Two New Acquisitions (1941 and 1949)

 Two new acquisitions arrived today: The Hotspur Book For Boys (1941) and The Hotspur Book For Boys (1949). For their age they are in great condition and here is the silliness of Ebay sellers: the two books cost me less than some Dandy and Beano Annuals from the 2000s!

Above the 1949 book with the Iron Teacher on its cover and then the 1941  cover which is so full of action of the comical kind and drawn in a style I have always liked.

Below are the back covers for the 1949 book and then the 1941 book.

The other thing you will notice is that the 1941 book is that the 1941 book is 1.5 inches (3.5 cms) thick while the 1949 book is almost .75 inches or just under 2 cms thick. I know what some of you are thinking; there was a World War going on (as usual) and paper rationing was not so bad at the start so more pages and as paper rationing did not stop until the early 1960s the 1949 book had less pages.  Wrong.

Each book has 126pp (talk about time and relative dimensions in space!). The reason that the 1941 book is thicker is because the pages are not the usual slim pages but card. You see it in a lot of books of the period and it was probably the cheapest and best available paper stock at the time although some pre-war annuals/albums/books had thick paper pages.

The 1941 book was given to Willie Rich by Auntie Lily for "X Mas 1940" the 1949 book was the property of Cherry Gail Goad of Shirley "nr Birmingham". I like to see these things as it tells you someone did own them and you (well I do) wonder whether those kids who had the books at the start of the War made it through the period safely.

These books are all text with various black and white and colour illustrations throughout and no stripwork as The Hotspur was at that time an illustrated boys story paper and concentrating mainly on sport and the odd adventure story later on.  

They are guaranteed 100% to put anyone who is "Woke" into intensive care for a full month. Boys getting the cane as punishment, dafty "natives" causing problems and the type of humour that you are not allowed to even think about these days. Historical perspective and "what we were like in the past" is strictly not allowed .

I am NOT going to make any "peck" or "pecker" jokes. Sometimes the pupils took their revenge on "the Head" or a teacher to teach him a lesson.  Here the lads have dressed up in hoods and gowns and bent a teacher over a desk while another prepares to "give him a damn good thrashing".  There is all kinds of wrong and kink in this...if you are a reactionary with a dirty mind.

The above illustration ought to help ease the Woke breathing a little. This colour illustration shows that the boys were NOT wearing white hoods and gowns and going all KKK on us.

Then we have....OMG! No doubt body image campaigners are going to have to eat an extra doughnut to deal with this one -especially as they would be outraged by the image and not really have to read the story for an explanation. I could trend on Twitter!

Right, another one of the fine colour illustrations and this time outrage because he struck the out-stretched hand "of the Hindu".  Firstly, at the time there was no separate India, Pakistan or Bangladesh so it cannot be seen as "racist" against any one country. The man was an Hindu. So story context is important.

So how about 1949's Book? Well, firstly, the colour work was all gone barring the frontispiece but there were still the well drawn illustrations to break up all of the text. These really were books bought to get kids reading.

The football illustration looks nice but I love the black and white one which has the comedy as well as all the body movements drawn so well. Artists KNEW how to draw back then!

WHACKO! One thing consistent in the boys papers right up to comics of the 1980s is the number of ways boys tried to thwart getting the cane or slipper across the backside -books, magazines, pillows and even armour plating! 

 

Above another "OMFG!" moment for the "sensitive" -another humorous story surrounding a boy with rather bad eye sight. Mr Magoo and Colonel Blink are better well known but this genre of story ran in TV, movies, comics, cartoons and much more even up to recent times (any modern examples receiving utter outrage in response!

Above you will see why scanning things just are not a thing for me! However, that Iron Teacher illustration needed to ne included. This was before Thomson re-booted the character to become more R2D2 after the Star Wars movie.

So much comic book and boys (and girls) papers history is forgotten or lost because of ignorance and modern trendiness. These books are fun and are well worth a read but not investment potential so remember that and do not get conned!

Merry & Bright

 I know these appeals are always never responded to but...

Does anyone have copies of the UK Merry and Bright comic from the 1930s? Just scans as there are 1930s stories I am looking for.

email me at blacktowercg@hotmail.com with subject header Merry & Bright

THANKS

Black Tower Gold -All The Links You Will Need!

The one thing that I have found an utter disappointment is the lack of interest in the reprint books amongst "British Golden Age comic fans". Sales of the 500+pp collection since first published over a decade ago -4 copies. The smaller self contained volumes -zero. No joke: not a single copy has sold despite all the (as I grew to know) false "Oh, sounds great -I'll be buying that one!" and so on and so forth.

What I did was send a couple of the single volumes plus a copy of the Collection (which is all of the books under one cover) to two long time British Golden Age comics collectors. I waited and began to think of the likely negatives I would hear back. That, it seems, was just my paranoia.

Both men loved the single volumes. Both described the collected book as "Utterly mind-blowing" and "I am speechless" -one offered to pay for the book but as they were gifts that was rejected outright. There were characters and strips both men had never heard of or had heard of but never seen a printed version. One pointed out that a proper price for the collected book would be £50 -"That would still be £200 cheaper than if they tried to buy some of the actual very rare comics!"

"Back From The Dead I have seen an original copy of and the quality is awful due to war time printing. Every scan or partial scan I've seen all have the same flaws and some parts hardly readable -the full book reprinted is a gift from Heaven!"

Neither person believed that the books were not selling.

The intention was to remove the books from sale and just keep them private for my own use but, I got persuaded to give it a final go. So, as things will be changing once the postal strike is over I thought "Why not?"

Do I expect people to start buying? No. But I have to try so here are the links.

Why are you still here? Go buy and make me rich (like that'll happen!)

A4

B&W

94 pages

Price: £8.00 (excl. VAT)Prints in 3-5 business days

http://www.lulu.com/shop/terry-hooper-scharf/black-tower-british-gold-collection-1/paperback/product-12183527.html

For the first time in 60 years some of the lost gems of the British Golden Age of Comics are reprinted!

Scanned and cleaned to the best standard possible -see The Phantom Raider, Ace Hart, Secrets Of The Super Sargasso Sea, Phantom Maid, Electrogirl, Skybolt Kid, Wonder Boy, Dene Vernon, Professor Atom and many, many others!

Its fun and action all the way -The British Golden Age shines through!

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A4
Paperback
B&W
68 pp

Price: £8.00 (excl. VAT)Prints in 3-5 business days

http://www.lulu.com/shop/terry-hooper-scharf/black-tower-british-gold-collection-2/paperback/product-12183569.html

The second collection of British 1940s comic strips featuring Maxwell The Mighty, Slicksure, Iron Boy,Alfie, Ace Hart and more.

Featuring the work of Golden Age Greats Alf Farningham and Harry Banger.

Specifically designed to feature more humour than the previous volume this should be a treat for all comic collectors.

Reprinting the full content of The Meteor and The Rocket Comics from 1948.

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A4
Paperback
B&W
68 pages

Price: £8.00 (excl. VAT)Prints in 3-5 business days

http://www.lulu.com/shop/terry-hooper-scharf/black-tower-british-gold-collection-3/paperback/product-12183586.html

This is the third volume in Black Tower Comics’ collection of Golden Age British comic strips that have not seen print for 50-60 years!

Included in this volume is a bumper crop of Ace Hart:The Atom Man strips and an article on the character.

A complete 1949 comic in Smugglers Creek; Denis Gifford’s Search For The Secret City and science fiction legend Bryan Berry’s rendition of Kid Carter -Teenage Tec! A must for all comic collectors and historians.

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A4
Paperback
B&W
86 pages

Price: £8.00 (excl. VAT)Prints in 3-5 business days

http://www.lulu.com/shop/terry-hooper-scharf/uk-gold-collection-4/paperback/product-12184087.html

The fourth volume of this series features some great finds of the lost era of British comics:

Ace Hart The Atom Man, Captain Comet -Space Ranger, TNT Tom, Clive Lynn -Space Reporter, Superstooge, "The White Gorilla", Atomic Tuffy, Cast Iron Chris, Sigord.....

and many others!

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A4

Paperback

B&W

68pp

Price: £8.00 (excl. VAT)Prints in 3-5 business days

http://www.lulu.com/shop/terry-hooper-scharf/black-tower-gold-5back-from-the-dead/paperback/product-12184231.html

William McCail’s 1940 classic is reprinted for the first time in 80 years.

If you are into British Golden Age comics or early comics in general this is for you.

Robert Lovett rises from the dead and finds he has some startling powers: deaths follow, as does a Scotland Yard detective determined to track down the mysterious killer!

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A4
Paperback
B&W
35 pages

Price: £5.00 (excl. VAT)Prints in 3-5 business days

http://www.lulu.com/shop/terry-hooper-scharf/black-tower-gold-6/paperback/product-16249586.html

Yes! Now at issue 6 and bringing you more lost strips of the British Golden Age of Comics.There's a collection of strips featuring non other than TNT Tom and one of the weirdest UKGA characters -the Iron Boy.

Ever heard of Ingy Roob? Or his pet "Stretchy"? You will have if you read this issue.How about Dennis M. Readers Cat Girl?

Two other UK comics are reprinted in full, both from 1946 and the only issues ever published:Lucky Dice and The Fudge.

Black Tower -keeping UK comics history alive!

And if you want all of the above in one huge volume then....

A4
Paperback
B&W
405 pages

Price: £25.00 (excl. VAT)Prints in 3-5 business days

http://www.lulu.com/shop/terry-hooper-scharf/the-ultimate-british-comics-gold-collection/paperback/product-22041282.html

Combining volumes 1-6 (still available as individual issues but that works out far more expensive) of the BT Golden Age British Comics Collections (minus adverts) this is the ultimate for any Golden Age collector or historian or just plain comic lover.

Features....Ace HartTNT TomElectrogirl Wonderman The Phantom RaiderCaptain Comet Acro MaidPhantom MaidDene VernonThe Iron BoyThe Boy FishProfessor AtomThe TornadoPowermanWonder BoySlicksureMasterman Dane JerrusAlfieTiny TodMaxwell The Mighty Back From The DeadZeno At The Earth's CoreColonel MastiffAlly SloperSuper InjunSuper Porker  (oo-er, no, Madam, ooh),Tiger ManKing Of The CloudsCaptain Comet 

and MANY others!

Plus text features defining The Ages OF British Comics (Platignum, Gold, Silver), the artist William A. Ward and more.

If you knew nothing about British comics of the Platinum, Golden and Silver Ages then once you buy and read this book you'll be a goddam omic intellectual dinosaur! Yipes!

All in that beautiful Iron Warrior cover exclusively drawn for Black Tower by that meta-gargantuoso talented Ben R. Dilworth!

I sold my family to be able to get this book out! Help me buy them back by purchasing your very own 

whizz-o copy today!

A Quick Note

 The British Golden Age of Comics Face Book page has been paused indefinitely. The reason for this was simple;I posted and posted, uploaded lots of images and evryone was aware of how to get hold of the reprint books and...

Very few if any responses. You assume that if people are fans or interested in a certain period or characters then they might ask questions or comment. Nope.

Remember the old Yahoo group had thousands of imges and hundreds of files and it was pretty much dead.

I am giving this blog a go until July at which time if its just me posting and no one bothering (or those certain bloggers stealing original work) then this also goes. Life's too short and I am quite happy to keep al the info in my head. Anything -such as the discovery of a Golden Age female hero- will go into publications. Decades of freebies and no credits are stopping.

"That is not possible" It Is

 

I was asked in an interview for a German comics magazine why I stopped publishing British Golden Age reprints?

Well, there are six volumes as well as the huge collected edition and in ten years the collected edition has sold 3 copies while the single volumes....

NOT ONE SINGLE COPY.

Each book can take months to produce and for them to just sit in internet limbo while all the 'fans' bemoan the fact that these comics and characters have vanished...well, you work it out.

I have a huge collection of 1940s comic albums/annuals and comics and they are not being scanned or reprinted.

I enjoy them myself and there is no fandom -you know those people who all said they would be buying copies when I published?

The interviewer did not believe me and thought I was trying to drum up sales so I showed him the online store dashboard and sales report. "That cannot be possible" he said.

It is.

Lost Heroine Found and Comic Bits The Place To Find Them!

Although I do read any old boks and annuals/albums I receive before adding them to my already overweighted shelves

The first reason I check is to make sure no pages are missing and that there is no other damage that needs tending to first. Also...I love reading them!

The second reason is to see whether there are any characters I am unfamiliar with. My Vault of the Lost (that sounds cool...but I'm only referring to a section of my brain so...) has a stack of characters that no one else appears to know or care about (until I find them and then the Copy and Paste crew goes to work). There are a good few instances of my stumbling across a character not mentioned anywhere. Forgotten and as soon as I "show and tell" on the blog it is all grabbed and the purloiners start with their lies on how 'they' discovered this "lost gem". They know who they are as they check into CBO daily.

Comic Bits the Journal of British Diamond, Gold and early Silver ages comics as well as Penny Dreadfuls has featured some discoveries in its first two issues and issues 3 and 4 just need editing to make them presentable if I decide to publish them. In future any new discoveries will either be presented in Comic Bits or through a Black Tower publication as I am no longer in the mood for gving everything away after months of hard work.

Which brings us to the announcement I made..two weeks ago? Finding two more forgotten characters -female characters. Well, one turns out to be a slightly altered U.S. reprint that did make their way into some UK comics. At th time they were published (late 1940s) some new artists were trying to develop a more slick American style while working for Gerald Swan. This creates confusion unless you know what to look for.

It took a day but I found the original American comic strip and was able to dismiss it.

The second one, however, was British and was a superheroine (yeah, I wrote "heroine" -live with it). It seems to be a one off strip as I have almost a full collection of the publisher's annuals and even checked some comic issues -nothing. 

Name? Who drew it? Sample art?

Well, if you are really that interested you will need to wait for either Comic Bits or another publication to see the full strip and info.I have been giving away everything on CBO since 1997 and that is without any support to keep the work going so if you are interested then you pay.

Keep those eyes open!

https://www.lulu.com/en/en/shop/terry-hooper/comic-bits-no-1/paperback/product-kjgvzy.html?page=1&pageSize=4

Another Lost Silver Age Heroine Discovered

 

Oh yes. A new book just arrived today and I was expecting more illustrated text stories but instead it is a mix of text and comic sets (strips).

There are two female characters that I have never heard of before and I am going to be writing a post on these in the next week or so (I hope).

Nothing stays lost forever -not even old British characters!

The Mystery of Madame Foretell

 

Glynn Protheroe created Madame Foretell -"Our Fatheaded Fortune Teller" for Gerald Swan and her page was basically a series of head-to-head gags. Pretty one-dimensional and for a long time I just put her aside and went with the original pages. However, I was building up a back story for the character in my mind.

In The Green Skies, Vol. II part 3 we see Madame Foretell appear out of nowhere to warn two characters of the coming danger before a transportation spell pulls her back home to "The Wizardry" in Sussex. There she is met by an old turban-wearing fellow she refers to as "Gally".

"Gally" is in fact a Second Level sorceror whom Fanshawe the Reality Check-Controller calls by the name of Gagamulasha. In fact earlier Gagamulasha revealed that Madame Foretell's first name is Glynnis. Gagamulasha and Glynnis are married (though don't ask me which church or sect).

We learn that Madame Foretell can use "magic" but to what extent we do not know though she is left behind when Gagamulasha leaves for the final confrontation at Arrana Comare (Plain of Tears) where only powerful members of the mystical community join the Reality Check Controllers. What happens after that.....

At some point later in her life Madame Foretell met the sorceror and that is a story for another comic!

But how did she end up for a period as some 'batty' (not all there) fortune-teller? 

It was a question I was developing when a package arrived from Japan. After a lot of bowing and apologising for being unworthy the postman gave me the package. I opened up the envelope to see that Ben Dilworth had already produced some "Young Madame Foretell" strips and I thought "go with it".

So we now see Foretell when she was younger, possibly in th eerly 1930s -that raises other questions since she has obviously not changed since the Swan era (1940s/1950s) and 2021 and that is another story to tell (yes, there is one). It is this younger period that I hope to expand on in future.

Madame Foretell was literally a throw-away gag page and although I do not believe in "re-booting" characters I do believe in filling in their past and what made them into the people they became.

Keep popping by as you never know when something might appear. Looking into the future I can tell you it will not be tomorrow.