40th anniversary of Janus Stark!

[Lew Stringer]

It's 40 years today that IPC's revamped version of Smash! first appeared, featuring the first episodes of Janus Stark, Cursitor Doom and others. More info on my blog:

http://lewstringer.blogspot.com/2009/03 ... rates.html

Lew

[NP]

When this comic first appeared I felt a sense of dread- the Sixties were giving way to the Seventies already?! Strange how one comic defined the era.

[Lew Stringer]

I know what you mean Nigel. Suddenly this unique, streetwise, slightly subversive comic had been castrated into the type of comic I normally avoided like the plague. I soon got used to it though, and enjoyed it for what it was. However when the new Smash was followed a few months later by the fairly pedestrian Whizzer & Chips it was clear that the brilliant era of "Power Comics" was truly over, forever locked into a 1960s time bubble.

And as a reminder of what we lost....



Lew

[stevezodiac]

I remember it as if it were the day before yesterday. (I hate cliches). I think the fact I had been mourning the demise of the power comics made it have more of an impact on my mind. Its true that many comics that epitomised the 60s didn't last into the 70s eg TV Tornado and TV Century 21. (which did but as a new series). But the Power Comics were alive and vibrant, they had editors who spoke to you and told you what was going on behind the scenes. Well at least there were hundreds of issues to keep our memories alive. And as this forum is about Janus Stark here is a scan from the 1974 Smash! annual which I currently have for sale on ebay. (How cheap of me to finish with a personal ad).

[Lew Stringer]

the Power Comics were alive and vibrant, they had editors who spoke to you and told you what was going on behind the scenes.

Yes I should have mentioned that in my blog actually as it's quite significant. Admittedly "Alf and Bart" were just aping Stan Lee really but it did make the reader feel welcome and treated them as mature enough to be let in on behind the scenes news. How different to IPC's version, when the letter's page was replaced by a reader's jokes page and the editorial became a dumbed down affair by a fictitious "Mike" and his irrelevant drivel.

To be fair to IPC they were just carrying on a tradition from the old AP comics, and it would continue with Sid and Shiner's chats in Whizzer & Chips. However such fictitious nonsense only served to put the barrier back up between editor and reader that Power Comics had torn down in the sixties.

At least when 2000AD came along we had Tharg giving us the best of both worlds: genuine comic chat but presented by a fictitious editor.

Lew

[stevezodiac]

Yes I was always left cold by those DC Thomson readers pages where readers wrote in about their tortoise or cat. I did write to DCT in the 70s and asked if they could have a proper correspondence page but they said it wasn't what the readers wanted. Well I suppose they were kids and us selfish collectors would prefer they catered for us.

[philcom55]

I know that a lot of people today look back on the 1970s as a kind of Golden Age for British comics (rather in the same way that some people think of Peter Davison as the 'best' Dr. Who). I guess it largely depends upon one's age, and the period in which one's 'sense of wonder' was in its formative stage. Speaking personally I rather agree with Nigel's memory of the 'new' Smash!: that in the year 1969 it finally seemed as if British comics had come to the end of a long and illustrious road. Within just a few months of each other Power Comics folded; the original Eagle - having already become a pale shadow of its previous self - was ignominiously swallowed by Lion (complete with truly horrible black & white tracings of Frank Hampson's Dan Dare); TV21 was relaunched with very inferior contents and art, and many classic series like 'The Spider' either vanished entirely or went to reprint. It felt like the end of an era, and as a child of the 1960s I regretfully decided it was time to put away childish things once and for all. (Admittedly DC Thomson were largely unaffected by these changes but I'd never really got into Victor, Hotspur, Hornet, etc. and I felt that I'd outgrown Dandy, Beano, Topper and Beezer some years before anyway.)

The funny thing is that I really approved of all the reprints and foreign strips when they first began to appear in large numbers within British comics. At Odhams the American Marvel material was initially presented with a great deal of care, to the extent that it often looked better than in the US originals: Fantastic in particular had excellent printing, and the covers were always beautifully coloured (and of course, Wham!, Smash! and Pow! continued to carry a healthy dose of home grown material). Meanwhile at Fleetway the reprints were instrumental in Valiant, Lion, Tiger & Hurricane, June & Schoolfriend, Champion and Buster being able to expand to an astonishing 40 pages in 1965, yet at first they were balanced by a wealth of excellent new stories as well (Mytek, Steel Claw, Spider, Toys of Doom, Jason Hyde, Robot Archie, Kelly’s Eye, etc.). This was my Golden Age!

Incredibly, in just five short years, Fleetway, Odhams, and TV21’s City had all managed to crash and burn from the heights to the depths, leaving a wallpaper company to pick up the pieces. As Nigel says, the Sixties were well and truly over...

(Of course, Battle, Action, 2000AD, Countdown, Warrior, Viz, Oink, Crisis, etc. were still in the future - but we didn't know that at the time! )

- Phil Rushton

[Kashgar]

I'm afraid I can't really share this hand-wringing for the demise of the original Smash and the Power titles as a whole. I thought that the revived Smash was streets ahead of its predecessor and still remains one of my favourite comics. I was more than happy with my weekly dose of Thomson and Fleetway titles throughout the late 1960's and the revived Smash to me, rather than bringing an end to something more worthwhile, was a phoenix rising from the ashes of the increasingly mundane.

[Lew Stringer]

Interesting view Ray, and each to his own of course. Personally I felt IPC turned Smash into a more mundane comic if anything, despite bringing in such top artists as Lopez and Bradbury.

I think it's more about a mourning of the passing of the zeitgeist of the era, rather than a criticism of the new comic in itself though.

Lew

[Kashgar]

I was always a Thomson/Fleetway kid Lew and so the passing of the Odhams titles was of no great moment to me ( I never got into the whole TV21/Gerry Anderson thing either). On the other hand maybe I just can't seperate the excitement of going to the newsagents on a Saturday morning to buy the new Smash from any shortcomings, in turn, it may have had content wise.

[Lew Stringer]

Ah, I see the difference between our perspectives then Ray. I appreciate that the IPC Smash certainly brought an improvement to the adventure strip side of the comic, and I presume your tastes lie more in that direction? (I too was pleased that the increasingly ridiculous Brian's Brain had finally ended, and replacing it with something like Janus Stark was a 100% improvement.)

Personally I was never interested in the Thomson adventure comics at all through the 1960s I'm afraid, or the Fleetway ones much for that matter, so turning Smash! into such a comic was a massive disappointment for me. I can't tell you how much I detested war and sport stories, which is why my tastes lay in TV Century 21, The Dandy, and Odhams comics.

I stuck with the new Smash for 13 weeks, gave up on it for a year, then came back to it in 1970 and was hooked. By that time my tastes had changed (I was even buying Tiger!) but I had also sadly realised that the style of comics I enjoyed the most had gone forever so I "settled" for IPC satisfying my comics fix. IPC did some great stuff, with a lot of solid professional talent, but editorially they were increasingly over-cautious and dependent on formula.

I think the difference between Odhams and IPC can be summed up with the fact that IPC felt The Nervs was too O.T.T. to appear in their comics and (as one editor told me) sent an internal memo banning all editors from ever reprinting or reviving it. Reid went on to do Faceache of course, and World Wide Weirdies etc, but his Odhams work remains the peak of his career IMHO and he was never allowed to be quite as subversive under IPC's watchful eye.

Lew

[Raven]

It's interesting your view that IPC was over-cautious and dependent on formula, Lew. To my eyes they pushed, prodded and pulled the weekly comic formula as far it could go with their fun titles (Krazy, Cheeky Weekly, Leo Baxendale's Badtime Bedtime pullouts in Monster Fun, their two comics-in-ones) and later Action, 2000AD and Starlord etc. and were frequently *experimental,* breathing new life into the medium with zest and gusto. I'd been comparing old and new Smash on the ukcomicsarefun blog and agree with Kashgar that the new version was a great improvement! The IPC Smash is fantastic.

I was a 70s kid myself, but picked up some Power Comics from time to time at the odd mart (and also went through a volume of Pow at Colindale) and generally found them very mundane overall, so didn't keep up much of an interest. Their 'unique' formula seemed to consist mainly of reprinting lots of American pages (often badly reshaped and re-sized?) and the Alf and Cos pages aping Stan Lee's Marvel stuff - though that approach was quite appealing. And a lot of the homegrown stuff seemed very pedestrian to me.

Instead, IPC gave lots of work to UK creators - and your 'fictious nonsense' of the Sid and Shiner letters pages were, to a new generation of 6 to 10 year olds, a great fun and fondly remembered *innovation* with characters invading each other's comics! (Other titles featured regular letters pages; Whoopee a double-pager and they also published readers' own self-drawn full page strips.)

And far from being pedestrian, W + C became a very good comic indeed within a year or so; for younger kids, certainly, but full of kooky ideas, surrealism and lots of varying styles. I remember so well the sheer excitement of the IPC comics, and their new formulas and approaches as fresh titles launched.

To me IPC kept comics healthy for another decade or more, breathing new life and colour into the rather mundane scene it seemed to have become.

One thing I'll agree on, though. I do think Ken Reid's peak was probably with Odham's. His work really stands out in those comics. It's extraordinary. Oddly, I'm not so sure all of it is hugely *likeable* - I think those Frankie Stein and Jasper the Grasper series for example are sometimes more kind of morbidly fascinating than likeable, and they certainly do fascinate me - but his work alone is worth seeking out anything Odhams for. There's nothing else like it. He did lots of brilliant weird and twisted stuff for IPC too, though.

Leo Baxendale's work, though, I thought was overall better for D C Thomson before and IPC after.

[Lew Stringer]

I agree that Action, Battle, 2000AD, Oink! and Starlord broke the IPC formula for the better. Pity it then regressed with Speed, Wildcats, Nipper etc.

I agree that IPC's comics kept the industry afloat for years. They knew they had a basic formula that worked but they milked it dry. Overall, most of their comics didn't last much longer than the Power Comics had, and some didn't even last that long.

However I was thinking mainly of how things were in 1969 to the mid seventies. As for Whizzer and Chips, I was one of those 10 year olds it was targeted at, and although it was slicker than the Power Comics had been it didn't have the same edge to it in my opinion. Oh I stuck with it for a few years but out of habit more than real affection. Ended up giving most of my W&C collection to the RSPCA.

As I said, there were some great strips in the IPC comics (Jack Oliver's Master Mind and Cliff Brown's Timothy Tester are just two of many that come to mind) but on the whole I felt that Odhams were a bit more streetwise and robust.

It's not always what's on the surface that makes a strip great, but what's underneath. Here's another anecdote which sums up the Odhams / IPC difference: Odhams had allowed Mike Higgs to express his own style with The Cloak, which had proven very popular. IPC cancelled the strip and asked him to "draw more like Reg Parlett", which he declined to do and after a brief spell on W&C found himself without work.

In the end though it all comes down to personal taste of course, and the age you were at the time.

I should add that I'm not really criticizing the IPC strips as such, which were of an excellent standard and more polished than the Odhams material. (Odhams did have some weak material at times.) It's just that Odhams and IPC had different approaches in tone to their stories and personally I preferred Odhams. Taken on its ow merits I enjoyed the IPC Smash in 1970. It's when I compare it to the original version that I remember what was missing.

Lew

[Raven]

It's not always what's on the surface that makes a strip great, but what's underneath. Here's another anecdote which sums up the Odhams / IPC difference: Odhams had allowed Mike Higgs to express his own style with The Cloak, which had proven very popular. IPC cancelled the strip and asked him to "draw more like Reg Parlett", which he declined to do and after a brief spell on W&C found himself without work.

I don't think that single experience should be taken to signify more than it probably did, though: I expect they just weren't keen on his style. Looking at his Space School in W + C, I can see it might not be to everyone's tastes; maybe they considered the style a little too crude looking, or too old fashioned? Perhaps Space School didn't prove popular with the readers.

It's not like IPC or W+C had a house style where everyone had to draw like Reg Parlett. W + C itself stood out for having such a broad range of different artistic styles side by side; lots of different looks for so many strips in the same title. It just sounds like whoever took over wasn't keen on his work. It's very possible that a fair few new artists at Odhams were told to draw more like Leo Baxendale ... (I expect they were. Weren't many of the young Wham posse groomed to draw in his style?)

I think the Odhams tone stayed in a few things. Ken Reid's Faceache in early-mid 70s Buster had that feel a bit: very wordy speech balloons and strips more concerned with piling up grotesque imagery or people having increasing nervous breakdowns than actual traditional story lines!

And the darker feel non-traditional adventure strip especially flourished in Valiant (which took on Janus, of course) and even, to an extent, in Buster for a while.

[philcom55]

Actually, I'm sure that if the new Smash! had appeared a few years earlier I'd have really loved it: it was certainly a nice package, and many of the reprints were well-chosen (and often had better reproduction than when they first appeared - particularly Don Lawrence's wonderful 'Karl/Eric the Viking'! ). The real problem was that I felt I'd outgrown British comics by then anyway. Throughout the 1960s my parents had allowed me two titles on regular order at our local newsagent in addition to my pocket money, and while I continued to get Lion and Smash! every week during 1970 I found myself becoming far more interested in American titles with their (seemingly) enlightened attitude towards naming writers and artists. As a prospective art student I attended the earliest comic conventions and became involved with the fanzine scene, only to discover that even people like Dave Gibbons were being turned down by IPC (who seemed to have the attitude that they didn’t need new artists with the likes of Eric Bradbury and Geoff Campion around). Few of us really cared for DC Thomson (where Gibbons eventually got his break), so I think we tended to look more and more towards the US during those years.

I must admit, though, that my interest in Smash! did revive briefly with the inclusion of Angus Allan and Eric Bradbury’s Simon Test - especially as it allowed Bradbury to produce some outstanding cover illustrations as well. For a time it was almost like reading Maxwell Hawke during the early 1960s again... but then even Smash! came to an end and I cancelled my order at the newsagent once and for all. After that I didn’t even look at another British comic until 2000AD number one came out (and even that was a huge disappointment at first, with its notably ‘dumbed down’ version of Dan Dare! ).

- Phil R.