Great Expectations part 10

 

(* Artwork © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)

Great Expectations part 9

 

(* Artwork © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)

Great Expectations part 8

 

(* Artwork © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)

Great Expectations part 7

 

(* Artwork © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)

Great Expectations part 6

 

(* Artwork © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)

Occupy this column

The Alan Moore / Frank Miller spat, which began with Miller's vitriolic attack on the Occupy movement and (so far) ended with Moore's comments in a recent interview, has attracted quite a bit of attention in the UK media and is now inspiring cartoons.

If you spot any more, let me know.

(* The Luvvies by Andrew Birch, 9 December 2011 (top) © The Independent.)

A H Brown

Arthur Henry Brown was born in Appledore, Kent, on 24 August 1924, the youngest son of William Brown and his wife Annie Florence (nee Gibson). Along with his two older brothers, Brown grew up in Appledore and showed an early aptitude for creative writing, winning a national story competition run by Cadbury's at the age of eight - the prize being 30 bars of chocolate.

After working for the Co-op in Tenterden, Kent, Brown joined the Army at 18, serving in the Royal Signals (Air Formation Unit) in Europe and Africa after his initial training in Ossett, Yorkshire. A witness to the horrors of Belsen Concentration Camp, Brown spent the years immediately after the war in Cairo before being demobbed.

Returning to civilian life, he continued working for the Co-op, becoming manager of the store in Hawkhurst. Here he met Joan M. Tester, the two marrying in 1952. The newly married couple lived in Cranbrook, Kent, where their childrem, Felicity and Martyn, were born in 1953 and 1956.

Brown supplemented his earnings by writing short stories and novels, writing under a variety of names including A. H. Brown, Rod Brannan (for westerns) and Susan Brown (children's stories). In all he published some 20 books, so there would seem to be additional pen-names still to be discovered.

Brown was a keen sportsman and had a lifelong love of cricket, becoming a supporter of Kent County Cricket Club and playing with a local cricket team.

In later life, Brown lived at Loudon Court, Ashford, Kent, where he died in 2010. His wife predeceased him in 2006 and he was survived by his two children and three grandchildren.

PUBLICATIONS

Novels as A. H. Brown
For Valour. London, Digit Books, Apr 1959.
Special Unit. London, Digit Books, Aug 1959.
The Fourth Man. London, Digit Books, Jan 1961.
The Sun and the Sand. London, Digit Books, 1961.

Novels as Rod Brannan
Treachery at Carson's Creek. London & Melbourne, Ward Lock & Co., 1965.
Prairie Preacher. London & Melbourne, Ward Lock & Co., 1966.
The Steer Stealers. London & Melbourne, Ward Lock & Co., 1966.
Man from Wyomin'. London & Melbourne, Ward Lock & Co., 1967.
Outlaw Lawman. London & Melbourne, Ward Lock & Co., 1967.
Ghost Herd. London & Melbourne, Ward Lock & Co., 1968.
Texas Stranger. London & Melbourne, Ward Lock & Co, 1968.

(* My thanks to John Herrington for pointing me towards a biographical sketch about Brown written by his granddaughter Felicity Moore from which much of the above information is derived.)

Wendy: The British Comic Not Published in Britain

Wendy: The British Comic Not Published in Britain

by Jeremy Briggs

There is a modern comic associated with DC Thomson that gets mentioned from time to time but most people know little about it because, unlike Commando, BeanoMAX or the other DCT titles, we can't just go into a shop and buy one - not in the United Kingdom at least. Wendy is a comic magazine aimed at 8-15 year old girls with a theme of horses and ponies that is currently published by Egmont in Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Various comic strips that have appeared in Wendy are supplied to Egmont by DC Thomson and are referred to collectively by DCT as Pony Stories. Wendy is copyrighted to Wendy Promotions Ltd which is made up of Egmont and DC Thomson & Co Ltd.

Before he retired DC Thomson editor Bill Graham edited the Pony Stories for Wendy and in a 2008 interview on the downthetubes comics site he said, "The magazine called Wendy was first published in Germany in 1986, using stories reprinted from our girls' papers. The character Wendy first appeared in 1991. Wendy is published weekly in Germany and fortnightly in Denmark, Sweden and Norway by the various arms of Egmont. It is also published under licence under other titles in France and Holland (I think quarterly). Wendy is huge in the territories where it is published. Along with the magazine there is considerable marketing. A range of toys based on the characters was launched last Christmas and I believe it won Toy Of The Year in Germany."

While that interview is now over three years old and the publication schedules have changed, putting 'Wendy' into the search engine of the German Amazon.de shows just how many Wendy related items are still available in Germany from toys to books, CDs to computer games.

This is the November 2011 Swedish issue of Wendy. In Sweden the title is now published 8 times a year, so approximately every 6 weeks. It is a full colour, glossy, stapled magazine that is 52 pages long and, like so many UK comics aimed at a similar age range, it is bagged with gifts and has a cover price of 39 Krona which is around £3.50 - £3.75. There are three different comic strips in this issue, the adventure strip Wendy which is 19 pages long split 10/9 over two parts, the animation style strip Horseland which is 12 pages long and the single page humour strip Snobben & Skrutten. Of the rest of the magazine, 12 pages are given over to features, posters, pin-ups and quizzes using colour photos of horses, there are 4 pages of adverts, 2 pages of a text story with no illustrations, plus the front cover and the contents page.

Wendy is a 15 year old blonde, horse loving girl who lives with her parents and younger sister and who has adventures with her friends. In this Swedish version her surname is Thorsson, however in Germany she is Wendy Thorsteeg, in Denmark Wendy Thorup and in Norway Wendy Thorn. The other characters, both human and equine, change name between countries as well. In this story entitled Den Svarta Mustagen (The Black Mustang) Wendy is on holiday at a ranch in America and is taken by one of the local Indian tribe to see cave paintings of horses while hoping to encounter a wild horse.

Horseland is a more tongue-in-cheek story of an equestrian centre with six friends plus their horses and other assorted pets and farm animals. In the strip the animals talk to each other, but not to the humans, in the same way that Snowy in Tintin or Jolly Jumper in Lucky Luke talk to other animals. In this episode entitled Stackars Timmi! (Poor Timmy!) the humans, along with the help of their animals, rescue hedgehogs would were looking for Timmi, the missing youngest member of the hedgehog family. As the art is in a modern animation style it is not surprising to discover that the strip is based on an American CBS-TV animation series of the same name and was supplied by Tooncafe and not DC Thomson.

Snobben & Skrutten is a one page humour strip about two horses, one a posh thoroughbred and the other a down-to-earth pony. In Denmark the pair are known as Snobby & Snuske while they are Lord & Lauser in Germany. The Snobben & Skrutten page in this issue of Wendy has modern stylised artwork but the strip was originally illustrated by DCT artist Willie Richie in a much more traditional humour style. While it has never been published in the UK it does have an English title, Snooty and Scamp, and a page of it in English was displayed at the Willie Richie art exhibition in Dundee University as part of the Dundee Comics Day in 2010. In his tribute talk about his late friend and colleague on that day, Bill Graham told the attendees that Willie Richie had drawn over 800 pages of Snooty and Scamp over the years for Wendy.

In the downthetubes interview, Bill Graham also listed the various other artists that he had used on the Pony Stories strips including British artists Barrie Mitchell, Jim Colthorpe and Phil Gascoine plus Spanish artists Jaume Forns, Rodrigo Comos, Jesus Pena, Antonio Perez and his son David, and Joaquin Romero along with Rojo, Roca, Blase and Redondo.

Another DC Thomson staffer who worked on Wendy was editor Bill McLoughlin who again was interviewed on downthetubes in 2008 and when asked if any of the thousands of pages of comic strips produced for the Wendy comic had been published in the UK said, "A version of Wendy appeared in Animals & You, but I don't think there are any plans to publish stories here."

Wendy may not the sort of comic that readers of Judge Dredd Megazine or CLiNT would be interested in, but it is a title that has provided work for British comics creators for over two decades.

Further Information

The website of the German Wendy comic is here.
The website of the Danish Wendy comic is here.
The website of the Norwegian Wendy comic is here.
The Swedish Wendy comic does not have a separate website.

German TV advert for Wendy Gee Gee Friends toys.


(* Wendy is © Wendy Promotions Ltd.)

Comic Cuts - 9 December 2011

Some good news just arrived — always nice to have on the run-up to Christmas. There is to be a French-language edition of Eagles Over the Western Front. Look and Learn Ltd. has just signed a deal with a publisher in France, who will do their own 3-volume collection of the strip. The deal also covers the three introductory pieces I wrote for the volumes. So watch out for Aigles sur le front occidental — well, that's what Google translate comes up with — in 2013.

Fired up with enthusiasm, I've now stitched together 14 pages of 'The Crusader', the fourth strip that will be appearing in the C. L. Doughty collection Pages from History. I still have half a dozen pages to scan, but they're so huge (four times the size of the printed page) that it involves rearranging the office to get them on the scanner. I'm hoping to have them finished over the weekend. I'm still hopeful that I'll have the book on sale by February.

It's that time of the year when I usually take a look at the sales figures of Christmas annuals. I didn't manage to put together any numbers last year because figures aren't always easy to come by; hard data is often hiding away behind paywalls and even what used to be freely available online (such as the Bookseller's Top 50 bestsellers) are now only available to subscribers. You can still see a Top 20 on their website. The Beano Annual 2012 managed to creep into the Top 10 sellers at the end of November with a weekly sale of 16,878, bringing overall sales to around 88,560.

The second highest selling annual is the Moshi Monsters Official Annual, which, in the same week (w/e 26 November) sold 16,166, bringing the total to around 86,530. The following week (w/e 3 December), the Beano Annual managed to keep its place in the Top 20, while Moshi Monsters had dropped out. I don't have figures, but I imagine Dr Who Official Annual 2012, Peppa Pig Official Annual 2012 and Top Gear Official Annual 2012 probably make up the rest of the Top 5 annuals.

Just for comparison, here are the Top 5 best-selling annuals for the equivalent week in 2009.

1 Beano Annual 2010 (19,633)
2 The Official Doctor Who Annual 2010 (15,424)
3 Hannah Montana Annual 2010 (15,363)
4 Ben 10 Alien Force Annual 2010 (13,893)
5 Peppa Pig: The Official Annual 2010 (13,065)

Peppa Pig still seems to be going strong, as is Doctor Who. The other two also have annuals out this year, but sales of all four are below 12,000 for the week. Maybe this indicates a general fall in sales or a move to buying online... most likely a mixture of the two.

For old fogies like myself, one of the most obvious signs of decline in annuals is the number of pages. The Beano and Dandy annuals are 112 pages, putting them top of the chart when it comes to value for money. The Moshi Monsters annual, for comparison, is only 64 pages, as are the Doctor Who, Peppa Pig and others annuals. Compare that to, say, the first issue of Strip Magazine, which runs to 68 pages (including covers) and costs £5 less. Yes, a copy finally arrived!

What you get to your £2.99 is a full colour magazine with a good range of strips and articles. Where last week I described The Phoenix as the modern day equivalent of early Buster (although I should add the caveat that I was talking about the mix of stories, not the content), I would put Strip Magazine somewhere in the late 1970s, post the arrival of Battle Picture Weekly and 2000AD.

There are five serial strips plus one humour and two complete stories. Two of the stories are reprints: a newly coloured version of 'Hook Jaw' from the pages of Action and The Age of Heroes, published by Halloween in the US in 1996 and distributed, I believe, by Image. Artists include P. J. Holden (who is also interviewed in this issue), Keith Page (producing a prequel to the recently published Iron Moon graphic novel), Mike Penick, John McCrea, Graham Stoddart (a competition winner but not a newcomer) and Jon Rushby, who have a good mix of styles between them.

I'm going to reserve judgement until I've seen a second issue, but all the strips set off at a cracking pace and show a lot of potential. Issue 2 is due out on Wednesday, 14 December, so you might want to scoot down to your local comic shop and make sure you grab a copy of issue 1 this weekend. You can still find a preview of issue 1 here. The Strip Magazine blog is here.

Today's random scans. I ran, two weeks ago, a pair of covers by Peter Andrew Jones that formed a panoramic image. Thinking about his work, I remember that he was one of the main artists on Larry Niven's books but the other name I associate him with is Tanith Lee, so I've dug out a couple of her novels. I absolutely love Jones's use of colour in these and the Nivens. I will have to see what else I can find on my shelves.

 

We have an article from Jeremy Briggs to run tomorrow and I'll see what I can dig out for Sunday, although it won't be a full blown cover gallery as I've not had a chance to do any scanning this week. 'Great Expectations' will continue from Monday... if I can get my act together over the weekend. Fingers crossed.

Great Expectations part 5

 

(* Artwork © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)

Great Expectations part 4

 

(* Artwork © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)

Great Expectations part 3

 

(* Artwork © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)

Chris Weston and The Trigan Empire

As I mentioned on Friday, further information about the upcoming Trigan Empire movie is likely to trickle out over the next few weeks and months. Well, it hasn't taken long. At shortly before midnight last night, Chris Weston tweeted...

... with a link to the Wikipedia entry on the Trigan Empire strip.

Great Expectations part 2

 

(* Artwork © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)