Blah Blah Blah.

I'll be reading this sort of thing. Sorta.

So, over a year since the last post. Apologies. I was going to delete this blog. Then I was going to leave it, but start a new one about the thing that I'm going to go on to write about. But I took a sniff of Wordpress and decided I didn't want to be constantly mithered to update for cash. So, then I thought, well, why not go back to the old place and do some of the new stuff and some of the old stuff and push the other stuff you've been doing in the meanwhile. It's not like I've been living in a cave for the past year (and the year before that to be frank - 14 posts in a year does not qualify one for a Red Hot Lover badge).

So, I've just embarked on a plan to read nothing but comics and comics-related criticism for six months. Hard-reading, not taking my news from Ain't It Cool or listening only to the Ink-Studs podcast. I'll still be operating in The Real World, except that when I read for pleasure it will be words and pictures only. I feel a need to catch-up and mine backwards. It's an art form I've not exactly neglected - I still buy comics on occasion (usually in book form these days, unless they're small press) - but I do feel like I have lost the overview I used to have. In addition, I'm interested in revisiting and revising ways of looking at and writing about comics.

I've also just got a new phone. And a tablet (on which I've been reading lots of comics I couldn't otherwise afford, such as Jack Cole's Plastic Man comics). So, I'm feeling more techno-enabled. And I will be writing about other stuff than comics. You know, the usual stupid observations and self-righteous football postings.

I started the comics thing on June 26th. I'll finish it on Boxing Day, unless I'm having such a whale of a time that I decide to continue. Let's see... And watch this space.

'How I Wrote Elastic Man' Issue Two, Alan Moore

It must be said, I have no real desire to read Alan Moore’s output these days, but the impact and power of his earlier work, particularly the Warrior-published twin giants ‘Marvelman’ and ‘V for Vendetta’ and his 2000AD work, especially 'The Ballad of Halo Jones', in the UK and his ground-breaking work on DC’s Swamp Thing in the USA is undeniable. The black and white 'Marvelman' strips with Garry Leach’s ‘court artist’ photo-realist style and Bissette and Totleben’s scritchy, scratchy, surface-irritant work on Swamp Thing blew me away at the time and maintain their power whereas their contemporary and fellow standard bearer for the 'Comics Aren't Just For Kids' campaign 'The Dark Knight Returns' doesn’t.

This 1988 interview is from Newcastle-based music and youth culture show, The Tube, and features Moore talking about, amongst other things, 'The Ballad of Halo Jones', his never-completed future-world tale of the unemployed.

Sally Cinnamon.

sallyhead, originally uploaded by mithering.

Given the obsessive, list-making, desire for clarity and rediscovery that drives so many comics fans it's amazing how little information about or passion for 'girls' comics there is. Granted, the fare served up in many of them was pretty weak - Bunty and Tammy in particular - but some of the more war-centred boys comics suffered from a similar lack of tone.

There are exceptions to this. Girls' horror comic Misty has managed to maintain a high profile based on the back of how many boys read their sister's copy during it's two year run between February 78 and January 1980. I know, I was one of them. That said, I had been reading girls' comics since the early 70s due to being at the end of a long chain of handed-down titles which because it had both boys and girls contributing meant I got my hands on Bunty, Valentine and June as well as The Beano, The Valiant and Scorcher, amongst others.

A couple of summers back I picked up a couple of hundred comics from a car boot sale in North Wales to get my hands on a few copies of The Valiant. I intended to sell on the rest at some point, mainly a large number of Tammy comics, and a handful of other girls' titles. One of which was Sally, 'The Paper for Adventure-Loving Girls'.

On further inspection, Sally, which was published by Fleetway, and ran for 94 issues between June '69 and March '71, was pretty interesting. The subject matter of the strips was similar to that in many girls' comics of the period - misery, subjugation and dealing with your mischevious younger brother or unsympathetic stepmother - but the settings were different. Instead of the usual public school or domestic worlds, the characters in Sally operate in something closer to that favoured in non-war, non-comedy, boys' comics. So we have The Cat Girl, the acrobatic, agile daughter of a private detective dad, Legion of Super Slaves, a group of girls enslaved by evil genius 'The Grand Termite' to help him take over the world, Tiny Tania in Space (the title speaks for itself), The Justice of Justine, in which the title character gains super powers from a mysterious cloak and The Girl From Tomorrow which features a girl from the future who gets into various scrapes.

It's not all space and ray guns - Farm Boss Fanny is traditional and class-obsessed, The Castle Kids and The Very Important Cow is as dull as it sounds, and Daddy Come Home! brilliantly plays on youngsters' fears of parental abandonment in a World War Two setting.



Anyhow, have a look for yourselves. I've uploaded a complete scan of this issue in CBR format, which is a full-screen image reader usually used for reading comics and magazines on computer screens. CDisplay Comic Reader can be downloaded, for free, here: CDisplay details and download. An issue of Sally from August 1969 can be downloaded by clicking http://www.mediafire.com/?rzyntzcbmnz

Let me know what you think.

It's Over.

The cover of The DFC #1, originally uploaded by mithering.

So the Great White Hope of British children’s comics has finally come a cropper. As of issue 43 (only three more issues to come after tomorrow’s issue 40 hits the doormat) The DFC is no more. According to a post on the Paw Quality Comics blog, Random House can no longer fund it, presumably because the experimental method of selling it by subscription-only has failed to attract sufficient interest.

This will, sadly, leave several serialised stories up in the air, including Philip Pullman’s John Blake, Mo-Bot High, and the newly-returning Crab Lane Crew. Realistically, it is difficult to see where the strips currently and recently running in The DFC could find a place within the moribund world of British Kids’ comics. John Blake could, conceivably, be completed and issued as a graphic novel on the back of Pullman’s name (even though it is not particularly good), but would there be a market for the amazing Mezolith, the cute and compelling Vern and Lettuce, or the consistently-funny Little Cutie?

It’s early days, so the individuals involved in the strips listed above, along with several others of quality, may arrange some alternative vehicle, may issue the strips themselves, or may just leave them hanging. Either way, having spent several years only picking up US material, such as the odd issue of Angry Youth Comics or Hate Annual, it was good to see that there was intelligent life outside the knowingly-ironic world of the American Underground, and that it was in a format I could buy for and share with my kids.

So, cheers, David Fickling, it was worth it for me. I hope it was for you.

My Baby's Got DFC.

DFC Reader, originally uploaded by mithering.

The DFC is available in Tesco for one week only. It's a subscription-only comic that's been flogged through The Manchester Guardian to the likes of me. If you've not seen it already, treat yourself. It's not the greatest of line-ups for an advocacy issue, but it does have Sarah McIntyre's consistently funny Vern and Lettuce, Jim Medway's cutely-observed Crab Lane Crew and cover-stars Mo-Bot High by Neill Cameron. A stronger line-up would have included the increasingly surreal and beautifully-illustrated Mezolith and Gary Northfield's Lil Cutie, a tremendous marriage of offbeat humour and appealing illustration. Tremendous applause in the direction of Gary Northfield for providing the first ever creator-owned character* for The Beano, with Derek The Sheep (available in book form right now).

*A real breakthrough, albeit six years ago.