Happy Anniversary, Doctor Who!

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Phoenix
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Re: Happy Anniversary, Doctor Who!

Post by Phoenix »

Digifiend wrote:There is material prepared for Beano and Dandy which possibly never got published due to pagination reduction in the war, and probably for Magic and Skipper too due to their demise.
Digi raises an interesting point here, which is relevant, to a greater or lesser degree, to the three Thomson titles that went belly up without being obviously amalgamated with another title. These were The Vanguard in 1926, The Red Arrow in 1933 and The Skipper in 1941.

It is very unlikely that The Skipper had anything much left over, perhaps a handful of Wishbone Wuzzy strips, but these would surely have been used in his second coming. Thomsons knew weeks in advance that they planned to close the title down, and all the serials finished appropriately in the last issue. Some favourite characters like Leatherface, The Iron Men of the Sea and Torgoth the Axeman would reappear in The Hotspur in the fifties, Cannonball Kidd was created from a mixture of Whizz-Bang Bob and Dixie Kidd, and The Evil Eye was at least partly influenced by The Paralysing Eye.

The Red Arrow was a strange story comic. It was A5 size, had 56 pages and contained one long complete and normally an instalment of just one serial. The serial still running on its demise, with issue 53, was Zorro The Slink, which had started in issue 51. In the Editorial of that last issue it was announced that Starting next week The Red Arrow will be run in conjunction with our companion paper Adventure. There was no corresponding announcement in any issue of Adventure, nor did Thomsons announce the 'amalgamation' by amending the title to Adventure and The Red Arrow. The conjunction had been made smooth, though, because Thomsons, their advance planning well in place, had been running Zorro The Slink in Adventure, simultaneously with The Red Arrow, for those same three weeks.

The Vanguard, however, is a different matter. This story comic bit the dust with issue 136 (May 15 1926), without any warning whatsoever. It was a victim of the General Strike, which actually only lasted ten days but brought production at Thomsons to a halt for much longer. It was to be eight weeks before Adventure and The Rover resumed normal service, twelve for The Wizard. There were three serials that would have run on into the next issue. These were Floating Phil, which had been running since issue 134, plus The Jungle Money-Makers and Smudger Smith, which both started in 135. Add North To Ghost Light into the mix, which was due to start in 137, and we have four serials to find published or republished elsewhere at a later date. North To Ghost Light finally appeared in Adventure 326 (Jan. 28 1928) - 331 (Mar. 3 1928), and then again, in full this time, in The Red Arrow 21 (Aug. 6 1932). The other three serials never reappeared, as far as I am aware, although it is possible that they were published under different titles.

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tony ingram
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Re: Happy Anniversary, Doctor Who!

Post by tony ingram »

-MikeD- wrote:
Classic Comics wrote:Aah... Target novelisations... Doctor Who is my addiction, and the books particularly so. I bought my first in 1976 - Doctor Who And The Loch Ness Monster, bought appropriately enough in Inverness. I spent years collecting every edition of every Target, including most of the foreign ones - although I only have one of the Japanese ones and that cost me an arm and a leg.
Heh. I only collected the UK books (mainly), but the completist in me used to always be on the look out for missing adventures. I once became so obsessed, I used to go to every library sale for miles around just to look for the hardback editions...

I still haven't read Pescatons or Harry's War...I may have to check eBay... :D
I still have several of the WH Allen hardbacks, bought from Anerley library about thirty years ago now. And I really recommend Harry Sullivan's War!

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Re: Happy Anniversary, Doctor Who!

Post by Classic Comics »

tony ingram wrote:
-MikeD- wrote:
Classic Comics wrote:Aah... Target novelisations... Doctor Who is my addiction, and the books particularly so. I bought my first in 1976 - Doctor Who And The Loch Ness Monster, bought appropriately enough in Inverness. I spent years collecting every edition of every Target, including most of the foreign ones - although I only have one of the Japanese ones and that cost me an arm and a leg.
Heh. I only collected the UK books (mainly), but the completist in me used to always be on the look out for missing adventures. I once became so obsessed, I used to go to every library sale for miles around just to look for the hardback editions...

I still haven't read Pescatons or Harry's War...I may have to check eBay... :D
I still have several of the WH Allen hardbacks, bought from Anerley library about thirty years ago now. And I really recommend Harry Sullivan's War!
If memory serves, I read Harry Sullivan's War just after I read one of John Gardner's James Bond novels, and I do remember thinking how much I preferred Harry Sullivan's War. I believe Ian Marter had some thoughts about a sequel, though I've no idea how far they went. I think Janet Fielding had expressed an interest in writing a Tegan novel before the 'Companions of Doctor Who' range was stopped.

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