MYSTERIES, MUSINGS & MEANDERINGS...

In previous posts I've doubtless bored you all rigid with ponderous ponderings on the nature of time, as well as rambling reminiscences of my childhood and how I've never been quite able to comprehend how I went to bed one night as a teenager and woke up what seems like the very next morning as the grumpy curmudgeon I am now.  Well, the bad news is that it's more of the same, I'm afraid.

As a child I was always looking backward.  When I moved from the first house I remember (but not the first I lived in), I made little pilgrimages to my old street to look at my former abode and derive some comfort from the familiarity of its presence.  What's odd about this over-developed sense of nostalgia is that I only lived three or four minutes away and was a mere five and a half years old.  Wow!  Not even six and already hankering after the 'good old days'.

This compulsion to revisit the past has been a prominent feature of my personality all through my life to this very day.  I recently added photographs of the views from the windows of my previous houses to my screensaver facility so that I can again gaze on familiar scenes whenever the mood takes me.  At the click of a key, I can re-experience any one of several landscapes that once met me when I drew back the curtains in the morning at various stages in my life.

However, there was one particular house (the third after the aforementioned ones above) I lived in for several years that I didn't miss 'til over a dozen years after moving out (and two houses down the line) and I've often wondered as to the reasons for this 'delayed reaction'.  If you're interested (or aren't currently engaged in watching paint dry), feel free to join me as I explore the possible explanation for the curious complexity which has puzzled me for many a long year.

When I moved from the house in question (back in 1972), my life still revolved to a great degree around the neighbourhood it was situated in.  I continued to attend the school just across the road from it for another two and a half years.  I still went to Summer and Christmas fayres in the church at the top of the street, and my mother dutifully trotted along to the Sunday services every week, even though there was another congregation of the same denomination just around the corner from our new home.  (In fact, it was from this group that the one my mother went to had sprung.)  My friends all lived near or around my old domicile and I continued to frequent the area for quite a few years after.

It wasn't unusual for me to come home from school (and later, work), have my tea, and then return to my previous neighbourhood to hang about the local shopping centre (about thirty seconds away from my old front door) with my pals.  Perhaps that explains why I wasn't consumed with the same rabid pangs of nostalgia I nursed for previous houses; I saw it so often that I simply never had a chance to miss it.  The ambiance of the house was preserved in our new home by the presence of the same furniture we'd had in every place we'd ever lived in - plus, our new house was similar in many respects to the first one I remembered; hence it conjured up a feeling of familiarity that pre-dated the dwelling we had just recently vacated.

It wasn't until we had again moved house (in 1983) and were ensconced in yet another new residence that I gradually started to miss the one we had quit way back in 1972.  What's strange about this was that I was simultaneously wallowing in nostalgic notions for the homestead we had just left (to say nothing of the ones which preceded them both), so it certainly can't be denied that I was spoilt for choice when it came to such sentimental self-indulgence.  Maybe I'm just greedy?

Okay, we've killed a few minutes, so how do I bring these meandering musings to a close?  Tell you what - let's save it for the next post.

CRIPES! PART TEN Of The GOOD OL' MISSING LINK...

Copyright REBELLION

Once again we travel back to 1967 to find out what's happening in the eventful life of The MISSING LINK, as chronicled in the pages of FANTASTIC.  LUIS BERMEJO handles the art chores impeccably, which is why this strip is so fondly remembered by those of us who read it at the time.  If you weren't one of that lucky number, don't despair - you can now acquaint yourself with Linky's adventures on this very blog.  Am I good to you or what?  (Okay - so who said "what"?)

COME - TAKE A WALK WITH ME...

One of the things about my home town (as I'm sure it is with yours) is that certain aspects have changed so much over the last twenty-five years or thereabouts, that some areas are almost unrecognizable to what they once were.  To anyone who moved away in the early '80s and has never been back since, the town remains preserved as it was in the amber of their memories.  If ever they were to return on a visit, I'm sure they'd be in equal parts amazed and horrified at some of the changes which have taken place.

Truth to tell, I'm almost envious of them.  To gad about on the other side of the world somewhere, thinking, in a blissful state of ignorance, that one's home town remains as it once was seems a reassuring notion to me.  In that way, the playing fields of your childhood remain forever inviolate.  Same goes for people; if you don't know someone has expired since you last saw them, they're still alive to you and will be for as long as you are.  What does it profit you to learn that their life's race ended halfway through your own?

I remember being in a camera shop a number of years ago and running into a school-pal who once sat beside me in technical drawing class (and probably other classes also).  ALAN PARKER was (and is) his name, a fact which won't make this tale one whit more interesting, but which I feel compelled to mention for no other reason than that it happens to be the case.  The conversation ran something like this.  Me: "Hi, Alan - what're you up to these days?"  Him: I'm on holiday at the moment."  Me: "Not going anywhere?"  Him: "Yes - here!"  Me: "Eh?"  Him: "I emigrated to Australia a couple of years back, and I'm over visiting my folks." 

To be honest, I can't actually recall whether it was Australia, New Zealand or Canada he had gone to, but Australia will suffice for the purpose of our tale.  I was actually quite surprised by the news, mainly because it didn't seem like anywhere near two years since I'd last seen him - five or six months at the most, I would've thought.  The realization that he'd been living in another country and pursuing a new and different life for that period, while I subconsciously imagined him to be still tripping merrily around the streets of my town, ready to run into at any moment, was a sobering reminder that things aren't always as we perceive them to be.  In my life, nothing much had changed; in Alan's, a whole new horizon lay before him - and he was already several steps on in the journey which had taken him beyond the narrow (if comforting) confines of my own world.

A few weeks back, myself and a friend I've known since I was seven years old, took a wander around the new housing scheme which now sits upon the sizeable area of land where once resided my old secondary school.  It was a strange experience because, inside its boundaries, there were no visible 'landmarks' to indicate our location.  We could've been in any new-built housing scheme in Britain; it was as if we'd walked through a dimensional portal and found ourselves somewhere else entirely.  Beyond and out of sight, lay the familiar environs we'd known since childhood, but within these strange new streets we were in an unknown place in an unknown land.  It was with a sense of relief that we returned to our own world some minutes later, back through whence we had come.

In my more fanciful moments, I sometimes wonder if the 'dear departed' (assuming they survive death in some form) are aware of what goes on in the place they left behind; or do they imagine (like the distant wanderer) that everything remains the same as when they left it?  If granted a day's visit to their home town from whatever celestial realm or dark netherworld they may inhabit, would they be surprised and dismayed to learn of the changes which have taken place in their absence? "What? My old house has been demolished?  The old cinema has been gone for twenty years?  My favourite toyshop is now a newsagents?  The Cairneys don't live at number thirty-three any more?"  Or would such trivial concerns be beyond them in their joy at feeling the wind blow through their hair once more, and again experience a sun-kissed walk through green fields for however brief a period?

Try and let me know if you go before I do, will you? 

SUPERMAN AND BATMAN ON RADIO...

Image copyright DC COMICS

I bought this LP album around February or March of 1985 from a record store in Portsmouth shopping centre.  An astounding 27 and 3-quarter years ago, so I've now had it for more than half my life.  I find this absolutely mind-staggering, because it seems like just a few years back, and it's been played only a handful of times since then.  In fact, most spins occurred only recently when I dug it out to transfer to CD and it took several tries to get right.

The B side features two SUPERMAN radio broadcasts from 1947, the first being markedly inferior in audio quality to the second, as well as to both episodes on side A, which hail from '45 & '46 respectively.  Also, the use of SAMMY TIMBURG's theme tune from the '40s MAX FLEISCHER Superman cartoons bestows an immensely juvenile air to the later shows and does them no favours.  I'd guess that digitally restored, superior-sounding versions of the episodes have been issued since the album's release in '84 (the earliest episodes from 1940 have been*), but, to be frank, I doubt it'll make them any more enjoyable from a purely historical point of view.

Interestingly, a lot of what eventually became Superman lore in the comics first occurred on the radio show.  For example, KRYPTONITE, JIMMY OLSEN, the BATMAN/SUPERMAN team-up, and the famous call to action as the mighty Man of Steel took flight - "Up, up and awaaaayyyy!!"  Of interest are the interview extracts with CLAYTON 'BUD' COLLYER, the voice of Superman/CLARK KENT on radio and in cartoons.  Certainly worth having, and maybe I'll listen to it again in another 27 and 3-quarter years.  (Which will doubtless fly by in no time.)

******

*Update 20-3-'24: Every episode was later digitally remastered and made available in a CD boxed set, which I bought brand-new many years ago.

DID YOU MISS THIS LINK? (PART NINE)...

Copyright REBELLION

Well, lookee here now - ol' LINKY's up before the Beak and may well do some serious time if the bewigged buffoons have their way.  One thing's for sure, the newly-evolved star of the classic '60s strip need have no fear of picking up the soap in the showers with the kind of 'muscle' he displays here - who'd be mad enough to tangle with him?  Superbly drawn by LUIS BERMEJO, this POWER COMICS extravaganza is crying out to be coloured and released in a nice hardback volume.  Wouldn't you all like that?  Then write your letters to SANTA now, telling him you want such a book for Christmas.  Who knows?  Maybe that'll do the trick!

Click here for Part Eight.

BEANO VERSUS DANDY (EXPANDED EDITION)...

Images copyright D.C. THOMSON & Co., Ltd

Browsing through the comics section of my local WHS this afternoon, my eyes spied the latest issue of The BEANO.  Something about it looked different, so picking it up, I perused its contents.  Looks good, I thought, so I decided to buy it, along with its companion paper, the desperately doomed DANDY.  (Which didn't look so good, it has to be honestly said.)  I was surprised to see that The Beano's 'new look' also came with a new price - £2.

Let's explore that for a mo.  The Beano has 36 pages;  forgetting for a sec that around 14 of them are a mixture of ads, games & puzzle pages, that works out at a little over 5 pence per page, which is pretty good value.  It's still good value at just over 9 pence for each of the 22 pages of actual strip cartoons, but obviously the first option is the better of the two.  That's to say it's good value 'relatively speaking' - whether the public perceives it as such is open to question.

The Beano raising its price by a quarter is worrying though.  (I presume the comic was still £1.50 last week, but it's been a while since I bought it.)  50 pence is quite a steep rise, especially in one go.  Comics normally only do this when circulation is falling - it's a way of compensating for the loss of revenue from declining sales.  We'll have to wait and see whether the increase will scare off even more buyers.  You'd think D.C. THOMSON would seek to entice The Dandy's 7,000 readers by combining it with The Beano when the former expires in a few weeks, but it seems not, apparently.

Also, after coming under fire not that long ago for describing cover-mounted toys as 'gifts' when the regular price was increased to pay for them, you'd think that Thomson's would take greater care to avoid misleading advertising.  '2 Huge Posters' shouts the cover blurb, but it's actually only one double-sided poster.  Is there a difference?  Yes, there is.  Two posters would be two separate posters which could be displayed simultaneously.  As only one side can be seen at a time, it should have been described as what it was - a double-sided poster.  A subtle distinction admittedly, but an important one.  Any siblings hoping for a poster each were doomed to bitter disappointment.

So, let's look at a couple of Beano pages.  First one up (above) is CALAMITY JAMES, as drawn by TOM PATERSON.  Well drawn, well composed, and not only funny to read, but also to look at.  It may be a reprint for all I know, but regardless, quality is quality.

Next up is MINNIE The MINX, drawn by KEN H. HARRISON, the only artist since the legendary DUDLEY D. WATKINS to do justice to Oor WULLIE & The BROONS.  Nice simple layouts, clear storytelling, immaculately illustrated - what more can I say?  Now, however, let's look at the other side of the coin.

I have to admit that The DANDY logo has been improved by the addition of the white border on the inside of the letters, but the overall shape is still somewhat lacking.  Some apologists for the comic's failure have blamed its imminent demise on kids being unable to find it in shops, but in every WHS I've been in, it's always placed right next to The Beano.  We'll just have to put that lame excuse down to bitterness on the part of those who promoted themselves as the comic's saviours, but instead hastened it to its doom on a grease-wheeled skateboard.

And here's one of the reasons why.  Artwork which is stiff and flat, minimalist layout (look at the 'classroom' - then recall the work that LEO BAXENDALE put into The BASH STREET KIDS and The SWOTS & The BLOTS), too many panels consisting of talking heads, and poor perspective.  (In the first picture, teacher looks as if he's floating above the pupils.)  This is the standard of art I'd expect to see in a fanzine produced by a 14 year old.  (Which probably explains why someone who lurks around my site is such a huge fan of this 'style' that he attempts to emulate it.)  But it gets worse.  Look below.

Sigh!  Horse poo mountain indeed.  That covers it.  Sadly, nothing more need be said.

******

However, I'll say something anyway.  I've said it before, but it bears repeating.  Look at the awful lettering font used in the above two pages.  The Dandy editor justified its use by saying that kids found it easier to read than upper case.  I'm not convinced, but even if it were true, it would surely only apply to neatly rendered upper and lower case, not a spidery scrawl.  Also, u&l case is a style that's traditionally associated with nursery comics in Britain.  (TWINKLE, LITTLE STAR, etc.)  Perhaps this is one of the reasons why comics have long been seen in this country as being fit only for children.  Upper case is not only easier to read (in my opinion), it also makes a page seem less juvenile.  Something to consider perhaps?

The RUNAWAY SUPERBOY - PART FIFTEEN Of FAVOURITE COMICS Of The PAST...

Images copyright DC COMICS

SUPERBOY #146 is another comic I had as a boy which I never got to read the conclusion of in the next-but-one issue.  (Again, just like WORLD'S FINEST COMICS #178, the succeeding publication was an 80 Page Giant which featured reprints of earlier stories.)  The wrap-up of the Superboy adventure came in number 148, but I've never read it in the forty-odd years since I first obtained the original comic featuring the first part of the story.  (Or if I have, I've long since forgotten it.  I don't think I have though.)

If my flashback faculty is faithfully fulfilling its function, I got this ish the same day as X-MEN #45, both bought for me by my bruv on or around the time of his birthday in December 1968.  I recall comparing the full-colour X-Men story with its black and white reprinting in the pages of bombastic British publication, FANTASTIC, shortly before it finished its 89 issue run.  I think I also flicked through FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #6 in the same shop on the same day of purchase of the other two.

The shop still exists*, although it's changed hands quite a few times over the years - and it's been decades since it sold any U.S. comicbooks.  However, one glance at Superboy #146, X-Men #45, or FF Annual #6 (even though I didn't buy it) and I'm once again back in that shop as it was in 1968, when I was a mere ten year old boy.  Many years later, as an adult, I finally obtained that FF mag, but it cost a lot more than it would have back in the '60s.  Couldn't tell you where I got it from 'cos I can no longer remember.  Not that it matters, I suppose, because it's too firmly associated with that shop from my childhood days.

And perhaps that's how it should be.

(*Update:  Well, it did at the time of writing, but around three and a half years later, it closed its doors for the final time.  It's now a fast food outlet.)

   

Update: I've now got the conclusion to the above tale, which you can read about here.  Before you jump over to have a look, below is the cover (replica edition) of #147, the Giant reprint issue, so that you've got all three issues in sequence.

TV CENTURY 21 - MUSIC FROM 2065...

For those of you not fortunate or discerning enough to have held on to your copies of TV CENTURY 21, it may interest you to learn (if you didn't already know) that the comic had a vinyl disc tie-in back in the '60s that serves as a nice little keepsake of the famous publication.  It's fairly easy to acquire on eBay (I've just bought two of them) for a relatively inexpensive price, which surprised me as - a good many years back - I saw a few of these CENTURY 21 EPs at a comic mart for about £15 to £20 each.  Perhaps the fact that most (if not all) of them have since become available on CD has lowered the price of the original records.

I have the first year's worth of TV21s in my collection (including #1), plus a good number of others up to the last issue, but it's nice to see the logo gracing the cover of a record and it's a great little collector's item to own.  Once I've luxuriated in its presence for a while, I'll place it alongside my FIREBALL XL5 - JOURNEY To The MOON EP, which I bought a good many years ago.  The TV21 record arrived today and is in very good condition, but an even better version is winging its way to me as I type.  Interestingly, DOCTOR WHO was never featured in the comic, so I assume that the inclusion of the theme tune was intended to represent The DALEKS, who appeared in the first 104 issues.

Collectors of TV21 may be interested in a facsimile of the free gift (Fireball XL5) from #3, available from NORTHERNLAD on eBay.  Priced at £5, it's printed on card (without his name-stamp) and is a nice way of reliving part of your childhood if you owned an original back in the day.  Item #130794388939. 

WANTED: DEAD Or ALIVE - BATMAN! FAVOURITE COMICS Of The PAST - PART FOURTEEN...

Copyright DC COMICS

As I've said many times before, comics are the next best thing to diaries and photographs (in fact, sometimes they're better), because they somehow manage to evoke specific moments in our pasts in an almost tangible way.  Very often, I've been so buried in a back issue that I'm surprised when I look up from its pages to find I'm not still in the house (or the time) I lived in when I first read it.

Take BATMAN #201 for example.  This was yet another comic purchased from CORSON'S (which, at the time of typing, still exists*) back in the latter half of '72, not long after we'd moved into our new house.  I remember buying it early evening, and arriving home to discover that friends of my parents were visiting.  I sat at the dining table in the living-room, and set about re-creating the splash page on a piece of blank paper.  That table was given away some years later, but it still exists in the fabled land of memory whenever I recall that golden evening of so very long ago.  (*Update: Not any more, alas, 7 or 8 years later.)

That's the great thing about comics; they're a gateway into an earlier time and place - a means by which we can relive the past for however brief an instant, through the images on the page and even the smell that emanates from the paper - re-creating long-vanished moments from another era which we can experience again and again whenever the fancy takes us.

Somehow I doubt that perusing comics on the Internet or on an iPad is an experience that'll easily lend itself to the same kind (or degree) of nostalgic and sentimental wallowing in which an actual published paper periodical allows readers to indulge.  And to think they call it 'progress'.  I know what I call it, and I very much doubt I'm the only one.

However, let's suppress our sadness, and enjoy these pages from a period when the demise of printed comics was still a very long way off.  Hopefully, that fate isn't as imminent as it now appears to be.

STREWTH! Is He MAN Or LINK? Or... Is He BOTH? (PART EIGHT)

Copyright relevant owner

It was with the eighth instalment in FANTASTIC #8 that The MISSING LINK changed direction and stepped up a gear.  With the 'hulking' Link now transformed into a human, the strip started to evolve into a bona fide superhero series, though it would take several more episodes before this became apparent.  If you weren't around in the '60s to savour this strip the first time out, ahead of you lies the thrill of joyous discovery, as this blog re-presents - in chronological order - all fifty-one episodes of this classic from yesteryear.  And, if you behave yourselves, I might throw in the full-colour tale from FANTASTIC ANNUAL 1969.  No, don't applaud - just put a cheque in the post!

For Part Nine, click here.  For Part Seven, click here.

PART THIRTEEN Of FAVOURITE COMICS Of The PAST - 'HAS-BEEN HERO'...

Images copyright DC COMICS

Before the memory of past events fades beyond my ability to accurately recall, I now cast the spotlight of history upon WORLD'S FINEST COMICS #178, which I had when I was a boy of between 8 and 10 years of age.  My original copy was torn into tiny pieces at some point (I don't remember why) and for a few years the scraps littered the layers of insulation fibre between the floor joists up in my loft.  In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if fragments yet lurked there to this day, over 40 years after my family moved from the house.

The scans you're currently looking at are from a replacement copy I acquired a good many years ago.  It's true to say that I've had it for a far greater period of time than I ever had the original, but in all that span, I've never yet managed to read the story's conclusion in the next-but-one issue, number 180.  (179 was a Giant-Size reprint issue.)  One day I must apply myself to tracking down a copy of the comic and finding out what happened, though it'll be a strange sensation to finally read the resolution of a tale I first started 43 years before.

Looking at this comic now, memories come flooding back; images of CORSON'S, the shop from where I bought it; the bedroom of my old house and the gloom of the loft where it met its final fate.  If you had this comic as a child then you'll have your very own set of recollections to accompany it.  If so, cast now your eyes over the following select pages and enter again that hallowed haven of yesteryear when the world was a much simpler, safer place and the future still lay a very long way off.  (Or at least that's how it seemed.)

And just think - somewhere out there is bound to be someone who read #180 all those years ago, but never saw #178.  Ain't life strange?

******

UPDATE: I've now acquired WFC #180 - click here.

Further Update: I've now also acquired #179, a giant reprint issue unconnected to 178 & 180.

  

Note that the 'photo' of Superman resembles the Aurora model kit.  I wonder if
 it was a deliberate 'homage' or merely a coincidence.  Whaddya think, readers? 

CRIKEY! PART SEVEN Of The MISSING LINK...

Copyright REBELLION

Oh, lookee here - a whole four pages of The MISSING LINK, drawn by the amazing LUIS BERMEJO and published in FANTASTIC #7 way back in 1967.  Obviously I must've read these titanic tales in a previous life, because I surely can't be old enough to have seen them in my present incarnation.  ('Scuse me, it's time for my reality pill.)  Wouldn't it be great to see these classic stories reproduced in full-colour in an inexpensive, hard-covered volume?  Hopefully, by featuring these strips on this blog, I can help create an appetite for such a publication.

Fingers crossed, everybody.  (Update: And as we now know, REBELLION's TREASURY Of BRITISH COMICS arm published just such a book, though in the original black and white.)

FOR FAWKES' SAKE...

Copyright REBELLION

Remember, remember - er, wait just a second, I've forgotten.  No, hang on - I've remembered again.  Tonight is November 5th, GUY FAWKES' NIGHT - BONFIRE NIGHT - GIVE PENSIONERS AND PETS A HEART ATTACK NIGHT - whatever you want to call it.  For all those participating in the firework festivities, here's a cut-out Guy Fawkes mask from a 1997 issue of BUSTER.  I think this was printed in the insides of the comic just about every year, and may even hark back to my own childhood - it certainly looks familiar.  (Although, back then, it would've been a cardboard free gift - with its own elastic - tucked inside the comic.) 

Anyway, take care if you're having a firework display or attending a local bonfire - fingers and skin are handy things to have, so take appropriate steps to ensure that you or your kids aren't parted from them.  REMEMBER THE FIREWORKS CODE!