Comics UK

In retrospect it's surprising how much Fleetway concentrated on comic-strip adventure stories during the 1960s at the expense of humorous ones. To be fair, as AP they could be said to have virtually pioneered the genre in the 1950s with Sun, Comet, Lion and Tiger, while DC Thomson still continued to persevere with their venerable story papers and comics like Dandy, Beano, Topper and Beezer where humour was the major element. During the early 1960s even older titles like Knockout, Radio Fun and Film Fun became tilted more towards the serious mould before they were finally discontinued, the only partial exception to this trend being the launch of Buster in 1960 - and initially this too was carefully balanced so that 50% of the contents at any one time were action-orientated.

More adventure titles like Valiant, Hurricane, Champion, Jag, Jet, etc. followed in due course - not to mention the drastic conversion of Odhams' Smash! in 1969 - and apart from the short-lived experiment of The Big One in 1964 (lasting only 19 issues! ) it could be argued that Giggle was the first example of a whole new generation of self-consciously 'funny' comics that were to proliferate under the IPC banner during the 1970s and 1980s.

However, unlike Whizzer & Chips, Corr!!, Monster Fun etc. surprisingly few people remember Giggle today. Launched on April 29th 1967 and lasting for exactly twice as many issues as The Big One before it merged with Buster in January 1968 it seems to me that the main problem was a desperate lack of new, home-grown material (a failing that it shared with its oversized predecessor). Looking at the contents today it's astonishing to see just how many consisted of European imports (eg Lucky Luke as 'Buck Bingo', 'Tammy Tuff', Captain Swoop, Herlock Sholmes, etc.) and straightforward reprints (eg Deed-a-Day Danny as 'Danny', The Gremlins as 'The Chuckles', Sandy Dean's Schooldays as 'Tales of Tollgate', Niblo Nibbs, etc.); even strips that I don't personally recognize, like Reg Parlett's 'Helpful Hettie', had clearly been resized from somewhere!. In fact, apart from Alf Sarporito's eponymous cat who appeared on the cover I can't be sure that anything else was entirely original (though I'd guess that The Wild Bunch and Cruncher may have been, as well as at least one standard Fleetway adventure strip).

What to make of this? Could it be that by 1967 Fleetway had let go of so many of their old humour artists that there simply weren't enough left to produce significant amounts of new material? If so this might put the acquisition of Odhams into new light as a ready source of such creators rather than simply a collection of failing titles like Eagle.

Did Giggle prepare the ground for the success of Whizzer & Chips?

- Phil Rushton

'GIGGLE' definately impacted on my memory, Phil [one of the best-ever titles for a humour comic, I thought!]; like you say, it was heavy in imported strips, and even as a 5-year-old in 1967, I was aware that much of the material was 'foreign-looking' [nothing wrong with that, of course, the SPANISH-artist depiction of 'BUSTER' himself in the 60s was my own personal favourite] than more familiar material c/o DC THOMSON, IPC or 'TV 21' etc from the same period.

The copies that I did see had an imported 'LUCKY LUKE' story, that was very well-rendered in an almost ASTERIX style: there were also numerous pages of ultra-elaborate 'join-the-dots' that ran into hundreds of dots; so elaborate, there was no way you could work out exactly what would emerge beforehand....


----this comic seemed quite thick, with a large page-count I remember....I don't know if it appears often in e-bay, but I certainly wouldn't mind a revisit of this 1967 gem [or at least, that's the stature it has acquired in my memory-banks]........

philcom55 wrote: What to make of this? Could it be that by 1967 Fleetway had let go of so many of their old humour artists that there simply weren't enough left to produce significant amounts of new material?

Nah. Giggle was just done on the cheap, hence the foreign imports and reprints. Apparently Fleetway's rates were better than Odhams' so if they wanted humour artists they'd have easily attracted them. (Isn't this why Baxendale quit Odhams to go to Fleetway?)

philcom55 wrote:If so this might put the acquisition of Odhams into new light as a ready source of such creators rather than simply a collection of failing titles like Eagle.

Fleetway didn't acquire Odhams. IPC had owned both since 1963 and just took more charge in late 1968/early 1969, which is when "Fleetway Publications" and "Odhams" was replaced by "IPC Magazines" in the small print of all those comics.

Lew

Lew Stringer wrote:Nah. Giggle was just done on the cheap, hence the foreign imports and reprints.

Yeah, I was afraid that must be the real explanation, I just didn't want to admit to myself the extent to which the rot had already set in at Fleetway even before IPC took over. I wonder if the Sarporito dummy cover of an unpublished comic that someone showed here a while back was also intended for another such cynical reprint job...or was that Odhams? As an example of the lengths they were prepared to go in order to avoid commissioning new material here's a strip they lifted from a girls' comic where a female character actually seems to have been given an artistic ‘sex-change’ to make it more acceptable to male readers: It's interesting that if Giggle and Jag were, respectively, the last two comics launched under the old regime then the humorous title was nearly all reprint and the adventure one was all-new: it was only under IPC that the idea of an all-new Whizzer & Chips was finally taken 'seriously'. I wonder what sort of market research the two managements carried out; or was it simply that someone noticed Buster's sales were holding their own better than Lion and Valiant by then?

- Phil R.

ISPYSHHHGUY wrote: I certainly wouldn't mind a revisit of this 1967 gem [or at least, that's the stature it has acquired in my memory-banks]........

Your wish is my command! Besides, I'm inclined to agree that Giggle wasn’t a complete waste of space - in fact many of the French strips (such as Lucky Luke) were really rather good, and I think it’s a shame that British readers didn’t prove more accepting of their slightly different style. I’ve often wondered how a UK edition of something like Pilote would have fared at the time. For example 'Tickler Pics' strikes me as a particularly original take on the standard humorous strip with its regular use of a 35 panel grid, yet despite its European feel I've no idea where it originated (any ideas?): Other worthwhile strips included Reg Parlett's 'Helpful Hettie', which would presumably have been new to most readers as it also appears to have been reprinted from an unknown girls' title (anybody know which?): - And of course, there were those astonishingly complicated join-the -dot pictures so fondly remembered by ISPYSHHHGUY: - Phil Rushton

...Finally, (and because we're only allowed three attachments per post) Giggle followed Buster in featuring a number of adventure strips, of which the most intriguing was ‘The Space Travellers’: - I’d be interested if anyone can say who this was drawn by ( possibly Mike White?), and whether or not it was new at the time. While I don’t recognize the episodes I’ve seen it does look similar to other ‘Lost in Space’ type stories that had previously appeared in Knockout and Film Fun.

- Phil Rushton

yiu've whetted my appetite with this one, Phil!: 'GIGGLE' is on my definate hit-list........the 'join-the-dots' format is exactly as I remember it........many thanks for letting me see this long-defunct, but still-fondly remembered material. As a 5-year-old, I appreciated this comic, along with most others I have revisited from this period.

Astonishing it is a full 42 years since I last saw hide or hair of this stuff......

philcom55 wrote: I wonder what sort of market research the two managements carried out; or was it simply that someone noticed Buster's sales were holding their own better than Lion and Valiant by then?

- Phil R.

More likely that Giggle and Whizzer and Chips were launched to rival DC Thomson's funnies, rather than to compliment their own comics. Even the boxed in 'G' of Giggle is similar to the boxed in 'D' of Dandy at the time.

W&C in particular was a clear rival to Dandy and Beano. If you bought Dandy & Beano in 1969 you'd have two 16 page comics for 8d. W&C gave you "two comics in one" (two 16 page comics) for 6d. (Of course W&C was really just one comic but its gimmick was successful, and they'd learned from the mistakes of Giggle.)

Lew

Lew Stringer wrote:W&C in particular was a clear rival to Dandy and Beano. If you bought Dandy & Beano in 1969 you'd have two 16 page comics for 8d. W&C gave you "two comics in one" (two 16 page comics) for 6d.

Good point. I'm amazed that it hadn't occurred to me before.

In 'A Very Funny Business' Leo Baxendale said that when he was planning Wham! as a kind of 'Super-Beano' he'd wanted to approach people like Paddy Brennan, only to be told by Odhams that they already knew how to do adventure comics - it was just in the humour market that they felt DC Thomson had an advantage. I imagine that Fleetway had a similar point of view, and that this was inherited by IPC when they took over.

- Phil R.

As far as I'm aware Phil 'The Space Travellers' was new, at least to British readers. Can't say who the artist is but not Mike White.
One way or another 1967 was a bit of a 'town-twinning', 'foreign exchange student, kind of year at Fleetway, for not only did we have more than a whiff of the Continent in the pages of Giggle but we also had the arrival of the girl's paper Tina initially bylined 'the most popular girl's paper in the World'. A boastful claim based on the fact that Tina was the first title to be published in ten different countries around the world simultaneously. As ever our 'tight little island' xenophobia saw the British version merged with Princess after a mere thirty issues but it would be interesting to know if the versions in Australia, Austria, South Africa, Italy, New Zealand, Germany, France, Switzerland and Luxemburg fared any better.

Oh yes, I'd forgotten about the great Tina experiment. I think I read somewhere that it continued to be popular on the continent long after Fleetway cancelled the UK edition (I'll see if I can locate the source of that).

- Phil Rushton

Nice to read this thread and see some of the strips from Giggle - I have fond memories of that comic, and remember the first few issues well with the free ballon etc (I think, like most folk of a certain age we all at least bought the first 3 issues of newe comics with the free gifts?!) - I liked the mix of humour and adventure strips and although I wasn't aware that it contained French/Belgian strips I knew it was different and loved Lucky Luke. I have a soft spot for a lot of Fleetways/IPCs shorter lived comics (Jag, Starlord, Thunder, Jet etc) some rot in them but also some really great stuff - Wasn't aware that Fleetway and Odhams were part of the same company , intersting stuff.

STARBOY wrote:Wasn't aware that Fleetway and Odhams were part of the same company , intersting stuff.

Here's the company history of IPC from their own website which you may find of interest:

http://www.ipcmedia.com/about/companyhistory/

Lew