Rover covers (1965)

When it came to DC Thomson, although I always liked their humour comics I was never a regular buyer of their adventure comics and story papers. I preferred the ones by Odhams and Fleetway/IPC (plus City's TV21 of course) and American imports. However I've recently bought quite a few old DCT titles and I'll be showing some material from those next year. 

For today though, here's half a dozen covers from 1965 issues of Rover and Wizard that I bought recently. This long-running text story weekly featured some excellent covers as you can see. Superbly illustrated and designed, these eye-catching covers offered an exciting incentive for the reader to buy them. Unfortunately, as they're uncredited and as I'm not too familiar with Thomson's story papers I don't know who the artists were. Can anyone help? I'm guessing the two Lame-Duck Donovan covers might be by Ron Smith but I could be way off. Any information would be gratefully received and I'd credit you of course. 

In the meantime, enjoy looking at these fine examples of an age long gone.  

The Comics that won The War!

Who could have believed that in 2014 we'd see an annual with a cover strip featuring Big Eggo blowing up Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering? That's exactly what we get with The Beano and The Dandy: The Comics that won The War!, the latest collection of classic DC Thomson strips. 

These archive books have been published every year since the 50 Golden Years book in 1987 and I think this is the best one yet. Many of the previous books have often chopped up strips or overlapped pages to present a busy layout to appeal to children, but this one presents full page strips with no intrusions or redesigning. It gives the impression that this book is aimed at the older reader and the collectors so I hope it sells well in order to encourage DC Thomson to stick to this design.

The contents are marvelous, with numerous strips scanned from wartime editions of The Dandy and The Beano. My only quibble is that most of the art is uncredited, which isn't what one expects from a book aimed at collectors. 

One artist who is given his due is Dudley Watkins, and there's a fantastic pencil sketch of his in here that I've never seen before. There are also many of his Desperate Dan and Lord Snooty strips reprinted, showcasing some very bizarre and surreal stories. 

Just when you think the book is solely about The Dandy and The Beano it throws a curveball with some fantastic cover art from The Rover, The Skipper and The Hotspur story papers. 

There are also a few post-war strips that had WW2 themes, such as a complete Blitz Boy story from an early sixties Dandy Book, drawn by Paddy Brennan.

One of the weirdest strips in the book is a Wild Boy of the Woods episode which features a giant robot Hitler! That's right, - a giant robot Hitler! So bizarre it's worth the cover price alone. 

All in all, The Beano and The Dandy: The Comics that won The War is an excellent collection and deserves a place on the bookshelves of every collector of British comics. The R.R.P. is £12.99 but you'll find it cheaper than that if you shop around.