THE GREAT BRITISH COMIC BOOK WEEKEND - SEXTON BLAKE V CAMBRIDGE

Keith Chapman is better known to Archive readers as Chap O'Keefe, author of a series of hugely popular western novels - his character Misfit Lil is a particular favourite around these parts, but as well as being an accomplished novelist Keith has an interesting background in comic books.

For the first of three posts from Keith, the Archive asked Keith how it was he became involved in comic books in the first place.

 As a youngster in the 1950s I'd always 

preferred 

the predominantly text-story weeklies, 

like Champion, Rover, Wizard, 

Adventure and Hotspur, plus the novels 

published monthly in the Sexton 

Blake Library detective series and, for a few short years, the Western 

Library. This was probably a budgetary choice. Pocket money lasted 

longer if you didn't spend it on comics that were read in much shorter 

time. With the papers that had just one or two illustrations per item, 

you could imagine your own pictures as a story unravelled rather than 

have artists draw them for you step by step. The plots were roughly the 

same as in the new comics. Roy of the Rovers in the early Tiger comic 

was very similar to Danny of the Dazzlers in the Champion. No surprise 

there. Stories and scripts were written by the same people.

 

When I was in my last school term in what was then called the 

second-year sixth, I was supposedly working toward a Cambridge 

University entrance exam. I'd also started writing articles for what 

we'd now think of as a fanzine, Herbert Leckenby's Collectors' Digest. 

And I wrote letters that appeared on "mailbag" pages in the magazines I 

read. It was this that brought me to the attention at Fleetway House of 

W. Howard (Bill) Baker, editor of the Sexton Blake Library. I think he 

liked the review I wrote of Murder at Site 3, a B-movie based on one of 

his Sexton Blake books.

 

Anyway, he had an opening in his office for a junior staff member. His 

assistant, Michael Moorcock, thought of as a bit of a young maverick and 

a hippie, was off to broaden his experience in Scandinavia and had 

started to develop his career as a fiction writer in Science Fantasy 

magazine with his Elric stories.

 

Besides working as a sub-editor on the two Sexton Blake novels a month, 

I would also be expected to do duties occasionally on other titles 

belonging to the group. By this stage, 1961, these were mainly juvenile 

comics. I was interviewed by the group's Managing Editor, Alf Wallace, 

and offered a job at the wage of £7. 4s. 9d a week. It wasn't much, but 

the opportunity to get into Fleetway House straight from school was 

tempting. After doing 0-levels and A-levels, more years of studying and 

examinations, even if they were at Cambridge University, seemed daunting 

rather than exciting. My parents, my sister and I lived in a house 

rented from a local council. In the class-structured British society of 

those days, we would have been regarded as "working class", although my 

father was a qualified machine-tool maker. Despite scholarships and 

other funding, university education for me would cost the family some 

money, and leave me with none at all to do the things a young man likes 

to do in the way of buying a car and having some social life.

 

In retrospect, it might not have been the wisest decision, but at 18 I 

opted for Sexton Blake rather than aiming for Cambridge.

 

At Fleetway, it became very apparent that although a new house policy 

didn't encourage it, many of the editors moonlighted as contributors to 

their own or their colleagues' publications. Alf Wallace's friendly and 

charming secretary, Hazel, helped me on to the freelance writing road 

with the offer a near-new Royal portable typewriter, minus its case, for 

£12.

 

Group script editor Ken Mennell tried to instruct me on how to write 

scripts for war picture libraries -- for example, Air Ace -- but a 

working day at the office was fairly mundane. I found myself reading 

Sexton Blake submissions and proofs, copy-editing, writing new titles 

and blurbs, running the readers' letters pages, keeping editorial 

ledgers and liaising with the accounts department over payments to 

contributors.

 

One big snag was clearly going to be the unionised approach to pay and 

promotion. Although I was doing creative work, I was classified as a 

"clerk" for a probationary period , and after that had a five-year 

ladder to climb to a senior wage as a member of the NUJ.

 

But it was a pleasant experience in many respects. I shared many a lunch 

break with young people who went on to make their mark in the comics of 

the future. Barrie Tomlinson eventually became a Tiger and New Eagle 

editor, an IPC group editor, and a Roy of the Rovers writer. Doug Church 

was a 2000 AD art editor. Peter Stewart, with whom I shared an office, 

was destined to be editor of Shoot, a top soccer paper. A few months 

after I joined Fleetway, Pete's long-time friend Dave Hunt also came 

along, and in time he edited several comics for IPC, including Battle 

Picture Weekly.

 

After about a year, it became clear Sexton Blake's days at Fleetway were 

numbered and my future was likely to be as just one of a number of 

juniors working on the many comics, and slowly up that pay scale on the 

basis of time served. Any competitive advantages I had by way of my 

knowledge of the Blake "bible" and of copy-editing text would be lost.

 

Then an ad appeared in the World's Press News, which was the place to 

look for "situations vacant" on the periodicals scene. Micron 

Publications were looking for an editor for their comic book lines. 

These were lookalikes of Fleetway "picture library" comic books, the 

main one being Combat Picture Library. The company had been founded a 

few years earlier as G. M. Smith Publishing by Ron Maiden and Mike 

Budge, who had worked in the general administration offices at Fleetway. 

The story went that some money had been put up by an aunt and they'd 

gone into "backstreet" publishing on their own account.

 

I had a word with fellow Fleetway staffer Doug Church, who drew in his 

own time for rival Combat and had earlier worked for G. M. Smith 

full-time, if I remember correctly. It seemed you'd need to be an 

all-rounder, since the staff was naturally small compared to Fleetway's, 

and the hours might work out longer than anticipated and the 

responsibilities wider. But Micron had no pay scales  based on 

seniority. If you worked as an editor, you would be recognised and paid as one.

 

I found out later that the Micron opportunity appealed to many -- I was 

far from the only editorial person at Fleetway who applied for the job. 

But I got it, and that was how I initially became involved in comic 

books. I think what worked hugely in my favour was that as well as 

making an application for the editorial post, I  bashed out a 135-frame 

Combat Picture Library script on my Royal typewriter over the weekend 

and submitted that, too! The payment rate was half Fleetway's, but it, 

the promise of more scriptwriting assignments, and the suddenly boosted 

day-job pay were riches at the time.

THE GREAT BRITISH COMIC BOOK WEEKEND - COMIC'S TAUGHT ME HOW TO READ

John Sinclair, a bit part actor and comic book writer, is a personal friend and I'm pleased he was able to contribute a little something for the Great British Comic Book Weekend. Here John tells us how it was comic books that encouraged him to read in the first place.

When I went to school at the age of not-quite-5, I could already read. In fact I had a reading age of 12.

But my teacher wouldn’t accept it. She kept trying to catch me out. She would give me encyclopaedias and point at random words. She would write long complicated words on the blackboard.

And I would get them right every time. She would get very angry for me. For I was a smartass. I would put my hand up whenever we had a new thing to read. I would always be the first to say I was finished when we were given a new long book to read.

You see, I had always been around adults, so I was used to dealing with adults.  What’s more I was used to competing with adults. You see, that’s how I learned to read. By competing with my father and grandfather for the newspapers when they came through the door.

When I was little, in the dawn of the 1960s, we lived with my grandparents, and one of our charming little rituals was the daily race for the evening paper. If I won, or if my grandfather won, he would put me on his lap and read the paper to me, pointing out difficult words and explaining what they meant. My poor old dad would just sit in his chair and sulk, reading the paper granddad had brought home from work that day.

Ours was a house full of newspapers; my dad and granddad would buy one each at work, and we would have that aforementioned evening paper delivered, but we would also have a skip-load of weekly papers as well; I learned to tell the days by the day the weekly papers appeared: Tuesday; Titbits, Wednesday: Weekend (even though it came out midweek), Thursday: Weekly News and the Radio Times and TWW Weekly (this was before the all-encompassing TV Times). Mondays and Fridays were spare days – but my dad used to get the Readers Digest for any spare moments...

I always loved the ‘proper’ articles but my granddad one day did something I shall ever love him for; he showed me the comic strips. Oh, the Daily Mirror had lots of ‘spot’ humorous comics, but it also had the bank of strip comics running under the letters column. It had Garth! It had The Perishers (and Wellington’s birthday- always a great event in the strip - was the week before mine! But above all it had ... Andy Capp! My granddad loved Andy Capp and it was the first strip I can remember looking at and actually getting the joke.

I had always been an artistic child – I was always to be found with a pencil in my hand - and it was then that I discovered that comic strips had my two favourite things together – drawing and words. And then my grandfather told me that there were things called ‘comics’..... ‘What’s a ‘comic’ granddad?’

He took me straight around the corner to the paper shop and pointed the row of brightly coloured periodicals to me....  my heart stood still.....I had found my one true love – I was home!

Granddad  decided for me that one with funny animals on the front seemed most appropriate so I hurried home with my first issue of ‘Harold Hare Weekly...’

Within weeks I was getting the ‘Dandy’ on a Monday (nicely filling in that spare day) and the Beano on a Wednesday – thus freeing up ‘Weekend’ for the grown-ups....  and from there on there was no stopping me.

By then I had a little brother so of course he had to have his comics as well... Between me and him and my vast army of cousins we had nearly every comic going. We used to read Buster, Topper, Beezer, et al. We had a fair amount of the girl comics as well but we would never ever allow ourselves to be seen reading them in public. No, they were the ones we would read in the outside toilet or after lights out in bed with our prized Dan Dare torches. Funnily enough, at this young age I never used to like the Eagle or any of the ‘older’ comics, the ones with the words UNDER the pictures. They always seemed, sort of, well, ‘posh’ for me, too grown-up.

Then I went to school. And my problems started. Finally the headmaster himself got involved,  I was given more advanced things to read and things settled down.

Now you might have noticed that all the comics I have mentioned earlier were British. Good old salt of the earth, chortle and chuckle, biff the bad-guy on the chin and get a spanking from a slipper if you were misbehaved British comics.

And then there was this wet lunchtime and we all had to stay in a classroom. To combat the usual mayhem there were games and toys and that ... and a pile of comics on a teacher’s desk to read. I can remember going through the usual suspects, and then there was a funny-looking coverless comic that was all in colour – this was a time when the only all-colour comics were the ones for little children and had only about 12 or 16 pages, you know, the Toytown and Enid Blyton stuff that I was much too mature for now..

So I picked this odd comic up and sat down to read it.

There are moments when your life changes. I mention one above. This was another. This is when I really really took a bend in life’s highway. This comic was a 1959 Detective Comic, and the first story featured a weird-looking bloke with pointy ears called The Batman who swung around on a rope and used his brain a lot to outwit Yankee villains. Didn’t think much of him.

But the backup feature starred a guy all in green who did amazing things with a bow and arrow. He had an arrow with a boxing glove on the end. He had an arrow that shot gas. He had an arrow that dropped a net on the bad guy – in this case a fella who wore a time-piece on his face and called himself, oddly enough, the Clock. For some reason, maybe it was because I was such a huge fan of the then-current Robin Hood TV show, I took the Green Arrow to heart.

I was fascinated by this new type of comic, with its long stories, even up to 10 pages in length (!) and its unusual setting and milieu. I had probably not seen much SF by that age; this was the early 1960s remember, Gerry Anderson’s Supercar had only just finished and I had probably caught a whiff of William Hartnells’ Dr Who.

So I did something I should never have done. I took the comic home. The shame of it! I can only plead youthful ignorance and I did take it back. Eventually.

This was a Tuesday I think, and I remember sitting reading it over and over in the little sitting room of my grandparent’s terraced house...

By the next morning I had warmed to the Batman character, and was fascinated by an ad in the comic for something called an ‘annual’. It seemed to have lots of Batman stories in it, and I wanted it! So when my mother, who was going to Newport that morning asked if I wanted anything, I showed her the ad and asked, no begged her to get it for me. Naturally I didn’t hold out much hope. Even at that young age I was used to disappointment.

The hours dragged by, my mother finally came home...  and she had it!!

All these years later I can still recall the feel of that moment.  It’s hard to describe that sensation to non-comic fans, but an ex-girlfriend of the female persuasion once said it must be like ‘finding that perfect pair of shoes in a sale in a shop you never normally go into ...’

I wish I still had that comic, but this was in the days before I became known as a ‘collector’. These were the days before I had a cardboard box that I carefully put away all my comics into every night. This box and the all the others were eventually to find a home in the big cupboard at the top of the stairs in the modern house over in Trowbridge we later moved into. This was ever to be known as ‘the comic cupboard’. Now they sit in my library, or as my significant other calls it, the middle bedroom of my current house. Now they’re not your average run-of-the-mill cardboard cartons but proper long-boxes set out on shelves. Oooo the luxury! I even have an armchair and a side-table for drinks....

I count myself very lucky in that I was at the right age to be there when Marvel comics came into their own; I can remember picking up Spiderman 3 from Frys’ newsagents in Cardiff’s Caroline Street, and Fantastic Four 2 around the corner in the train station. Not to mention coming out of the Saturday morning pictures at the County Cinema and buying X-Men flippin’ 1 in the shop across the road...

In so many ways the 60s were a golden age for comics. Apart from the fact that the US comics were finally easy to obtain over here – before late ’58 us comics were shipped over as ballast so were only to be found in mostly seaside towns or ports like Cardiff - the impact of TV on the market created comics based on TV shows. For instance Gerry Anderson’s Supermarionation empire begat TV 21, Lady Penelope, etc.

There were also all the educational comics like Look and Learn and their ilk. Beautifully produced things that were the direct descendants of the Eagle’s cutaway pages and completely under-valued by their intended market... I never knew anyone who ever actually bought one; I suspect that they were only ever purchased by parents for their kids to ignore.

Of course there were all the DC Thomson titles like the perennial Beano and Dandy, and oddities like Sparky (they’d never get away with that thick-lipped, grass-skirted African boy character today, even if Joan Armatrading Gs a well-known fan of the comic) and the rest, but they were beginning to be overtaken and eventually superseded by the various Odhams and IPC titles that were just that little bit more modern...

And don’t let me get started on my theory of how making all those big-screen adaptations of comic characters has actually hastened the movement of the comic book industry into a small, dark specialist corner away from the mainstream where it belongs....

But anyway there we are. How a geek was born.

That daily steeplechase for the evening paper and a wet and rainy school day lunchtime turned out this now middle-aged geek who ended up making a living by the pen. Starting out as a journalist where I’ve written for everything from the Radio Times to the Telegraph, I moved on to children’s TV where I still reside, churning out shows like Fireman Sam, Chloe’s Closet and the current Igham Ogham. Or as I put it, living on Channel 5 and CBBC between the hours of 5 to 10am Monday to Friday, 6 – 11 Saturday and Sunday.

Thank you Andy Capp and Harold Hare.  Thank you Green Arrow and especially Batman. It’s been a great ride. I’ve enjoyed it.

And I still spend much too much time in Forbidden Planet. According to my girlfriend anyway.

THE GREAT BRITISH COMIC BOOK WEEKEND - ARMED AND READY

The Commando series of comic books have been going strong for fifty years now - something quite unique in British comics. Sure there are some titles that have been going longer - The Beano and Dandy spring to mind, but the Commando comics are the only adventure series to enjoy such a long run. Noted for their distinctive 7 × 5½ inch, 68 page format the Commando comics  have remained more popular than many other British war comics, and some would say British comics in general, despite their simplistic stories and black and white artwork, with only the covers in colour.

The series continues to prosper and recently digital editions were released alongside the regular books, taking the series into a future unimagined when the first title rolled off the presses all those years ago when the world was black and white.

Why then has the series continued to prosper while others have fallen in action? What makes the Commando series so unique?


"That’s the 64,000 dollar question, isn’t it? I don’t know the definite answer...I doubt if anyone does. The efforts of the three previous editors and their policies must be a large part of the success, particularly when we were battling rival titles. However, I don’t think any single factor could tell the whole story." Calum G. Laird, editor Commando Comics.

Published by D C Thomson of Scotland, the series was originally titled Commando War Stories in Pictures, but in 1993 the title was changed to Commando For Action and Adventure in order to reflect the wider aspects of the stories. And although the majority of the comics are still world war II set, other conflicts are often featured and on times the comics have even taken us into far future conflicts and beyond.

For many years now the Commando books have offered two reprints and two new comics every fortnight, and in order to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary it was decided to reprint noted titles from the history of the comic, alongside all new adventures.  What was the brief in selecting the titles for reprint, I wondered? Why not just reprint the first fifty in order which seemed the most logical thing to do?





"We decided to reissue the first 12 books starting at No12 in January and working down to No1 in December. The other titles have been chosen by individuals as ones they remembered as being significant either in the history of Commando, its artists, its writers or to the staff members when they were readers. After weighing all the factors, and there are many more than may be apparent, my editorial judgement was to do things the way we have." Calum Laird, editor Commando Books

Are the Commando series a success story we should be celebrating, or are they, with their square jawed heroes, a sign of the British inability to let go of past glories? A few years back during the Iranian hostages affair much of the media outrage came from the fact that the captives cry and tell behaviour was far removed from our idea of how UK servicemen acted under duress. Will Hutton wrote in The Observer, " For those who lived in the spirit of Commando Comics, in which the dashing squaddy or Spitfire pilot always heroically triumphed in the trial of honest Brit against foreign evil the contrast is bitter."

Anyone wanting to check out the Commando series can of course pick up the titles at the local newsagents, but there are also a great series of collected graphic novels from Carlton Books. These are themed collections and contain twelve classic Commando titles within the limp covers. The Dirty Dozen, pictured left, was one of the first collected titles and is a great read from cover to cover. My own copy is more dog eared than my dodgy uncle Jim's, " Big 'an' Bouncy Magazine" collection.




I asked the current editor  how the collected editions were selling and he replied thus:


"The Carlton Collections have sold very well and continue to do so. A new one will be out this year entitled Rogue Raiders — a selection of the best Commando Raids stories. In July Carlton will release a series of four books in a different format of three stories in one set of covers. These will be priced at a lower level than the existing Collections."

Check our Charlton Books HERE.

And visit the Commando website HERE


  

THE GREAT BRITISH COMIC BOOK WEEKEND - SATURDAY MORNING THRILLS

 Traditionally Saturday morning was when the new comics hit the shops and here renowned editor and comic book fanatic, Steve Holland takes us back to those days with an entertaining look at Saturday morning's of old.

When does a hobby become an obsession? I loved the comics that I read when I was a kid and felt an overwhelming sense of loss when I discovered that my mother had casually given away a load of them to neighbours and relatives – including my copies of TV21 and Joe 90: Top Secret and a pile of books that included a Lone Pine novel sent to me and autographed by Malcolm Saville. I’m sure we all have horror stories like that.

But even I eventually gave away my beloved stack of Valiant comics, although they only went as far as my sister and at that time we were still living in the same house. It was only a few years later when I’d moved out and my sister was in the process of buying a flat that the question of what to do with them cropped up. My answer was that, the next time I was back at the old family home, I’d take one last look before getting rid of them. Just one last look…

What you have to remember is that this is the comic that had all my favourite strips: The Steel Claw, The Wild Wonders, Raven on the Wing, Kelly’s Eye, Mytek the Mighty and others that I had spent five of my most formative years reading. This was the comic that, one Saturday morning, I became so engrossed in between the counter and the door of our local newsagent, head buried in the latest episode of Return of the Claw, that I’d walked almost all the way home when I bumped into one of my neighbours. She gave me a quizzical look and asked why I hadn’t taken my dog with me as I always did.

The poor mutt was still tied to a fencepost outside the newsagents.

Now I’m older, I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever come across a book or a comic that will engage me so wholly and utterly ever again. Children haven’t changed: if they like something it’s almost impossible to peel them away from it, whether it’s a comic, a DS game or a TV show. I’m not sure I could ever immerse myself so completely in something now. Life has too many deadlines.

I’ve reached that (middle-)age where I find myself revisiting old childhood favourites, although sometimes with a little trepidation. I read dozens of thrillers when I was a kid as I grew up in a family where books were left lying around – mostly by my Dad – but on re-reading some have proved to be disappointing. The Satan Bug by Alistair MacLean, for instance, I remember as being a high-speed race against time but this time round found it very slow-moving. I was a little wary of buying the Lone Pine series by Malcolm Saville (reprinted by Girls Gone By) because I loved the books so much when I was a youngster… but I took the plunge and they’re not bad. Not quite as exciting plot-wise as I remember but I still love the characters.

Then there are comics. Although I gave up on Valiant in early 1975 – spending my pocket money instead on Speed & Power – I never did leave comics behind completely. The Saturday morning ritual was too ingrained and there was always something on the newsagents’ shelves that grabbed my attention, whether it was Vulcan or Action or Battle Picture Weekly or 2000AD or Starblazer or Warrior.

And then my sister, bless her, moved out of the family home and I took just one last look at my old Valiants and felt that Saturday morning thrill all over again. Moreso, in a way, because I appreciated the quality of the artwork more on this second voyage of discovery. Before, I think my attitude to the artwork was that it simply illustrated the script; some artists were better than others but the story was what was important. Blame it on my odd upbringing: whilst many learned to read via comics, I only started reading comics a couple of years after I began devouring novels at a terrific rate.

Second time around, I began to realise that the best strips were a combination of great storytelling by both the scriptwriter and the artist. I realised why I loved the work of Jesus Blasco, Mike Western, Eric Bradbury and a handful of others whose work I could spot as they changed strips, even though I didn’t know their names – they were great storytellers in addition to their talents at depicting the characters and situations.

I began collecting older comics, often those which featured artists whose work I recognised. The adventures of characters like The Steel Claw were dotted around all over the place, not just in Valiant but in the annuals and summer specials but also the Fleetway Super Library and reprinted in Vulcan. Like any collector I was interested in reading every story and wants lists began to evolve into indexes, neatly typed up on an old Brother electric typewriter, scribbled over with notes and then typed and re-typed again.

When does a hobby become an obsession? I think I’ve just answered my own question.

I recently launched a new series of indexes with the publication of Hurricane & Champion, which were supposedly the two companion papers to Valiant but had almost no connection with that paper beyond using its popularity to sell the new titles. It meant re-reading a lot of stories that I hadn’t seen for years and I’m glad I did. There were a couple of gems lurking in those yellowing pages that I’d forgotten about. One was a series of swashbuckling adventures featuring a character called Hugo Dunwiddie, who set himself up as a sword-for-hire in Cromwell’s England, which, thanks to their length (4-5 pages a week), had the space to develop plots and characters in a way that most strips lacked as they lurched from cliffhanger to cliffhanger. Another was a surreal humour strip called ‘Cosmic Nick’, about an alien stranded on Earth due to having accidentally sent a washing line of clothing back to his home planet. The aliens on his home world (Clotto) become convinced that clothing is the dominant life form on Earth and that humans have been enslaved by shirts, trousers and jackets.

Over the years I’ve stumbled across dozens of great comic strips, many of them completely forgotten. If you like Dan Dare, try Rick Random; if you like Charley’s War, track down episodes of Trelawny of the Guards; if you’ve overdosed on Roy of the Rovers, pick up Hot-Shot Hamish for some light relief. 

Re-reading these old strips is like rolling back the years, with the added bonus of being able to appreciate the craft of the scriptwriters and artists who worked on them. Don Wollheim once said that the Golden Age of Science Fiction was the age of 14. I guess you could adapt that to comics by saying that the Golden Age of Comics as far as I was concerned was between the ages of 8 and 12. Well, I’m a lot older than that now, but I’m pleased to say that I still find reading comics a hugely pleasurable pastime and, at their best, they still give me those Saturday morning thrills.

THE GREAT BRITISH COMIC BOOK WEEKEND - BLAST OFF

What is a comic book?

The question may seem rhetorical. After all comic books have been a part of our culture for as long as anyone can remember. However the modern comic book is the result of an evolution that stretches back into distant history, perhaps even into prehistory – after all the cave drawings of ancient man are merely a way to visually tell a story. However the real history of the comic book began with the introduction of mass printing in the nineteenth century – arguable the publication that invented the modern format was Funny Folks which was published in 1825. Funny Folks was not called a comic but a paper and although originally intended as a one off it was so popular that it became a weekly paper, and lasted twenty years.

In 1890 Alfred Harmsworth published Comic Cuts and the comic industry boomed. Harmsworth also brought out other titles such as Chips and The Wonder. This would be the beginnings of a publishing empire that became the Amalgamated Press and eventually transformed itself into the International Publishing Corporation.

The comics or funny papers were aimed largely at adults and it wasn't until 1885 and Jack and Jill, that comics were produced with children in mind.

Step forward to the 1930's and we truly enter a golden age for British comics – by this period comics were without any notable exception aimed at children, but there was always a large adult readership. It was also during this period that the differences between British and American comics was defined. American comics developed into a booklet size magazine of 64 pages, while British titles were much bigger, thinner and printed on paper similar to the daily newspapers.

In the 1950's one of the most famous British comics in history was launched – on the 14th April 1950 The Eagle was born and Dan Dare became an immortal character. It was also during this period that comics were being made to appeal to either of the sexes. The boys had Eagle while the girls had Girl.

And so the Archive celebrates the rich world that is the British Comic Book – over the next two day s we will be presenting interviews, features, guest posts and scans of rare comics in the incredible British Comic Book Weekend.

Tainted Stats

For some reason my weekly stats report didn't arrive until today:
Weekly Stats Report: 21 Mar - 27 Mar 2011
Project: THE TAINTED ARCHIVE
URL: http://tainted-archive.blogspot.com/

	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat	Sun	Total	Avg
Pageloads	952	865	820	963	886	814	816	6,116	874
Unique Visitors	721	639	629	687	672	591	599	4,538	648
First Time Visitors	691	601	601	648	614	547	566	4,268	610
Returning Visitors	30	38	28	39	58	44	33	270	39

Kindle 3 review

Thanks to Amazon I now have a gleaming new Kindle in my sweaty hands - and after road testing it I can say that it is not for nothing is the Kindle considered the best eReader on the market. It's a pity the device still doesn't support the ePub format, but given the strength of the Amazon store I am willing to overlook this small niggle.

The single most important thing with any eReader is the display screen, and the Kindle's is quite brilliant. The eInk Pearl screen really does look like paper. The background in a nice clean white and the text standing out clearly- you can also increase the size of the text, which makes reading as comfortable as a traditional book.

The controls are quite straight forward, though I did find that having the pages forward and back controls on the same side of the device a little clunky, but when you get used to this it becomes second nature. It is also a nice touch to be able to reorientate the display to landscape. Pictures are reproduced with clarity, though only, as with most dedicated eReaders, in black and white.

The Kindle also supports a nifty option that allows the device to read out loud to you, obviously the computerised voice (male or female can be selected )  is not really any good for fiction it is useful for newspapers, blogs and documents- though the onboard speakers are a little hollow sounding, this is quite brilliant through headphones. In short the Kindle is easy to operate and after a hour or so's use the user will more or less know what he or she can do with the machine.


Now the biggest strength of the Kindle is the Amazon store and whilst the sheer popularity of the device may mean that one day Amazon will rule the world, it ties the user to the Amazon store to buy books, it is a pleasure to use. You can access it via your computer or with the Kindle device itself. And with one click a selected newspaper, blog, eBook or audio book is delivered almost instantly to the Kindle. You don't even need to use a computer to enjoy the Kindle since all aspects of the store can be accessed via the device itself. It really is quite amazing how well the device interacts with the store.


Bad points - all I can really complain about is the way the device doesn't number pages - you have read 30% of this title. This does make things seem slightly artificial. You really do forget you are not reading a traditional book with the Kindle but one glance down at the % screen reminds you. However a forthcoming update, again delivered seamlessly to the device, will remedy this and the Kindle will display page numbers.


Yep, the Kindle is king - but please support ePub sometime soon.