By many & various (the Amalgamated Press)
No ISBN
These materials were created long ago in a different society for a very different audience. As such much material is inadvertently funny, blatantly racist and/or sexist and pretty much guaranteed to offend somebody sooner or later. Think of it as having to talk to your grandparents about “back when everything was better”…
If you don’t think you can tolerate – let alone enjoy – what’s being discussed here, maybe it’s not the book you need today. Why not look at something else or play a game instead?
This is probably the most controversial and potentially distressing book I’ll review this year – so why have I?
There’s a long-cherished but perhaps rather dangerous idea opining that beauty is greater than truth and the comics work in this book is of an astoundingly high quality. The problem is that it’s frequently applied in support of unchallenged assumptions about race, gender, class and culture.
These splendidly entertaining stories, strips, puzzles. poems and jokes come from a time and place where everything was fine and as it should be – as long as you were white, comfortably well off and preferably male…
Normally I review graphic novels and comics collections with a view to readers and potential purchasers becoming fans of the picture-strip medium beyond their usual comfort zones. Here though, I’m cautiously applying modern critical sensibilities to once ubiquitous items that shaped generations. On one level, an entire genre of pictorial edification seems forever lost: permanently removed from the contemporary cultural scene. With material like this though, I can’t honestly say whether that’s a good thing or not…
If you’re lucky enough to stumble across a copy or any similarly-vintage volume, I hope my words convince you look for yourselves. I’m always on my high and wide horse about the paucity of classic vintage strips, stories and comics but I think we need to create an academic benchmark in the entertainment ether for cases like this one.
Material available to the young and older readers of the 21st century will never be of this nature again, but that doesn’t mean it should be shoved aside and forgotten. This sort of stuff shaped generations and it needs to be studied in context.
These are slices extracted from our communal childhood, and must not be swept away or covered up – like Japan’s removal of its role in WWII ( apparently excised from the country’s school history texts) or our own government’s sly massaging of history and culture to wash away common folk, social inequity, and the accomplishments of women, the labour and union movements…
Playbox Annual 1955 was released by The Amalgamated Press in 1954 (dating was year-forward on such bumper, hard-backed premium editions so the book would have been released in the Autumn intended as a Christmas staple). For nursery kids and their parents or adult guardians, radio, comics and being outside in the fresh air were the order of the day. Television was still in its infancy. DC Thomson’s exuberant and anarchic stable of titles were the favourites of older children, but their fare for toddlers was all but indistinguishable from that of other publishers.
Far less open to change or innovation, Alfred Harmsworth’s AP was the most prolific purveyor of children’s papers, with a pedigree stretching back to the end of the 19th century and a stranglehold on syndicated and licensed characters (especially screen and radio stars) which kept well-intentioned, nostalgic parents coming back for more…
Playbox was AP’s Jewel in the Crown. It had launched – prior to the company’s official foundation – on 19th October 1898, running until 1909 with illustrators and writers such as Julius Stafford Baker, Stavert Johnstone Cash, Mabel F. Taylor and Mabel Lucie Atwell as regular contributors. Favourite features endured through merger and amalgamations (I guess the clue was in the name) until a second volume appeared on St. Valentine’s Day 1925.
It was a rebranding and relaunch of Jungle Jinks and this iteration lasted until 11th June 1955, whereupon it again morphed into a more contemporary title by merging with Jack and Jill.
For much of that second life, Playbox benefitted from the cachet of undisputed UK comics superstar Tiger Tim and his chums The Bruin Boys – Bobby Bruin, Jumbo Elephant, Willie Ostrich, Georgie Giraffe, Jacko Monkey, Joey Parrot, Porkyboy Pig and Fido Pup – who spent their days learning to be civilised at Mrs Bruin’s Boarding School. The feature was originally rendered by Stafford Baker, but eventually became a multi-artist enterprise encompassing many of the country’s greatest artists.
Tim had first appeared in Harmsworth’s Daily Mirror in 1904, graduating in 1909 to The World and His Wife and its weekly children’s supplement – Playbox. The gang also appeared in the Rainbow weekly colour comic (from February 1914) with Tim as cover feature until its demise in 1956.
In 1919, Tiger Tim’s Weekly (nee Tales) launched, augmented by its own annual from 1921 (first one dated 1922 – got it now?). At a time when merchandising deals for children’s stuff were in their infancy, the characters were so popular that Britains – a toy soldier manufacturer – launched a line of lead figures to sell alongside their more militaristic and farm animal fare.
In this twilight years album – the 47th yearly release – the line-up as ever includes not only anthropomorphic Tim and Co. but also general features (prose and strip), fact pieces and plenty of puzzles and games to keep the nippers engrossed – and quiet – for hours…
Once again: when this book was released, our views of other races and cultures ranged from patronisingly parochial to outrageously insular to smugly intolerable and just unforgivable. As with every aspect of British – Hell, all “White Culture” – there was an implicit assumption of racial superiority – notwithstanding the fact that every empire is built on multi-nationality; and even within living memory WWII could not have been won by white warriors alone.
Which brings us back to ethnic stereotyping. All I can say is what I always do: those times were so different. Mercifully, the best of us have moved beyond the obvious institutionalised iniquities of casual racism and sexism and are much more tolerant today (unless you’re obese, gay, gender-nonconforming, trans, vegan, liberal, or childfree and happy about it). If antiquated attitudes and caricaturing offends you, don’t read this or any old comics – it’s your choice, but perhaps you shouldn’t condemn just on my or anybody else’s say-so without seeing what’s here…
Moreover, class and regional differences underpinning this entire era are far more insidious and egregious – just look at Sexton Blake and his assistant Tinker or upper middle-class, highly educated Dan Dare and his canny, competent but inescapably comedic “Ee baih gum” sidekick Digby…
I fear historic portrayals and inclusions of other races have always and will always be controversial and potentially offensive from our elevated standpoint, and we have mostly moved on since those pitifully ignorant times. It’s not really even an excuse to say, at least in our post-war comics, that baddies were mostly our kind and all those differently-hued cultures were victims: generally friendly, noble savages not trying to eat us…
Nor will this diversion ameliorate the shock of one particular illustrated story at the back of this particular book: I’m saying nothing further now, but By Crikey you’ll know what and why when we get to it…
This cosy, royalty-rich annual (so, so many kings and princesses!) begins in traditional manner: following stunning 2-colour frontispiece Wibblewobble Town (by Tom Wilkinson?) we open with western prose adventure ‘Cowboy Courage’ as young Cowboy Dan come to the rescue of “redskin maid” Wild Rose and her pony White Cloud in a beautifully limned monochrome yarn, before Stavert Johnstone Cash wishes ‘A Merry Christmas to All’ in a frenetic tableau starring cat clan the Fluffkins.
Via illustrated prose, a genteel dispute between King Nosegay and Wizard Wobble is settled on ‘The Giant Haystack’ before the Bruin Boys merge doggerel and comic strip in cooking clash ‘“Plop!” Goes the Pancake’ (probably drawn by Herbert Foxwell) whilst text tail (!) ‘The New Puppy’ reveals how a big baby mutt learns to get along with aging tabby cat Montmorency…
‘Sky-High for Treasure’ combines strip and verse as two lads hunt pirate treasure (by Mabel Atwell?) whilst we resort to prose for ‘The Princess with the Purple Hair’ before returning to red & black tones for Cowell’s squirrelly tableau ‘The Tickletails are on the Move’ and Hugh McNeill’s fairy forest romp ‘Ring A-Ding Ding!’, all supplemented by Cash’s poetic pinup ‘Mow-Pram Rides’ and an animal inspired ‘Hamper of Jokes’.
Many inclusions are traditional “block-&-pic” (a progression of panel drawings accompanied by a paragraph of typeset words), such as McNeill’s ‘Two Boys in a Boat’, but ‘Home by Howdah’ is a modern comic strip story in all but content.
Fairy tale wonders and staggeringly lovely art masking and reinforcing so many poisonous attitudes about privilege, class and race are all out in force here, as the worst of “blackface minstrel” shows manifests as a bunch of jolly “picaninnies” who have to find an animal alternative to a crashed motor car…
Prose and monochrome return in ‘Peter to the Rescue!’ as a cowardly boy finally finds the motivation to be a hero and ‘Hair-Raising’ offers tonsorial tips for urbane birds before Tammy Twinkle shares a forest folk day out in text treat ‘Off to the Sea’, after which McNeill rolls out some seasonal chuckles in ‘Here’s Santa Smiler’…
Block-&-pic thriller ‘Robin Hood’s Pupil’ finds young John and his sister Catherine seized by Normans before devising a way to summon the immortal hero and – following more jokes in ‘Breezy ‘Bus-Stop Chatter’ – eerie prose yarn ‘Friendly Snowmen’ sees some seasonal wanderers lending a frosty helping hand to a lad who wants to buy his ailing little brother some sweets…
‘Laugh with Chic’ (McNeill) segues into puzzle page ‘A Happy Holiday’ and more Bruin Boy larks in ‘Topsy-Turvy Trick’ before Dick and Pusskins (Whittington and his animal asset) turn a job search into a tobogganing treat in ‘Icy Trip’ whilst prose parable ‘The Dragons’ Picnic’ sees a scaly family pay their regal respects and save a king in distress…
More casually racist cartoon virtue signalling sees a friendly white store owner help Little Raven and his father Chief White Wing when they desperately need a surfeit of pelts to buy off “Blackfeet” raiders. All the generous ‘Paleface Friends’ get in return is the useless gold clogging up the natives’ river…
A burst of activity is encouraged by ‘Trick Fun’ and ‘River Race’ before text thriller ‘Air Rescue’ sees housebound Linda play a big part in saving a sinking yachtsman, whilst ‘Reg and Ron’ endure scholastic shocks in strip form prior to more puzzles in ‘Strangers Around’ and ‘Games for Your Party’.
A burst of black and orange heralds Cash’s Fluffkins tableau ‘Sports day’ and Foxwell’s Bruin Boy strip ‘Christmas Snowball and Fun for All’ before we’re back in the world of appalled sensibilities with prose fantasy ‘Ching Chung’s Pets’, after which McNeill charms again in kiddies’ seaside adventure ‘Off for a Float in Chic’s Paddle-Boat’…
Tableau ‘The Woolly Boys’ Train-Ride’ closes the colour section before prose treat ‘Farmer’s Boys’ finds two wilful animal slackers learning the value and rewards of hard work, and illustrated verse ‘Lazy Trains’ brings us to a text tract of boarding school mice enjoying illicit ‘Cheese Pie for Supper’ and illustrated instructions on how to cast ‘Shadow Pictures’.
Apprentice Val works for ‘Grundvik the Toy-maker’ and foils a robbery in this text thriller in advance of pictorial epigram ‘The Buntings’ Dress Parade’ and more Bruin Boy hijinks in ‘Wigwam Surprises’, after which ‘Playbox Theatre’ details how to make a play at home… Another ‘Puzzle Page’ leads to historical adventure as a cabin boy Bob unearths ‘The Pirates Treasure’ and Chic invites ‘Too Many to Tea’. That’s just as well because you’ll need a bracing beverage to get past this year’s visit to (African? Caribbean? Alabamian?) favourite vacation spot and the ‘Darkietown Yacht Race’. I have words but I’m not going to use them…
Dickensian Victoriana sees two vagrant lads clean a widow’s chimney and encounter ‘Lucky Smoke’ and rich rewards after which city kids have ‘Country Fun’ in a prose tale sporting beautiful and uncredited silhouette illustration, prior to cartoon gag ‘A S’talking Stork Surprises Sam’ segues into cheeky kitten ‘Flips’ shares his diary and ‘Adrift on Ice’ shows and prose the valour of two kids in the arctic looking for food for their mother…
What passed for age-appropriate children’s content back then might raise a few eyebrows these days but we’re back on solid ground when ‘Percy Pump’s Pranks’ in prose bring the festivities to a close, leaving only room for a ‘Playbox ad’, editorial comment in ‘My Letter to You’ and a back cover adorned with advertorial ‘Cadburys Puzzle Picture’…
Popular fiction from a populist publisher will always embody some underlying assumptions unpalatable to some modern readers, but good taste by contemporary standards was always a watchword when producing work for younger children. Some interactions between white children and other races is a little utopian, perhaps, but more insidious problems arise from the accepted class-structures in many stories and the woefully petrified sexism displayed throughout.
None of this detracts one jot from the sheer creative power of the artists involved, and perhaps the best we can hope for is that readers use judgement and perspective when viewing or revisiting material this old. Remember, Thomas Jefferson may have kept slaves, but Britain’s Royal Family, our museums and educational institutions all benefitted hugely from the trade; it’s only been illegal to beat your wife since the 1970’s (The Domestic Violence and Matrimonial Proceedings Act 1976), and even today and far too often people who die in police custody apparently only have themselves to blame…
So before I go off on another one or get put on another government watch list, let’s return to the subject at hand and say that despite all the restrictions and codicils this is in many ways a beautiful piece of children’s art in the time-honoured fashion of Enid Blyton, Dodie Smith and Arthur Ransome, with lovely illustrations that would make any artist weep with envy.
© 1955 The Amalgamated Press.