Cloris and Claire by Roy Wilson

I scanned these strips years ago but must have forgotten to blog about them as I've just found them as I was clearing out old files on my Mac. The strip is Cloris and Claire, The Sporting Pair which appeared in June weekly in the early 1960s. (These examples are from 1962.) The artist was the legendary Roy Wilson, sadly nearing the end of his life (he died in 1965) but his talent was as strong as ever. Click on the images to see them larger, particularly the one above which I've enlarged even more to show in more detail Wilson's flawless brushstrokes. 

According to Denis Gifford's Encylopedia of Comic Characters the scripts were reworked plots from Reg Wooton's Sporty strips. Cloris and Claire was later reprinted in Sally in 1969/70 and retitled Sue and Prue, The Clueless Two. 

T.V. Fun No.1 (1953)

T.V. Fun No.1. Cover date: September 19th 1953. 
Price: 3d (1p). Every Monday (but probably out the previous Saturday.)
Publisher: The Amalgamated Press Ltd.
Page count: 20, comprising of four full colour, four spot colour (red), 12 black and white.
Page size: 24cm wide by 32cm high. 
Print quality: newsprint.

The year 1953 was a turning point for The Amalgamated Press. In one fell swoop they axed their three longest running comics. Comic Cuts, Illustrated Chips, and Wonder (formerly The Funny Wonder) were all cancelled in the same week, and replaced the following week with a brand new comic, TV Fun.

Clearly A.P. were determined to appear up-to-date by jettisoning their oldest comics in favour of one that reflected the new television age. Comic Cuts and Chips had run for over 60 years. Would TV Fun prove to be a worthy successor? Sadly not. It survived for just six years, changing its title to TV Fan for its last few months and merging into the romance comic Valentine in 1960.

Truth be told though, TV Fun wasn't a bad comic by any means. It was perhaps just not as modern-looking as A.P. would have hoped, despite its full colour covers (which the extinguished comics had lacked). To its credit it did feature work by some of the top artists in British comics, so let's look at a few pages from issue one. 

On the cover (above), the Arthur Askey strip had sort of made the jump from A.P.'s Radio Fun to herald this new venture. The artwork is by Arthur Martin.

Turning the page, the first thing the reader would be confronted with was a two page text story As Midnight Chimes. Prose stories like these were still a common feature of comics of the 1950s. 

Panel shows have always been a staple part of the TV schedules (because they're relatively cheap to do) and TV Fun reflected that with Put Your Question. I thought this was the work of Cyril Price but I'm reliably informed by comic historian Ray Moore that it's by Alex Akerbladh, and the last series he drew for A.P.

TV Fun contained a good balance of humour strips, prose stories, and adventure strips. One of the latter being Call In The Yard...

No less than five prose stories appeared in the comic. One of them was a complete story featuring super-spy Valda...

An adventure strip was awarded the full colour centre pages, with chapter one of The House With Red Shutters illustrated by George Heath...

The excellent Roy Wilson had a place in the new comic too, with two strips on page 14: Who's Who in Our Zoo, and Hoofer the Tee Vee Gee Gee. Neither of which were actually TV characters but TV Fun seemed to be aiming for the essence of a TV show in some of its strips, rather than filling it with adaptations. 

However, a TV celebrity did appear on the facing page in the form of Jimmy Edwards. Artwork by Reg Parlett, packing a lot into the page...

Despite this being a new comic and the company's big new launch, the editorial didn't appear until the inside back page, tucked away at the bottom. There the editor welcomed the readers, told them of things to come, and recounted his week. Which is all well and good until he cracks a racist joke. 

On the back page, a full colour strip starring Diana Decker 'The Cutie Queen of the TV Screen'. Judging from the times Ms.Decker flashes her legs in this and subsequent strips I think it's fair to say that A.P. were aiming TV Fun at an older reader than Thomson's Dandy and Beano. It looks to me that Bertie Brown was the artist of this page, and well chosen too for his ability to draw the female figure. 

Surprisingly (to me at any rate) I won this first issue on eBay last week for just £9.99. Either not many people noticed it or interest in pre-1960s British comics is waning fast. Of course, many collectors buy for nostalgia, and anyone who had this comic as a child would be in their late sixties by now and most likely to be cutting back on their collection rather than building it up. I hope showing a few pages from it here have been of interest to readers of this blog anyway. 

As always, click on each page to see it at a larger and more legible size.

Books about comics - Part 2

As with part 1 of this feature (see here) I'm looking at some of the books about British comics which inspired this blog.

The History of the British Newspaper Strip by Denis Gifford was published in 1971. I picked up this copy years later, which must be a second printing as the copy I'd seen in my local library years earlier had been called Stap Me! (an expression from the Just Jake strip). See here for that version's cover.

Anyway, it's an good little book that gives readers a taste of the history of the UK newspaper strip, from well known favourites such as Pip, Squeak and Wilfrid...

...to more obscure ones such as Hylda Baker's Diary by Dennis Collins...

In 1983 the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood held an exhibition of Victorian 'Penny Dreadfuls' and comics from over the years. I went along and bought this souvenir, Penny Dreadfuls and Comics, a 124 page softback on the history of the publications.

Well illustrated, the book showed various covers from the 19th Century prose publications...

...to the (then) more contemporary comics...

...with accompanying text and information...

1983 also saw the publication of The Comic Art of Roy Wilson, a superb hardback written and compiled by Alan Clark and David Ashford...

This book was a revelation to me, showing what a fantastic artist Roy Wilson was, with numerous pages and covers of his work reproduced throughout...

The historians had even uncovered some unseen pieces of Wilson's art, such as these character sketches for the Smarty character that the artist probably used for reference while he was drawing the strip for TV Fun in 1954...

Even more revealing was this unfinished page, possibly intended as a frontispiece for an Amalgamated Press annual, but abandoned halfway through for some reason...

Three years later, in 1986, Alan Clark produced a companion book, The Comic Art of Reg Parlett, covering the popular artist's 60 years in comics...

The book is a great testament to the quality and versatility of Parlett's work, from his early days...

...up to strips that many of us will be familiar with...

It also showed some of his sketches, including these trial drawings Parlett did when he was designing the Whiskers the Wizard character for Wonder in 1944...

The final book in this selection is The Wonderful World of Film Fun, by Graham King and Ron Saxby, that was published in 1985. I remember being so fascinated by the story of this long-running comic that I read the entire book in one sitting.

The book is comprised of short chapters, each on a theme...

...with plenty of full strips reproduced...

It was only when I started pulling out various books to research this post that I realised there have been so many written on the history of comics over the years. I really ought to arrange the ones I have properly one day and put them all in the same bookcase instead of in various rooms as they are at present. If I included the ones on American comics too we'd be here forever but I'll show a few more about British comics soon!  

This week in 1955: TV FUN No.95

This is the issue of TV Fun that was in the shops exactly 59 years ago. I've shown some issues of this comic on my blog before, but it's always worth a look at a few more strips. TV Fun was considered to be Amalgamated Press' modern comic of the time, a move away from the old style comics such as Comic Cuts and Illustrated Chips which it had replaced in 1953 a week after those titles folded.

Luckily for some of the artists of the old style comics, TV Fun had taken them on board. The cover strip shown here, Arthur Askey, was drawn by Arthur Martin. 

Jimmy Edwards was a popular star of the day, and his pompous, blustering headmaster character was perfect for a comic strip. Artwork by Reg Parlett.

A new strip starring Reg Varney ("as a boy") had begun in the previous week's issue. Here's episode two, drawn by A.P.'s top artist, Roy Wilson...

TV Fun contained a balance of humour and adventure strips. Westerns were hugely popular in the 1950s so naturally the serial Cal Conway's Son ran in the colour centre pages of the comic in 1955. I don't think this was actually based on any TV series. Artwork by George Heath.

TV Fun seems to have provided a lot of work for Reg Parlett. Deservedly so of course, as he was one of the best cartoonists to ever work for A.P./Fleetway/IPC. Here's a Sally Barnes strip from the issue by Reg...

Our 'Tec' Teaser was a precursor to Lion's Spot the Clue with Zip Nolan, and invited readers to participate in solving a crime...

The solution for the mystery appeared on the facing page, along with a Jerry Jones text story and an advert for a Whistling Yo-Yo (all the rage back then y'know).

On the back page, "The Modern Miss in Merry Moments" Shirley Eaton in full colour. A film star long before her memorable appearance in Goldfinger. Art by longtime A.P. artist John Jukes.

Like IPC in the 1970s, Amalgamated Press were never shy of reprinting material in their annuals. That same Shirley Eaton strip was reprinted just two years later in the TV Fun Annual 1958 with a bit of nifty resizing...

(For more info on that annual, see a blog post I did several years ago by clicking here.) 

At 16 pages for 3d (1p) the TV Fun of 59 years ago was a reasonable rival to The Dandy and The Beano, although I get the impression that TV Fun was aimed at a slightly older reader. Adolescents probably, who'd enjoy a glimpse of legs in the Sally Barnes and Shirley Eaton strips, and the artists readily provided such 'good girl' art. A.P. were actively trying to attract an older readership in the 1950s, with the most obvious comic being Top Spot (see blog post here). Sadly this direction didn't last, and when the Mirror Group acquired A.P. in 1959 (founding Fleetway) such 'cheesecake' was dropped, and subsequent titles such as Valiant and Buster (brilliant as they were) were firmly aimed at children. 

This week in 1938: BUTTERFLY

Several British comics have been known to be named after ferocious beasts; Eagle, Lion, Tiger, Jag.... er, Butterfly!? Yes, Butterfly seems to have been an unusual title for a comic but it didn't harm its fortunes, with it running 1,206 issues from 1925 to 1940.

The issue shown here is No.1,101, dated May 14th 1938, but published on May 10th, 76 years ago today. The topline announces "Grand News For All Readers", but this wasn't the sort of "grand news" that often meant a merger. It was simply an announcement of a new story due to start the following week.

The cover strip, Smiler and Smudge, was drawn by Bertie Brown. Unfortunately, reflecting the times, 'Smudge' is presented as a stereotypical caricature of a black boy both in appearance and speech. He's also subservient to his white co-stars. Although Smiler and Smudge are pals, it's clear who's the boss. It's a nice example of Bertie Brown's artwork but there's little else to recommend it.

Butterfly had the same format of most other tabloid-sized comics of the day published by the Amalgamated Press. Eight pages, comic strips on pages 1,4,5, and 8, and text stories on pages 2,3,6 and 7. All in black ink on coloured paper (in Butterfly's case, green). Here's a few strips from the centrespread...

Captain Plus and Major Minus. Not sure who the artist is:

Honey Potts. Art by Roy Wilson:

Moggie the Mouser. Originally by Roy Wilson but I don't think this episode is. It's interesting that the character was created in 1936, pre-dating The Dandy's Korky the Cat by a year.

On page six, a typical A.P. text story, Sardura the Bold, sharing the page with the editor's letter, an advert for Sports Budget story paper, and an ad claiming that a bar of Cadbury's chocolate will give you "enough energy to let you run three miles and not feel tired"! What a huge difference to today, where chocolate is no longer allowed to be advertised in comics because it causes obesity!

On the back page, the only adventure strip in the comic; Jungle Island. (I don't recognise the artist, sorry.) Serials featuring British characters a faraway setting were the norm in comics of the time so each story needed its own novelty. In this case, it's Banjo Joe, who seems to have an annoying knack of strumming his banjo during life or death situations. No doubt the plucky musical instrument saves the day at some point. 

...and that's another look back at a comic from bygone years. Please let me know in the comments below if you enjoy looking back at these pre-war titles. I know a lot of comic fans prefer the titles of their own childhoods, but I think it's important to make sure the history of British comics, for better or worse, isn't forgotten. What do you think?