Sadly, news has been coming through that the latest issue of Crikey, number 16, will also be the final issue of Crikey. It was always going to be tough, in these austere times to keep a magazine about comics going, especially one with a niche market like Crikey. But the loss of distribution through Borders was a hit that proved just too much to take. So we say goodbye to the British magazine that featured British comics from yesterday, and did it all very well indeed.

You may remember that we had publishers Glen Fleming and Tony Ingram here on the FPI blog at one point in support of their magazine. It’s a shame to see it go, but it’s pleasing that they’ve decided to go out with one final issue than by slipping away unnoticed. Issue 16 has features on Mick McMahon, Look-In, Action Force, I SPY, The Bojeffries Saga, Joe Colquhoun, Stingray and more.

And here’s publisher Glen Fleming from the Crikey website with his own goodbyes..

“And that’s it. It’s been a blast and I’d like to thanks all our readers, supporters and people who have contributed to Crikey! over the past few years. Maybe we’ll see each other again …sooner than you think!!”

Longtime supporter Lew Stringer gives it a fitting send off over at his blog. And also tells us of plans of a new digital magazine Comics Unlimited from the publishers of Crikey. And there’s more on the demise of  Crikey at Down The Tubes.

Crikey 16 is available from all Forbidden Planet International stores.

We needn’t have worried. You all know what happened next. As Crikey! moved to greater heights with each issue, more and more people came along to write for us thus lifting the pressure somewhat off the editorial team. Those people helped us spend more time doing what we do best – create a nice looking, well-written, fun and affordable magazine about all those comics from our collective pasts. The full colour issue was published at the end of last year to some acclaim. I found myself producing the whole thing. Not a problem with the likes of Tony Ingram on board, with his vision, superb articles and trusty collection and scanner. Although issue 8 looked great in colour, I had to revert to the previous format of 52 pages with 48 in black and white. No problem – most of British comics had appeared in black and white anyway, so the appearance didn’t suffer too much.

(the cover to issue 9 of Crikey! with art by Enrique Romero, out this March)

I’ve always wanted to speak to artists and writers throughout my comics reading ‘life’. I always thought Crikey! would benefit with interviews with the greats (should we be able to get them to speak with us!) and that has become part of my mission for Crikey! – more interviews with the people who brought/bring us our beautiful stories and artwork. Issue 9 showed us Romero of Modesty Blaise fame (see the previous Crikey post – Joe) and also featured none other than David ‘V for Vendetta’ Lloyd. More interviews are lined up for future issues – but I won’t tell you who they are! Keep reading comics. Keep reading Crikey!. This is only the beginning…

In my editorial role I interviewed legendary Spanish artist Enrique Romero about his work on Modesty Blaise (currently being collected in a number of volumes by Titan) and AXA giving us a fascinating look at the Spanish artist and his life. Then, as if that were not enough to satisy even the most seasoned fan for one issue, 2000AD creator and writer Pat Mills finishes this trio of Crikey! scoops and tells us about Gerry Finley-Day, Jenny McDade and John Armstrong’s impact on Girls’ comics in particular and, in the case of Finley-Day, British comics development in general. The much lamented Top Secret Picture Library is remembered by Cranston McMillan and Tony Ingram comes up with his usual brilliance with the first of a three part article on British Marvel. British artist Walt Howarth is remembered by Derek Wilson and Derek also takes us down his own, personal memory lane in an often funny, yet poignant look at Life, the Universe and… other stuff. There’s more – but you’ll just have to pick up Crikey! 9 when it’s published in early March..! Check it out – you will not be disappointed!

(a strip from Axa – who often had an aversion to clothing, as I recall – from the Sun newspaper, art by Enrique Romero)

Thanks to our friends at DC Thomson, we show you some beautiful artwork last seen over forty years ago in the pages of Diana. The Avengers: Steed, Mrs Peel – they’re all there! Rod Barzilay shows how proud he is of his creation Spaceship Away with some lovely art by Don Harley, C. Weston, Keith Page and Ferdinando Tacconi amongst others.

(Mrs Peel and John Steed – cult TV classic The Avengers re-interpreted for comics by Emilio Frejo Abegon, (c) DC Thomson)

Phil Clarke and Mike Higgs step up to the plate with a glorious rendition of The Phantom in the UK with art by Walter Howarth (to be featured in Crikey! #9). PFC Tony Ingram shows why he is one of the main writers at Crikey! with his letter home from the front line: The Life and Times of Charley Bourne, complete with the (granted) stunning black and white art of ‘Charley’s War’ co-creator Joe Colquhoun.

The First Birmingham Convention is remembered 40 years on and Peter Hansen follows with an unusual look at one of America’s greatest – Micky Mouse…what has that to do with British comics? A great deal. Check it out! Mike (The Cloak) Higgs (again!) draws his own Comicy Saturday – and it’s hilarious!

(My Comicy Saturday by Mike Higgs)

Crikey! has come along way in the past 18 months. If you’ve not seen it, you no longer have the excuse…

So – of the original three founding members of ‘The Great British Comics Magazine’ only I am left. That obviously leaves me to take the magazine forward. This is a new area of publishing for me and I am looking forward to the challenge.

Tony Ingram has been a long time contributor and will continue to astound us with his expertise and insight to all things British (well, comics anyway!) and Peter Hansen, Phil Clarke (no relation!) and Mike (The Cloak) Higgs of Blasé Books continue to be great supporters of the magazine. Indeed, it must be said, Peter is the main reason issue 8 (on sale early December) is in full colour throughout. My deepest thanks to him for his support and faith in Crikey!.

So – the Crikey! revolution continues! As mentioned above, Crikey #8 is in full colour and for that to continue we will need the sales. That’s over to you! As a teaser, issue 9 brings an exclusive chat with Modesty Blaise artist Badia Romero – watch out for that one!

I believe the next issue will be the best Crikey! yet. We can finally see our great artwork the way it was meant to be – in full, glorious colour! Other plans for Crikey! are in the pipeline already. All I need is your continuing support! Don’t forget to write!

Glenn B Fleming

(the great Dennis the Menace from the immortal Beano as seen on the last issue of Crikey!, (c) DC Thomson)

The chaps up in bonnie Scotland let us use that fantastic artwork of Dennis the Menace on the cover. All in the Crikey! shed believe this to be our best cover yet – and it’s going to take some beating. We can only try! I’ve said before that working on Crikey! is a joy, never work, and I believe that all who read and contribute to its growing success believe that too. The British public have a tremendous legacy here – British comics have influenced the genre (hate that word!) throughout the past hundred years or so and that legacy is recognised throughout the world. This is why Crikey! works – because of the depth of past work; the writers, artists and, it must be said, publishers who have held British comics up like a beacon through the past century(s). We have all their efforts to look at – I’m already looking forward to Crikey! 1000 – which, at the present rate of publication, is about 83 years off!

(Mike Butterworth’s the Trigan Empire, which first appeared in Fleetway’s Ranger in the mid 60s)

It’s interesting to learn that people are being turned onto British comics again because of Crikey! That fact alone makes it worthwhile as I was one of those people who deserted for American comics a lifetime ago. In the late ’80s I dropped comics altogether. Following the publication of Crikey! I find myself searching for The Numbskulls, General Jumbo and The Trigan Empire again, having rediscovered my enthusiasm for this kind of entertainment. The artwork, the daft stories… they’re all coming back to me. I also find myself searching the comics I never got in the first place. For example, Tom’s Misty article from issue 1 (published over a year ago!) showed me something I’d missed along the way. Some of the girls’ comics were better than the boys! Check them all out if you can – they really are worth reading (here, here and publishers – including DCT – please take note, there’s a wealth of classic British comics material languishing in your archives which there’s a real desire for among readers – Joe).

(getting all Misty-eyed, published by Fleetway back in the day and I think now (c) Egmont)

So. This blog is not so much a blog post as a thank you to all our readers who are buying Crikey!, making it the success it is, but also a BIG thank you to all our contributors, regular or otherwise – keep those articles coming! The letters column is one of the best parts of the magazine and one Brian and I always look forward to putting together, so keep those letters coming and we’ll keep answering! Here’s to the next issue of Crikey!

Glenn B Fleming

Crikey! issue 7 is on the way soon and available from your local, friendly, neighbourhood FPI store and via the official Crikey! site. Glenn is currently cursing the mighty Rain Gods of Albion and pondering if there is a market for waterproof comics.

I travelled over the ocean no less than twice to speak with this great man in his house in California. Jack and I spoke for many hours about his creations and those of others. He spoke warmly about his early years in the business and the trauma of later when he locked horns with just about everybody for the return of his original artwork and the ownership of his copyrights. Until that day I’d always presumed that comics were something we, the Brits, had given to the Yanks. Jack mentioned innocently that comics were “an American artform. Not art,” he said, “but an art form”.

(Jack Kirby shakes hand with Glenn; I’d post a cheeky comment here, but frankly I’m too consumed with jealousy to think of a caption!)

On my return I did some research and found that Mr Kirby was not entirely correct. Yes, the initial creation of the ‘American comic strip’ lay at the feet of no less a figure than Joseph Pulitzer (he of the very prestigious prize fame) and newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst. Their fight is well documented elsewhere but it seems that way, way back in the mid 1860s The Little Bears was published, the first strip with recurring characters. Mutt and Jeff was the first successful American daily comic strip, first appearing at the turn of the 20th century. But ‘strips’ had occurred long before these: you can argue that proto-comic strips exist from the time of ancient Egypt, several millennia ago (or even draw connections to cave paintings or Aboriginal rock art even further back in human history – Joe).

More recently, the Bayeux Tapestry (which is a visual narrative of the Battle of Hastings and beyond, embroidered on a seventy-meter cloth strip with annotations in Latin) was created following the invasion of the Normans into England in 1066. William Hogarth‘s English cartoons from the 18th century, which include both “single panel” work and also narrative sequences such as The Rake’s Progress appeared before Hearst and Pulitzer began their tiff. Around the mid 1860s a German strip appeared and so this era seems to have brought forth many a creative mind that lent itself to a sequential ‘artform’. Indeed, the German strip Max and Moritz had an undeniable influence on the American strip – and Jack Kirby was still half a century away from being born.

Like most memories and claims it’s never the whole story. Even Da Vinci is recognised as a creator of the ‘cartoon’. Kirby was right though: comics are an American artform. As they are a British artform… A French artform… A German artform… And so on. And I’ve not even mentioned the Japanese yet…

Crikey! issue 6 is on sale now and available from your local, friendly, neighbourhood FPI store and via the official Crikey! site. Glenn is currently planning an archaeological expedition to a chalk pit near Piltdown where he hopes to unearth proof Neolithic Britons invented the comic

Well, looking at them just recently I remembered only too well the thrill of it all. Thumbing through them, torn and yellowing now, I remembered something else that had affected me. Something that was… different. Quickly scanning the reprints and the relative sizes of each comic it became obvious to my (then) 12 year old mind – the British reprints were a different layout. To fit the bigger sized POW!, for example, the editors had ‘cut up’ the stats from America and ‘re-sized’ it to fit their pages. However, simply because American comics use more or less the same grid system and same sized panels every story, the editors had filled certain areas with different panels and usually the wrong ones. Continuity was not on their minds – for example:

(cover to Pow! #7 from 1967, borrowed from ComicsUk site, via Lew Stringer)

Fantastic Four issue 27 and POW! 53

The Cover of the original American comic, showing The Submariner holding Sue Richards away from Reed Richards whilst he restrained an angry Thing and Human Torch became the ‘Splash’ page. Then, to save us naive and impressionable teenagers the vision of (horror of horrors) the delectable Sue Richards in a bikini (changed days, now they shovel in scantily clad superwomen with improbably physiques – Joe), the POW! editors cut out the next THREE pages of the original (14 panels of Lee/Kirby magic depicting their particular brand of humour and Namor’s unrequited love for Sue) and went straight to the brooding Submariner, sat on his throne, alone and declaring his love for Reed Richards fiancé and his intention to marry her.

(the properly-sequenced page from Fantastic Four #27 with Namor showing us how to win a woman’s heart with a grand romantic gesture; art by Jack Kirby and (c) Marvel)

Then came the genius of the POW! editors. As if leaving out continuity altogether wasn’t bad enough they actually re-arranged the panels in the story: Namor breaks into the Baxter Building while the Thing is exercising (by pressing a giant spring connected to the wall – like one does!). Namor arrives, punches and breaks the spring, leaving the Thing pinned against the wall. Boiiing! Namor then fires a sleep pellet at the Thing and knocks him out.

Suddenly Johnny Storm arrives. Before he can ‘flame-on’ Namor fires a vacuum pellet (a pellet for every occasion?) at him and knocks him out, too. In their wisdom, the POW! editors decided to ignore the obvious thread of the story. They decided that Johnny would be knocked out before the Submariner fires the vacuum pellet at him and then he fires the ‘knock-out’ pellet at the Thing. The whole continuity, the trademark of Jack Kirby storytelling, is lost for no reason – I still can’t see why this happened – the panels fit okay in their correct order so maybe it was just a mistake. Check these editions out for yourself.

I can’t quite make up my mind whether it was the genius of the POW! editors who saw the stories in their own way, or the genius of Jack Kirby’s storytelling made the pages still work … methinks it lies with the illustrator if anywhere. No matter what they did with Kirby’s layouts, they still worked!

Check out all your Power Comics and original Marvels that correspond to these stories and see for yourself! Have fun!

Crikey! issue 6 will be on sale in July and available from your local, friendly, neighbourhood FPI store and via the official Crikey! site. Glenn is currently fiddling with his Thunderbird 2 model while telling kids “it’s not a toy, don’t touch it”.

(cover of TV21 showcasing the immortal Thunderbirds from 1967)

Lady Penelope. Captain Scarlet. The Persuaders. The list goes on and on. Those strips were featured in a variety of comics and magazines, now sadly no longer in print. Diana, Countdown, TV21… where have they all gone? I suspect the very technology all those TV shows hinted at has finally come around to bite them on the backside. Something has happened to society as a whole and it seems that kids just don’t read anymore (well, apart from J K Rowling books. And Philip Pullman books. And Jacqueline Wilson, who started out working for D.C. Thomson. And… Okay, let’s just say some kids today don’t read as much and leave it at that! – Joe). Now it’s all about CGI and interactive games: never has death and destruction been so accessible – albeit in a cyberworld!

(cover to Diana for Girls from 1964)

“The old ones are the old ones,” they say. Well, I don’t see too many of today’s TV programs appearing in comic form. Imagine a strip about a ‘reality show’… can it be far away? (what a thought – Joe)

That said, its comics some of us still love even though they have changed beyond (almost) all recognition in the past 15 years or so. New writers, editors and artists have brought gritty realism into the genre (I hate that word but it works) and changed the look of all our favourite characters. For some reason even Marvel are re-designing their main characters’ costumes. Is this to do with copyrights or just a desire for change? Or both? Even stalwarts such as the Beano and 2000AD constantly change their format to keep ‘in touch’ with today’s young comic readers. I ask, do things need to change so radically and is it for the best? Where are all the new strips? The new characters? The talent to produce them?

Film also has had something to do with the current change in direction of our medium. Along with big money. We’ve already had trilogies starring Spiderman and X-Men. Two Fantastic Fours and a Daredevil. Now take a look at his summer’s blockbusters. They all feature characters at least 40 years old: Iron Man, The Hulk, The Batman (although Hellboy is a good bit younger, but that’s not in the same mega budget league as those flicks, although I’m sure it will be at least as inventive if not more so – Joe). Indiana Jones is almost thirty years old; an attempt by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to bring the best bits of the pulp heroes of their childhood to the big screen. They wanted him to be a comic strip icon on celluloid and they pulled it off.

(cover to Look and Learn from 1968, part of a ‘Famous Firsts’ series of images, in this case depicting the first spacewalk. For fact fans that would be cosmonaut Alexy Leonov, who climbed out of his capsule and hung floating over planet Earth in 1965; if the Space Race had gone a little differently he might have been the first man on the moon. Your useless space trivia for today supplied by Space Cadet Joe...)

Lucas and Spielberg are huge comics fans and in Lucas’ case it doesn’t take much to work out where his influences are from. In fact, at one time Lucas owned part of a comics and SF shop.

My hopes are still for someone to create a new set of characters that we can get to like and love over the years. Someone to care about and read with anticipation.

But I’m not going to hold my breath. Maybe I’ll just have to create my own…

Crikey! issue 6 will be on sale in July and available from your local, friendly, neighbourhood FPI store and via the official Crikey! site. Glenn is currently fiddling with his Thunderbird 2 model while telling kids “it’s not a toy, don’t touch it”.

We all know about Stan Lee and Jack Kirby: but we’re still unsure who did what, when and why. A bit like John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Just who did exactly what within those teams will never be answered because one member of each team is dead and the other says they were the major contributor. Well, most of the time.

(Halo Jones by Ian Gibson, (c) Rebellion)

And anybody can write words – right? (Well, maybe not, but hopefully they can write their own name. Hopefully). But how many people out there can actually draw? Draw those beautiful illustrations that we all look at in our comics and graphic novels. When is the last time you spent an hour looking at a word? Moreover, pictures were around long before words. Those drawings on the caves were put there by some caveman who didn’t know what words were (well, at least written words, they may have had oral language and spoken words – Joe). But he knew how to draw a picture of what he was looking at.

I was recently drooling over part three of the epic Halo Jones saga. A chicken and egg situation formed in my mind. Alan Moore wrote the words, clearly. He may have even come up with the concept. It may have been totally his idea with no input from anyone. But Alan quite rightly passed the illustrative side of the series to unquestionably the best artist for it – Ian Gibson, a 2000 AD stalwart who had previously lent such distinctive visual flair to Robo-Hunter and others.

So, point in question: Ian Gibson’s vision is clear and unique. His is the lingering image in the reader’s mind, even if Alan Moore told him what to draw. The actual dialogue is at best secondary, though I don’t discount their impact (especially when written by Moore).

(more of art droid Gibson’s beautiful artwork for Halo Jones, (c) Rebellion)

What’s that other saying – a picture is worth a thousand words. I’d bet it wasn’t a writer who penned that. My money would be on an artist. So – the pencil is mightier than the pen in my estimation. Writers will, of course, disagree. But think about it: if there were no artists to visualise the writer’s words – we’d have books, not comics. If there were no writers – we’d still have the visuals and therefore a silent ‘movie’ to look at (hmmm, but would those pictures convey a complex narrative tale without a scripter?? – Joe).

But, then again – what are you looking at the moment?

Crikey! issue 6 will be on sale in July and available from your local, friendly, neighbourhood FPI store and via the official Crikey! site. Glenn is currently trying to think of a way he can write a Crikey! column using only pictures and ideograms.