Sexton Blake - Comics UK

Sexton Blake

b. 11th November 1893

Created by Hal Meredith, Blake is always compared to Sherlock Holmes and I'm sure that Meredith's inspiration for Blake came about through Holmes. The first Holmes story published in 1887 and the first Sexton Blake story in 1893. For some reason, Holmes' power of deduction and lateral thinking overcame Blake's more agressive, and more realistic, approach to solving crimes.

But Blake wasn't without his fans and there are many out there who wonder why his stories haven't been told as often as Holmes'. They would like nothing more than to see a TV producer get his teeth stuck into the hundreds upon hundreds of first class stories on Blake. After all, they're still producing shows about Holmes.

Blake's career entered its golden age after the appointment of the dynamic editor Harold Tyman. It was he who pushed for more and more clever crimes to be committed within the stories and then even cleverer solutions to solve them. Throughout the 1920's and 1930's everybody had heard of Sexton Blake.

Because of his popularity and the large number of people writting his stories, other publications apart from the Union Jack had to be produced. The most successful of these was The Sexton Blake Library, and here are a few covers from 1916, 1936 and 1953.

In 1978, IPC released a new comic title in the shape of Tornado. In it was a strip entitled Victor Drago and The Terror Of Troll Island, it was set in 1929 and Victor was a private detective. The thing was, Victor was Sexton! The publishers wanted a Blake strip but didn't fancy calling it Sexton Blake, fearing that it sounded too old fashioned. So they came up with the name of Victor Drago. It seemed to be an eleventh hour decision because one of the panels (below) shows that Drago's Rolls Royce, The Grey Panther, has the number plate SB 192, a coincidence? I don't think so.