Steve Winders reviews Steve Holland’s new collection of “Sexton Blake” strips which first appeared in Valiant weekly in 1968.
The Book: Published by Bear Alley Books and retailing at £25.99 inc. postage and packing, an “early bird” discount currently available, Sexton Blake Volume One is an A4 sized paperback collection of strips from the Valiant weekly in 1968. Running to 164 black and white pages, it contains the first five serial adventures of the famous detective from the weekly and four short complete adventures from the Valiant Book of Sexton Blake, published in 1968. The serial stories were written by Harold Lamb and drawn by Eric Dadswell and the shorter strips were drawn by Tom Kerr and Oliver Passingham.
The Background: Sexton Blake was a popular private detective hero of text serials and novels, long before he appeared in Valiant, with his first adventure appearing in 1893. His popularity peaked in the 1920s and 30s and he was featured in plays, films, radio series, television series and comic strips.
His appearance in Valiant resulted from the 1967–71 ITV series which starred Laurence Payne as Blake and Roger Foss as his assistant, Tinker and their likenesses are used in the strips, which are set in the 1920s like the series. Valiant’s publishers, Fleetway, held the rights to the character as their predecessor company, the Amalgamated Press had acquired the rights from his creator Harry Blyth. Indeed, Sexton Blake strips had appeared in Knock-out weekly from 1939 until 1960. Knockout (now without the hyphen) was absorbed into Valiant in 1963.
The Review: The new collection features an impressive cover picture by Martin Baines, which shows Blake and Tinker confronted by a clawed figure, poking its arms through the grille in a stout wooden door. The rest of the front cover is appropriately black, given the dark, eerie tone of the stories inside.
The book begins with an introduction by Steve Holland, which provides a clear and detailed introduction to Blake’s career in comic strips and also traces the history of one of the settings and plot elements used in the new strip, which had previously thrilled readers of “Dick Turpin”, “Maxwell Hawke” and “Jack O’ Justice” strips, and would be used again later for a “James Bold” strip in Cheeky weekly. Holland’s introduction is enhanced by pages from several of the strips he refers to, as well as a short sequence from a 1948 Knock-out strip and a page from the 1979 Tornado weekly, which featured a detective called Victor Drago, who had originally been intended to be Blake, until it was realised that the publishers (now IPC) had licensed publication rights to the BBC, who had made their own Sexton Blake TV serial in 1978 and, at the time, had acquired the rights in order to publish a tie-in novel.
Each episode of the Valiant serials occupied two pages and the first story, “Sexton Blake and the House of a Thousand Perils”, ran for seven episodes. This story, set in a house full of traps and apparently supernatural incidents was the setting used by the other strips. Indeed, “John Brody” in Boys’ World in 1963 and “Grant C.I.D.” in Eagle in 1968 also each used a similar setting in one of their adventures. With heavily shaded frames, Dadswell conveyed the eerie unsettling atmosphere well and this style was maintained for the other serial stories, all of which had mysterious creepy settings.
The story titles “The Ghost of the Highwayman”, which ran for twelve episodes, “The Phantom of Peril Rock”, running for eighteen episodes, “The Museum of Fear”, running for seventeen and “The Curse of Graveways Abbey”, running for eight, give a clear idea of the nature of the stories. While the many earlier “Blake” stories sometimes contained such features, most did not and neither did the TV series, which focused more on action adventure and solving problems, although the TV stories did include one where a thief had an invisibility ray and another where the villain believed he was King Arthur reincarnated. Over the long history of Sexton Blake’s text stories, he encountered everything from mysteries in the style of Sherlock Holmes to science fiction, but Valiant opted for spooky stories which were particular popular in comics at the time.
The serial stories are well paced and hold the reader’s attention well, with strong ‘cliffhanger’ endings to episodes. My only criticism is that they are so similar to each other, with dark sinister settings and disguised villains unmasked at the end, but the template worked for so many stories in British comics and has subsequently worked for the TV cartoon series Scooby Doo Where Are You? for the past fifty years!
The short strips from The Valiant Book of Sexton Blake included in the volume are more varied, with just two of the four stories having ‘ghostly’ elements, with one being a ‘spot the clue’ story and the other being a more conventional adventure.
The “Sexton Blake” strip ran in Valiant from January 1968 until May 1970, so it was clearly well received. The stories are fine examples of the ‘ghostly mystery’ genre and credit to Steve Holland for making them available to a modern audience. I look forward to the next volume.
Steve Winders
Sexton Blake Volume 1 | Published by Bear Alley Books | Format: A4, 164 black & white pages, paperback with matte cover | Preorder your copy here
As always, Bear Alley are offering an early-bird discount for readers who order early. You’ll know the drill if you’re a regular customer: payment is via Paypal and orders can take 8-10 days. The books will be back up to cover price and postage on release day and should be available at the Bear Alley shop on Ebay. The option to pay via Paypal will also remain available.
Orders can be made via Paypal (steve [at] bearalley.co.uk), price £23.99 including p&p. Please make sure you include your address when paying by Paypal. US orders can also be made via Paypal, £26.99 sterling including p&p. Again, please make sure you include your address when paying by Paypal.
Please ask for other overseas prices; publisher Steve Holland can usually offer postage at a cheaper rate than Ebay’s Global Shipping. The same applies if you want to buy more than one volume at a time.
More Sexton Blake
Bear Alley has republished several Sexton Blake annuals. Here are direct links to these releases
Head further downthetubes for…
• Blakania: The Sexton Blake Resource
Created at the tail end of the Victorian era, Sexton Blake rapidly became one of the most popular fictional characters of the 20th Century. He featured in thousands of adventure stories published in countless papers, magazines and comics. He also appeared in stage plays, radio dramas, films and television serials. In these articles, you’ll discover what made him such a quintessential part of the English landscape for so long; how he changed with the times; his cultural significance; and why he faded from view in the mid-1970s.
• The Casebook of Sexton Blake (Wordsworth Mystery & Supernatural)
This thrilling collection presents seven exploits from his ‘golden age’
Award-winning writer Mark Hodder, keeper of the invaluable Blakiania resource online, introduces Blake to a new audience, and George Mann and Jimmy Broxton bring us the first new comic in decades. Plus, Karl Stock interviews the writers and artists.
The Special also includes the Sexton Blake comic strip originally published under the title “Victor Drago” in the short-lived comic, Tornado, written by Chris Lowder (writing as Bill Henry) and featuring art by Mike Dorey.
• Sexton Blake and the Great War
A collection comprising three text stories from Union Jack magazine dating from World War One and the lead up to it.
• Sexton Blake versus The Master Crooks
Three more tales pitting Blake against bank robbers, impostors and kidnappers, duels with swords, and pursues his foes by any means necessary
Every hero has allies; men and women of great ability and character, drawn into their orbit by circumstance and adventure. This was never truer than for Sexton Blake, Britain’s greatest detective…
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
Born in Preston, Steve Winders has been a lifelong fan of Dan Dare and Eagle and of Doctor Who since its first episode. He has written many articles about the 1960s Eagle, the various incarnations of Dan Dare and the fictional exploits of the Harris Tweed Appreciation Society for Eagle Times and its predecessors and regularly reviews new works about British comics for Down The Tubes and Steve Holland’s Bear Alley blog.
He has also written articles about another interest, Robin Hood, for the online Adventures of Robin Hood Appreciation Society Magazine.
Other interests include the American West, which was inspired by the famous Eagle strip, Riders of the Range, Astronomy and soccer. He is a supporter of Preston North End. He has taught for over 40 years, in Lancashire, Mid Glamorgan and Plymouth. He is married and has three children.
Categories: British Comics, British Comics - Collections, British Comics - Current British Publishers, Comics, downthetubes News, Features, Reviews
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