Comics UK

How did they print the Beano and Dandy in the 30's-40's

In 1959 onwards they used film to store the comic page...that is when Classics starts the reprints...how did this change printing.....

I've just watched Stephen Fry BBC 4 the Gutenberg press the invention of the printing press.....saw how they did text with lots of letters put together in rows.But how did they do pictures?

Did 30's newspapers use the same printing process as the 30's comic.....

thanks in advance if anyone knows any answers to these questions.....
Was the image etched on to metal somehow....?

In the very early days, i beleive they took a picture and engraved the lines into wood (or else the picture was engraved into wood to start with). Metal (melted antimony) was then poured over the wood block and when it was solidified the lines of the picture where "facing downwards" from the block, which could then be added to the press. I should think they had a slightly more high-tech process by the 30's, though.

The fact that from the late 1950's onwards Thomsons stored a version of the original artwork on film made no difference to how they produced the comics. It was only a secondary and more easily accessible method of storing artwork that had already been used.
In the 1930's and 1940's and indeed the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's the actual production of a comic from the original artwork began in Thomson's process dept in Dundee. It was here that the original artwork was photographed and reduced onto a light sensitive metal plate and it was from this plate via chemical etching that the final printing plate was produced.
Once the printing plate was produced it was then used, if colour needed to be added to a page, to stamp out a very thin piece of papier mache called a flong and any colours that needed to be added, four for covers and usually single colours elsewhere would each be added, a colour at a time, to a seperate version of this flong.
The printing plates and the flongs would then be sent, from Dundee, to Thomson's two main printing works in Manchester and Glasgow were they would be used to set up the presses for printing.
If anyone has copies of old Dandys and Beanos in their possession you might well find if you peruse some of them that any added colour is sometimes offset a little from the artwork beneath and this is almost always because of the shortcomings of using papier mache flongs. Thomsons sent the printing plates and flongs to their printing works by train and in very cold weather or hot humid conditions the flongs had a tendency to expand or contract a little while in transit and as a consequence any plate produced from them at the printing works was similarly wrong-sized from the original art plate from which it was produced, thus making the colour either bleed or contract in the finished comic from its position on the original artwork.

Thanks Kashgar and felneymike
It always puzzled me how they did it..

So it was photographed...must find that Bash Street kids one by Leo that showed the process in the Beano and Dandy 60 years or 50 years book.......just thought of it...

Now I want to see a papier mache flongs...I'll google..

To get the different colours for the cover did they have 4 photos of drawing for cover then fongs put in different places for each colour on each photo..then merged together.....

Or just one photo put papier mache flongs on one to represent red........then taken off and redone for colour blue.....
If two papier mache flongs are left on for two prints does this mix the colours to get green and brown for example...

I've found my answers...it is different colour plates........
found David Sutherlands Bash Street kids in 1983 explaining the process in the first annual Beano and Dandy the first 50 years.

Also Leo Baxendales printing of the Beano is in the magic moments annual...

I done a post on this topic using this post for the information
http://petergraycartoonsandcomics.blogs ... s-how.html

I find it very interesting.