deathbringer
Post invalidated by first word being "uhhh"
Posts: 3497
Registered: 04-02 |
uhhhhhhhhhh
I collect old British comics. Well when i say "comics" i mostly mean thier forerunners, the Story-papers, which were mostly/entirely text stories with the odd illustration. Though picture-story comics did exist alongside them (Illustrated Chips etc) they were aimed at younger readers (mind you, compared to most current British-made comics they read like Shakespeare).
The ages i aim for are from approxamately 1892 (when Chums first appeared - it was one of the first 'high minded' and 'patriotic' story papers aimed at replacing the horror-themed 'penny dreadfuls' which had existed throughout the 19th century) to 1940 (the "graveyard week" saw many publications cancelled due to paper rationing).
The ones i mainly collect are:
Union Jack
Featuring stories of Sexton Blake - greatest fictional detective of them all! ...no, really
The Boys' Friend
Tabloid sized with tiny writing, lots to read in an issue! They dragged serials out for a long time though, so collecting complete serials is a nightmare, not many century-old tabloid sized papers printed on crap paper survive, funnily enough
Chums
Was aroundabout tabloid sized and published in weekly, monthly and yearly editions, the early yearly editions were basically just a year's worth of the weekly ones in a book - fascinating reading! I have the first volume from 1892-3. It was better in the early days as it had complete stories, serial instalments (including a brilliant story called The Iron Pirate which was also published in book form and is well worth tracking down for anybody who is into "steampunk" or things like that - a bonus being it was actually written in the era it's set in!). It also had comic strips - something for everyone!
The Captain
I started collecting this one by accident, because volumes of it are cheap! "Volumes" ran for 6 months, and i beleive it came out monthly and cost sixpence, the 6-monthly volumes came out as books (i have about half and half of the 'official' bound volumes and ones people made themselves). It has both serial and long complete stories which make good reading.
The Magnet / The Gem
Two different but similar papers, both usually featuring stories of 20,000 words or so written (every week! alongside everything else he had on the go, which was a lot) by Charles Hamilton, the twentieth cenury's Shakespeare. Did you know that Shakespeare was actually 'forgotten' for a long time after his death and then 're-discovered' later? I firmly beleive the same thing will happen with Charles Hamilton. Mind you George Orwell didn't like him... though his response to Orwell's criticism makes the writer of 1984 look like a bit of a whinging politically correct prick. I know who's stories i prefer anyway!
Oh yeah the stories in these papers were set in boarding schools with great characterisations and ongoing storylines that could at times be quite dramatic... remind you of anything?
Oh yeah, and they introduced Billy Bunter, who is a character many people have heard of vaguely but don't know much about.
I collect all sorts from the early 20th century, though. For instance i recently took delivery of half of 1938's worth of Girl's Crystal. Above my head sit 1900-1 volumes of Boys of Our Empire alongside 1950's volumes of The Wizard (containing V for Vengeance, which Alan Moore ripped off, tacking on some gayness and anti-thatcherite predictableness) and various yearly volumes of Chatterbox, which was aimed at younger readers and had one or two long serials that ran over a year in addition to shorter stories, interesting articles and poems.
Accross the room there's also many 1960's-90's adventure comic annuals such as Victor, Hotspur, Action, Hurricane and the like which i pick up cheap when i can find them. These are alongside older text-based annuals from publications such as Champion, The Skipper, Schoolgirl's Own... There's more reading in the text-story ones!
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03-05-10 05:01 
