User:Nicknack009/British comics

British comics have a history distinct from comics in other parts of the world. They began in humorous magazines in the late 19th century, developed into specialist comic magazines aimed at working class adults by the end of the century, before increasingly being aimed at children from the early 20th century. These early comics were typically weekly anthologies containing a variety of strips which were humorous in content, until the 1920s when they gradually began including adventure strips in the mix. Comic strips began appearing in newspapers about the same time, initially anthropomorphic animal strips for children, with humour and adventure strips following.

The weekly anthology format became more specialised from the 1950s on, with titles focused on humour, boys' adventure, girls' adventure and romance. The "picture library" format, featuring a single 60-page story drawn at digest size and aimed at older readers, also became popular. The market peaked in the mid-60s, but by the 1970s it was in serious decline, and publishers responded with even more specialised titles with more extreme content. The decline continued through the 1980s and 90s, and the mass audience of children that comics had once enjoyed was reduced to an older, niche audience of fans. A new wave of writers and artists arose who brought more adult sensibilities to the medium, and the "graphic novel" or book-length comic was pioneered by creators like Raymond Briggs and Bryan Talbot.

(comment on modern market - newsstands, newspapers, bookshops, small press, webcomics)

19th century
Early British comics evolved from Victorian humorous magazines like Punch, which were popular from the mid-19th century and combined topical cartoons with humourous articles. The first recurring comic strip character, Ally Sloper, created by Charles H. Ross, first appeared in the humorous magazine Judy in 1867, and got his own title, Ally Sloper's Half Holiday, in 1884, published by Dalziel Brothers. Funny Folks, published by James Henderson from 1874 to 1894, is the first publication recognised as a comic, but it contained as much text as comic strips, and its strips were usually no more than six panels long with a text narrative under each panel. These early comics were eight pages long, tabloid size, printed in black and white and sold for a penny.

Comics publishing really took off in the 1890s, twenty years after the Education Act of 1870, as a result of which Britain had a largely literate working class. Publisher Alfred Harmsworth launched Comic Cuts in 1890, costing only a halfpenny, undercutting his rivals thanks to the new technology of photoengraving doing away with the need to engrave cartoons on wood blocks. After legal action from Henderson, from whose magazine Scraps he had illegally reprinted material, Harmsworth advertised for new artists, and later in the same year launched a second title, Illustrated Chips. One artist whose work he published was Tom Browne, whose style, influenced by caricaturist Phil May, with lively outlines and little of the cross-hatched shading typical of Victorian illustrators, was influential for the next five decades. Browne's best-known creation, "Weary Willie and Tired Tim", a strip about two tramps inspired by Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, began in Illustrated Chips in 1896, and continued until 1953, drawn by other artists after Browne's death in 1910, and influenced Charlie Chaplin's "little tramp" character. The first character to enjoy serialised adventures was "Chubblock Homes", a Sherlock Holmes parody by Jack Butler Yeats, which ran in Comic Cuts and Funny Wonder from 1899 to 1901. Harsmworth's titles inspired imitators from rival publishers, like Trapps Holmes' Funny Cuts. About 40 titles were published in the 1890s.

The content of these early comics was exclusively humorous. Weekly story papers, which published adventure stories in prose with illustrations, were also popular. (expand)

Early 20th century
Early comics were aimed primarily at adults, although they were also enjoyed by children. In 1904 Harmsworth's company, the Amalgamated Press, launched a new comic called Puck, 12 pages long with four printed in colour. This particularly appealed to children, but embarrassed adults, who associated colour illustrations with children's books. From then on comics were increasingly targeted at children, the early satirical content replaced with slapstick humour. In 1914, having the 8-12 age group sewn up, the Amalgamated Press launched The Rainbow, the first title aimed at under-eights, and soon dominated the nursery market as well.

The first British newspaper strip was Julius Stafford Baker's Tiger Tim, which ran briefly in the Daily Mirror from 1904. The character also appeared in Monthly Playbox, a supplement to the magazine The World and his Wife, and The Rainbow, before getting his own title, Tiger Tim's Tales (later Tiger Tim's Weekly) from 1914 to 1959, and thereafter appeared in Playhour and Jack and Jill until 1985. Newspaper comics only took off in the later 1910s, with Charles Folkard's Teddy Tail in the Daily Mail starting in 1915, A. B. Payne's Pip, Squeak and Wilfred in the Daily Mirror from 1919, and Mary Tourtel's Rupert Bear in the Daily Express from 1920, all anthropomorphic animal strips. Some newspaper strips were aimed at adults, like Norman Pett's cheesecake strip Jane, in the Daily Mirror from 1932, and the first notable adventure strip in a British newspaper was Jack Monk's Buck Ryan, also in the Daily Mirror from 1937.

The rise of cinema was a great influence on comics in the early part of the 20th century. In 1920 the Amalgamated Press launched Film Fun, full of strips based on popular film comedians like Harold Lloyd and Laurel and Hardy, drawn by artists like Bertie Brown and Bill Wakefield. The same year saw the first British comic strip adventure serial, "Rob the Rover" by Walter Booth, which ran in Puck until 1940. However, early adventure strips were static and stagey, with lots of text narration and little dialogue, until Reg Perrott, with his 1936 strip "The Road to Rome" in Odhams Press's Mickey Mouse Weekly, began using cinematic techniques like close-ups and dramatic angles, as well as panels of different shapes and sizes rather than a regular grid. Mickey Mouse Weekly was the first British comic to be published in full colour by photogravure, and lasted until 1957.

D. C. Thomson & Co., a newspaper and magazine publisher based in Dundee, had been publishing story papers, that other mainstay of the juvenile publishing market, since the 1920s, and had included short comic strips among the prose stories. In 1936 they launched the Fun Section, a comics supplement to their newspaper The Sunday Post, featuring The Broons and Oor Wullie, both written by R. D. Low and drawn by Dudley D. Watkins. That was followed in 1937 with the launch of a new weekly comic, The Dandy, for which Watkins drew "Desperate Dan", in 1937, and another, The Beano, for which he drew "Lord Snooty", in 1938. The Dandy finally closed in 2012; The Beano is still being published. Watkins became so valuable to Thomsons that he was allowed to sign his work (as was his counterpart Roy Wilson at the Amalgamated Press). These titles were the first to abandon text narration, relying entirely on speech balloons, and had a more modern sense of humour than the dated comics of the Amalgamated Press, who launched Radio Fun (1938) and Knockout (1939) to compete with them.

Post-War comics
The comics market contracted due to paper shortages and import restrictions during World War II. Many long-standing titles were cancelled, and imported American comics disappeared. Publishers like Gerald Swan, T. V. Boardman and L. Miller & Son stepped into the vacuum, reprinting American material and publishing original material in American formats. One such was L. Miller & Son's Marvelman, an American-style superhero created by Mick Anglo's studio to replace Miller's reprints of Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel, which could no longer be published for legal reasons.

After the war, editor Leonard Matthews oversaw an increase in adventure strips, largely westerns and historical swashbucklers, at the Amalgamated Press, first in existing comics like Knockout, then in specialist new titles like Thriller Comics. Established illustrators like Sep E. Scott, D. C. Eyles, Eric Parker and John Millar Watt, and demobbed young artists like Geoff Campion, Eric Bradbury, Mike Western and Ron Smith, were recruited to draw them.

The increased importation and reprinting of American horror and crime comics led to public concern (see below), and in 1950 editor Marcus Morris, an Anglican clergyman, and publisher Hulton Press responded by launching the Eagle, a tabloid comic aimed at teenage boys with colour photogravure printing, intended to promote wholesome values. Alongside adaptations of Bible stories and educational features, the Eagle ' s most popular feature was Frank Hampson's science fiction strip "Dan Dare". Other popular strips included "Fraser of Africa" and "Heros the Spartan", both illustrated by Frank Bellamy. Other publishers launched titles in a similiar format, like TV Comic (1951-84), featuring comics versions of popular TV programmes of the day, and Express Weekly (1954-62), featuring Ron Embleton's Roman epic "Wulf the Briton". The Amalgamated Press responded with cheaply-printed rivals like Lion (1952-74), starring space hero "Captain Condor", and Tiger (1954-85), featuring football star "Roy of the Rovers", and D. C. Thomson belatedly entered the boys' adventure comic market when they converted their story paper The Hotspur into a comic in 1959.

In 1950 the Amalgamated Press launched the first comic aimed at girls, School Friend. Marcus Morris and Hulton Press launched Girl the following year, and many more titles followed, including D. C. Thomson's Bunty in 1958, full of stories of boarding schools, ballerinas and orphans. Romance comics, like the Amalgamated Press' Marilyn (1955-65) C. Arthur Pearson's Mirabelle (1956-77) and D. C. Thomson's Romeo (1957-74), were another 1950s innovation. Another was the "picture library" format: digest size comics telling a complete story in 64 pages. The Amalgamated Press used this format for adventure stories (Thriller Picture Library), westerns (Cowboy Picture Library), romance stories (Love Story Picture Library), detective stories (Super Detective Library) and war stories (War Picture Library), with painted covers and scripts by writers like Michael Moorcock, Ken Bulmer and Joan Whitford. These titles created an increased demand for artists, which was filled by recruiting Italian artists like Hugo Pratt and Gino D'Antonio, Spanish artists like Jesús Blasco and José Ortiz, and South American artists like Alberto Breccia.

Meanwhile, humour comics continued to thrive. The Beano featured successful new strips by innovative young cartoonists, including David Law's "Dennis the Menace" (1951-present), Ken Reid's "Roger the Dodger" (1953-present) and Leo Baxendale's "The Bash Street Kids" (1954-present), and D. C. Thomson launched more titles, including The Topper (1953-90) and The Beezer (1956-93).

In the newspapers, humour strips created in this period include Wally Fawkes' Flook in the Daily Mail (1949-84); Barry Appleby's family sitcom strip The Gambols in the Daily Express (1950-99); Reg Smythe's working class layabout Andy Capp in the Daily Mirror (1957-present); and Maurice Dodd's The Perishers, about a gang of children and their dog, also in the Daily Mirror (1959-2006). Adventure and dramatic strips included Steve Dowling's time-travelling hero Garth in the Mirror (1943-97); Tony Weare's western strip Matt Marriott in the Evening News (1955-77) ; Sydney Jordan's space hero Jeff Hawke in the Express (1955-74); David Wright's socialite and fashion model Carol Day in the Mail (1956-71); ; and James Bond, adapted from Ian Fleming's novels and drawn initially by John McLusky, later by Yaroslav Horak, in the Express (1958-83).

In 1959 there was some reorganisation of the market. The Amalgamated Press became Fleetway Publications following their takeover by the Mirror Group. Hulton Press was taken over by Odhams Press, resulting in Marcus Morris leaving and Frank Hampson being taken off "Dan Dare", replaced by other artists, beginning with Frank Bellamy.

Moral panic over American comics
The importation and reprinting of American horror and crime comics like Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror led to what in retrospect has been characterised as a moral panic. At the urging of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Home Secretary and the National Union of Teachers, Parliament passed the Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act 1955, prohibiting "any book, magazine or other like work which is of a kind likely to fall into the hands of children or young persons and consists wholly or mainly of stories told in pictures (with or without the addition of written matter), being stories portraying (a) the commission of crimes; or (b) acts of violence or cruelty; or (c) incidents of a repulsive or horrible nature; in such a way that the work as a whole would tend to corrupt a child or young person into whose hands it might fall." Although the act had a sunset clause, it was made permanent in 1969, and remains in force today, represented, for example, in the Royal Mail prohibition against mailing horror comics and the matrices used to print them. However, only two successful prosecutions have been brought under the Act, and none since 1970.

1960s
Fleetway expanded its line of war-themed "picture library" comics in the early 1960s, supplementing War Picture Library with Air Ace Picture Library (1960-70), War at Sea Picture Library (1962-63) and Battle Picture Library (1964-84). D. C. Thomson launched their own title in the same format, Commando, in 1961, which is still being published. War became a common theme in the boys' weeklies, including new ones like D. C. Thomson's The Victor (1961) and Fleetway's Valiant (1962). Valiant also featured "The Steel Claw", who used the power of invisibility to commit crimes before reforming and becoming a misunderstood crime fighter, written by Ken Bulmer and drawn by Jesús Blasco. Fleetway's Lion featured another anti-hero, "The Spider", a master criminal with an array of gadgets created by writer Ted Cowan and artist Reg Bunn, many of whose adventures were written by Superman ' s co-creator Jerry Siegel.

Girls' titles, on the model of Girl and Bunty, proliferated in the 1960s, but by the middle of the decade romance comics had disappeared, in favour of lifestyle magazines for teenage girls. A bridge between the comics and the lifestyle magazines was Jackie, launched by D. C. Thomson in 1964, which combined comic strips with features on fashion, pop music and romance.

In in 1964 Odhams Press enticed Leo Baxendale and Ken Reid away from D. C. Thomson to create a "super-Beano" called Wham!. Its initial success led to companion titles Smash! (1966), Pow! (1967), Fantastic (1967) and Terrific (1967). These titles, unified under the "Power Comics" banner, began reprinting American superhero comics. However, Baxendale felt Odhams had expanded too quickly, and by 1968 all five titles had been merged into one, Smash!, which was retooled as an adventure comic. Later that year, Odhams merged with Fleetway, City Magazines and others to form IPC.

In terms of output, the British comics industry peaked in the mid-1960s, with over 4,000 issues of nearly 100 titles published in 1965, including 44 titles aimed at boys, 28 at girls, eight humour titles and nine nursery titles. This compares to the United States' peak of 3161 issues in 1952, with a population four times the size of that of the UK.