December can be an exhausting and expensive time of year. But when you've finally made all the arrangements for visiting in-laws, ordered the turkey, posted all the cards and bought all the presents (not forgetting the cat, the dog and Great Aunt Griselda in Penge) it's traditional to sit back and think about buying
yourself a present as a reward. And this year I can't think of a better present for any British comics aficionado than a copy of the utterly brilliant
This Was The Wizard by Derek Marsden and Ray Moore.
To be honest I wasn't sure if this would interest me all that much as I've always been more of a fan of picture strip comics than the text-heavy story papers that my father grew up with. In the event, though, I was absolutely blown away by the staggering amount of information it contains and the masterful way in which it's all been organized. In my opinion this has to be one of the very best books about British comics I've ever seen: it's the sort of reference work you can lose yourself in for hours on end, dreaming of all those stories that entertained so many generations of schoolboys - as well as providing them with uplifting moral examples to structure their adult lives around. This really deserves to find a place in every library in the land (and I'm sure that Thomsons themselves must be overjoyed with the end result).
All 264 pages are crammed full of fascinating history, photographs, story outlines and biographies - not least of the astonishing William Blain: Wizard's second editor who personally created such memorable characters as William Wilson, Alf Tupper, Matt Braddock, the Wolf of Kabul, and even the Four Marys for Bunty. In my opinion Blain deserves to be classed with the very greatest writers of boys' fiction, alongside Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. Rider Haggard and Robert Louis Stevenson - and it's only DC Thomsons' policy of not including writers' bylines that stopped him from becoming equally famous. What's more he also found time to originate the Dandy and Beano, as well as going on to become Editorial Director of all Thomsons' boys' papers and then Managing Editor of the entire juvenile group - a post that he held right up to 1970. A true giant by any standards...and yet who remembers his name today? Hopefully this book will go some way towards setting the record straight.
But for me the real meat of
TWTW ('TW2'?) is its display of over a thousand small reproductions of header illustrations, including every one of the serials that appeared during the Wizard's 40 year history, along with short plot descriptions and Ray's expert art credits. The great thing about these is that they provide an effective style guide for so many of DC Thomsons' top adventure artists over the years - many of whom went on to work on the picture strips.
I could go on and on about the various other delights to be found inside this amazing book - the full colour cover reproductions, the list of complete stories, the gifts, the cartoons, the advertising flyers, and above all Derek's excellent introductory text - without doing it full justice. Take it from me: if you have any interest at all in the history of British story papers and comics then you
need this weighty tome on your bookshelf (and if it comes gift-wrapped from Santa himself then all the better!).
- Phil Rushton