I started the idea of the BCBA back in the 1990s. A numjber of family members of deceased artists contacted me after failing in attempts to get scanned samples of a father/grand fathers work. Companies were not helpful as it took up their time and, in many cases, the british publishers these people worked for went out of business during the late 1950s into the early 1970s.
It takes time tracking down good quality and confirmed artwork (in comic format) by specific creators but I did and families were quite happy to finally see the work for the first time.
We have also lost so much work because when the smaller companies went out of business most everything that could not bring in money was dumped. Gerald Swan really did not like his comics bhut he saw the gap in the market created by WW 2. I asked, as I assumed that I was buying art stock, what was available? Nothing. Pages were dumped or pulped and that was it. Original art was apparently also stolen.
What I had not expected was the ill feeling from people within what was left of British comics toward the archive idea. Not publishers but comic creators. I put up with name calling and worse just for attempting to preserve UK comic heritage. I should point out that I was not makjing money doing this but I was LOSING a lot!
The British Golden Age Comics Face Book page took over from the destruction of Yahoo groups. Rare or near impossible to find photos of creators and publishers I posted there. This blog as well as the loss making Golden Age books and Comic Bits are here to try to preserve our almost lost comic history at least until the Managing Editor Upstairs calls me in!
It is not money making. It is a project to save our heritage.
No comments:
Post a Comment