On a regular trip back to the family home recently I found myself leafing through some old 2000 AD annuals on the bookshelves of my old room. Flicking through some at random I spotted an article by one of the Mighty Tharg’s research droids, a young Lew Stringer. The article was in the 1985 edition of the 2000 AD annual from Fleetway (back when the title 2000 AD still seemed futuristic) and Lew was telling readers of the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic about their rich comics heritage and the heroes who entertained kids and inspired many of the then contemporary 2000 AD creators long before it exploded into our midst in 1977.
(cover to the 1985 2000 AD annual, published by Fleetway and from the style I’m thinking Mike McMahon for the artwork)
Its funny, I did recollect reading this article a few times but until I picked it up the other week I had clean forgotten it was written by Lew. When I read it for the very first time I didn’t know Lew at all (I’ve since had the pleasure of reading his work and swapping the occassional email with him) and I was focussed more on what his article described. It was only three pages in that annual, but it was important to me because it opened a window into the diverse (and often wonderfully eccentric) history of British comics for the young me.
Remember that in 1985 we didn’t have the range of graphic novels we take for granted now and certainly not archive editions of classic material from yesteryear. Other than the occassional repeat in annuals and summer specials we generally didn’t get to read these older strips, they languished away in publisher’s vaults. And sadly a lot of the British ones still do even today – luckily we’ve had some classic reprints like The Steel Claw, Charley’s War, The Spider, Albion Origins and Classic Dan Dare, not to mention classics from 2000 AD like the Complete Judge Dredd Case Files, or the brand new Complete Ro-Busters, strips new to fresh-faced readers when Lew wrote this article and now archive classics in their own right. And how many of us delighted when Alan Moore, Leah Moore, John Reppion and Shane Oakley revisited those classic old characters in an inventive way with Albion. But there’s a lot more classic British material a lot of us would pay to see collected and reprinted.
Lew’s article would be one of the first pieces to give the younger me an inkling of our comics heritage – I knew of the original Dan Dare through my dad (who read it as a lad in the 50s; years after this I would get him some of the Hawk Books collections of classic Dare as birthday presents. Naturally I read them afterwards too), I’d come across the Steel Claw (probably in reprinted stories in some of those annuals and specials, I think) and a few others here and there, but most of these characters were a mystery to me and I found myself intrigued and wanting to read more, to know about (and enjoy) some of the characters that came before the comics I was reading. Articles like that made the young me more aware of that there was a lot more to comics than what I saw every week on the newsagent’s shelves – there was an array of characters from the past, there were comics from outwith the UK and US mainstream publishers… It’s a short article from the days when research droid Stringer’s circuits were gleaming and newly plated, but it was enough to open my eyes a bit wider (thanks, Lew). And its great to know that Lew still supports and celebrates Brit comics, past and present, to this day, which is why you should bookmark his blog if you haven’t already. Meanwhile, enjoy a look at the comics of our past, ironically taken from a comics annual from my past (was that really more than 20 years ago?) – click on the pics for the larger versions:
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November 22nd, 2008 at 10:56 am
Thanks for reminding me of that blast from the past Joe, as I’d even forgotten about it myself! The article was commissioned by Steve MacManus on the strength of previous articles I’d written for my own short-lived Brit-com fanzine Fantasy Express.
Most fanzines of the time only focused on American comics, which I loved too, but I thought UK comics needed to be put in the spotlight too. People such as the late Denis Gifford did concentrate on UK product of course but they’d mainly cover pre-1950 comics, with a heavy emphasis on the pre-war weeklies. I just tried to balance things out a bit by looking at the era I was familiar with, the 1960s and 1970s.
The article above isn’t very thorough, but that was the remit, to make it bright and breezy within a limited space. Back then 2000AD’s readers were mainly children, so we weren’t expected to go into the sort of depth that the excellent features in today’s Judge Dredd Megazine do. I hope your blog readers get a kick out of it anyway.
November 22nd, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Excellent.
You know what, the flying jacket on Dan Dare actually looks fleecy and warm – how the dickens can anyone draw those qualities?
November 22nd, 2008 at 4:07 pm
That was the first 2000ad annual I ever brought. Includes a rare Alan Moore Ro Busters strip with lovely art by Steve Dillon and John Higgins if memory serves.
I still find it strange that other countries seem to celebrate their comic’s past but here we don’t. Perhaps we are slightly embarrassed about all that cheap labour from Spain and South America that was often used. Even odder is all this talk about Britain loosing it’s identity, usually by people who can never back up their argument with any examples, yet our fantastical past is deliberately ignored. Britain the world leader in Fantasy and Scfi. (Is that too strong a claim I wonder?)
November 22nd, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Fair point Reuben. I think the problem is Britain has always considered comics to be throwaway junk because comics had long been presented that way. Things are changing slightly but most people I know (non comic fans) will never regard comics as worthy. But then that’s the British attitude towards the arts in general I think, from my experience anyway.
November 24th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Reuben, I think you are right too, on the comics front and the SF&F front. We do have a vibrant and internationally respected SF&F publishing environment (unlike with the comics for the most part) but that respect and acclaim for the actual books and authors, past and present, extends mostly only within the SF&F community – readers outside it turn their noses up the same way they do at comics. Not sure if we are the leader in the field, but we’ve certainly claim to be one of the most influential historically (Clarke, Wells) and today (Banks, Stross, MacLeod, Morgan, Hamilton, Asher, Duncan). All the more reason to wave the flag for both comics and SF…