Comics UK

Picked up the latest copy of Best of British last night from WH Smith, has a two page article on the Valiant comic. Plus a page on Fred Bassett. Here they are. If you can't see them clearly you'll have to buy the magazine. The Valiant article is written by Lin Bensley - anyone familiar with him/her?

And here's the Fred Bassett piece from same issue:

Looks interesting I've never seen it before>

A few comments and amendations to the Valiant article 'None but the Brave'.

1) D.C. Thompson - Aargh! That got me annoyed from the get go. D C Thomson has no 'p' silent or otherwise and a comic fan should really know that.
2) Valiant was created as rival to Thomson's Victor (20 months later) and 'soon eclipsed it's rival'. If this was a personal comment, as in regard to the writer's own affections it would be fine but there is no evidence that Valiant ever 'eclipsed' Victor otherwise and particularly as Victor remained uneclipsed for a full sixteen years after the demise of the Valiant.
3) 'Three items survived from Knockout' - Actually there were four, he disregards the fact the Prof Kraken began his exploits in the older paper.
4) The Crows and The Nutts were both drawn by Reg Parlett. Nutts to that! The Nutts strip was the work of Spanish artist Angel Nadal and I can't imagine anyone who had actually looked at examples of the strips thinking they were by the same artist.
5) In the 1960's the Valiant contained two great western yarns 'The Duke of Dry Gulch' and 'Navaho Joe'. Well, yes and no. The first was certainly published in Valiant but the second doesn't exist. What I think we have here is the conflation of two titles
' Fort Navajo' and 'Jackaroo Joe' into one. The second isn't set in the US though but in Australia and then Scotland.
6) Fleetway didn't become IPC in 1963 but, as far as the juvenile publications were concerned, in 1969.
7) 'One-Eyed Jack' didn't begin in 1976 but in Dec 1975.

Well I'm glad I got that off my chest. I will forgive the writer one slip though. He says that Valiant ran for 714 issues. It didn't, but then there's always been a bit of contention over this. Recent research has indicated that the actual number of Valiant's published was in fact 712.

Whew! I only caught half of those errors Kashgar. Whenever I see such articles I'm reminded afresh of Erwin Knoll's famous dictum that “everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for that rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge”.

In other words the Valiant article is probably par for the course: it's just that we don't know enough to spot all the flaws in everything else that gets published!

- Phil R.

I’ve never seen the Asterix strip rejiged as Little Fred: the ancient Brit with bags of grit before. I thought the British rights to this strip belonged to the publishers of Look and Learn. What a shame it teases us with this while the bulk of the review is lifted off the web.

grumpy old man wrote:I’ve never seen the Asterix strip rejiged as Little Fred: the ancient Brit with bags of grit before. I thought the British rights to this strip belonged to the publishers of Look and Learn.

Valiant had the same publisher as Look and Learn: Fleetway.

Lew

The Fred Basset article shows a picture of the cover of the very first FB book. By sheer coincidence I picked up the same book two days after buying the Best of British. For £1.50 from Deptford Market nice conditioon too. Not a big fan though but can't resisit a bargain.

BTW Navajo Joe was a late 60s Spaghetti Western starring Burt Reynolds in the title role, music by Ennio Morricone. I love Spaghetti Westerns.

I’m fascinated by the social engineering Lew. That the swats that read Look and Learn could understand a strip set in Gaul but the er… blots who read Valiant couldn’t so it becomes Little Fred the Brit with grit. Do the editorial team now work for News International?

grumpy old man wrote:I’m fascinated by the social engineering Lew. That the swats that read Look and Learn could understand a strip set in Gaul but the er… blots who read Valiant couldn’t so it becomes Little Fred the Brit with grit. Do the editorial team now work for News International?

When "Asterix and the Big Fight" appeared in Ranger (and later Look and Learn) it was renamed "Britons Never, Never, Never Shall Be Slaves".

http://mitglied.lycos.de/jakubkurtzberg/Ranger01.jpg

Asterix became "Beric the Briton" and Obelix was "Son of Boadicea". They also published "Asterix and Cleopatra" as "In The Days of Good Queen Cleo".

The Valiant strip features the first story, "Asterix the Gaul", and began life as "Little Fred and Big Ed". As a large part of the story features Asterix without Obelix it was retitled as shown in the article.

As far as I can remember 'Beric the Bold', the Ranger/Look & Learn incarnation of Asterix, was also transformed into an Ancient Briton!

- Phil R.

(Aaaaghh! Robbie beat me to it!)

And Getafix was Doric the Druid. I have a 1965 Ranger - which was a really fab, packed weekly mag - and found it very strange to see Asterix in there as an ancient Brit!

Just getting back to Freddy B for a nanosecond, here is the first page of the first book, naturally featuring the first ever Fred Basset strip. He looks a lot less smoothly defined than later but then that is the case with almost all strip cartoons. The first Peanuts and Andy Capps were a lot different from those of a decade or more later.