The Valiant Book of Mystery and Magic 1976

The 1970s saw a rising interest in fiction dealing with horror and the occult. The Exorcist and The Omen in the cinema for example, The Pan Book of Horror being a popular series of paperbacks, and the relaxation of the Comics Code allowing vampires, werewolves and other horrors in American comics that were reaching more UK newsagents than ever before. Teens, adults, (and kids if they could access it) enjoyed nothing better than a good scary story. 

How could British comics join the fun? The Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act 1955 had forbidden the production of horror comics in the UK due to alleged effects on children, a kneejerk reaction to 1950s horror comic imports (see here). However, stories of the supernatural had continued to appear in British comics occasionally, although they tended to be very tame.

In 1975, IPC decided to publish a one-off hardback edition called The Valiant Book of Mystery and Magic. The closest thing they could get away with to a horror comic without being too graphic. Most of the stories featured The Spellbinder character; the old magician who had been the lead strip in Lion weekly. (By this time Lion had merged into Valiant.) However the book also contained several one-off mystery stories illustrated by IPC's top artists.

The book had 144 pages, mostly in black and white. The full colour lead strip, The Hand of Tuthoon, written by Frank Pepper and drawn by Fred Holmes, reintroduced readers to The Spellbinder, revealing how Tom Turville had awakened his ancestor Sylvester Turville from suspended animation.

The book also included one of the Spellbinder serials from Lion, edited into a 33 page adventure. The rest of the book featured all-new material. Perhaps the most intriguing strip was The Final Victim, an early collaboration between Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun several years before they created Charley's War for Battle. In The Final Victim, Colquhoun drew himself as 'Albert Weems', a comic artist down on his luck. Presumably the comic's managing editor 'J.J. Legrun' was based on IPC's Jack LeGrand. Here's the whole story...

Joe Colquhoun also illustrated some other material in the book, including two text stories, The Red House and Nightmare and the short comic story The Man on the Road...

Other great talent in the book included Eric Bradbury...

...Fred Holmes...

...and of course Geoff Campion, the main Spellbinder artist who also contributed some art for text stories and the endpapers...

The Valiant Book of Mystery and Magic was a one-off, which suggests it either didn't sell very well or IPC decided to shy away from the subject. It's a fantastic book though, as you can see from the examples I've shown here. Well worth seeking out if you don't have a copy. 

There's one hugely important thing about it that you may have noticed; the stories all carry writer/artist credit boxes. Hats off to the editor for doing this as it was definitely not usual IPC policy at the time, and wouldn't be seen again until 2000AD started publishing credits a couple of years later. 

Captain Hurricane arrives!

VALIANT No.1. Cover by Geoff Campion.

I was never a fan of war strips and I must admit I often used to skip the four pages of Captain Hurricane that were at the front of Valiant every week. However it can't be denied that he was a popular character, lasting the duration of the comic's 14 year span. 

In the early days he was depicted in a more 'straight' adventure style but after a while the art and stories became more exaggerated. The main artist was R. Charles Roylace, who drew both the strips I'm showing here today, although other artists such as Jack Pamby and Fred T. Holmes also filled in from time to time. Looking back at it now, the strip does have a certain charm, could be very funny, and it's certainly well illustrated, although some of the racist remarks made by Hurricane towards Germans and the Japanese make one wince today.

Without further ado, here's the very first Captain Hurricane story from Valiant No.1, dated 6th October 1962, (scanned from a photocopy)...

Now a story from ten years later, from Valiant and TV21 dated May 27th 1972. This exaggerated, more humourous style, is the one that most readers will remember...

Captain Hurricane was a character very much of his time, when war strips appeared in virtually every boys' adventure comic. By 1976, when Valiant merged into Battle Picture Weekly, he'd had his day. Presumably not as popular as he once was, and perhaps too jocular for the deadly serious Battle comic, the strip was dropped and he only appeared in the merged comic as a mascot on the letters page, eventually being phased out altogether. He later turned up alongside other old comic characters in the mini-series Albion written by Leah Moore and John Reppion, illustrated by Shane Oakley. 

Double take!

Above is the back cover to Valiant No.1, dated 6th October 1962. A fantastic piece of artwork that I believe is by Geoff Campion. 

The main figure was considered so striking that it was used as the inspiration for the cover to Smash! Holiday Special 1969, also by Geoff Campion...

And why not? It's a powerful image and made a very eye-catching cover to that special. Same artist, same publisher, two versions. The second version simplifies things a little by streamlining the head-dress and doesn't include the shield but it's clearly inspired by the Valiant art from seven years earlier.

Britain AD2170 (LION 1970)

Tonight's episode of Doctor Who (In the Forest of the Night) reminded me in some ways of a short lived strip that ran in Lion weekly back in 1970/71, particularly the cover shown above (drawn by Geoff Campion). 

Britain AD2170 began in Lion dated 25th July 1970. A three page serial illustrated by Solano Lopez (and possibly his studio assistants) it told the story of four British astronauts who return to Earth after a five year mission. They discover that Earth is covered in a dense jungle and people have reverted to a primitive state. Borrowing an explanation from Planet of the Apes, the story proposes that the ship must have travelled into the future and that they've actually arrived in the year 2170.

Here's the first episode. Click pages to see them larger...

As in tonight's Doctor Who, London is overgrown with trees and vegetation and wild beasts are on the prowl. We learn that society has broken down into tribes, one of which are the savage 'Snakemen' who wear armour made from car tyres. They appear on the cover to Lion dated 22nd August 1970, drawn by Geoff Campion (who was illustrating most of Lion's covers at this time)...

The astronauts use the remnants of civilisation to fight the Snakemen but there's a greater danger from a huge scaly Godzilla-like monster that roams London, although how and where it originated isn't really explained.

Along with Smash!, Buster, Valiant, and some girls' titles, Lion hit a glitch in late 1970 due to a printer's strike. The issues dated November 14th were the last for several months, and the comics vanished from the shelves until the ones dated 6th February 1971. As with all the other serials, Britain AD2170 continued from where it had left off but the strike had affected sales of the comics. Lion and Thunder were set to merge, and so in the issue of Lion dated 13th March 1971, Britain AD2170 was brought to a conclusion. Here's the final episode...

Britain AD2170 wasn't one of the greatest strips to have appeared in a British comic but it had its moments and was suitably exciting. Personally I found Lion to be one of the better UK adventure comics of the seventies and was a good comic to lay the foundations for 2000AD a few years later. I'll be blogging more about Lion in future posts when I have time, hopefully before the year 2170.  

Strips 78 booklet

Art by DAVE GIBBONS

In the days before Internet social networking, the Society of Strip Illustration (SSI) was an ideal organization for bringing comic creators together to socialize and promote the comics industry. I was a member myself in the 1980s, but a few years earlier, in 1978, the SSI held their first event, Strips 78, in London. Here are a few pages from the accompanying A5 booklet, with artwork rarely seen before outside of the SSI membership. 

Firstly, an introduction from Dennis Hooper, who was the Chairman in 1978 and, as no doubt you'll know, previously the editor of Countdown and art editor of TV21. This is of particular interest as it explains the origins of the SSI and how it grew from the Comics 101 event that Denis Gifford had organized in 1976. (Click to see it larger.)

Now here are some of the pages drawn by SSI members exclusively for the 52 page Strips 78 booklet...

BRIAN LEWIS

BILL TITCOMBE

MARTIN ASBURY

GEOFF CAMPION

DENIS GIFFORD

JOHN M. BURNS

JOHN RICHARDSON

KEVIN O'NEILL

LEO BAXENDALE and BRIAN BOLLAND

MICK McMAHON and DICK MILLINGTON

Finally, the centrespread, showing the names of the editors on the IPC weeklies at the time...