information relating to the item or their situation. One common feature is the focus on a protagonist who has to accept or overcome some aspect of their self, and thus the stories can be read as bildungsroman narratives in which characters negotiate unexpected changes and circumstance (a clear metaphor for adolescence) and ultimately accept their new identity or surroundings. For example, in ‘The Four Faces of Eve’ (Malcolm Shaw and Brian Delaney), Eve has no memories of her past and is plagued by terrifying nightmares of death. She ultimately discovers that she has been made from the bodies of four different girls and is experiencing visions of their memories. The story revolves around her search for a friend (‘I’m so lonely. I’ve got no friends, no memories, and now, it seems, no family!’, #21) and attempts to solve the mystery of her origins. She despairs (‘I’m a freak, a monster!’, #29), but when she finally tells her story to the circus folk she has met, they not only believe her but also show her the way out of her situation, as her friend Carol’s father informally adopts her, saying ‘I’ve got two daughters now.’ (#31)

‘The Four Faces of Eve’, Misty #22. Written by Malcolm Shaw, art by Brian Delaney.

Misty combined these serial instalments with one-off single stories: generally wicked four-page cautionary tales where a delinquent protagonist would be dramatically punished for a misdeed. A short selection might include: Cathy cons an old lady out of a moodstone ring which then sucks all the colour out of her life (‘Moodstone’, #1); a gossip columnist is crushed to death by the books of names and notes she has kept on her acquaintances (‘Sticks and Stones’, #16); clothes-thief Ann is turned into a fashion dummy (‘When the Lights go Out!’, #18); cruel siblings Vivien and Steve trap a mouse in a maze until it dies of exhaustion but are in turn locked in a maze by sentient apes (‘The Pet Shop’, #24); Sally awakens a real ghost while teasing her scared cousin (‘The Last Laugh’, #29); mugger Cath causes an old lady to be hit by a bus but is then run over herself (‘Dead End’, #34); Sue takes a creepy mask to win a Halloween competition but then cannot remove it (‘Mask of Fear’, #39); Rita steals a jigsaw but ends up trapped in one (‘The Final Piece’, #44); Lisa steals a clock but discovers she will have to wind it forever (‘Slave of Time’, #55); Olivia summons the spirits of her teachers to cheat on a test but they will not leave (‘The Disembodied’ #68); cheat Alison is given a magic pen but continues to cheat so it breaks and covers her with irremovable ink (‘A Stain on her Character’, #72); Sally destroys her dad’s snail experiments, but the snails trap and immerse her (‘House of Snails’, #77); Kate scares her little sister with monster stories and is attacked by a monster herself (‘Monster Movie’, #87); vandals break some stained glass windows and end up trapped in the new ones (‘Crystal Clear’, #99); and jealous Roma drugs her cousin and cuts off her beautiful hair, but is then consumed by ghostly hair growing out of the floor (‘Crowning Glory’ #101). 

Alongside this were single-page comedy series: Miss T (a hapless witch), Wendy the Witch, and Cilla the Chiller (who appears in the annuals). Miss T was created, written and drawn by Joe Collins, who had created a number of other comedy strips for different titles, such as ‘The Kitty Café Cats’ (Girl), ‘Snoopa’ (Penny, Jinty and Penny), and ‘Edie the Ed’s Niece’ (Tammy). Miss T features regularly in the weekly issues of Misty and even takes over from her on occasion: welcoming the reader on the inside cover (#91) and often appearing and addressing readers on the ‘Write to Misty’ letters page (#16). Her bulging eyes, tangled wiry hair, bulbous nose and warty face should make her a repulsive character, but the little witch exudes innocence and is generally trying to do good (despite unintentional mishaps), making her an appealing heroine. Her battered witch’s hat and oversized shoes also contribute to a visual sense of guileless chaos, and the strip enhances this by being heavy on effects: using emanata such as motion lines, and sound effects (‘Glop’, ‘Burp’). When she is critiqued by a reader in the letters page of #79 (‘I think she’s STUPID and ought to be in stupid comics, not yours’) a lively debate continues for three issues (#89-#91). In the final count Misty claims that 270 people support Miss T with just twenty-six against: ‘a victory for the little witch of more than ten to one’.

‘Miss T’, Misty #70. Written and drawn by Joe Collins.

Wendy the Witch (by Mike Brown) was a reprint from Sandie (1972-73), aimed at slightly younger readers. Wendy’s spells often help her to revenge herself on bullies, although they may go awry. Her strips often make heavy use of puns (‘She’s had her chips now, eh, monster?’, #60) and editorial asides. The supporting cast of characters (which include Enid, Nellie, Rosie, and Nosey Nelly) give the strip a feel similar to The Beano’s ‘Bash Street Kids’ (Leo Baxendale), or ‘Dennis the Menace’ (devised by George Moonie, David Law and Ian Chisholm) as Wendy gets ‘the slipper’ from her mum (Misty Annual 1979).  

Cilla the Chiller, a schoolgirl ghost who haunts a stately home and plays tricks on its visitors, appears only in the Misty annuals. Its creators are unknown, and the strip has a similar feel to the other two comedies: puns are common, and the art is in a typical British comics style: reminiscent of the work of Reg Partlett or Leo Baxendale.

‘Wendy the Witch’, Misty #55. Art by Mike Brown.

Julia Round’s research examines the intersections of Gothic, comics and children’s literature. Her books include Gothic for Girls: Misty and British Comics (2019), Gothic in Comics and Graphic Novels: A Critical Approach (2014), and the co-edited collection Real Lives Celebrity Stories. She is a Principal Lecturer at Bournemouth University, co-editor of Studies in Comics journal (Intellect) and the book series Encapsulations (University of Nebraska Press), and co-organiser of the annual International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference (IGNCC). Her new book on Gothic for Girls and Misty is accompanied by a searchable database, creator interviews, and other open access notes and resources, available at www.juliaround.com.

'Misty' and the Horrible Hidden History of British Comics (Part 1 of 3) by Julia Round

British comics, especially those for girls, dominated children’s entertainment in the last century but have been all but forgotten today. When remembered, there is a perception that the boys’ titles were all about heroic adventures and space travel, while the girls got stories about horses and boarding schools. Nothing could be further from the truth! – these comics were not for the fainthearted and tales could often include murderous animals, football violence, Nazi soldiers, cursed choirs, deals with the devil, schoolgirl sacrifice, parallel worlds, monsters, possession, criminals and more.. 

Misty is an important part of this lost history. It was a weekly anthology comic for girls that told tales with supernatural or spooky themes. It was published by Fleetway and ran for 101 issues between February 1978 and January 1980.  It appeared at the end of a decade in which British comics had started to dwindle due to competing entertainment media (cheap paperback books, television, early computer games), and publishers’ exploitation of their audience.  

Cover, Misty #1. (1978)

Despite its short run, Misty is one of the best-remembered British comics. But its stories and themes were not unique. Spooky stories had featured prominently from the earliest days of British comics, such as ‘The Phantom Ballerina’ or ‘Jane and the Ghostly Hound’ in Amalgamated Press’s School Friend (1950-65). IPC’s great rivals DC Thomson had also made prominent use of the theme in comics such as Diana (1963-76), and particularly in their mystery title Spellbound (1976-78), which would be cancelled just as Misty was set to launch.  

But a number of things made Misty stand out from the rest of the crowd. Firstly, its ethereal and seductive cover girl/editor: Misty herself, who welcomed readers to each issue, answered letters on the ‘Write to Misty’ letters page, and sometimes introduced stories in bookending panels (but only in the annuals and specials). Misty was the brainchild of the comic’s editorial team. Its sub editor, Bill Harrington, suggested that the comic should have a host type character: a spooky looking fellow called ‘Nathan somebody’. Nathan was rejected as too creepy, and Misty instead came to life: imagined by the comic’s first editor and co-creator, Wilf Prigmore. The team initially devised her as a ghostly looking character, but she quickly evolved into more of a spirit guide: a ‘child of the mists’ whose role is to present tales for our delight. Misty’s appearance was created by Shirley Bellwood, a portraitist and veteran of the older romance comics, and who based Misty closely on herself. With long black hair, flowing robes and a star charm, she resembles the new age witch of the 1960s and 1970s counterculture. Her welcomes to readers draw extensively on images of the body and the journey (see further below) as we are constantly urged to ‘walk’, ‘journey’, ‘quest’, ‘venture’, ‘step’ or ‘follow’ Misty elsewhere – crossing into another world.

Inside cover from Misty #16. Art by Shirley Bellwood, words by Malcolm Shaw, lettering and page design by Jack Cunningham.

Misty’s appeal is acknowledged by the comic’s first creator, writer Pat Mills, who says: ‘Misty worked well […] she is this beautiful witch-like character and I’m sure it would have had an appeal to a lot of readers and – being a little cynical about it – possibly the more middle-class kids, or middle-class mum would see it as “safe” whereas if they had seen the kind of covers I had in mind they might have said “Oh no, I don't want my Daisy reading this kind of nonsense!” Mills is credited with suggesting the initial idea for a girls’ horror comic as a vehicle for his lead serial, the Carrie adaptation ‘Moonchild’. He also had a key role in shaping the look of the comic, which drew on the innovations that he and art editor Doug Church had used in 2000AD. This included spreading stories over four pages rather than the usual three, allowing for one big panel or splash page to introduce each instalment.

‘Winner Loses All!’, Misty #79. Art by Mario Capaldi, writer unknown.

Misty’s dynamic page layouts are the second reason for its impact – as part of my research into this comic I instigated a small-scale research project (funded by Bournemouth University’s Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture and Communication) into these layouts. This was devised and conducted by Dr Paul Fisher Davies, who tagged layout features in ten randomised issues, Tags included panel features such as angled borders, round borders, open borders, jagged borders, and so forth, along with page layout features such as arrows, colour, inset panels, and splash pages. The pages were also categorized in terms of their relationship to a standard ‘grid’ or number of tiers.

‘A Scream in the Night’, Misty #47. Art by Jorge Badia Romero, writer unknown.

The findings were remarkable. Misty’s pages are continually transgressive and dynamic – in the sample of 241 pages there were no pages that received no tags – even those that appear simple and perpendicular still have at least one dynamic feature, such as an open panel border or staggered tier. Panel borders are varied and experimental in form: they are often angled, liminal or indeterminate (ragged, misty) or broken in some way. The most common feature found was the borderless panel, achieved either by using blank space to create an implied border, or by overlaying consecutive images so they appear contiguous. Another significant page feature noted was transgression, where character limbs or other objects break an enclosing panel border or other spatial container, which occurs on ninety-three pages (39%). These exciting formats are most often used for a purely decorative purpose with no clear narrative meaning, although in some instances they are modalising (i.e. have ties to the story content, such as a cloud shape to indicate a dream or memory). When modalising features appear, they tend towards the emotional and symbolic rather than the prosaic – for example indicating heightened emotion (jagged border) or reinforcing the central motifs of the story (representational border). 

The study’s findings also helped us reflect on the usefulness of current comics theory, using the notion of the ‘tier’, which is an important organizational principle of the comics page and is prominent in francophone discussion of bande dessinée (as ‘bandes’ or ‘strips’ are integral to the French name for the medium). The work of Benoît Peeters (1991), Thierry Groensteen (2009, 2012), and Renaud Chavanne (2010) supports the search for tiered patterns as a principle in the Misty layouts. However, this project found that while tiers do seem to be an organizing principle for most Misty pages, this seldom takes the form of a straightforward grid. Variations such as staggering (where the upper and lower edges of panels in sequence do not line up) and tilting (where the baseline that defines reading progression is at an angle rather than horizontal) are extremely common: appearing on ninety-six pages (40%) and eighty-nine pages (37%) respectively. 

The dramatic and dynamic page design also has much to do with Misty’s art editorial team: art editor Jack Cunningham and art assistant Ted Andrews, who both worked on the comic for its entire run. The art was commissioned from Spain, drawing on artists from three main studios (Selecciones Ilustradas, Creaciones Editoriales/Bruguera, and Art Bardon), and sometimes manipulated heavily to fit house style. Cunningham recalls that when it was received it would be in various sizes, so the first thing to do was to ‘make a standard size that every artist worked to, and it used to appear as quite simply as square frame, square frame, square frame, and as we got a better idea we perhaps started off with some figures that were outside of the frame, run the titles across two pages, and break it all up, bit by bit […] I didn’t go through the whole script of course, but I designed what the opening page should look like and the end page should look like. And then here and there indicate where it would be better to leave a frame open perhaps. Because it’s very static, and very difficult to get any feeling of movement.’ Some artists also designed their own page layouts, with the extra page allowed for each story giving them space to shine.

 The Spanish artists who worked on Misty and many of the other British girls’ and boys’ comics of the time were powerhouses of talent, and their skill is the third reason that Misty had such an impact. These artists had defined the look of 1950s British romance comics, dominating Fleetway’s catalogue of titles (such as Valentine, Mirabelle, Roxy and Marilyn), and glamorising their content. While it has often been assumed that the Spanish artists were used because they were cheap, artist and researcher David Roach (Masters of Spanish Comic Book Art) states categorically that ‘They weren’t used because they were cheap, they were used because they were the best!’  Many worked for the American industry at the same time. Isidre Mones remembers Misty fondly, saying ‘I always had a suspicion that there is a sector of British women between forty and forty-five years old traumatized by those comics that I drew. I overlapped them with my Warren work, and I did not disguise the terrifying aspect very much!’

 Stories were not signed and original art was not returned, so the identification of artists is an ongoing task conducted by fans and scholars online. For those interested in learning more, a searchable database of all the Misty artists’ names and story summaries is available at www.juliaround.com/misty. Recycling and ‘bodging’ was used extensively to get the most out of an expensive piece of quality art. While almost all of the content of the weekly issues was original, the annuals and specials would reprint these stories, alongside reprints from earlier titles. The accepted wisdom was that stories could be recycled every few years as the audience would have moved on, although this was not always the case.

 Misty’s fourth great strength was in its highly skilled writing team and its combination of different story types. As creators were not credited it is hard to identify the authors of stories, although its editorial team (editor Malcolm Shaw, and sub editor Bill Harrington) would have written many of these. Malcolm Shaw and Pat Mills had worked together previously, launching Jinty in 1974, before it was taken over by Mavis Miller when she left June.  Shaw took over from Misty’s initial editor Wilf Prigmore after just a few issues, and served for almost the comic’s entire run. Although Malcolm Shaw wrote for many girls’ titles, the Misty stories were a perfect fit for his interests in science fiction and myth, and allowed him to push the boundaries of fiction for girls. He was passionate about the title and was its lead editor for the bulk of its run.

Julia Round’s research examines the intersections of Gothic, comics and children’s literature. Her books include Gothic for Girls: Misty and British Comics (2019), Gothic in Comics and Graphic Novels: A Critical Approach (2014), and the co-edited collection Real Lives Celebrity Stories. She is a Principal Lecturer at Bournemouth University, co-editor of Studies in Comics journal (Intellect) and the book series Encapsulations (University of Nebraska Press), and co-organiser of the annual International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference (IGNCC). Her new book on Gothic for Girls and Misty is accompanied by a searchable database, creator interviews, and other open access notes and resources, available at www.juliaround.com.

Comics, Childhood and Memory—An Autobiography (Part 3 of 3) by Melanie Gibson

Comics, Childhood and Memory: An Autobiography (Part 3 of 3)

Melanie Gibson

A very contrasting example, which moves away from the concept of agency and glamour and reflects the move towards learning through difficulty and emotional turmoil, is seen in Figure 9, a story which featured in Tammy from 1974 to 1984.

As noted above stories in British girls’ comics generally became bleaker as the twentieth century progressed, and made extensive use of the victim heroine motif. Here, as well as incorporating the increasingly fashionable activity of gymnastics, popularized through television coverage of the Olympic Games in the 1970s, especially through the figure of Olga Korbut, the story features a main character who is another working class outsider. As with the school stories mentioned earlier, the focus is on Bella’s trials and challenges, initially at the hands of relatives who want her to use her skills to steal on their behalf, and later on the part of the gymnastic establishment, as the example below shows. However, in contrast to the adult male characters her body constantly breaks the frame and the images seem to celebrate the inability of the form of the comic to control her moving figure. The narrative also celebrates her class position, rather than attempting to direct her into becoming a middle-class girl, and locates her as thriving, rather than simply surviving.

Bella at the Bar’ (Tammy, IPC, Jan. 15 1983, pp. 14-16)

To conclude, the general cultural consensus, or rather, stereotype, about British girls’ comics was that they were less significant than comics for boys, or other types of comic, specifically because they had been created for a young female audience.

In some ways I adopted that stereotype, as it was not the British girl’s titles that I was drawn to in becoming an ‘aca-fan’, but the superhero titles from the USA. I was influenced in this initial choices of focus by what had become a life-long engagement with that specific genre. However, in writing this article, I recognize that I did not exclusively read in that genre, but like most children in Britain, across a range, including the girls’ comic.

In looking at examples from material that I had at the time, rather than titles came into my growing comics collection as an ‘aca-fan’, when I became interested in exploring women’s memories of comics, I can see a number of links across the two genres that dominated my childhood reading, a few of which I have started to draw out above.

What surprises me most in revisiting my childhood reading, is how much the body in movement and physicality, much like superhero titles, is significant in girls’ comics, whether through activities seen as specifically signifying girlhood, or simply through being adventurous and engaged with others.

Finally, returning to memory, revisiting these titles evokes an emotional response, as they bring back discomfort with notions of traditional femininity, as well as tensions around school. I have a clearer understanding, perhaps, of why I rejected girls’ comics generally, but I can see that some were, and are, important and positive aspects of my reading history.

Bibliography

Bunty (DC Thomson) 1958-2001

Girl (Hulton Press) 1951-1964

Jackie (DC Thomson) 1964-1993.

June (Fleetway) 1961-1974.

Lady Penelope (City) 1966-1969.

Mandy (DC Thomson) 1967-1997.

Roxy (AP) 1958-1963.

School Friend (AP) ran from 1919-1929 as a story paper and 1950-1965 as a comic.

Tammy (IPC) 1971-1984.

Twinkle (DC Thomson) 1968-1999.

Gibson, M. (2015) Remembered Reading: Memory, Comics and Post-War Constructions of British Girlhood. University of Leuven Press. 

Gibson, M. (2008) ‘Nobody, somebody, everybody: ballet, girlhood, class, femininity and comics in 1950s Britain’. In: Girlhood Studies. 1, 2, pp. 108-128  

Gibson, M. (2008) ‘From 'Susan of St. Brides' to 'Heartbreak Hospital': nurses and nursing in the girls' comic from the 1950s to the 1980s’. In: The Journal of Children’s Literature Studies. 5, 2, pp. 104-126 

Gifford, D. (1975) The British Comic catalogue 1874-1974. Mansell. 

Kuhn, A. (1995) Family Secrets: Acts of memory and imagination. London: Verso. 

__________

Dr Mel Gibson is an Associate Professor at Northumbria University, UK, specializing in teaching and research relating to comics, graphic novels, picturebooks and fiction for children. She has published widely in these areas, including the monograph (2015) Remembered Reading, on British women's memories of their girlhood comics reading. Her most recent work focuses on girlhoods, agency and contemporary comics. Mel has also run training and promotional events about comics, manga and graphic novels for schools and other organizations since 1993 when she contributed to Graphic Account, a publication that focused on developing graphic novels collections for 16-25 year olds, which was published by the Youth Libraries Group in the UK.

The ‘Remembering UK Comics’ series is edited by Dr William Proctor and Dr Julia Round.

Comics, Childhood and Memory—An Autobiography (Part 2 of 3) by Melanie Gibson

Comics, Childhood and Memory: An Autobiography (Part 2 of 3)

Mel Gibson

I next turn to the most popular of the titles for pre-teens in the late 1950s and on, Bunty, which I experienced entirely as a ‘pass-along reader’. The following images all come from that periodical. I chose to use a single edition here to show different styles of illustration, the use of color and the mixture of new and reprinted material.

Unlike School Friend and Girl, the key difference was that in Bunty the publisher aimed to create comics that they hoped would appeal to working class readers, so developing new markets by further differentiating the audience by class as well as age. Again, as with Girl, the actual audience read across class lines. Familiar tropes and narratives were given new twists in Bunty, most notably, perhaps, in schoolgirl stories. This was the case in ‘The Four Marys’, where one of the ‘Marys’ was a working-class scholarship pupil. This was the narrative most often mentioned by respondents in my 2015 book on memories of comics, and had an impact on several generations of readers. It was reported as about community, unity and friendship, and as enabling girls to overcome obstacles, a narrative of productive and positive inclusion, as is implied by aspects of the story in Figure 4.

However, this approach could be double-edged given that this narrative, like many others, focused on the problems of being a working-class outsider. The stories tended to be concerned with the struggle of such outsiders to deal with the snobbery of, and bullying by, both staff and other pupils. So, on the one hand, one might become one of a very close-knit group of friends, but on the other, one might be victimized because of a perceived difference from the school ‘norm’. As someone who had been severely bullied in school by a teacher before the age of eleven, such stories were far too close to my actual experience to be pleasant reading, again resulting in rejection, especially as I was unconvinced that I would eventually win out as the heroines in the comics did.

These particular genre stories, then, can be interpreted in very different ways. The example below, which appeared in the early 1970s, is a reprint of a much earlier story, as the style of art suggests, along with the uniforms and the dress of the teachers. Here the focus is inter-school sports rivalry and about the consequences of being a ‘show-off’, in this case about a school having superior sports facilities. There is, all the same, a sub-narrative about who is included on the team, with snobbery playing a major part in tensions within the school.

‘The Four Marys’ (Bunty, DC Thomson, 832, Dec. 22 1973, pp. 16-17)

The next two images, also from Bunty, are included to illustrate the domestic and everyday life aspects of the title. The first is the title page featuring the ‘Bunty’ picture story which was an often humorous and affectionate account of the titular Bunty’s life. The anthropomorphized dog in the top corner, whilst a surreal addition, is based on Bunty’s dog, which appears in a more normal form in other stories. Many of these comics had a title which was a girls’ name and the contents and cover were, in effect, a summation of a form of girlhood and of the inferred age and gender suitable interests of the potential reader. As with the Twinkle narrative above there are captions, but no speech balloons, so Figure 5 also shows how British comics for girls maintained a range of modes of address.

Bunty front cover (Bunty, DC Thomson, 832, Dec. 22 1973, p. 1)

The last page of the same edition, featured what was also described in interview (2015) as one of the best remembered aspects of the title across the whole period of the publication of the title, the cut out doll. These pages were often seasonally themed, as is the case here, given that the reader is asked to choose an outfit for a Christmas party. Note also that despite the very different styles of drawing the girls on the front and back cover are both meant to be Bunty, emphasizing the overall identity of the periodical. To actually play with the dolls, in an era before photocopying or scanning were commonplace, meant that the reader had to destroy the ending of the final story, forcing a choice of what was more important to them as individuals. The title was, then, interactive to an extent and this activity serves to point out the agency of the reader.

Bunty Cut out doll (Bunty, DC Thomson, 832, Dec. 22 1973, p. 32)

There were, as mentioned above a number of narratives that featured girls with powers of one kind or another. One of the most popular was Valda (Figure 7) who featured in Mandy from the late 1960s into the 1980s. Many of the narratives focus on adventures, which makes the character increasingly distinct from the domestic and the victim heroine in the comics. Others feature her skills and prowess in a number of sports, including ice skating, tennis and diving. However, she also fights evil and rescues those in difficulty, the latter as shown in Figure 7. She takes her power in part from the crystal depicted around her neck in the main panel, but also has to bathe regularly in the flames of the ‘fire of life’, ensuring the continuation of her skills and youthful appearance, despite being over 200 years old. As a child, what particularly impressed me about this particular story, in one of the few girls’ annuals that I owned, was the abrupt way in which the narrative was introduced. To simply dismiss the concerns and questions of adult males in favor of following one’s own agenda sounded wonderful. Here, then, is another point of contact between girls’ comics and my preferred superhero comics, in what can be recognized as a non-costumed female hero with powers who is assertive and independent. Here the directive aspects, or the focus on suffering, that appeared in other narratives is absent, offering space for celebration, rather than modification, of the self.

‘Valda’ (Mandy Annual, DC Thomson, 1976, p.2)

What the examples above indicate is that there was generally a quite self-contained world, or model, of girlhood (with various age and class inflections) in each of these titles. This was, on the part of some publishers, purposive in maintaining a space between younger girls and popular culture. Popular culture was seen as potentially corrupting, especially for girls, in the mid twentieth century. That comics could be seen as part of that culture was contained by publishers through incorporating content that could be read by adult gatekeepers such as parents as protecting girls from its worst excesses. Comics were consequently not generally part of the synergy around other forms of popular culture and so became lower profile, increasingly detached from the more consumerist model of girlhood offered in magazines.

However, this protectionist stance was not consistently followed. The mage below offers an example of a very different approach, given that another way of reading the self-contained worlds of many girls’ comics is not as protection of the girl reader, but as a failure to capitalize on the marketing of other cultural products. The chosen example illustrates the practice of closely shadowing popular television programs from the mid-1960s on. There were comics like Lady Penelope (City, 1966-1969), which in addition to its obvious commitment to Thunderbirds also featured strips on The Monkees and Bewitched (Gifford, 1975, p.95). However, this example is from June, a comic that included strips based on television, but was not dominated by them. ‘The Growing up of Emma Peel’ offers an extension to the series, in what might now be called a prequel. The unfortunate cook that features on the page is later explained to be Emma’s trainer in a number of forms of combat and his role is rather like that of Alfred in Batman. The dialogue serves to suggest that Emma’s father does not take her seriously, but her exclamation ‘Got it! At last!’ is used to show the reader that, far from being a dilettante, she is determined and committed. Here too there is an underlying positioning of the girl as to be shaped, in this case indicating the need for self-discipline in achieving aims. The adult Emma is shown in the photograph that leads into the story, and the assumption is that the reader will be aware of the series, but the emphasis is on what is needed to achieve both her glamorousness and her capacity for action.

‘The Growing up of Emma Peel’ (June, Fleetway, Jan. 29 1966, p. 24)

Dr Mel Gibson is an Associate Professor at Northumbria University, UK, specializing in teaching and research relating to comics, graphic novels, picturebooks and fiction for children. She has published widely in these areas, including the monograph (2015) Remembered Reading, on British women's memories of their girlhood comics reading. Her most recent work focuses on girlhoods, agency and contemporary comics. Mel has also run training and promotional events about comics, manga and graphic novels for schools and other organizations since 1993 when she contributed to Graphic Account, a publication that focused on developing graphic novels collections for 16-25 year olds, which was published by the Youth Libraries Group in the UK.

The ‘Remembering UK Comics’ series is edited by Dr William Proctor and Dr Julia Round.

Comics, Childhood and Memory—An Autobiography (Part I of 3) by Mel Gibson

Comics, Childhood and Memory: An Autobiography (1 of 3)

Mel Gibson

Everyone writes and re-writes their autobiographies as they remember, in a continual process of selection and construction. As Annette Kuhn (1995) described it, memory is ‘driven by two sets of concerns. The first has to do with the ways memory shapes the stories we tell, in the present, about the past-especially stories about our own lives. The second has to do with what it is that makes us remember: the prompts, the pretexts of memory; the reminders of the past that remain in the present (p.3). Some of my childhood memories are anchored by what I was reading to a specific place and time, in line with what Kuhn suggests, as having been an enthusiastic comic reader generally means that I have a timeline of my childhood, given that they were typically bought new or second-hand shortly after publication. It also means that comics are tied in a direct way to memory, something which as an ‘aca-fan’ became linked with the practice of object elicitation, of using comics as objects in interview.

As a British child born in 1963 in the North East of England my memories of comics incorporate a wide range of texts, including material like Rupert the Bear and Teddy Tail, anthropomorphic narratives which originated as newspaper strips. I also had access to imported superhero comics, which my father bought for me (or perhaps for himself with me as a secondary, pass-along, audience). These were exclusively DC titles, especially Batman, The Flash and Justice League of America. They were aimed at an audience much older than I was when I first read them, with him, as an under five year old. The combination of comics featuring adult characters and a parent who was around only intermittently, given that he was studying art in London, was potent, giving those comics a heightened significance. That he also used elements of them in art works stressed their importance too and may have contributed to my interest in comics as an ‘aca-fan’.

However, I also had access to comics in the form of annuals that had been gifts for my mother as a child. These annuals related to a gender specific title called Girl, a weekly periodical which had specific class and gender signifiers. More costly than many of the other titles available, and partly printed in four colour rotogravure on comparatively high quality paper, it was also a broadsheet. The majority of titles for girls, in contrast, were tabloid and although they might feature a cover in colour, were usually printed in black and white, with occasional uses of red as a spot colour (see Figure 4 for an illustration of this). All of these physical qualities attached to Girl could be seen as signifying the middle-class nature of the periodical. Who the audience actually was is not so fixed, but the intention was, whoever the reader, to guide their aspirations. It is Girl and the genre that it belonged to, the British girls’ comic, which will be the focus of the majority of this article. I would add that I am focusing down further still, on titles that were aimed largely at younger readers, rather than those in their teens.

The robust annuals, part of the wider culture and marketing around comics, along with toys and a range of other materials and events, were a staple Christmas gift in British households throughout the late twentieth century. The annuals I got to read had been published in the 1950s and contained a mixture of other materials alongside comic strips, including prose narratives. These earlier British publications linked me with both my mother and grandmother through forming the basis of some of our shared reading and family history. As Kuhn states, ‘an image, images, or memories are at the heart of a radiating web of associations, reflections and interpretations’ (1995, p.4).

Engaging with both the superhero comic and the girls’ comic, two very different comic traditions, meant that they became juxtaposed in my mind. Both inhabited what seemed to be gendered spaces and readerships and, indeed, almost appeared to be capable of being used as tools to mold me into a ‘proper’ girl or boy. Both also seemed to contain characters whose activities were linked with gender. I was, however, most drawn to stories in Justice League of America and to one in particular in Girl, entitled ‘Belle of the Ballet’. Whilst the content is very different, what drew me in was that the male and female characters had shared aims and objectives.

The example shown below, which I have analysed in depth elsewhere (2008), is a complete short story from an annual (in the British weekly anthology comics stories could run for twelve weeks or more, each week ending with a cliff-hanger). What is important in this context is that David, the male dance student is a regular character who trains and performs alongside Belle and Marie. He does not dominate the stories, but is simply part of their friendship group. In this example the friends investigate a dance focused mystery where class and the acceptability of dance are also key themes.

This narrative and others about Belle and her friends, the encouragement of family members and the increased cultural interest in ballet as a socially appropriate activity resulted in my taking ballet classes when I was around five. This ended rather swiftly when stage fright and the theft of my Twinkle comics from the dressing room after a performance resulted in my refusing to go back to classes again (or read that comic).

‘Belle of the Ballet in Little Miss Nobody’. (Girl Annual 3, Hulton, 1954, pp. 81-84)

The stolen copies of Twinkle flag up another set of references, as well as memories. It was a British weekly title which was sporadically bought for me and formed a dramatic contrast with the superhero titles. It was an important title for very young girls and, I believe, the only nursery comic that consciously addressed a gendered audience, as indicated by the way that the strap-line after the title ran, ‘specially for little girls’. Accordingly, it often had similar content to titles for older girls, including a focus on work. For instance, Twinkle featured a narrative about ‘Nancy the Little Nurse’, who helped her grandfather mend toys. I returned to this comic and that narrative in 2008, in writing about the many tales about nurses that appeared in British girls’ comics. Twinkle also featured a number of magical friend stories and a range of activities including a cut out doll.

‘Nancy the Little Nurse’ (Twinkle, No. 362, 28th Dec 1974)

I fear that as a child I felt the material in the girls’ titles was somehow constraining in comparison to the content of superhero comics. It was only later, in researching girls and comics, that I became fully aware of the diverse narratives that existed and that these titles were often ground-breaking in terms of both approach and content. Engaging with girls’ comics as an academic, in hoping to understand what these texts meant to readers, helped me grasp the complex nature of the genre and how readers understood those comics, using them as identifiers of self, often in opposition to monolithic readings of girlhood and the girls comic. However, as a child with limited funds to draw on, I simply opted for what I saw as more exciting and less directive. The full color in the superhero titles was also, I admit, an attraction.

However, to return to memory, in largely rejecting British girls’ comics as a slightly older child (preferring, by the mid-1970s, as I entered my teens, the X-Men and Franco-Belgian albums in translation, particularly Asterix, Lucky Luke and Tintin) I was consciously cutting myself off from what was a major genre and shared cultural experience. I now suspect it was also an attempt to disengage from British girlhood and what I saw as the expectations surrounding it. It was also about this time that I became an avid reader of science fiction for adults, which further moved me away from girls’ culture.

To put the scale of this rejection in context, British girls’ comics existed for every age group, as the depiction of the characters in the two narratives above suggests. These weekly anthology publications formed the majority of reading of most British girls between the 1950s and 1990s, with over fifty titles existing through this period and major ones circulating between 800,000 and a million per week. It was, in effect, the dominant form of comic aimed at girls, and created a potential feminine reading trajectory that ran from Twinkle, through Bunty and similar titles aimed at those under twelve, to titles for older readers focused on heterosexual romance and popular culture such as Roxy in the 1950s, and later Jackie and on to magazines. What is also significant about these narratives is that romance only featured in titles for older readers and the worlds depicted in girls comics were about their friendships and rivalries, not about boys.

The narratives they included changed over time especially from the late 1970s to 1990s, some becoming rather bleaker and horror-inflected and others opting for realism via the inclusion of photo stories. Further, a number were slowly converted into magazines, reflecting what were seen as changing interests amongst girls. This shift also served to emphasize that comics were for boys, which the sales figures for girls’ titles actually contradicted. However, as I became a teenager, I was increasingly uncomfortable about talking about my interest in comics, as cultural assumptions about reading meant that I was often told to read magazines for older girls or women instead. Additionally, actively seeking out superhero comics put me firmly in a male zone, including one specialist shop where I was known as ‘the girl’, and seen as a rarity. This meant that I inhabited a liminal zone around popular periodical reading and gender.

To return to the kinds of narratives that existed, the titles for younger readers featured a number of dominant types. There were schoolgirl investigators, school stories of various kinds, work related stories, those tied to popular activities like ballet, ice skating, horse riding or gymnastics and ones about friendships. They also contained ghost stories, ones where girls had magical friends, rags to riches narratives, and tales about animals of various kinds. There were, in addition, forays into science fiction and fantasy, with a number containing heroines with magical or other powers. The umbrella of the girls’ comic, then, had a very diverse range of material beneath it. The following examples give a small indication of some of what was available.

I begin with ‘The Silent Three’, an example of the girl investigator narrative and one of the most popular narratives in what was one of the most popular titles for girls in the 1950s. Whilst the majority of girl investigator narratives do not incorporate costumes, here the three friends wear matching domino masks and cloaks. The friends’ activities are also part of a type of secret society at school. Consequently, investigative narratives in this particular story run alongside ones about everyday school life, including school bullies attempting to either find out about or discredit those in the society. This has some obvious links with concepts in the superhero titles including the vulnerability of the hero and the secret identity. This is despite the private all-girl school and middle (or upper middle) class context of the narrative. The villains, as suggested in the images below, as well as the school bullies, may also be, like those in some Enid Blyton books, class ‘others’.

‘The Silent Three’. (School Friend Annual, AP, 1958, p. 7)

Dr Mel Gibson is an Associate Professor at Northumbria University, UK, specializing in teaching and research relating to comics, graphic novels, picturebooks and fiction for children. She has published widely in these areas, including the monograph (2015) Remembered Reading, on British women's memories of their girlhood comics reading. Her most recent work focuses on girlhoods, agency and contemporary comics. Mel has also run training and promotional events about comics, manga and graphic novels for schools and other organizations since 1993 when she contributed to Graphic Account, a publication that focused on developing graphic novels collections for 16-25 year olds, which was published by the Youth Libraries Group in the UK.

The ‘Remembering UK Comics’ series is edited by Dr William Proctor and Dr Julia Round.

Remembering UK Comics: A Conversation with William Proctor and Julia Round (Part II)

‘THE BASH STREET KIDS,’ THE BEANO

JR

When I was reading comics like Jackie I don’t remember any credits at all though, and I certainly didn’t know enough about the creators to follow anyone in particular. I barely recognized celebrities in the photos strips! (and there were some fairly big names, though often before they were famous - that’s George Michael below). Jackie always felt more like a magazine than a comic to me though - I mostly remember its articles (on anything from anorexia to crafting), pop music features and interviews, and of course tons of quizzes (how else would I have known what sort of personality I had or how to attract the right sort of boy?!)

George Michael stars in this photo strip from Jackie

So my awareness of British comics creators has been almost entirely retrospective, a bit like yours I think. It’s been an amazing journey of discovery! I’m still not great at recognizing art, but the range of styles and techniques and layouts in these comics is spectacular. Some of the pages are mind-blowing! — notions like tiers and grids simply didn’t seem to exist for these artists. 

‘The Chase’, Misty #40 (art by Douglas Perry, writer unknown)

‘The Loving Cup’, Misty #71 (art by Brian Delaney, writer unknown)

WP

That’s a great point about artistic styles, Julia. Again, at the time it would have just seemed typical to me, and while breaking the structural ‘rules’ of grids and tiers has become quite common nowadays, often with critics describing such exploits as innovative (especially in superhero comics). But it’s not something I’ve given much consideration to be honest (and certainly not at the time).  

JR

There’s a lot of variety! Some artists did always go in for quite static layouts of course - regular rectangular panels laid out in three tiers. Some of the DC Thomson titles in particular might include things like a snippet of dialogue captioning the whole page (‘Dad! You can’t mean it!’) - for me, this can make the events feel a bit more like summaries and slows the pace. But a lot of the girls’ comics had crazy layouts! All those gymnasts and swimmers meant dynamic action that could be used to break up the page. Doug Church’s role as art editor of 2000AD led a big push towards splash pages and large opening panels that definitely fed into titles like Misty in the late 1970s, but I think the impetus was always there. 

‘Bella’, Tammy (written by Primrose Cumming, art by John Armstrong)

WP

Thanks to Professor Martin Barker, I now have a complete run of the 1970s’ comic Action, which caused quite a controversy stirred by the media ‘harm brigade’ (the more things change, and all that). It is my favorite UK comic overall, but that came much later after I read Barker’s Comics, Ideology and its Critics (1989). I won’t go into that here as we have an essay upcoming focused on the title, and an interview with Martin Barker himself, but I think it’s interesting that comics tapped into successful films, much in the same way that so-called ‘exploitation’ cinema did. Spielberg’s Jaws led to a cycle of ‘Sharksploitation’ and ‘nature-run-amok’ films, like William Girdler’s Grizzly (1976) -- which lifts its plot from Jaws, but replaces the Great White with an 18-foot tall grizzly bear! -- Michael Anderson’s Orca (1977), Joe Dante’s Piranha (2000),and many, many more, all the way into the new millennium with the Sharknado franchise. But UK comics tapped into successful film cycles as well, like Action’s ‘Hookjaw,’ a bloody intertextual remix of Moby Dick and Jaws.

‘Hookjaw’ from Action

It seems to me — and I’m sure scholars have mentioned this before me--that comics also drew from the exploitation model of latching onto the coat-tails of popular cinema. Another example that springs to mind comes out of your research into Misty, Julia! I’m thinking of the strip titled ‘Moonchild’ by Pat Mills and John Armstrong, which is a thinly-veiled riff on Stephen King’s Carrie; although as Simon Brown points out in his Screening Stephen King, without Brian De Palma’s 1976 adaptation, King probably wouldn’t be the house-hold name he is today! So I’m guessing that it was De Palma’s film that ‘Moonchild’ is responding to rather than King (at least directly). 

JR

Absolutely — the Misty serials in particular seemed to rearticulate texts from all over the place. As well as ‘Moonchild,’ Pat Mills wrote a serial called ‘Hush, Hush, Sweet Rachel’, which takes its plot from Frank De Felitta’s Audrey Rose (1975, also adapted into a film in 1977). ‘End of the Line’ (Malcolm Shaw and John Richardson, #28–42) draw on the movie Death Line (1972), where people are kidnapped by the cannibalistic descendants of a group of Victorian tube tunnel workers trapped underground. Of course, sometimes the recycling is little more than a name-check to create an atmosphere: ‘Whistle and I’ll Come,’ which recalls M.R. James’s ghost story ‘Whistle and I’ll Come to You’ (1904) which was made into a UK television adaptation in 1968). ‘Hush, Hush, Sweet Rachel’ is a portmanteau of the movie Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), a psychological thriller about infidelity and a falsely accused murderess, and the TV movie Sweet, Sweet Rachel (1971), a pilot for a series about a murderer who uses extrasensory perception. And ‘The Four Faces of Eve’ (Malcolm Shaw and Brian Delaney) name-checks the 1957 movie The Three Faces of Eve, which is about dissociative identity disorder. So intertextual references were very common, even if only used as a knowing nod to source material or to conjure a mood. 

WP

Although I’m aware of academic work on UK Comics—James Chapman’s British Comics, Mel Gibson’s Remembered Reading: Memory, Comics and Post-War Constructions of British Girlhood, and Martin Barker’s Comics, Ideology and its Critics are three of my personal favourites—I often wonder if some of the UK Comics’ history is in danger of being forgotten. There are surely reams of publications that have yet to receive academic treatment (I am unaware of work on comics like Champ and Scream, two of my nostalgic objects). Of course, you have your new book on Misty coming out soon as well! Mazel tov!

Is that a fair assessment of the field do you think, Julia?  Are we in danger of losing our national memory about UK Comics to some degree?

 JR 

Definitely. Few people thought any of these comics (particularly the girls’ titles) were worth preserving or collecting, and I’ve heard loads of horror stories of original artwork being used as cutting boards, or comics being used to mop up archive floors, or thrown into skips (when Fleetway moved offices), or just given away outside conventions. Mel Gibson’s research into readers’ memories and oral histories actually started because she found that the comics themselves were so hard to get hold of! When big private collections have appeared (such as Denis Gifford’s, after his death) they’ve been split up and sold off. I’ve been part of a number of (rejected) bids to try and get some national research money behind preserving some of these collections, and I’m speaking at a public event next weekend (Saturday 2 November) at the Cartoon Museum in London that is trying yet again to drum up some interest in this. We need to protect and preserve these publications and their ephemera, whether through digitisation or creation of a physical archive. There isn’t anything about today that looks or feels (or smells!) like old British comics — they really are relics of a bygone age, not to mention an important part of our national memory. They have so much to tell us about society from almost every angle — ideology, gender roles, politics, economics, social norms, other media, and much much more. 

 Plus, did I mention that the stories and artwork are awesome?!

BP 

It’s certainly a history that is worth preserving, and I’m sure that there are many titles that have fallen through the academic gap (and perhaps will continue to do so). And yes, the stories and artwork are awesome (sublime, even)! 

I’m sure some readers may find the idea of ‘smell’ quite odd, but when I sniff an old comic, I am immediately catapulted back through time as if at 88 miles per hour in a Delorean; back to a simpler time, of a childhood spent indiscriminately gorging on a bevvy of titles, often picked up at a jumble sale hosted by a local church (in my experience). I remember ink-stained fingers as I delivered comics and newspapers—and the odd porn magazine—on my paper route. I remember Dennis the Menace terrorizing his dad, who would react spectacularly by chasing Dennis with his weaponized slippers. I remember Judge Dredd shooting up another block party, Slaine slicing and dicing his enemies, a thinly-veiled analogue of Robert E. Howard’s Conan. I remember laughing at the various strips in Whizzer and Chips, Cor!, Buster, etc.; gasping at the latest twists and turns in Roy of the Rovers; shivering in terror at ‘The Thirteenth Floor.’  I remember reading my sister’s Jackie, Mandy, and Bunty. Gender didn’t matter in what I read—I was and remain a comic book omnivore— yet it mattered enough not to openly declare my eclecticism to friends for fear of masculine reprisal in the school playground. I remember it as the best of times during the worst of times (I grew up in Thatcher’s Britain, so nuff said). 

DENNIS THE MENACE AND GNASHER FROM THE BEANO

At the beginning of this conversation, I did caution that I would be likely to wax lyrical! My memories of reading as a child, and as a teen, are precious. Without the education provided by comics, I’m not sure I would be such an energetic and avid reader as I have been throughout my adult life. (Bryan Talbot once said that he learned to read through comics, so I know I’m in good company.)  

STRONTIUM DOG FROM 2000AD, ART BY CARLOS EZQUERRA

In essence, this series of essays on UK Comics aims to spotlight at least some of the medium’s history. As such, we have curated a lively series of essays that will hopefully reach those readers for whom UK Comics are forgotten relics, or to share a range of perspectives on a medium that people may not be aware of. We hope you’ll join us on our voyage into the dog-eared, pulp-inflected, yellow-stained past as we remember the wonderful, eclectic, intelligent, and insane world of UK Comics.  

Next week, we begin with Dr Mel Gibson on girl’s comics.  Join us, won’t you?

Dr William Proctor is Senior Lecturer in Transmedia at Bournemouth University, UK. He has published widely on various topics related to popular culture, including Batman. James Bond, Stephen King, Star Wars and more. William is a leading expert on franchise reboots, and is currently writing his debut monograph, Reboot Culture: Comics, Film, and Transmedia Histories (forthcoming, Palgrave). He is the co-editor of Global Convergence Cultures: Transmedia Earth (with Matthew Freeman, Routledge 2018), and Disney’s Star Wars: Forces of Promotion, Production, and Reception (with Richard McCulloch, University of Iowa Press 2019).

Dr Julia Round is a Principal Lecturer in the Faculty of Media and Communication at Bournemouth University, UK. She is one of the editors of Studies in Comics journal (Intellect Books) and a co-organiser of the annual International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference (IGNCC). Her first book was Gothic in Comics and Graphic Novels (McFarland, 2014), followed by the edited collection Real Lives, Celebrity Stories (Bloomsbury, 2014). In 2015 she received the Inge Award for Comics Scholarship for her research, which focuses on Gothic, comics, and children’s literature. She has recently completed two AHRC-funded studies examining how digital transformations affect young people's reading. Her new book Misty and Gothic for Girls in British Comics (forthcoming from UP Mississippi, 2019) examines the presence of Gothic themes and aesthetics in children’s comics, and is accompanied by a searchable database of all the stories (with summaries, previously unknown creator credits, and origins), available at her website www.juliaround.com.

Remembering UK Comics: A Conversation with William Proctor and Julia Round (Part I)

Editor’s Note: Most American comic fans know of the so-called British Invasion as creators such as Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and Frank Miller, among others, represented new voices in U.S. comics. But few have taken the time to understand the larger British comics culture — the context which these and many other gifted pop culture auteurs emerged. But more than that, we should know more about everyday comics culture — what British youth read, what forms these publications took, how stories circulated in their “ordinary” lives, and so forth.

When I first came to England in the early 1990s, I came back with a suitcase full of magazines and comics, fascinated by a parallel world of popular culture in English which was little known in America. I had read my Angela McRobbie and Martin Barker and even George Orwell’s work on the comic postcard, and wanted to understand this tradition better. I had no idea that British comics was sputtering well before I got there.

When Billy Proctor proposed a series of interviews, conversations, and essays on the British comics tradition, I jumped at the chance. I had first met Billy through our shared interests in the works of Bryan Talbot, having spent a wonderful afternoon at the home of one of the UK’s leading comics artists. I felt more of us around the world should know of this history and so for the next few weeks, I am turning control of my blog over to Proctor, who organized the “Cult Conversations” series a while back, and his colleague, comics scholar Julia Round, for a deep dive into this particular comics culture.

In the coming year, I hope to do more here on comics and comics studies as we ramp up to the release of my book, Comics and Stuff, coming in 2020 from New York University Press

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WP

I should state that I am likely to wax nostalgic about UK Comics, or at least, comics I read in my salad years. It seems that my childhood was a period where comic books were in abundance (I was born in 1974). Scanning the shelves of local newsagents these days fills me with sadness, to be honest, although perhaps I’m peering into the past with rose-tinted spectacles. Perhaps not. It’s not that there are no UK comics any longer—far from it. As the image below attests, shelves are teeming with British comics. But to my eyes, they all seem to be for children, less so for anyone over the age of five or six. And what counts as a ‘childrens’ comic’ seems to have shifted quite significantly since around the 1990s.

Here’s an image of UK comics’ shelves in retailer, WHSmith.

Comics were a huge part of my reading life from childhood through to my teens. Of course, I continued to read comics as an adult as well, but gravitated towards more ‘mature’ fare. Maybe it was a rite of passage, generally speaking. Many of us started out reading The Beano, The Dandy, Whizzer and Chips, Cor, etc. then moved onto titles like Victor, Action, The Eagle, Warlord, Scream, Champ, and, of course, 2000AD. I’m talking mainly here about boys' comics, but I also read girls’ comics too! I would never have bought them nor admitted to reading them to my friends though! Even at a young age, boys were dunked in the petri-dish of masculinity, learning to become MEN. If I’d finished reading my weekly purchases, I’d certainly dip into my sister’s Jackie, Bunty, and Tammy, as well as her magazines such as Look-In and Smash Hits.

 Am I romanticizing our youth Julia?

JR   

Not at all! — in fact, I really like the idea that working your way through the British comics, from youngest to oldest, was a rite of passage. Sadly though it seems that often it ended in the denigration and ultimate rejection of comics - I’m wondering if this attitude was almost culturally ingrained. Memory is a strange beast - if you’d asked me twenty years ago if I read British comics as a kid I think I might have said not really - not because I was lying, I just didn’t really remember much about them or how significant they were to me. But I did read them, and part of the joy of immersing myself in them again for research purposes has been having all these half-formed memories flooding back.

JACKIE (1980)

I had a long hiatus from girls’ comics after a particularly scary encounter with Misty when I was about 7 or 8 (for more on that check out our podcast!), but I read Jackie for years afterwards, well into my early teens, and lots before that as well. I think I started on Twinkle, and I definitely read The Beano and The Dandy enough to get some annuals for Christmas. I also distinctly remember a comic from my pre-teen years called BIG that nobody at all remembers (the lack of exclamation mark was very important since there was another pop magazine called BIG! which my newsagent always used to produce for me instead). I’ve often doubted it existed, but a spot of internet research turned up this, and tells me that it was a reprint title, collecting the best of comics such as Cor!, Buster, Whizzer and Chips, and so on. Reprinting and recycling was common practice in the British comics - not just in the souvenir hardback ‘annuals’ which would be released every year in time for well-meaning relatives to buy you for Christmas, but also between titles. Publishers believed that kids only read comics for a few years, meaning that their entire audience would be renewed every 8 years or so, which meant that popular serials that had originally appeared in one title would often be recycled into another one some years later, or collected together under a different name, like BIG.

One of the most interesting things about the British comics was the sheer range of titles. Ones for the very young, like Twinkle, with simple layouts and stories about fairies and flowers and talking animals. The anarchic comedy titles like Beano, Dandy, Cor! and the others. The war, sports and sf titles for boys that you’ve mentioned, and the school and ballet stories for girls (June and School Friend, Bunty), not to mention the romance titles of the 1950s. But as the medium developed and the number of weekly publications increased, it’s worth stressing that these were definitely not all cosy Enid Blyton-style tales - horrific bullying, ghostly happenings, mistaken identities, kidnappings, and much much more graced the pages of the British girls’ comics, and things got dark — really dark! — before the industry faltered in the 1970/80s and finally collapsed in the 1990s.  

It still boggles me that an industry that at its peak was publishing hundreds of weekly titles, with circulation figures up in the millions, can have so completely collapsed! And it didn’t have anything to do with censorship or a Code like in America. British comics publishing was completely dominated by two main companies: DC Thomson, a family-run firm based in Dundee, Scotland, and Fleetway Publications (originally known as Amalgamated Press, and later renamed as the holding company International Publishing Corporation, which also gobbled up many smaller publishers such as Odhams and Newnes). These two companies were engaged in fierce competition which went on for decades. They poached each other’s creators, copied each other’s titles, kept prices low, increased free gifts, and constantly sought to outdo each other for drama and excitement - we, the readers, definitely befitted from their creativity and innovation!  

The strongest memories for me are of absolutely nail-biting stories, combined with crazy layouts and amazing artwork. Fleetway sourced most of this from Spanish artists, many of whom (I found out much later) also worked for publishers like Warren in America. I didn’t know enough about the writers or artists to recognise this at the time, of course, and the British comics stories were completely uncredited for many years, which didn’t help either! Do you remember any particular artists or writers Billy/what are your strongest memories of the ones you read? 

WP 

That’s an interesting question! I think it was only when I started to read 2000AD that artists and writers came to the fore. The comics I read in junior school (ages 7-11) were mostly the humor comics such as The Beano, The Dandy, and later, Champ and Scream. It was only later that I went back and recognized certain writers and artists—Alan Moore was involved in writing ‘Monster’ for Scream, which was a short-lived anthology comic that absolutely terrified me! (I’ve since bought the complete 15-issue run from Ebay.) It was in secondary school (ages 11-16) when I gravitated to 2000AD. I worked at the local newsagents as a paper-boy then, and I even remember the address where I delivered 2000AD on a weekly basis! Unbeknownst to both the addressee and the newsagent, they wouldn’t receive their copy on the day of release, but the day after. I would take the comic home to read before delivering the next day, hoping that I wouldn’t be caught for doing so. At school, there were a few kids who also read 2000AD—and I mean a few. It’s plausible that many teens read 2000AD regularly, but perhaps we were at an age where that wasn’t to be admitted in public. (Puberty came with unwritten rules after all, and comics should have been in the rear-view mirror by that time.)  

But there was one boy who had a massive back catalogue of 2000AD comics, and we became fast friends. He would lend me older issues in chronological order so I could read full stories from beginning to end. Then as now, 2000AD worked on a kind of rotation. The flagship strip was, and remains,  ‘Judge Dredd.’ Dredd would feature in every issue at the front of the comic, but other strips would run for a number of weeks until the story was finished, then depart for a while, replaced by other stories on a rotating basis. I distinctly remember the first time I started to recognize artists’ styles without looking at the credits. The story was ‘Nemesis the Warlock’ and the run that introduced me to the character was by Bryan Talbot. The detail is incredible, with the technique of cross-hatching used to magnificent effect. (I once spoke to Talbot about departing from that style later in his long and illustrious career and he simply remarked: “it takes bloody ages, that’s why I stopped!”) And to this day, ‘Nemesis the Warlock’ remains my absolute favorite UK comic, bar none.

Other artists, such as Brian Bolland and Kevin O’Neill, also became instantly recognizable.  

Of course, this was the era when the ‘big two’ US publishers, Marvel and DC, would start offering work to UK writers and artists, many of whom cut their teeth on 2000AD. In effect, 2000AD became a breeding ground for talent, with now-familiar names crossing the Atlantic to work as hired hands for the big two: Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, Peter Milligan, Warren Ellis, Jamie Delano, etc. This is often referred to as ‘The British Invasion.’  

Art by Brian Bolland, who would go on to pencil Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke for DC.

It was much later, however, that writers and artists became sovereign (at least for me). So while I may be au fait with many artists’ styles nowadays, that occurred retroactively, and even more so when I began studying comics as an academic. I must say that my scholarly work, however, is focused more on US superhero comics than UK comics, although I hope that I’ll rectify that in future—I’ve been keen on doing some work on Scream as it seems broadly neglected in academic spheres. 

In a nutshell, my strongest memories are of excitement and horror! Roy of the Rovers always left me gasping with exertion, as did ‘We are United’ in Champ. I was an avid football fan, and these strips seemed akin to the real thing—perhaps more so!  

Also in Champ was ‘The Sinister World of Mr Pendragon.’ I would read it under the bed covers (with a flashlight), and would be so paralyzed with fright that I wouldn’t dare go to the bathroom in case the monsters ate me! ‘The Dracula Files’ in Scream had a similar effect.  

What about you Julia?  Did you recognize artists or follow a particular writer? As you said, of course, many strips went uncredited at the time, but I believe Action and 2000AD instigated a shift towards proper accreditation (I may be wrong about that but I’m sure you’ll tell me!)

SCREAM’S ‘THE DRACULA FILE’

JR   

If you go back far enough, there actually used to be credits in British comics - you can find them in Eagle (1950–69) and some of the romance titles of a similar era, but by the 1970s this wasn’t standard practice any more. Some smaller companies like Top Shelf did carry on crediting their artists and writers, but the British Big Two definitely did not. Part of each comic’s editorial team’s job was actually to paint over any signatures that artists dared to add to their work! - of course this led to lots of more subtle signatures and references bring inserted, and it can be lots of fun to try and spot these. The artist John Armstrong was particularly good at hiding his initials in his artwork! 

I think 2000AD was the comic responsible for bringing creator credits back when it launched in 1977 - its art editor Kevin O’Neill basically said ‘This is bullsh*t’, put them on, and told Fleetway management they were experimenting. They’ve been there ever since! The idea was then picked up by Tammy editor Wilf Prigmore (credits first appeared in Tammy on July 17, 1982, and continued until February 11, 1984). He remembers this move as also being driven by one of his writers, Anne Digby, as the comic was serialising an adaptation of her Trebizon school story novels and she thought adding her name might help them sell. 

Dr William Proctor is Senior Lecturer in Transmedia at Bournemouth University, UK. He has published widely on various topics related to popular culture, including Batman. James Bond, Stephen King, Star Wars and more. William is a leading expert on franchise reboots, and is currently writing his debut monograph, Reboot Culture: Comics, Film, and Transmedia Histories (forthcoming, Palgrave). He is the co-editor of Global Convergence Cultures: Transmedia Earth (with Matthew Freeman, Routledge 2018), and Disney’s Star Wars: Forces of Promotion, Production, and Reception (with Richard McCulloch, University of Iowa Press 2019).

Dr Julia Round is a Principal Lecturer in the Faculty of Media and Communication at Bournemouth University, UK. She is one of the editors of Studies in Comics journal (Intellect Books) and a co-organiser of the annual International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference (IGNCC). Her first book was Gothic in Comics and Graphic Novels (McFarland, 2014), followed by the edited collection Real Lives, Celebrity Stories (Bloomsbury, 2014). In 2015 she received the Inge Award for Comics Scholarship for her research, which focuses on Gothic, comics, and children’s literature. She has recently completed two AHRC-funded studies examining how digital transformations affect young people's reading. Her new book Misty and Gothic for Girls in British Comics (forthcoming from UP Mississippi, 2019) examines the presence of Gothic themes and aesthetics in children’s comics, and is accompanied by a searchable database of all the stories (with summaries, previously unknown creator credits, and origins), available at her website www.juliaround.com.