Thomson's 'Big Five' and the days of 'the good, long read'.

Kashgar · Post by **Kashgar** » 26 Feb 2007, 12:54

In another strand Peter Gray mentioned Thomson's 'Big Five' boy's story papers and I thought a few details of the days when 'text ruled the earth' at Thomsons might be of interest.
Thomsons first juvenile story paper was actually for the fairer sex 'Girl's Weekly' (492 issues)(1912-1922) which in turn was followed by 'Bluebird' (100 issues) (1922-1924). After this they lost interest in publishing papers for young girls until the picture paper 'Bunty' arrived in 1958.
In 1921 the first of the boy's 'Big Five' titles appeared 'Adventure' which ran to 1878 issues (1921-1961). Then in order this was followed by -
Rover (2481 issues) (1922-1973)
Wizard (1970 issues) (1922-1963)
Vanguard (136 issues) (1923-1926) killed off by the General Strike.
Skipper (543 issues) (1930-1941)
Red Arrow (52 issues) (1932-1933) digest-size title
Hotspur (1197 issues) (1933-1959)
These papers always contained the odd page of comic strips but picture strips of the kind seen in the later boy's picture papers were a no-no until 'Adventure' began featuring front page picture strips in 1946. In time the other three remaining Thomson boys story paper titles Rover, Wizard and Hotspur would follow suit to a greater or lesser degree. In fact the story papers included enough picture strips in their later years for it to take me twelve instalments to tell their full story in 'The Story Papers Collector's Digest' a few years ago.
When the boys picture papers began to appear in the late 1950's with 'The New Hotspur' they did not entirely shun the use of the prose story within their pages either, to the extent that, in the early days, both the revived Hotspur and Victor would include two prose stories every week amongst their picture strip content. Indeed it wasn't until 1971 that Hotspur, Victor and Hornet published their last regular prose stories while the Wizard, revived as a picture paper in 1970, ran at least one prose story right up until its final issue in June 1978.
It is difficult to overestimate the effect the old story paper titles had on the picture paper titles, certainly in the 1960's, when at least a half of all the scripts used in the picture papers had been culled from earlier prose tales in the story papers. Obviously this includes the influx of traditional favourites from the story papers inc Morgyn the Mighty (Rover 1928), The Wolf of Kabul (Wizard 1930), Wilson (Wizard 1943), Tough of the Track (Rover 1949), Braddock V.C. (Rover 1952) etc but also a host of scripts from other, one-off stories.
In their early days both Dandy and Beano were also heavily reliant on prose stories to fill out their pages with the first 28 page Dandy containing 12 pages of text and the first similarly sized Beano containing 10. The Dandy eventually having 4pgs of text, by then out of 12, up to Aug 1954 and 2pgs till Sept 1955 and the Beano 4pgs to Dec 1953 and 2 till Feb 1955. The first all strip comic produced by Thomsons having been the first issue of the tabloid sized Topper in Feb 1953.

colcool007 · Post by **colcool007** » 26 Feb 2007, 20:15

Kashhar,
that is fantastic. Exactly the sort of info that we on the board love to see come to the fore.

While I am a self-confessed panel fan, I find it intriguing to see how many of the DCT panel stories were re-issues of old text stories. As we have seen from Al's recent run of Union Jack Jackson, the scripts from many of the original Big 5 were dusted off, re-brushed and had the serial numbers removed so that they could appeal once more to a new audience.

The only thing that you seem to have omitted is that the text stories continued in the Annuals for quite some years after they had been removed from the comics.

Now to brass tacks, do you still have copies of the Digest and how much are they?

I am sure that I am not the only one who would like to add that tome to their reference collection.

Peter Gray · Post by **Peter Gray** » 27 Feb 2007, 00:15

Interesting they started off with girl comics before the big 5...you would think girls would have liked this...strange it didn't last..

I wonder if the stories should be collected together into a book the good ones..

interesting Topper was the first comic without written stories...

the forum is certainly covering a variety of comic topics...

philcom55 · Post by **philcom55** » 27 Feb 2007, 01:15

Kashgar wrote:Thomsons first juvenile story paper was actually for the fairer sex 'Girl's Weekly' (492 issues)(1912-1922) which in turn was followed by 'Bluebird' (100 issues) (1922-1924). After this they lost interest in publishing papers for young girls until the picture paper 'Bunty' arrived in 1958.

Perhaps they assumed that most young girls were advanced enough to read the many story papers aimed at grown women, like Peg's Paper, Red Star, etc.

Incidentally, it's often forgotten that a lot of the early picture-papers and picture-libraries released in the 1950s were also aimed at young women and housewives.

- Phil Rushton

Kashgar · Post by **Kashgar** » 27 Feb 2007, 12:06

Thanks for the kind words Col. In fact I was thinking of listing when the DCT annuals gave up the ghost on the text story and also maybe doing something similar for the Fleetway titles so watch this space.
As to the articles I did for the SPCD I don't think back issues would still be available as it is no longer a regularly printed magazine but i'll try to track down my own copies, wherever they may be, and send you a few photocopies if of interest.
I'm pretty sure Thomsons did give up on the girls titles precisely because they felt they had the market covered by their already existing womans' papers. In fact both Girls Weekly and Bluebird were both incorporated into the woman's magazine 'My Weekly' which shows in which direction they were pointing the readership of these two titles on their demise.
One point I didn't make which I think should have been made is what constitutes an adventure strip, as the 'strips' that appeared in the boys' story papers and in Dandy and Beano were virtually always in the form of blocks of illustrations, absent of speech balloons, with the story told in a written libretto beneath each individual picture. Whereas in the boys and girls picture paper titles speech balloons were liberally sprinkled across the
the artwork in the more modern, generally accepted picture strip form.
I will return to this subject anon!

Richard S. · Post by **Richard S.** » 15 Mar 2007, 10:41

click here for more info. (and stories!) from the big 5...

http://www.britishcomics.20m.com/home.htm

Richard Sheaf

Peter Gray · Post by **Peter Gray** » 15 Mar 2007, 18:08

I'll read some of those...

nice to see DC Thomson having there own comic fansite website. I look forward to the picture adventure strips examples you will put up in the future.

the adventure strip I would like to see an example of is the great flood of London by David Sutherland.it seems so apt these days...
I've only seen a few haunting pictures from the Beano and Dandy 50 years book....the rats invading looked scary...

Peter Gray · Post by **Peter Gray** » 19 Mar 2007, 20:32

Read the Morgyn the mighty.....I want to read the next chapter...please..

http://www.britishcomics.20m.com/hotspur.htm

some eye catching of its time covers..

the Iron teacher cover looked fun so

now going to read from Hotspurs The Iron teacher...

colcool007 · Post by **colcool007** » 20 Mar 2007, 21:26

A good chance of getting a long read is the following lot on Ebay.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... :IT&ih=001

I gave up issue counting when I got to 2000 comics. It is serious money but you are still looking at less than 50 pence a comic! Now who is going to be brave enough to max out their credit card to buy these comics?

Richard S. · Post by **Richard S.** » 23 Mar 2007, 12:17

sold for ?2,071!
Still not much / comic

Richard Sheaf

colcool007 · Post by **colcool007** » 23 Mar 2007, 15:31

Richard S. wrote:sold for ?2,071!
Still not much / comic

Richard Sheaf

A real deal as it was an average of about 90 pence per comic!

Comics UK