What comics did you buy today?

[big bad bri]

I got buster annual 93 whizzer & chips annuals 91 & 94 looks like every page in that is reprint . Also got 3 issues of V, superior spidey 6&7 ,age of ultron 1-6 I don't really want start collecting American stuff again

[Phoenix]

On the whole its quite surprising that nobody else ever thought of using the same effect...!

Phil has clearly not been spending much time recently with his Thomson collection. The company did little else for years on end. As far as the post-war period is concerned, the first issue to use all three colours together was Adventure 1167 (Sep. 7 1946). They switched to the much longer-lasting arrangement with 1222 (Mar. 13 1948). The two relevant mastheads are below. The other three members of the Big Four also made constant use of combinations of these colours.

[philcom55]

Ah! - but I was referring to the idea of using a four letter title (beginning with some combination of the letters 'H' and 'W'), written in capitals, with an exclamation mark, all contained inside a stylized explosion, where the letters are red, the explosion is yellow and the background is blue.



To be fair, though, I guess the odds against anybody independently coming up with another comic masthead just like that must be pretty astronomical!

...Oh! Wait a minute:



- Phil R.

[babington]

How do you pronounce "Hwyl"? Does it mean something like "Fun"? Great fireworks issue!

[Phoenix]

Hedging our bets a bit there aren't we, Phil? I feel the need to point out that Thomsons didn't need explosions and exclamation marks to emphasise their qualities. Their papers spoke quietly and authoritatively for themselves and for each other, knowing that their loyal readers were with them for the long haul, and didn't need or deserve to be startled every week. That said, they were constantly providing explosive serials inside, and on the front cover in the case of Adventure, where of course they made full use of those three primary colours. To their credit they even kept their use of green to a minimum so as not to alienate their young customers with red/green colour blindness. Furthermore, Thomsons were obviously catering for a more literate and numerate clientele. Not for them the one-syllable titles like Hwyl! and Wham!. Hotspur, Rover and Wizard you will notice all had two syllables, and Adventure was even more adventurous with three. A straightforward comparison of your two mastheads and my second Adventure one clearly proves that the use of calm red letters against a peaceful yellow background, the whole bordered gently in blue, creates an award-winning combination that hundreds of thousands of Thomson story paper aficionados would have voted home comfortably in a landslide against your pair, had the readers of Hwyl! and Wham! ever had the temerity to put their heads above the parapet in a national referendum.

[Digifiend]

The same is true of most of the DCT humour titles too. Dandy, Beano, Magic, Topper, Beezer, Sparky, all two syllables. Buzz and Plug broke the pattern though.

[Lew Stringer]

I think Phil was simply pointing out the similarity of design of the mastheads of Hwyl! and Wham!

[Phoenix]

In Phil's last post, where he does present the similarity of mastheads, there is a fair measure of humour underlining his point. I suspect that he may well have been mischievously holding back his revelation about Wham! for his follow-up post, but that takes nothing away from our good-natured jousting. My first response was merely pointing him in the direction of Thomsons' use of those colours in their mastheads, to show that Hwyl! wasn't alone in using them. My second post was responding to his humorous, and possibly deliberately misleading, comments about the key similarities between Hwyl! and Wham!, and was certainly not intended to be in any way serious. Even a surface reading should have picked that up. I thought we were trying to avoid relying on smilies, allowing instead the language to speak for itself. We were both making valid points but were not expecting everything we said to be taken literally.

[SID]

Got the latest 2000AD and Commando.

Both good.

[big bad bri]

Buster annuals 1966,72,73 & 75 (why were theses softback when the rest of the fleetway stuff at the time was hardback?) also got Beano Summer specials 1971,72,73,74.Dandy summer specials 1971,73,79,80,81,82,83,84,85 & Beezer summer specials 1985,86. from phil shrimpton comics most of them look brand new like they just came of newsagents shelves & i will definetley read these specials before sticking them in cupboard like i do with all comics i buy these days i haven't read the phoenix since iss 4

[felneymike]

A huge brick of Union Jack, the 1880's version. It's a bound volume about 3.5 inches thick, covering 1880 to 1882, though annoyingly it begins with issue 2! Oh well, plenty of complete serials to read through, including some by G.A. Henty (who edited it for part of the run, too), which must be the "true first editions" of some of the stories.

[tony ingram]

Young Marvelman Annual 1959.

[Raven]

Furthermore, Thomsons were obviously catering for a more literate and numerate clientele. Not for them the one-syllable titles like Hwyl! and Wham!. Hotspur, Rover and Wizard you will notice all had two syllables, and Adventure was even more adventurous with three.

And interesting to reflect, in turn, on how much more literate the clientèle of the IPC comics I grew up with must have been compared to the Thomson readership, with titles like Whizzer and Chips incorporating Knockout (eleven syllables, which even incorporated the word 'incorporating'!); even as pre-schoolers we were trusted with six syllables with Jack and Jill and Candy - three times as bright as those tots who could only handle Twinkle and Bimbo's two - before graduating to Donald and Mickey and Also Goofy (ten!)

Then UK Marvel respectfully acknowledged the level of literacy we'd reached by allowing us to graduate to titles like The Mighty World of Marvel Featuring The Incredible Hulk and Planet of the Apes; at twenty-two syllables, a title aiming itself firmly at the intellectual elite!

[Phoenix]

Now all we have to do, Raven, is sit back and wait for someone to take your remarks seriously.

How did you get that grave accent on 'clientele'? Have you got a French keyboard for just such moments of need?

[tony ingram]

Then UK Marvel respectfully acknowledged the level of literacy we'd reached by allowing us to graduate to titles like The Mighty World of Marvel Featuring The Incredible Hulk and Planet of the Apes; at twenty-two syllables, a title aiming itself firmly at the intellectual elite!

Then again, they also published Strip!