By various (the Amalgamated Press)
No ISBN
After decades when only American comics and nostalgia items were considered collectable, recent years have seen a resurgence of movement in home grown product. If you’re lucky enough to stumble across a vintage volume, I hope my words can convince you to acquire it. However, if I can also create a groundswell of publishers interest maybe a lot of magical material out there in print limbo will resurface in affordable new collections…
Great writing and art is rotting in boxes and attics or the archives of publishing houses, when it needs to be back in the hands of readers once again. On one level the tastes of the public have never been more catholic than today and a sampling of our popular heritage will always appeal to some part of the mass consumer base. Let’s make copyright owners aware that there’s money to be made from these slices of our childhood. You start the petition… I’ll certainly sign it.
TV Fun Annual 1959 was released by The Amalgamated Press just as the silver screen became a staple of every household, but as the comic it celebrated was gasping its last (dating was year-forward on these bumper, hard-backed premium editions so this edition would have been released in the Autumn of 1958).
The comic launched on 19th September 1953, presenting strips, stories and manufactured gossip and PR for a range of entertainment figures. The format had been a popular one since the times when British comics had featured silent film and radio stars, but as paper and print technology advanced and illustrators were replaced by photography only the comedic elements really kept pace.
TV Fun ran until September 1959, absorbing Jingles and Tip Top along the way before being swallowed by the rise of new style celebrity comics like Buster.
This volume doesn’t vary from the traditional format, with a preponderance of text stories, “messages†from such stars as Sally Barnes, Dickie Valentine, Pat Boone and others, plus a selection of puzzles, “Would You Believe It†fact-files, strip histories of motoring and aviation and party games on offer. There are also a number of lavish, fully painted plates inserted featuring Robinson Crusoe, The Dancing Highwayman and the latest technological marvel the Deltic – a Diesel-Electric locomotive.
The prose content comprises two to five page stories, some attributed to the likes of Ruby Murray and Winifed Atwell, recollections from Arthur Askey and Whacko! Headmaster Jimmy Edwards and there’s a ripping yarn from the Casebook of Inspector James and but The Isle of Fear, The Duel at Daybreak!, Jungle Magic, The Man from the Circus!, The Last Voyage, Hold-up in Snake Valley, The Ragged Millionaire and The Spy at the Inn are all standard, celeb-free historical, pioneering or seafaring adventures, westerns and other types of trauma-free yarns meant to thrill while encouraging a love of reading.
The strips are gentle comedies and gentler dramas starring Max Bygraves, Arthur Askey, Diana Decker (who you won’t recall as “the Cutie-Queen of the TV Screenâ€), Strongheart the Wonder Dog of the Woods, The Harty Family, Mick of the Mounties, Ferdy the Sly Old Fox, Our Jean, Mick and Montmorency, Sally Barnes, Derek Roy and his dog Nero, Jimmy Edwards – the Pride of St. Capers, Brownie the Pony, Sheikh Abdul and his servant Pepi, Shirley Eaton – the Modern Miss and Inventors Circle: a cornucopia of colour and monochrome tales from some of Britain’s best postwar cartoonists.
Some of the content might raise a few eyebrows these days. Popular fiction from a populist publisher will always embody some underlying assumptions unpalatable to modern readers, but good taste was always a watchword when producing work for children and a strip like Mississippi Max and his Axe, whilst visually racist, still had a black protagonist who was kind, helpful and above all not an idiot – a claim many white characters couldn’t make…
A more insidious problem was the institutionalised sexism through-out. All we can hope for is that the reader uses judgement and perspective when viewing or revisiting material this old. Just remember Thomas Jefferson kept slaves and it’s only been illegal to beat your wife since the 1980’s.
Before I go off on one let’s return to the subject at hand and say that despite all the restrictions and codicils this is a beautiful piece of children’s entertainment in a traditional mould with illustrations that would make any artist weep with envy.
© 1958 The Amalgamated Press.
Which I’m assuming is now part of IPC Ltd., so © 2009 IPC Ltd.