Comic Cuts — 30 October 2026

After a somewhat chaotic fortnight, I'm back on track. I think I'm back on track. 

We had a friend, Stacy, over from America and we made plans to go out a few times over the nine days she was staying. There were a couple of days where Mel and Stacy were up in London and I spent those days trying to catch up with orders; other days we all went out to meet other friends for lunch, visit shops and galleries; and some days we just chilled out here at the house, or went down the pub.

The aftermath of all this fun and frolic is that I was left with a few hundred photos to sort out. So often I just dump them in a folder and copy them to an external hard drive because that's a lot easier than the alternative. Well, this time I was determined to actually do some posts based on our days out, which you will have seen over the past week. There are a few things that didn't make the cut, like a trip to Firstsite to have a look at the Berryfield Mosaic, a piece of Roman mosaic from c. 200 AD, discovered in Colchester in 1923. Unfortunately, attempts to photograph the mosaic were thwarted by its dirty, scratched, glass cover. Oh, well... 

Between sorting through photos (straightening and cropping them, and doing a little touching up here and there where light or reflections spoiled an otherwise good shot) and keeping up with orders for the new SEXTON BLAKE book, and dealing with the regular run-of-the-mill stuff that life throws up, I haven't had much time to do any work. I've answered a few enquiries and I'm pretty much up to date there; I even updated a couple of picture galleries while I was playing around with Photoshop, but at some point I need to settle down and sort out the second volume of BLAKE and get to work on the next book, whatever that is.

I did do one bit of research into a book I recently picked up: Smart Guy by Frank Kenny. It's a digest crime novel published by the almost unheard of Vanguard Publishing Co. of Burton-upon-Trent. I say "almost" because I actually own a copy of the sequel, Hellish Smart, published at the same time in 1954. There were two other novels that formed a brief series: Rod Rover Rides High and Rod Rover Gets Out, both by Dane Yates. I've seen neither of the latter books. I don't even know if they are crime or western.

Anyway, Vanguard Publishing Co. (Burton-on-Trent) Ltd. was registered in April 1954 at 160 High Street, Burton-on-Trent with a nominal capital of £1,000 in £1 shares. Its directors were J.M.G.C. Tresise and John Travis Kauntze. The latter was a solicitor who probably had nothing to do with the daily running of the company; he died in 1960 aged only 45.

The second director led me a bit of a run-around as the only official record I could find referred to the marriage of Jeanne-Marie Gilbert Catherine Tresuse to one Hector L. Macneal in 1963. This was the year after Vanguard was struck from the Register of companies in September 1962, although it had been inactive from almost the moment its first four books were released in August 1954.

I ended up with quite an extensive family tree drawn up for the Tresises of Burton-upon-Trent covering five generations as they were locally famously a firm of printers and newspaper owners. The firm was founded by Cornishman Joseph Nicholas Tresise (1828-1893), who moved to Burton in 1840 and set up a printing machine in his front room in Moor Street in 1859.

His sons, Charles Arthur (1853-1932), one time Mayor of Burton, and Joseph Nicholas (1861-1914), a town councillor, were joint proprietors and founders of the Burton Chronicle and the Burton Evening Gazette. The business passed down to Charles' son Horace Herbert Tresise (1891-1950) and then to Horace's son, Charles Edward Tresise (1917-1999).

Teddy, as he was known, was born in January 1917 and attended Burton Grammar School before joining the family firm at the age of 15, learning the trade of cost accountant. He joined the T.A. and, for the first three years of the Second World War, was in the 8th Army, commissioned as Britain Intelligence Officer in time for the invasion of Sicily and Italy. After spending three months back in England giving talks at war factories, he became a War Correspondent Contacting Officer in Monty's No.5 Public Relations Unit from D-Day to Berlin.

Teddy had married Isabella Joan Staples in 1940, but the marriage ended in divorce when Isabella fell pregnant to a GI. Now stationed in Brussels, acting as a wet nurse to reporters, he was invited to a New Year's Eve (1944) party given to honour the liberators of Brussels — Captain Tresise being one of the first officers to enter the capital on September 3, 1944.

Tresise arrived shortly before midnight and was introduced by the party's organiser to her cousin, Jackie... just in time to link arms for Auld Lang Syne. They spent the night together when the Germans launched a last-minute air attack on Brussels on January 1st. Four months later, the couple were married, on V.E. Day at the Hotel De Ville at Uccle, between Brussels and Waterloo. 

Jackie was Jeanne-Marie Gilberte Katrine Cambron of Chaussee de Waterloo — the co-director of Vanguard Publishing Co. — although one imagines her husband's experience as a publisher and printer was the driving force behind the firm. Teddy had helped launch Soldier as an Army newspaper in 1945 ahead of being demobbed in January 1946, when he rejoined Tresises. Known locally for printing street directories, souvenir brochures and stationery, the firm had a growing business making beer mats. 

Teddy split the business in two, his brother Kenneth Herbert Tresise (1913-1999) retaining the old printing firm while Teddy set up Tresise Drip Mats in Moor Street in partnership with Keith Hornby Priestnall with Clifford Gothard as chairman. They became the country's biggest producer of beer mats and coasters, eventually being sold to Bryant and May.

What led to Tresise to launch Vaguiard Books is unknown, although it may be that a gap in the market was spied when a great many paperback companies — New Fiction Press (Hank Janson), Harborough Publishing (Michael Storme), R.S. Grey (Ace Capelli), Edwin Self, etc. — stopped publishing in the first six months of 1954. Certainly Smart Guy, the first of the two Frank Kenny novels featuring Guy Smart, has none of the extreme violence and sexual overtones of the gangster novels of that era.

Smart Guy is a fun, fast read involving an actress past her prime, her adoring manager, her deadbeat (but titled) husband, his floozie, her dresser/assistant and an ivory-handled gun that is used in a darkened theatre dressing room to kill Lord Roderick Caryll. Actress Stella Roselle is the chief suspect and is arrested by Chief Inspector Godliman of Yarbury C.I.D.. Enter Guy Smart, who had previous with Stella (then known as Rosie Steel) while working as a clerk to a firm of lawyers in Yarbury. Although he was fired when Rosie fell pregnant, Guy (married to his boss's daughter) was not the father. Discovering the identity of the child — given up for adoption — and the father is one thread Guy sets out to uncover. 

There's a fair amount of action along the way, including a boathouse battle with a group of young thugs who have set upon two young girls hitching a lorry ride, and a firework performance from Guy at the coroner's court. The mystery is satisfactorily resolved in the final chapter and Guy sets off towards new adventures as a private eye.

I'm looking forward to reading the second novel in the series, chiefly for the trio of heroes: Guy Smart, D.S.O., the ruggedly good-looking ex-Squadron Leader, a brawny six-footer with a curt, sceptical manner; the Hon. Ethelred (Plummy) Plumleigh-Bretherton, a happy-go-lucky idler-about-town playboy who partners Smart in business; ex-Sergeant Bert (Tiny) Addenham, a burly, red-faced, bald-headed Cockney, genial, slow-witted greengrocer and unregistered bookie who also runs a  number of sidelines; and, as the book opens, they are joined in a new business by secretary Marcia Brice.

What adventures will they face in their second book? I'll let you know...