The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

This weekend’s Crikey! special, warming many shared memories of comics past for a lot of us, comes courtesy of the pen of Glenn Fleming:

According to my thesaurus Crikey means ‘an expression of surprise’, as in “Crikey! – I never thought I’d see you again!”

Well, it’s funny how your past life catches up with you – especially when you least expect it. All those comics you thought were long gone. All those stories you wanted to re-live. All that glorious artwork you wanted to drool over. Just one last time. Forty years or so has passed, a lifetime, so how could you possibly see that stuff again? Well, we might not be able to bring you complete stories and all of the drawings or even the original comics, but we’re committed to bringing the best of all those we can lay our hands on. So far, we’ve published beautiful samples of artwork by notables such as Frank Bellamy, Mike Noble, Ron Embleton, Ian Kennedy and Don Lawrence to name a few. We’ve brought you Ken Reid, Rocket, Victor, Scream, the Top Ten British Annuals, Adam Eterno… the list goes on and on. Andy Capp, Spellbound, Countdown and Commando. Phew! I’ll have to stop for a moment just to catch my breath.

(entertainment for growing boys in 1965: Ranger the National Magazine for Boys!)

Writing these articles, seeing other people’s contributions, designing the layouts of the pages, remembering those comics, capers and characters has sent me back to that time when my day was filled only with wonder and awe: The Bash Street Kids doing to their teachers what we all wanted to do to ours; Tough of the Track winning his races and then having fish and chips for supper; General Jumbo commanding the most amazing army ever seen on the face of the earth. I read somewhere that we remember everything, every little detail, that nothing is lost. It’s true. Everything about those times comes flooding back when I see the comics we have in the Crikey! shed – Ranger: The Trigan Empire. TV21: Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, the Daleks. All our favourite shows in comics. Boy, did we have the best of times! For me personally, it gave me an amazing insight to how I thought about the world of comics as a child. Recalling friends I had and the games we played based around the stories we read. We were kids in an adult world engaged in fantasy not found in an X-Box.

(proper “boy’s comics” – yarns of adventure in the Trigan Empire)

Thinking about it, every generation will tell you they lived through exciting times and I guess they’d all be right, but particularly so right now with a hundred years of comic history waiting there to be tapped into. And that’s our aim. More pages for Crikey!? Hopefully. Full colour all the way through? Definitely. Steven Hawking told us that everything is a matter of time. Crikey!’s time is here and now. Steven told us that time travel may be possible; we find that the Crikey! shed is our very own time machine, as these comics rekindle those embers that we thought were long extinguished: Paddy Payne, Lord Snooty, and Stingray.

(the Mysteron’s most feared agent and nemesis of the indestructible Captain Scarlet, Captain Black)

More and more people are coming onboard with their memories and expertise. We have already been told there is a danger of us becoming ‘the law’. That’s a sobering thought – and we’ve not got to Judge Dredd yet. But he’s coming. They’re all coming. We have over one hundred years of British comics to aim at. Many articles have been written for Crikey! still even more have to be produced.

As you are all aware by now, Crikey! is here. And Crikey! is here to stay. We have brought back great things from our past, from our youth; the best of British comics. It’s funny how I didn’t know I was missing something but it’s plain to see you were too. The response from you, our readers, has been incredible and makes this labour of love worthwhile. So worthwhile that this is turning into a lasting relationship – we’re barely a year old and have produced over 260 pages to indulge your drooling. We plan to bring you a lot more than that. And don’t forget Super-Spies and Secret Agents, and… well, you’ll have to wait and see what’s next. But we promise we won’t make you wait another forty years…

Issue #5 of Crikey! is out now and can be ordered from the official website or found in your friendly, neighbourhood FPI store.