Batman: Gotham Central (Titan Comics) #01 (2016)
First Appearances:
Brigand Doom in 2000 A.D. (Fleetway Publications) Prog 717 (09 Feb 1991).
Births:
Mike Western (1925); Kenneth Mahood (1930); Derek 'Dez' Skinn (1951); Leah Moore (1978)
Deaths:
Sir John Paget Mellor, 1st Baronet (Quiz; 1929); Sydney George Hulme Beaman (1932); Stephen Roth (1967); James Friell (Gabriel; 1997); Dick Millington (2015)
Notable Events:
Bruce Bairnsfather began a tour of his "Old Bill and Me" lecture in 1919, with the first appearance at Hove Town Hall.
Rick Martin newspaper strip began in The Daily Sketch in 1957.
Marvel's Bullpen were present at the comic mart, at the Central Hall, Westminster, in 1984.
The first episode of original superhero sit-com My Hero broadcast on BBC One in 2000.
Neil Tennant was a castaway on Desert Island Discs, on BBC Radio 4, in 2007.
The SWALC micro-arts festival took place, in the Lord Clyde pub, London, in 2012. Bryan and Mary Talbot were in attendance.
Showing posts with label Mike Western. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mike Western. Show all posts
Monday, February 4, 2019
Friday, October 12, 2018
Battle Picture Weekly #1
08 Mar 1975; Cover price 6p.
32 pages. Colour & B&W.
IPC Magazines Ltd.
Cover by UNKNOWN.
Free combat stickers.
Contents:
Giant cover illustrations of free gifts are an odd conceit. Are they there in case someone picking up the title can't tell there is something provided alongside the item they have purchased, or are they there to torment people many years later, when the gift in question has long since disappeared? Whatever the reason, it brings to mind the much older D.C. Thomson first issues which so prominently displayed their wares.
Battle Picture Weekly even partially aligns itself with the pocket books with a title which brings to mind Battle Picture Library, which had been published since 1961, but doesn't overtly signal such a link in any way. The markets being slightly different, and with such variety in the weekly, there isn't a great shock in this quiet distancing.
D-Day Dawson, for all the platitudes lauded on the strip over the years, isn't initially inspiring. A throwback logo doesn't help - even the first panel gives off the gung-ho, boys own adventure feel which was outdated even in 1975. Things improve through the duration of the story, though once Dawson is shot and placed upon a landing craft there is an odd sense of events not being taken entirely seriously. A wound which will kill Dawson eventually, yet a giving him a year of life with which to ruminate on events, should have more serious implications.
A shell destroys the landing craft, so he uses this stroke of bad luck as a means to rejoin the fight. Only a brief amount of time having passed, so after (presumably) having received some rudimentary surgery to stabilise his condition, he decides that grabbing navy explosives and heading back onto the beach is a good idea. There is no mention of keeping the gaping wound in his chest clean, he doesn't quickly stash any painkillers in a pocket, nor does he have any time to change clothes to conceal his wound.
What he does is charge a German strongpoint with the explosives, destroying it.
It is clear that the notion of a (legitimately) fearless soldier holds some special appeal, but the handling of the injury is sloppy and rushed. Had there been a return to Britain for the wounded Sergeant, before working his way back to the front lines on learning of the deaths of his squad, there would have been added psychological motivation. Even getting him back to one of the ships for a few days would have allowed for the extent of his injuries to be clarified.
Not the great yarn it is often seen as, but merely an above-average one.
A much fresher logo for Lofty's One-Man Luftwaffe signals a different type of strip. The opening break-out from a stalag luft certainly doesn't feel like run of the mill military exploits, especially when the body count begins rising. Lofty is the only one of his group to escape the clutches of waiting Germans, and he makes his way to an airfield where there is aircraft which will get him safely home.
But this isn't that story.
Taking out ace pilot Major Ranke, who was also on his way to the airfield, Lofty assumes his identity and takes his place with the one-o-nine squadron. Nabbing himself a plane, Lofty takes to the skies, quickly becoming tangled in ongoing combat between a Wellington and a Focke-Wulf, before limping back to the airfield he had just left. Welcomed as Ranke, Lofty decides to stick around so he can fight the German air force from within.
Passing yourself off as a German pilot isn't just about a solid grasp of the language, but idiosyncrasies, slang, personal history and knowledge of cultural phenomenons local to a specific region. It isn't explained how he can so convincingly step into the shoes of a decorated officer without any preparation or reference material, but there's enough eventful moments to keep young readers from questioning the logistics.
The Headfirst Hero is the story of John Cooper, who joined the French Foreign Legion at only fifteen. Despite being on the brief side his story is one which has lasting interest, and there's a solid argument that the inclusion of such material really solidified the title in the early issues. Balancing the fiction with history allowed the stories to be placed in context by astute readers, and highlighted events which spurred the writers on.
History was nowhere more evident than in The Flight of the Golden Hinde, in which Sir Francis Drake's vessel is called upon to defend British interests once more. Or, at the least, a replica is, created as a test to see if the British Navy could replicate Drake's achievements. There's an appealing ridiculousness to the story which carries it above the other strips, and despite qualms about how effective such a ship would be in open conflict with a 1940s vessel, the premise is presented with the right amount of self-awareness.
A second slice of true-life bravery, though by presenting Brew-Up at El Alamein as a strip, with excellent art, there is more immediacy to proceedings. The first issue feels slightly skewed in favour of strips, to the detriment of value-for-money. It is enjoyable to lose oneself in well-written text pieces amongst the more obvious contents, and by skimping on these it doesn't take long to rush through the issue. It isn't a problem which comedy titles suffer from, but adventure titles should feel as if they are packed with content.
Day of the Eagle, and Mike Nelson (Mystery Science Theater 3000 baggage is now hanging over that name) is caught in the midst of a Mission: Impossible-style operation to obtain German documents. He escapes, causing the maximum amount of damage in his retreat, and delivers the pilfered information to his superior in the S.O.E., where the title of the story finally comes into play. Operation Eagle is given the go-ahead.
Mike seems a little too eager to go kill someone. Anyone. He isn't fussy. The image of him stroking his chin in anticipation of being set loose to end the life of an unknowing individual gives the impression he is fitting Colonel Forster up for a pine box. Who is this madman, this psychopathic killer in our midst? Well... Mike is, unfortunately, our hero, and we are meant to like him. Which is something of a problem.
He's informed that from now on he'll only be known as Eagle (presumably to stop people asking how the Bots are) and given a FG 42, the German S.S. Paratroopers rifle. Of course he has to try it out, riddling a handy dummy with ammunition as Forster had wisely removed himself from the vicinity. When a boffin gives him a special lightweight tripod for use as a machine gun, Mike is delighted: "For maximum killing power, eh?"
We only know he's the hero because his job is to kill Hitler.
Which makes everything alright.
A full page is given over to explaining the history of badges given away as stickers, which only highlights how much more fun would have been had if Battle Picture Weekly had splashed out on actual patches for the launch. The badges chosen were all from Allies, so seeing kids running around with proper sew-on patches would have heightened interest in the title, as well as fostering an association with actual military branches.
Danny Budd is The Bootneck Boy, dismissed from a Marine recruiting hut by an unimpressed Marine Sergeant. We're given some back-story, and get to see that his life is already difficult before he gets jumped by three youths in a street-fight. Thankfully this is witnessed by the officer who told him he was too scrawny to enlist, and admiring Danny's ability to defend himself offers him a chance to fulfill his dream.
While it contains less action than elsewhere, The Bootneck Boy is an important strip in setting tone - it isn't a leap to see that this would eventually lead to Charley's War. Seeing small moments in Budd's liife before events propel him into combat allows for a sympathy which is entirely lacking in Day of the Eagle, and prevents the strip from being about (essentially) going out to murder people.
Rat Pack is a bargain-basement Dirty Dozen, with four inmates released from Wessex Military Prison by Taggart in what looks suspiciously like an unauthorised mission. Floodlights and prison sirens mark their escape in a jeep, but when they get to a barn to hide the jeep discover military police awaiting their arrival. Turk immediately attempts to kill Taggart (and not for the last time), before being slapped away.
Taggart tells his men - Kabul 'The Turk' Hasan, Ronald Weasel, Ian 'Scarface' Rogan, and Matthew Dancer - that they are to train to become a special commando unit, striking at dangerous targets behind enemy lines. The prison break was their first test, and they now need to take out Big Karl, a sixteen inch, long range German gun sited on the French coast. It is pointed out that their mission could be a suicidal attack, which proves prophetic - informed wind-speed is too strong to parachute into combat, Taggart kicks them out of the plane anyway. Right into the path of a German patrol.
As troops are mobilised Taggart has a moment of self-doubt, but readers shouldn't. This is an accomplished and entertaining opening, even if inspiration for the story is so blatant. Characterisation of the leads is strong, and danger is perceptible throughout. A great deal of the kudos goes to Carlos Ezquerra, whose confident artwork breathes life into events, and manages to make each of the main cast easily identifiable even in group shots.
The Terror Behind the Bamboo Curtain focuses on the lives of men interned at a Japanese prisoner of war camp, and who are being forced to construct a bridge before a monsoon arrives. The Japanese villains are drawn to resemble buck-toothed, short-sighted stereotypes seen in cartoons of the forties, and has little in common with actual appearances of officers. We get our first taste of what is to come when a prisoner is sent through 'the bamboo curtain' - a forest of bamboo laden with traps. Blake, a tough can-do British soldier, goads Camp Commander Sado into sending him into the bamboo forest.
There are more offensive stereotypes in The Bamboo Curtain than in the rest of Battle Picture Weekly combined, and it hurts the strip's credibility. If visual depictions are so biased, then we can't trust anything in the strip to contain nuance: British officers are square-jawed heroes who play by the rules, while foreigners are unattractive, cowardly, and willing to engage in all sorts of ungentlemanly conduct. A poor way to round off an otherwise strong collection of strips.
A final treat remains in the form of This Amazing War! which explains the Krummerlauf, a wind cannon, and a belt-buckle pistol. A really interesting selection, which contains facts which are beyond simple dates and names, and allows for intriguing illustrations. Did someone actually get their hands on one of those belt-buckles, or was it cribbed from a photograph? I would like to believe that a collector of militaria lent the item to editorial for the feature, but know that it is highly unlikely.
A rough jewel of a comic, with defining elements already in place.
32 pages. Colour & B&W.
IPC Magazines Ltd.
Cover by UNKNOWN.
Free combat stickers.
Contents:
.2 Battle Picture Weekly Blasts into Action! Introduction text.
.3 D-Day Dawson Beach-Head! w: Gerry Finley-Day (uncredited); a: Geoff Campion (uncredited).
.6 Lofty's One-Man Luftwaffe UNTITLED [Mass Escape from a Stalag Luft] w: Pat Mills & John Wagner (uncredited); a: Paulo Ongaro (uncredited).
.9 Boys at War The Headfirst Hero text feature by W. Harrington (uncredited); illustrated by Mike Western (uncredited).
10 The Flight of the Golden Hinde UNTITLED [Strange Vessel of the Past] w: S. Conforth (uncredited); a: UNKNOWN.
14 Battle Honours Brew-Up at El Alamein w: UNKNOWN; a: Zaccara (uncredited).
16 Day of the Eagle UNTITLED [Meet Mike Nelson] w: Eric Hebden (uncredited); a: Pat Wright (uncredited).
19 This Week's Great Gift! text feature (uncredited).
20 The Bootneck Boy UNTITLED [Marine Recruiting Hut] w: Ian MacDonald (uncredited); a: Giralt (uncredited).
23 The Rat Pack UNTITLED [Maximum Security Wing] w: Gerry Finley-Day (uncredited); a: Carlos Ezquerra (uncredited).
29 The Terror Behind the Bamboo Curtain UNTITLED [Bridge Must be Finished by Monsoon] w: Charles Herring (uncredited); a: Giancarlo Alessandrini (uncredited).
32 This Amazing War! German Secret Weapons Fact feature by Eric Hebden (uncredited); illustrated by Ian Gibson (uncredited).
Giant cover illustrations of free gifts are an odd conceit. Are they there in case someone picking up the title can't tell there is something provided alongside the item they have purchased, or are they there to torment people many years later, when the gift in question has long since disappeared? Whatever the reason, it brings to mind the much older D.C. Thomson first issues which so prominently displayed their wares.
Battle Picture Weekly even partially aligns itself with the pocket books with a title which brings to mind Battle Picture Library, which had been published since 1961, but doesn't overtly signal such a link in any way. The markets being slightly different, and with such variety in the weekly, there isn't a great shock in this quiet distancing.
D-Day Dawson, for all the platitudes lauded on the strip over the years, isn't initially inspiring. A throwback logo doesn't help - even the first panel gives off the gung-ho, boys own adventure feel which was outdated even in 1975. Things improve through the duration of the story, though once Dawson is shot and placed upon a landing craft there is an odd sense of events not being taken entirely seriously. A wound which will kill Dawson eventually, yet a giving him a year of life with which to ruminate on events, should have more serious implications.
A shell destroys the landing craft, so he uses this stroke of bad luck as a means to rejoin the fight. Only a brief amount of time having passed, so after (presumably) having received some rudimentary surgery to stabilise his condition, he decides that grabbing navy explosives and heading back onto the beach is a good idea. There is no mention of keeping the gaping wound in his chest clean, he doesn't quickly stash any painkillers in a pocket, nor does he have any time to change clothes to conceal his wound.
What he does is charge a German strongpoint with the explosives, destroying it.
It is clear that the notion of a (legitimately) fearless soldier holds some special appeal, but the handling of the injury is sloppy and rushed. Had there been a return to Britain for the wounded Sergeant, before working his way back to the front lines on learning of the deaths of his squad, there would have been added psychological motivation. Even getting him back to one of the ships for a few days would have allowed for the extent of his injuries to be clarified.
Not the great yarn it is often seen as, but merely an above-average one.
A much fresher logo for Lofty's One-Man Luftwaffe signals a different type of strip. The opening break-out from a stalag luft certainly doesn't feel like run of the mill military exploits, especially when the body count begins rising. Lofty is the only one of his group to escape the clutches of waiting Germans, and he makes his way to an airfield where there is aircraft which will get him safely home.
But this isn't that story.
Taking out ace pilot Major Ranke, who was also on his way to the airfield, Lofty assumes his identity and takes his place with the one-o-nine squadron. Nabbing himself a plane, Lofty takes to the skies, quickly becoming tangled in ongoing combat between a Wellington and a Focke-Wulf, before limping back to the airfield he had just left. Welcomed as Ranke, Lofty decides to stick around so he can fight the German air force from within.
Passing yourself off as a German pilot isn't just about a solid grasp of the language, but idiosyncrasies, slang, personal history and knowledge of cultural phenomenons local to a specific region. It isn't explained how he can so convincingly step into the shoes of a decorated officer without any preparation or reference material, but there's enough eventful moments to keep young readers from questioning the logistics.
The Headfirst Hero is the story of John Cooper, who joined the French Foreign Legion at only fifteen. Despite being on the brief side his story is one which has lasting interest, and there's a solid argument that the inclusion of such material really solidified the title in the early issues. Balancing the fiction with history allowed the stories to be placed in context by astute readers, and highlighted events which spurred the writers on.
History was nowhere more evident than in The Flight of the Golden Hinde, in which Sir Francis Drake's vessel is called upon to defend British interests once more. Or, at the least, a replica is, created as a test to see if the British Navy could replicate Drake's achievements. There's an appealing ridiculousness to the story which carries it above the other strips, and despite qualms about how effective such a ship would be in open conflict with a 1940s vessel, the premise is presented with the right amount of self-awareness.
A second slice of true-life bravery, though by presenting Brew-Up at El Alamein as a strip, with excellent art, there is more immediacy to proceedings. The first issue feels slightly skewed in favour of strips, to the detriment of value-for-money. It is enjoyable to lose oneself in well-written text pieces amongst the more obvious contents, and by skimping on these it doesn't take long to rush through the issue. It isn't a problem which comedy titles suffer from, but adventure titles should feel as if they are packed with content.
Day of the Eagle, and Mike Nelson (Mystery Science Theater 3000 baggage is now hanging over that name) is caught in the midst of a Mission: Impossible-style operation to obtain German documents. He escapes, causing the maximum amount of damage in his retreat, and delivers the pilfered information to his superior in the S.O.E., where the title of the story finally comes into play. Operation Eagle is given the go-ahead.
Mike seems a little too eager to go kill someone. Anyone. He isn't fussy. The image of him stroking his chin in anticipation of being set loose to end the life of an unknowing individual gives the impression he is fitting Colonel Forster up for a pine box. Who is this madman, this psychopathic killer in our midst? Well... Mike is, unfortunately, our hero, and we are meant to like him. Which is something of a problem.
He's informed that from now on he'll only be known as Eagle (presumably to stop people asking how the Bots are) and given a FG 42, the German S.S. Paratroopers rifle. Of course he has to try it out, riddling a handy dummy with ammunition as Forster had wisely removed himself from the vicinity. When a boffin gives him a special lightweight tripod for use as a machine gun, Mike is delighted: "For maximum killing power, eh?"
We only know he's the hero because his job is to kill Hitler.
Which makes everything alright.
A full page is given over to explaining the history of badges given away as stickers, which only highlights how much more fun would have been had if Battle Picture Weekly had splashed out on actual patches for the launch. The badges chosen were all from Allies, so seeing kids running around with proper sew-on patches would have heightened interest in the title, as well as fostering an association with actual military branches.
Danny Budd is The Bootneck Boy, dismissed from a Marine recruiting hut by an unimpressed Marine Sergeant. We're given some back-story, and get to see that his life is already difficult before he gets jumped by three youths in a street-fight. Thankfully this is witnessed by the officer who told him he was too scrawny to enlist, and admiring Danny's ability to defend himself offers him a chance to fulfill his dream.
While it contains less action than elsewhere, The Bootneck Boy is an important strip in setting tone - it isn't a leap to see that this would eventually lead to Charley's War. Seeing small moments in Budd's liife before events propel him into combat allows for a sympathy which is entirely lacking in Day of the Eagle, and prevents the strip from being about (essentially) going out to murder people.
Rat Pack is a bargain-basement Dirty Dozen, with four inmates released from Wessex Military Prison by Taggart in what looks suspiciously like an unauthorised mission. Floodlights and prison sirens mark their escape in a jeep, but when they get to a barn to hide the jeep discover military police awaiting their arrival. Turk immediately attempts to kill Taggart (and not for the last time), before being slapped away.
Taggart tells his men - Kabul 'The Turk' Hasan, Ronald Weasel, Ian 'Scarface' Rogan, and Matthew Dancer - that they are to train to become a special commando unit, striking at dangerous targets behind enemy lines. The prison break was their first test, and they now need to take out Big Karl, a sixteen inch, long range German gun sited on the French coast. It is pointed out that their mission could be a suicidal attack, which proves prophetic - informed wind-speed is too strong to parachute into combat, Taggart kicks them out of the plane anyway. Right into the path of a German patrol.
As troops are mobilised Taggart has a moment of self-doubt, but readers shouldn't. This is an accomplished and entertaining opening, even if inspiration for the story is so blatant. Characterisation of the leads is strong, and danger is perceptible throughout. A great deal of the kudos goes to Carlos Ezquerra, whose confident artwork breathes life into events, and manages to make each of the main cast easily identifiable even in group shots.
The Terror Behind the Bamboo Curtain focuses on the lives of men interned at a Japanese prisoner of war camp, and who are being forced to construct a bridge before a monsoon arrives. The Japanese villains are drawn to resemble buck-toothed, short-sighted stereotypes seen in cartoons of the forties, and has little in common with actual appearances of officers. We get our first taste of what is to come when a prisoner is sent through 'the bamboo curtain' - a forest of bamboo laden with traps. Blake, a tough can-do British soldier, goads Camp Commander Sado into sending him into the bamboo forest.
There are more offensive stereotypes in The Bamboo Curtain than in the rest of Battle Picture Weekly combined, and it hurts the strip's credibility. If visual depictions are so biased, then we can't trust anything in the strip to contain nuance: British officers are square-jawed heroes who play by the rules, while foreigners are unattractive, cowardly, and willing to engage in all sorts of ungentlemanly conduct. A poor way to round off an otherwise strong collection of strips.
A final treat remains in the form of This Amazing War! which explains the Krummerlauf, a wind cannon, and a belt-buckle pistol. A really interesting selection, which contains facts which are beyond simple dates and names, and allows for intriguing illustrations. Did someone actually get their hands on one of those belt-buckles, or was it cribbed from a photograph? I would like to believe that a collector of militaria lent the item to editorial for the feature, but know that it is highly unlikely.
A rough jewel of a comic, with defining elements already in place.
Sunday, October 7, 2018
Jet #1
01 May 1971; Cover price 3p.
40 pages. Colour & B&W.
IPC Magazines Ltd.
Cover by Eric Bradbury. (uncredited).
Free Trebor Bumper Bar fruit chews.
Contents:
A year before giant rabbits hopped their way across cinema screens in Night of the Lepus, giant animals were terrorizing Britain in Von Hoffman's Invasion. Both were, of course, inspired by movies of the fifties, but Jet's strip went a step further and added a mad Nazi scientist intent on revenging himself on Britain. While the story is all a set-up for the invasion, we do get to see an eel transformed into a sea-monster. It isn't Jörmungandr, but it is fairly impressive.
The quirky setting of The Sludgemouth Sloggers brings to mind Ealing comedies: thanks to a cruel geographical quirk, which is never explained, the valley of the River Sludge is a rain-trap, with a detrimental financial effect on the town of Sludgemouth. Desperate to revive the fortunes of the town, Ted Larkin, secretary of the Entertainments Committee, proposes to the council that they should enter the "What-a-Lark" competition, which offers a grand prize of fifty thousand pounds. "What-a-Lark" being, of course, a poor man's It's a Knockout.
Introductions are brief: Knocker Smith (a postman with balancing skills), Arfur Wurzel (likely named after the band, as he's a walking turnip-tossing stereotype), Charlie Anvil (the blacksmith, if you didn't guess by his name, who happens to be a strongman), and Constable 'Flipper' Finn (take a wild guess) are rounded up and sent off to compete in the first qualifying round. It is a thin script, aided some by the attractive art, but ultimately rather unremarkable.
Partridge's Patch takes place in the "peaceful little market town" of Barnleigh, to which we are introduced by way of a bank robbery. Peaceful? By what standards, the lack of giant eels eating people? The robbery happens to have taken place on Tom Partridge's beat, and he goes about solving the crime with his knowledge of rooks, salmon, and foliage. It is a decidedly rural strip, though it has the feel of the Zip Nolan stories to it.
In 1940, the British Bulldog Banner, which flew at Waterloo and the Crimea, and which is one of the British army's most treasured possessions, has fallen into the hands of German soldiers, though four soldiers have taken matters into their own hands to rectify the situation. Alf Higgs (an Englishman), Taffy Jones (a Welshman), Jock McGill (a Scotsman), and Paddy O'Boyle (an Irishman) are... Sergeants Four.
In returning the flag to British soil, they are rewarded (or given cruel and unusual punishment) by being made an independent commando force to tackle special top-danger missions. The thinking, most likely, being that if they can't be courtmartialed, then they can at least be shot by the Jerries. Sergeants Four is the narrative equivalent of a joke, though handled with a smidge more sensitivity than Bernard Manning. Barely. Even the Germans are hideously stereotyped, so at least it is equal-opportunity in its' targets.
Paddy McGinty, a young boy living in Boggymorra, wants a pet. The problem is that he can't afford to look after a pet, which is a sensible enough plot point to raise. Animals are expensive. Then he happens upon a blurry creature in the woods which claims to be from the planet Ven, and which can change shape. As you do. It may sound like the opening of a low-budget horror film, but this is the infamous Paddy McGinty's Goat, and any comparison to mainstream media is both pointless and inadequate.
Nothing about the story makes a lick of sense. We don't know how 'Goat' got into the woods, or managed to get to Earth for that matter, nor do we learn if others of his kind are around. There's no explanation of why this alien being feels most comfortable as a goat (disturbing suggestions aside), nor - given the final panel of the story - how Paddy is going to find the money to pay for Goat's voracious appetite.
But it isn't that kind of a story. It is the kind of story where a young boy takes an obake home to live with him, and hopes that its' tastes don't run to human flesh as well as raw turnips.
The Kids of Stalag 41 is exactly what the title would lead you to expect. Rationally it is obvious that the popular US comedy Hogan's Heroes played a part in the creation of the strip, but finding comedic elements in the notion of a group of children stuck in a concentration camp takes some doing. The strip is basically The Bash Street Kids with the trappings of WWII as scenery dressing, and while the artwork is perfectly serviceable it never overcomes the distasteful set-up.
When you're reading a comedy strip and thinking "I hope there isn't an Anne Frank joke in this," you know something has gone terribly wrong with the building blocks the strip is built on.
We aren't done yet. For such a thin comic, Jet is a wealth of tone-deaf strips.
Crazy Car Capers is loosely based on the 1968 US cartoon Wacky Races, though if that isn't enough to put a reader off, the script helpfully provides a slew of stereotypes and casual bigotry to the mix. Hiram X. Spendcash, a mad millionaire, has organised a round-Britain race for cars of an unusual design. and rather than truly original vehicle designs (such as The Addams Family's mode of transport) the designs seen are lazy and obvious jokes.
Because IPC had a rule that every title had to have a sports strip, whether it made sense or not, Adare's Anglians wastes three pages full of beautifully-drawn yet vapid nonsense about a small island's football team. New Anglia is a small island far out in the Atlantic, and the people there have decided to enter the World Cup to avenge England's defeat. If you are wondering how well this sits alongside the other strips, then fear not - there is the same mockery of foreigners present and correct.
The islanders exist in some strange time-warp, where everything looks a hundred years out of date, for no apparent reason. We don't find out how New Anglia enters the World Cup without participating in any of the qualifying rounds, which must have taken place prior. Everything about the strip is just a little bit off, and it is difficult to see why the choice to place Adare's Anglians in the title had been made. Did someone lose a bet? Was it a dare? In fact, these questions apply to Sergeants Four, Paddy McGinty's Goat, and Crazy Car Capers as well.
Thankfully there is one undisputed classic among the bunch - the first appearance of Faceache, masterfully handled by Ken Reid. The opening installment is a slight tale, yet no less amusing for that.
Kester Kidd is firmly in the tradition of Wilson, The Wild Wonders, and Master of the Marsh, with the titular character exhibiting amazing prowess at running, jumping and other athletic feats. Kester Kidd comes to the attention of Barney Grumshott, a former athlete considered the best all-rounder in his day, through assisting him fetch a television on a cart which has rolled away (which makes some sense in context). It isn't an inspiring start, and doesn't radically improve.
Watching the athletics on television, Grumshott is disappointed to see world records go to foreign athletes, and he decides to turn Kester into the greatest athletic all-rounder in history. You don't have to be a genius to fill in the blanks of what will come, but the story is handled with fine (if unambitious) art, and sympathetic dialogue. There's nothing revolutionary in the strip, but it does what it does well.
Bertie Bumpkin is a sustained joke about a country gentleman with a strong accent. Yep. That's the extent of the strip's ambitions, and reading the story now is uncomfortable at best. It isn't quite as bad as Paddywack, but there's nothing which raises so much as a wry grin. Terry Bave is so much better than this strip, and it feels as if Bertie Bumpkin is a placeholder until something more suitable can be found. It doesn't so much have a punchline as have a limited amount of space in which to expand upon a vignette.
Bala the Briton sits uneasily beside the rest of the contents - a historical epic, treated seriously, with classical undertones such as messages from the Gods, an epic sea voyage, and (in the final panel) evidence that Jason and the Argonauts has an undue influence of the scripting. While the bare bones implies Anabasis may have been the initial foundation (appropriately relocated for a British audience), the fantasy elements loom large over the strip. Not that this is, in any way, a detriment to the story.
It may be the beautifully clean art, or the clear and emotionally-pure desires of the main characters, which makes the strip stand out amidst the lesser material, but Bala the Briton truly is a refreshing read - the pacing is perhaps a little too slow, and the characters remain undefined save for their roles in the narrative, but it works despite everything. If there was a "readers favourites" box to pick highlights, my ball-point pen would be hastily scribbling in "Bala the Briton" (if, that is, I was born earlier).
Despite the (almost-)namesake of the strip having died in the early forties, Carno's Cadets wears its' influence large. I've made gags about Fred Karno before, and had to explain what I was talking about, so seeing that he had some influence on Brtish comics beyond custard-pie gags is amusing. Did children in the early seventies know who Fred Karno was? Or that the title was a play on Fred Karno's Army? I remain unconvinced that the cultural legacy was being appropriately maintained.
And this is the perfect example (alongside the Val Doonican reference) that the writers weren't appealing to the children reading the comic, but were actually writing from their own childhood favourites - a full generation separating the humour from its' intended audience, thus ensuring that the emotional immediacy of the material was once or twice-removed.
And yes, for the record this is about actual cadets. Zero exertion was made in coming up with the outline. The dialogue is peppered with lazy shorthand ("Fair dinkum" and "Hoots mon" appear within two continuous panels), and even the artist can't rise to the challenge of engaging or original ideas - a spaceship rendered as a giant disc looks more like a WWII helmet, and a giant robot has the appearance of cheap, stiff, plastic toys of the fifties.
Alien invasions have been done many, many times in British comics, and is almost a cliché through repetition, yet most manage to raise at least a couple of interesting twists. This feels like a strip which was held over from a decade previously, and offers nothing new or (crucially) engaging. I don't care about any of the characters, and the mild peril of a character falling down a cliff didn't raise any questions save for why these children were placed in peril in the first place.
As first issues go, this isn't all bad. There are too many shortcuts taken in getting to the story at hand, and some of the ideas are ridiculous, but there is charming artwork and a (little) touch of inspired lunacy (from Bala, primarily), but as a cohesive package the comic falls flat. The casual bigotry and reliance on tired ideas truly mars the good, and it feels rushed in a way that is hard to pinpoint.
40 pages. Colour & B&W.
IPC Magazines Ltd.
Cover by Eric Bradbury. (uncredited).
Free Trebor Bumper Bar fruit chews.
Contents:
.2 Von Hoffman's Invasion w: UNKNOWN; a: Eric Bradbury (uncredited).
.5 The Sludgemouth Sloggers w: UNKNOWN; a: Douglas Maxted (uncredited).
.9 Partridge's Patch w: UNKNOWN; a: Mike Western (uncredited).
12 Sergeants Four w: UNKNOWN; a: Fred Holmes (uncredited).
16 Jest a Minute! pocket cartoons. w: Miss L. Hawkins [Lollipop], G. Downs [Car Wash], M. Campbell [Road Up], B. Smith [Long-Distance], R. Warwick [Exercise Book], I. Frazer [Removals], N. Duffield [Psychiatrist], and D. Eatwell [Marriage Guidance]; a: UNKNOWN.
17 Free in Next Week's Jet in-house advertisement.
18 Paddy McGinty's Goat w: UNKNOWN; a: UNKNOWN.
20 The Kids of Stalag 41 w: UNKNOWN; a: Mike Lacey (uncredited).
22 Crazy Car Capers w: UNKNOWN; a: Solano López (uncredited).
26 Adare's Anglians w: UNKNOWN; a: UNKNOWN.
29 Faceache w: UNKNOWN; a: Ken Reid (uncredited).
30 Kester Kidd w: UNKNOWN; a: UNKNOWN.
33 Bertie Bumpkin w: UNKNOWN; a: Terry Bave (uncredited).
34 Bala the Briton w: UNKNOWN; a: UNKNOWN.
37 Carno's Cadets w: UNKNOWN; a: Solano Lopez (uncredited).
40 Cola Rola Lyons Maid ice lolly advert.
A year before giant rabbits hopped their way across cinema screens in Night of the Lepus, giant animals were terrorizing Britain in Von Hoffman's Invasion. Both were, of course, inspired by movies of the fifties, but Jet's strip went a step further and added a mad Nazi scientist intent on revenging himself on Britain. While the story is all a set-up for the invasion, we do get to see an eel transformed into a sea-monster. It isn't Jörmungandr, but it is fairly impressive.
The quirky setting of The Sludgemouth Sloggers brings to mind Ealing comedies: thanks to a cruel geographical quirk, which is never explained, the valley of the River Sludge is a rain-trap, with a detrimental financial effect on the town of Sludgemouth. Desperate to revive the fortunes of the town, Ted Larkin, secretary of the Entertainments Committee, proposes to the council that they should enter the "What-a-Lark" competition, which offers a grand prize of fifty thousand pounds. "What-a-Lark" being, of course, a poor man's It's a Knockout.
Introductions are brief: Knocker Smith (a postman with balancing skills), Arfur Wurzel (likely named after the band, as he's a walking turnip-tossing stereotype), Charlie Anvil (the blacksmith, if you didn't guess by his name, who happens to be a strongman), and Constable 'Flipper' Finn (take a wild guess) are rounded up and sent off to compete in the first qualifying round. It is a thin script, aided some by the attractive art, but ultimately rather unremarkable.
Partridge's Patch takes place in the "peaceful little market town" of Barnleigh, to which we are introduced by way of a bank robbery. Peaceful? By what standards, the lack of giant eels eating people? The robbery happens to have taken place on Tom Partridge's beat, and he goes about solving the crime with his knowledge of rooks, salmon, and foliage. It is a decidedly rural strip, though it has the feel of the Zip Nolan stories to it.
In 1940, the British Bulldog Banner, which flew at Waterloo and the Crimea, and which is one of the British army's most treasured possessions, has fallen into the hands of German soldiers, though four soldiers have taken matters into their own hands to rectify the situation. Alf Higgs (an Englishman), Taffy Jones (a Welshman), Jock McGill (a Scotsman), and Paddy O'Boyle (an Irishman) are... Sergeants Four.
In returning the flag to British soil, they are rewarded (or given cruel and unusual punishment) by being made an independent commando force to tackle special top-danger missions. The thinking, most likely, being that if they can't be courtmartialed, then they can at least be shot by the Jerries. Sergeants Four is the narrative equivalent of a joke, though handled with a smidge more sensitivity than Bernard Manning. Barely. Even the Germans are hideously stereotyped, so at least it is equal-opportunity in its' targets.
Paddy McGinty, a young boy living in Boggymorra, wants a pet. The problem is that he can't afford to look after a pet, which is a sensible enough plot point to raise. Animals are expensive. Then he happens upon a blurry creature in the woods which claims to be from the planet Ven, and which can change shape. As you do. It may sound like the opening of a low-budget horror film, but this is the infamous Paddy McGinty's Goat, and any comparison to mainstream media is both pointless and inadequate.
Nothing about the story makes a lick of sense. We don't know how 'Goat' got into the woods, or managed to get to Earth for that matter, nor do we learn if others of his kind are around. There's no explanation of why this alien being feels most comfortable as a goat (disturbing suggestions aside), nor - given the final panel of the story - how Paddy is going to find the money to pay for Goat's voracious appetite.
But it isn't that kind of a story. It is the kind of story where a young boy takes an obake home to live with him, and hopes that its' tastes don't run to human flesh as well as raw turnips.
The Kids of Stalag 41 is exactly what the title would lead you to expect. Rationally it is obvious that the popular US comedy Hogan's Heroes played a part in the creation of the strip, but finding comedic elements in the notion of a group of children stuck in a concentration camp takes some doing. The strip is basically The Bash Street Kids with the trappings of WWII as scenery dressing, and while the artwork is perfectly serviceable it never overcomes the distasteful set-up.
When you're reading a comedy strip and thinking "I hope there isn't an Anne Frank joke in this," you know something has gone terribly wrong with the building blocks the strip is built on.
We aren't done yet. For such a thin comic, Jet is a wealth of tone-deaf strips.
Crazy Car Capers is loosely based on the 1968 US cartoon Wacky Races, though if that isn't enough to put a reader off, the script helpfully provides a slew of stereotypes and casual bigotry to the mix. Hiram X. Spendcash, a mad millionaire, has organised a round-Britain race for cars of an unusual design. and rather than truly original vehicle designs (such as The Addams Family's mode of transport) the designs seen are lazy and obvious jokes.
Because IPC had a rule that every title had to have a sports strip, whether it made sense or not, Adare's Anglians wastes three pages full of beautifully-drawn yet vapid nonsense about a small island's football team. New Anglia is a small island far out in the Atlantic, and the people there have decided to enter the World Cup to avenge England's defeat. If you are wondering how well this sits alongside the other strips, then fear not - there is the same mockery of foreigners present and correct.
The islanders exist in some strange time-warp, where everything looks a hundred years out of date, for no apparent reason. We don't find out how New Anglia enters the World Cup without participating in any of the qualifying rounds, which must have taken place prior. Everything about the strip is just a little bit off, and it is difficult to see why the choice to place Adare's Anglians in the title had been made. Did someone lose a bet? Was it a dare? In fact, these questions apply to Sergeants Four, Paddy McGinty's Goat, and Crazy Car Capers as well.
Thankfully there is one undisputed classic among the bunch - the first appearance of Faceache, masterfully handled by Ken Reid. The opening installment is a slight tale, yet no less amusing for that.
Kester Kidd is firmly in the tradition of Wilson, The Wild Wonders, and Master of the Marsh, with the titular character exhibiting amazing prowess at running, jumping and other athletic feats. Kester Kidd comes to the attention of Barney Grumshott, a former athlete considered the best all-rounder in his day, through assisting him fetch a television on a cart which has rolled away (which makes some sense in context). It isn't an inspiring start, and doesn't radically improve.
Watching the athletics on television, Grumshott is disappointed to see world records go to foreign athletes, and he decides to turn Kester into the greatest athletic all-rounder in history. You don't have to be a genius to fill in the blanks of what will come, but the story is handled with fine (if unambitious) art, and sympathetic dialogue. There's nothing revolutionary in the strip, but it does what it does well.
Bertie Bumpkin is a sustained joke about a country gentleman with a strong accent. Yep. That's the extent of the strip's ambitions, and reading the story now is uncomfortable at best. It isn't quite as bad as Paddywack, but there's nothing which raises so much as a wry grin. Terry Bave is so much better than this strip, and it feels as if Bertie Bumpkin is a placeholder until something more suitable can be found. It doesn't so much have a punchline as have a limited amount of space in which to expand upon a vignette.
Bala the Briton sits uneasily beside the rest of the contents - a historical epic, treated seriously, with classical undertones such as messages from the Gods, an epic sea voyage, and (in the final panel) evidence that Jason and the Argonauts has an undue influence of the scripting. While the bare bones implies Anabasis may have been the initial foundation (appropriately relocated for a British audience), the fantasy elements loom large over the strip. Not that this is, in any way, a detriment to the story.
It may be the beautifully clean art, or the clear and emotionally-pure desires of the main characters, which makes the strip stand out amidst the lesser material, but Bala the Briton truly is a refreshing read - the pacing is perhaps a little too slow, and the characters remain undefined save for their roles in the narrative, but it works despite everything. If there was a "readers favourites" box to pick highlights, my ball-point pen would be hastily scribbling in "Bala the Briton" (if, that is, I was born earlier).
Despite the (almost-)namesake of the strip having died in the early forties, Carno's Cadets wears its' influence large. I've made gags about Fred Karno before, and had to explain what I was talking about, so seeing that he had some influence on Brtish comics beyond custard-pie gags is amusing. Did children in the early seventies know who Fred Karno was? Or that the title was a play on Fred Karno's Army? I remain unconvinced that the cultural legacy was being appropriately maintained.
And this is the perfect example (alongside the Val Doonican reference) that the writers weren't appealing to the children reading the comic, but were actually writing from their own childhood favourites - a full generation separating the humour from its' intended audience, thus ensuring that the emotional immediacy of the material was once or twice-removed.
And yes, for the record this is about actual cadets. Zero exertion was made in coming up with the outline. The dialogue is peppered with lazy shorthand ("Fair dinkum" and "Hoots mon" appear within two continuous panels), and even the artist can't rise to the challenge of engaging or original ideas - a spaceship rendered as a giant disc looks more like a WWII helmet, and a giant robot has the appearance of cheap, stiff, plastic toys of the fifties.
Alien invasions have been done many, many times in British comics, and is almost a cliché through repetition, yet most manage to raise at least a couple of interesting twists. This feels like a strip which was held over from a decade previously, and offers nothing new or (crucially) engaging. I don't care about any of the characters, and the mild peril of a character falling down a cliff didn't raise any questions save for why these children were placed in peril in the first place.
As first issues go, this isn't all bad. There are too many shortcuts taken in getting to the story at hand, and some of the ideas are ridiculous, but there is charming artwork and a (little) touch of inspired lunacy (from Bala, primarily), but as a cohesive package the comic falls flat. The casual bigotry and reliance on tired ideas truly mars the good, and it feels rushed in a way that is hard to pinpoint.
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