One evening in late September 1976, a large group of editorial staff gathered in IPC’s offices in London to watch the TV programme Nationwide. John Sanders was to be interviewed by Frank Bough about the affair. Without warning, Bough set aside virtually all the questions he had told Sanders he would ask, and attacked Action.

John Sanders defended the comic courageously, determined it should survive. But the ground was about to be cut from under his feet. For a while Sanders defended Action, but a concatenation of forces was making his position impossible. First, there was the continuing annoyance within the boys’ comics department at IPC that they had been circumvented over both Battle and Action. The Head of the Department, Jack LeGrand, was a man of some influence, with friends on the Board of IPC. Persistently I have been told that LeGrand “wanted Action to fail”. Second, among the protestors to complain about the comic was a strong contingent from the newly re-emergent Christian evangelical movement, some of whom were also members of the Responsible Society, which was especially active in the West Midlands, It was said to me that on the Board of Reed International, then parent company of IPC, there was at least one man with a very strong moral and religious bent. This gave the moralism of Action’s critics a voice on the inside. Looking at Action, many members of Reed’s and IPC’s Boards declared it to be “unsuitable for the image of IPC”.

But all these influences would have come to nothing, I suspect, but for one more. Among the bodies which contacted IPC to express concern, were the two main distributors John Menzies, and W H Smith. But the manner of their contact was quite different. Menzies simply referred the matter to IPC for consideration, relying on the fact that IPC were, in their view, “the most professional organisation with whom we have to deal”. Smiths took a different line. Though it is now difficult to establish exactly what happened, it is certain that Smiths warned IPC that if something was not done about Action, they themselves would take action on it. Mr. W.E.S. Clarke, W H Smith’s manager in this field at the time, told me that, although his memory was uncertain on the matter, it was most likely to have been a warning that Smiths would only supply copies of Action to fulfil specific orders, not on sale-or-return, which would have cut sales drastically. (There is a difficulty with this. By this time, Action was no longer being supplied sale or return; that is mainly a publishers’ way of launching and establishing a new comic, persuading newsagents to take it ahead of knowing if it will sell. Such a threat therefore could only have been damaging to a new advertising drive – hardly likely under the circumstances.) Another version which had currency at the time, but now impossible to check, suggests that Smiths warned IPC that if they did not withdraw Action, they would not only not carry this comic, they would also refuse to handle all IPC’s publications. I can neither confirm nor deny the validity of this rumour. It was certainly believed by quite a few of those who were working on Action. There are two real possibilities: that the rumour is true in which case, given the seriousness of the warning at, it is quite possible that it would have been issued over the head of W.E.S. Clarke, whose responsibility (as he himself told me) was essentially day-to-day contact with IPC’s many departments; or if not true, then the persistence of the rumour within IPC suggests that a hint may have been deliberately dropped internally to justify the subsequent removal of the comic.

It is unusual for a firm like IPC, with a commitment to profit, to withdraw a publication which is not only profitable but thriving when all around it are declining fast. Indeed it is particularly strange that they withdrew the comic when it was clear that there was an alternative way of dealing with the “problem”. When the rumpus began, Sanders had not only gone public to defend the comic; he had also acted behind-the-scenes to put the brakes on Action. He called a meeting of all those involved in the editorial control of Action, and made clear that it was to be toned down. The “excessive violence” was to be removed and, from then on, all pages of finished artwork were to be cleared with him, before they went to press. This had been communicated to the Board, But by this time the pressures for Action’s removal were too great. Someone somewhere wanted blood. Action was withdrawn, even though the price to IPC was the loss of their best-selling comic.

Probably it is impossible now to establish the precise reasons for the withdrawal, though we are entitled to speculate. But if we can’t know reasons, we can judge effects because of a lucky chance. IPC’s system means that comics have to be prepared some seven weeks ahead, and the final stage of preparation involves running off some thirty copies of the next issue for internal checks. At the moment the axe fell, the October 23 issue had reached that point. Despite pressure from the Federation of Retail Newsagents, IPC had declined to stop the issues that had already been printed (thank goodness!). But the October 23 issue never came out, although it was ready to roll. Instead, it provided the basis, after large changes, of the December 4 issue. But at this point editorship changed again. In June, John Smith, an editor who up to this point had worked mainly on nursery comics, took over from Geoff Kemp. In the way of things, blame fell on his head (unfairly in my view). He was taken off Action and Sid Bicknell, a very experienced but very traditional editor, was brought in. Bicknell’s task was to make Action safe again.

What happened to those thirty copies of the October 23 issue? A few survived. By this lucky chance we are in a position to see what changes the new editorial team felt it necessary to make, to make Action safe. A detailed comparison of the October 23 issue with the December 4 issue reveals the criteria they felt they had to work with. One recollected comment more than any other catches the spirit of the new rules. While John Sanders was away on holiday, a meeting of all editorial staff was called by Johnny Johnson, then IPC’s Production Director, to announce the changes. They were told that Action was being withdrawn and would be totally changed. One person remembered the instruction that was given: “to take all this adult, political stuff out of it and turn it back into a boys’ adventure comic”. That instruction explains an awful lot of what was changed between the intended October 23 and eventual December 4 issues. Let me illustrate the results by looking at a couple of stories that [were not] reprint[ed] in [the] book.

In Hellman, the change was small but still significant. The story then running showed Hellman on the Russian Front, nearly being captured by the Russians. He manages to outwit them, to capture one of their tanks and turn it on them. The uncut version ended with two pictures: one showed a lone German tank in a snow wilderness, where Hellman and his colleague congratulate themselves on their good luck and wish they could see the faces in the Kremlin tonight. The last frame showed just that, a moustached figure saying: “One German tank commander outwits a whole Russian regiment! He must he made an example of… I will offer a personal incentive to my men – a million roubles for this man Hellman dead or alive!” The figure was Stalin, unmistakably. The cue underneath for the next edition said: ‘The Russians want blood, and Hellman has to fight!’ In the revised version, the final frame has simply vanished: Stalin has just disappeared. The preceding frame has been stretched to fill its space. The cue has become: “Where will Hellman’s adventures lead him? See next Saturday!’ What should we make of this? It suggests Action’s problem was in being a bit too close to the real world. Push it back into a fantasy-land, and that might be OK. 

Hell’s Highway provides us with perhaps the clearest evidence on this point. The October 23 issue carried the third and final episode of a story about the Government ordering Cuban refugees to mount a mini-invasion of Cuba. The order had been countermanded and instead both the refugees and the truckers were to be removed as “embarrassments”. The final episode saw the truckers successfully thwarting the thugs who had been sent to kill them. One is killed by having a deadly cottonmouth snake tossed in his face. The other is shot. Then they pursue their own hijacked lorry south, right into the teeth of a hurricane, One of our heroes manages to clamber aboard the racing truck, kills the hijackers, and stops the lorry within feet of crashing into the sea. They free the Cubans, and tell hem to vanish. Returning to Washington, they pretend to the government agent that nothing has happened.

In the revised version, the story itself does not change, in the sense that they still thwart, chase, kill and rescue. But two things go. First, there are some reductions in the overt violence of the story. For example, where before the grapnel used for clambering on the truck had three prongs, now it was allowed only one. Where before a machine gun could be seen expelling four empty shell cases, now only one is permitted. And where before, under great stress and within feet of a watery grave in a Floridian hurricane, our hero could give vent to a startled ‘Hellfire’, now he exhibits real nonchalance and linguistic reserve: “Heckfire,” he mutters.

In all, there were thirty-three noticeable changes to Hell’s Highway. Two were rewritten cues at the start and finish, two were alterations to story-guiding information for which I could not work out any reason at all. Six were deletions of foul language like “Hell” and “Blast”, nine were to turn the grapnel into a hook, and three were for other cleansings of visual violence. A further four took out any threatening talk between characters, such as “Hitmen deserve all they get!” and “I’m gonna blast that rat!”. That leaves six alterations which actually changed the sense of the story. For these were deletions of every reference to Cuba in the story. The fact that we no longer have any sense who is doing anything is irrelevant – it is ‘adult, political stuff’ arid therefore must go. And in particular, you can’t possibly say the following: “Due to a sudden shift in Government policy we’re now friends with Castro. Those refugees have become. redundant. Out came the eraser, to make it: “Due to a sudden shift In policy those refugees have become, uh…redundant’’. Whose policy? What refugees? No matter. You can threaten and you can make people “redundant” but you can’t mention governments. 

Within the pages of [the] book, you can see for yourselves what happened to the other main stories: Hook Jaw, Death Game 1999. Look Out For Lefty, and Kids Rule O.K. The only other stories running at the time of withdrawal were Dredger which, being composed of single episode stories, couldn’t show changes in the same way; and Probationer which was simply deleted – we must draw our own conclusions from that. But the plain fact of the matter is that in no way can the changes made to Action to make it acceptable be explained simply as “removing the excessive violence”. But there were no protests when it returned, for it was now back in the category of ‘good clean fun’ …. And that makes Action a most important case history.

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John Freeman

John  is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.

He’s the writer of  comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.

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