The Beano and The Dandy at thruppence apiece were cheap and popular. The
Dandy had Korky the Cat, Winker Watson, Corporal Clott, Brassneck, Black Bob
and Desperate Dan.
The Dandy also had My Home Town…
A hope that Bolton might feature one
day never materialised, but I did learn that Tom Jones came from Pontypridd.
The Dandy was okay but I preferred The Beano: Lord Snooty and his pals, Biffo
the Bear, The Bash Street Kids, Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, Roger the
Dodger, Little Plum, The Three Bears and Jonah were all good ‘uns.
There was little to choose between The Beezer and The Topper. Both cost
fourpence and both were of larger size. The Beezer had Pop, Dick and Harry, Colonel
Blink, Ginger, The Numskulls and The Badd Lads.
The Topper had Figaro, Foxy, Big Uggy, Desert Island Dick, Julius
Cheeser and Beryl the Peril.
Lion, Buster and The Valiant were similar in style and content, and a
step up from the pre-mentioned comics. Lion was best known for Robot Archie.
Buster was best known for the title character.
And Valiant was best known for Captain Hurricane.
More in hope than expectation I asked my mother if I could have the
Valiant– my favourite – delivered weekly with the papers from Forbuoys. To my
surprise she said yes and how proud I was when the next issue dropped through
our letter box in perfect condition.
Billy Bunter was good.
And so was Legge’s Eleven.
There were lots of good stories in the Valiant but unfamiliarity with
certain names and words called for some guesswork.
Thus, Captain Hurricane’s tendency to erupt in a ragin’ fury rhymed with Fagin, in my mind. I also believed Maggot
Malone’s surname was pronounced ‘Mar-loan.’
The pronunciation of Mytek is still uncertain but I’m now of the opinion
that My-tek is probably correct and not ‘Mitteck’ as I read it in childhood.
In Kelly’s Eye, another Valiant story, Tim Kelly wore The Eye of Zoltec
– a Mayan jewel that made him invincible in his battle against arch enemy
Diablo. Thanks to Stephen Browning I knew I wasn’t alone in getting names wrong
as on our way home from school one day, Stephen made me laugh when he referred
to the evil Diablo as ‘that Die-able.’
The Hornet, the Victor and the Hotspur comic were three of a kind aimed
at older boys. The Hornet had Wilson.
The Victor had Alf Tupper; the Tough of the Track, the rough and ready
antithesis of Wilson who overcame all kinds of adversity to triumph on the
running track, usually on a diet of fish and chips.
The Hotspur had the Wolf of Kabul; a British officer serving on the North West frontier,
whose servant Chung went around clonking enemies over the head with a cricket
bat he called clicky-ba.
Other comics included Tiger, Wham, Knockout, Eagle, Rover, Sparky, Look
and Learn and TV21. Girls’ comics included Bunty, Judy and Diana. Boys were
known to read these in the hall during wet playtimes at school, as male apathy
meant there were few donations of boys’ comics to the box kept for such
occasions. Somewhere in the sprawling mass of damp comics and damp kids with dripping
noses, boys would swap copies of the Bunty just to read Toots.
~
Free gifts of any kind were always welcome. A recurring gift was a
thunderclapper or a Guy Fawkes Banger as it is called in the example below; note
the banging clapper and the trembling policeman. Dennis the Menace did the very
same thing to the simpering Walter in the Beano, with the same result. In
reality the free thunderclapper was one of the great disappointments of
childhood, as all we got out of it was a feeble flapping noise before,
invariably, the damn thing ripped.
Another disappointment was the birthdates in the Valiant. Anyone lucky
enough to have their date of birth printed could write in and claim a prize.
Fat chance.
Copying a joke from one comic and sending it to another in the hope of
winning a prize seemed like a good idea, but I had no luck with that either. Not
even with four attempts.
Scroll down to see a selection of annuals, summer specials and front covers.
No comments:
Post a Comment