Here’s a page offering links to our main reference pages. This doesn’t include links to our many creator interviews, most posted as news items.
Facts and Figures
I get a lot of questions from students in the UK and further afield about the British comics industry, so I’m posting some of my replies to often asked questions on this page. I hope it’s useful — but if there’s anything that isn’t covered please feel free to ask me!
• Classic British Comics: Who Owns What?
Over the years, a number of companies have purchased rights to various comic brands and characters, often prompting questions about whether that company will start publishing collections of characters they don’t own on social media.
This list, based where possible on information supplied by the companies listed, attempts to identify the comics key companies own, and is largely focused on “classic” brands rather than ongoing titles such as 2000AD, Beano, Commando and The Phoenix.
We hope it answers many of the questions British comic fans may have about who publishes what. Where there is an official web site, fan web site or page about a particular title, we plan to include links to them.
A British Comic Research Reference Guide by Colin Noble
• UK Comic and Children’s Magazine Sales
A Google document compiled by downthetubes of comic sales in the UK based on ABC-reported titles, from 2006 onwards. Not all comics are ABC registered
• British Comics: “The Good Old Days” Sales Figures
A snapshot of the sales of some of the best comic titles of the period
• British TV-related Comic Strips
While many American TV- and film-related comic strips are well documented, often on individual sites, there aren’t as many sites dedicated to individual British comics of the same nature. This page is an attempt to point researchers in useful directions as, so far as we know, there isn’t as yet a dedicated central resource.
“Bessie Bunter”. “The Four Marys”. “Ella on Easy Street”. “Moonchild”. If you don’t recognise these strips, then the chances are you’ve never picked up a British girls’ comic. Which, according to their creators, is a darn shame, because titles like Bunty, Tammy and Misty featured some of the best comics stories ever written for the traditional weeklies.
• Theatre Productions Based on British Comics
All theatre productions featured, be they a play or a musical, are based on a character or series originated in a British comic strip, whether it was in a newspaper or a comic, or a text story from one of the story papers.
British Comics – Special Guides
• Action: The Sevenpenny Nightmare
Presented here on downthetubes, with the full permission of Moose Harris, creator of the original Sevenpenny Nightmare site (now defunct and the domain under a different ownership), is his fascinating history of Fleetway’s fondly-remembered Action comic, going behind the scenes on the origins of all its strips, including Hook Jaw, Dredger and more.
British Comic Characters and Strips – Special Guides
The semi-official Charley’s War micro site, originally established by the late Neil Emery, which helped generate enough renewed interest in the World War One comic strip by Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun to persuade Titan Books to reprint it. This micro site includes interviews with creators Pat Mills and the late Joe Colquhoun, a Charley’s War: Stripography, and more
• Dan Dare
The downthetubes introduction to Dan Dare, by Ian Wheeler, with additional information and links complied by John Freeman with thanks to Jeremy Briggs and Richard Sheaf.
This section includes a guide to Dan Dare Books, including collections of the strip, a guide to the Radio Luxembourg “Dan Dare” radio show, including a rare surviving recording (and an Episode Guide, too), a growing guide to the “Lost” ATV Dan Dare TV Show, a guide to Dan Dare’s Friends and Enemies, an interview with David Motton, one of Dan Dare’s early writers, a guide to the origins of the Dan Dare-inspired comic zine, Spaceship Away, and Five Items of Iconic Merchandise!
• Garth | Garth – Strip Checklist – Part One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight (Reprints)
Background, links and a checklist of the Garth newspaper strips first published in the Daily Mirror. Compiled with indispensable help from Phil Harbottle, who has provided a number of synopses to the early adventures, used as part of our series checklist
First appearing in Fleetway’s Smash in “The Incredible Adventures of Janus Stark“, then joining the line-up of Valiant when the two titles merged, Janus Stark is a Victorian master escapologist with bones like rubber, able to contort in unbelievable ways and get through the smallest spaces or out of the tightest bindings.
Kit Carson – a real life American frontiersman who has enjoyed several comic incarnations across the globe, including Britain – had his own digest in Australia in 1949, whose success was partly what inspired AP to start digest comics in the UK in 1950.
Mike Gent charts the history of one of Britain’s most popular football comics characters…
British Comic Titles
• Current Titles List
Information always welcome
• British TV-Related Comic Strips
While many American TV- and film-related comic strips are well documented, often on individual sites, there aren’t as many sites dedicated to individual British comics of the same nature.
This page is an attempt to point researchers in useful directions as, so far as we know, there isn’t as yet a dedicated central resource.
• Commando
Published by DC Thomson, Commando For Action and Adventure is Britain’s longest serving war comic, publishing stories of action and adventure since 1961. These stories, with their mixture of excitement, danger and courage under fire, and the dynamic artwork that accompanies them, have won Commando a loyal readership over the decades.
This section includes a guide to Commando Collections, the late Colin Noble’s guide to The Best Issues of the 1960s, and interviews with former editors, and more
Mike Gent takes a trip back to the 1970s and remembers just one of many IPC humour titles…
• The DFC – An Interview with “The DFC” publisher David Fickling
In 2008, David Fickling Books and Random House launched The DFC, a new weekly comic in the UK, the first of its kind in terms of the levels of originated, new characters for many years. The work that went into this comic helped shape The Phoenix, still published today
• Marvel UK’s “Genesis 92” Project: Looking Back at What Might Have Been
A guide to Paul Neary’s revitalisation of the Marvel UK line and details of many projects that were planned when the company imploded in the mid 1990s.
• Marvel UK Re-Born: Revolutionary War Checklist
A guide to the eight issue limited series featuring Marvel UK characters, published in 2014.
• British Comic Companion: Spike
A feature by Jeremy Briggs
• Starblazer: Blazing through the Secrecy
The feature by Jeremy Briggs that kickstarted our wider coverage of DC Thomson’s SF digest title, which includes an interview with editor Bill McLouglin, Ray Aspden’s feature on writing for the title, and a feature by Starblazer writer Mike Chinn
Starblazer Checklist – Issues 1 – 75 | Issues 76 – 150 | Issues 151 – 200 | Issues 201 – 250 | Issues 251 – 281 | Starblazer Abroad
• Calling Warlord Agents! An Interview with DC Thomson’s Bill Graham
British Comic Reference
We feature a lot of web sites dedicated to specific British comics and the industry in our links section. But we also have some specific items on useful organisations
• The All Devon Comic Collectors Club
The desire of elder members to see old newspaper strips again, linked with the poor quality of the yellowing photocopies that were doing the rounds, provided the impetus for the club to decide to track down and reprint ‘lost’ Garth strips. A search for other British titles naturally followed; Romeo Brown,Paul Temple etc. and is very much ongoing.
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