Did anyone buy this comic from 1976?

[steelclaw]

It came out in 1976, does anyone know anything about it?
How long it lasted?
What were the strips like?
Etc

[Earl]

Yes, I have a copy. From memory it has several text articles as well as strips. It was published by Alan Class and edited by Denis Gifford. It ran for just 4 issues.

Earl.

[steelclaw]

Cheers Earl, blimey only 4 issues, Theirs one for sale on ebay.

[STARBOY]

Ally Sloper Comic (1976) was a strange one, it had some lovely strips inside like Frank Bellamy's Western strip "SWADE" (not much of a story but lovely art) and a few interesting one off strips and articles - personally for me it was of little interest as it seemed to focus on too many older strips (from memory not to sure of the era they were from) but I remember an issue that had a lot of pages froma character called Nipper , which persoanlly for me held no interest (altohugh I'm sure it would be of interest to comic historians).

[Kashgar]

This is a blast from the past. I've got all four issues stored away somewhere but haven't actually seen them for years. The Swade strip by Frank Bellamy was backed up with an interview with the artist and, as I recall, was significant as Bellamy's last finished work before his sudden death.
Another feature of interest in one of the issues was a reprint of one of Dudley Watkin's 'strips' that he drew for Boot's the Chemists in-house magazine 'The Beacon' when he worked for them in the window-dressing dept in the period shortly before he left Nottingham to become a full-time artist with Thomsons in Dundee. From memory it was called something like 'Our Exercise Class'.
The 'Nipper' illustrations were part of an appreciation of the work of Brian White who many years after he drew the Nipper newpaper strip ended his career as the artist on Keyhole Kate in the Sparky in the early 1970's.
I also remember that a similar appreciation of the work of a vintage comic artist was carried out on Roland Davies with particular reference to his pre-war newspaper strip about a crafty cart-horse 'Come On, Steve!'
I imagine if 'Ally Sloper' had been more of a success then Denis Gifford may not have seen fit to produce the A4 loose-sheeted 'Comic Cuts' and set up A.C.E several years later, so I suppose it was an ill wind.

[NP]

One of the four issues featured a nice 4 pager from Hunt Emerson and I think Keith Page made his debut there, while Frank Hampson's Victorian take on a female Dan Dare seems to ring a bell,( I haven't looked at it for years ) It's very much of it's time, too, with politics and feminism intruding! Definitely worth picking up, the Frank Bellamy pages alone are worth it!

[Lew Stringer]

I really liked it, although it was a bit hit and miss and, in 1976, seemed very expensive at 20p. Issue one came out sometime in the Summer of '76 (possibly July) as I remember buying it on a day trip to London that year on my first visit to a comic shop. (Dark They Were and Golden Eyed, then in Berwick Street.)

It had card covers and newsprint interiors in black and white. Quite thin, with no more than 32 pages I think. Jack Kirby did an Ally Sloper illo for one of the issues!

I've got all four issues somewhere. Must do a blog on them at some point.

Lew

[tolworthy]

I remember this one! I don't know it I'd even call it a comic - it felt more like more a fanzine. I don't know who it was aimed at. I remember thinking "this is VERY high quality stuff, but I don't know anyone who'd buy it". Apart from me, and I think I got mine from a half price bin. Still remember the article on Leo Baxendale receiving an award from Bob Monkhouse, with the headline "The Bash Street Dad."

[stevezodiac]

I bought this too. It was one of Dennis Gifford's fan mags. He had started a society called ACE (Association of Comic Enthusiasts) and published a newsletter printed on loose A4 sheets (I have some here having just got them out of storage). The newsletter had a news page on the cover (reprinted articles from Newsagent trade magazines and the like) there was a letter page and some nice checklists and repro artwork. I think Ally Sloper was a later more professional looking version. Incidentally I have some original Ally Sloper papers from the 1890s (but then I would wouldn't I?)

[Kashgar]

'Twas t'other way around Steve. ACE and it's loose-leaf A4 'mag' came after 'Ally Sloper' and not before.

[chrissmillie]

I bought it too. Didn't like it much.

[kevf]

I bought that Ally Sloper and all the subsequent issues, and it was the most exciting thing I'd seen at the time. I was by then a convert to Marvel reprints and thought British comics were boring (this was before 2000AD remember). But strips like Hunt Emerson's in Ally Sloper were mind blowing to me, and it was my first education into British comics history. I had had no idea who Frank Bellamy was (if you didn't read Garth, where would you have seen him before? His Eagle and TV21 work was a decade earlier and I'd simply never seen one).

It's hard to remember, nowadays in our age of total instant access to everything new and old, how it was possible to simply never have seen things before, and have no idea where to find them.

In 1976 where could I have gone to find Frank Bellamy? Or Ally Sloper? Or Hunt Emerson? No bookshop contained any comics except Asterix, BC and Peanuts - and how many dedicated bookshops were there back in those pre-Waterstones days? I was living in a village in Leicestershire, going to school in Market Harborough and occasionally getting into Leicester. My first local comics shop was still 12 years away! (I visited my first ever comic shop, Forever People in Bristol, the following year, and it was as mind-blowing as Ally Sloper No1).

Thanks for that nostalgia flash. If I can be arsed when I go to my studio tomorrow, I might open the box labelled UK Comics A- (actually I don't know if it's A-B or what, I've not opened it since I moved studios 11 years ago) and have a look at it.

Kev F

PS: I next saw a page of Frank Bellamy in Bert Fegg's Nasty Book by Michael Palin and Terry Jones, and later in the Penguin Book Of Comics.

[steelclaw]

It seems like everybody had bought it except me
I don't think I ever saw it in my local Newsagent at the time.