Welcome on this blog full of information about British comics and offcourse the comics.

A British comic is a periodical published in the United Kingdom that contains comic strips. It is generally referred to as a comic or a comic magazine, and historically as a comic paper.

British comics are usually comics anthologies which are typically aimed at children, and are published weekly, although some are also published on a fortnightly or monthly schedule. The top three longest-running comics in the world, The Dandy, The Beano, and Comic Cuts, are all British, although in modern times British comics have been largely superseded by American comic books and Japanese manga.

You can access the information and comics through the sidebar.
The comics are mostly in packages from around 100mb, inside these rar-packages you will find the comics in cbr format.dandare

There are no DC Thomson related comics on the site, because i had to remove these.

You can view the comics with any cbr-reader like CDisplay or ComicRack.

Most comics are from the 50’s-80’s with some 90’s.

I only place issues from last century,
so no issues newer than the year 1999.

I did not scan the comics myself only collect them from various sites on the internet, internet archive, Usenet Newsgroups and torrents.
So thanks to all the scanners and uploaders.

This blog is purely ment to preserve the comics and to enjoy them, no financial meanings are involved, if you like the comics buy them as long as they are availabe, because nothing can beat the feeling of reading a real comic.

If you find something wrong (downloads, numbering, information) please let me know so that i can correct the error.

Thanks to the following sites for the information :

UK Comics Wiki

Grand Comics Database

Wikipedia

buster

11,996 responses »

  1. https://www.mediafire.com/file/lt1xswdhznhs6wr/WorldOfFilmFun.cbz/file

    Done on vFlat as I’m still using the book at the moment and don’t want to pull it apart just yet.

    And that feels as good a place as any to don a pair of oversized Coke bottle glasses and go “actually”…

    I’m researching AP/Fleetway/IPC comics for a project, and most of the issue numbers out there are wrong, wrong, wrong.

    Film Fun for example. Sir Denis Gifford’s catalogue lists it as 2225 issues, a figure taken as gospel and spread by GCD, Wikipedia and many other sources.
    >But if you put the start and end dates into online date calculators it’s clear that it simply ran for 2225 weeks. However, while Film Fun officially stayed at a weekly frequency for its’ whole life there wasn’t an issue every week.

    >>In March 1947 there was an issue with three dates and three numbers (1416/1417/1418); this was likely industrial action as we have the corresponding issue of “Knockout” (while I only have cover pictures, “Illustrated Chips” and “Tip Top” – fortnightly at the time – had issues with 2 numbers on)
    >>There’s a similar situation with 1604/5/6/7 from October/November 1950, which again has four dates hidden away in the indicia.
    >>Then there’s the big famous strike from 1959, where Film Fun *seems* to have followed the same schedule as Lion – 20/6/59, undated unnumbered, undated unnumbered ‘issue A’, 29/8/1959. This happened /after/ the numbering was stopped, for added confusion.

    >So by my very crude calculations, Film Fun missed /at least/ 13 issues.
    >>There might also be other oddities – in December 1950 there was a “Radio Fun” with two dates & numbers but we don’t have the corresponding “Film Fun”.

    This has the knock-on that any unnumbered, dated issues like the “Film Fun 2224” we have here seem to be based on counting backwards from the incorrect Gifford figure.

    The upshot is that I’d honestly say any AP/FW/IPC titles not fully indexed by Steve Holland et al. (which is mainly post-war boys’ action) have highly suspect issue totals.

    >The numbers for even titles like Comic Cuts and Illustrated Chips are questionable.
    >>Comic Cuts ended on #3003, beyond debate. But that does not mean there were 3003 issues. But I’d bet my left hand and two fingers off the right that there was at least one double-numbered issue in March 1947.

    >Publication quirks before World War II seem rare, but I’d honestly not want to state they didn’t exist given how gappy our copies of issues are. I’d be maybe about 75% sure that the figures for Crackers or Jester or Larks are accurate, but I would be far from shocked to find otherwise.

    >Not all printing disputes are equal; I /think/ “Comet” and “Sun” dodged at least one dispute simply because they had a different printer to most of the rest of the AP line in 1950.

    >Other disruptions were things like the fuel crisis in the seventies, where IPC had reduced capacity but were able to manage it, e.g. “June” going fortnightly for a while.

    So yeah, TL:DR I think most of the issue numbers out there are inaccurate. My methodology for finding the correct ones (getting as many issues humanly possible and counting them) is likely to be long-winded.

    Be pretty cool though if that as and when we get the opportunity we could try to stem the spread of the incorrect info, though.

    Liked by 2 people

  2. Webfind jamboree! Weird stuff ahoy.

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/g5brp5sipvtd1m1/Amalgamated_Press__Newsagents_reservation_insert_Late_1940_s.cbz/file – tenuously placing this at 1949 due to the former J.B. Allen titles (Comet and Sun) being included. This would also fit with the end of WW2 paper rationing (lots and lots of rationing continued in the UK after 1945) and AP being in a position to push aggressively for new readers. And have the paper to make flyers.

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/v5oxfl8itcl1cfh/Barbie_Annual_1986.cbz/file – this time last week I did not know IPC even did a Barbie comic, and now I have a dozen issues on order.

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/8j3xcx0hyy5fw33/BritishComics_AnAppraisal.cbz/file – a report from the curtain-twitching busybodies who got American comics banned in the UK in the fifties. There’s a very good book by Martin Barker on the subject.

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/m1ki9cab0kken9g/BrushPenAndPencil_TheBookOfTomBrowne.cbz/file – only touches on Browne’s comic work but still.

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/2yl2lu3og88fnku/Lucky_Star_Romances_589_%2528Gorgon776%2529.cbr/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/zphqabs16ow22b5/Schoolgirls_Album_1947.cbz/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/g79eqx95zx8vl6t/Slick_Fun_Album_1951.cbz/file – one of the annuals for Swan’s Coloured Slick Fun.

    Liked by 1 person

    • boutje777 says:

      Thank you very much. I only was aware of American Barbie comics from Dell and Marvel.

      Liked by 1 person

      • This seems to be the one – https://www.comics.org/series/64110/

        Honestly not sure how much is original material… while I doubt any of it is Princess Tina reprints it will be interesting to see if it’s in house. IIRC Fleetway ignored American material and did their own thing for M.A.S.K. around the same time.

        I can’t tell if it was even merged with anything when it was cancelled; by 1987 I think IPC/Fleetway’s only remaining girls’ comic was Girl, which seemed to be aiming for older readers by that point.

        http://www.tonystrading.co.uk/galleries/annuals/barbie.htm shows there were four Fleetway annuals presumably tying into the magazine to some degree; I can see the World Distributors logo on the ones either side. Doubt the nineties ones were Fleetway/IPC as I think they’d largely got out the annual game by then.

        Like

  3. Quick question for War/Battle Picture Library bods. Recently got these in a job lot on ebay: –

    https://ibb.co/zHvVzP6

    They’re on the scan pile but they’re best part of 200 pages each so I’d rather not do any we already have. A quick cast around suggests we don’t already have any of them but if anyone gets chance to double check before I scan them I’d be grateful.

    Like

    • boutje777 says:

      Somehow the covers look familiar, but i can’t find any of these six somewhere.

      Liked by 1 person

      • Thanks! Going to be a little while ’til I get to them so I will keep eyes peeled.

        Also as they are presumably all-reprint I’ll probably check we don’t already have the original issues on here as I’m not sure scanning stuff for different page numbers is top priority…

        Like

    • Tom says:

      Not ones on the done list. Especially like the Battler Britton although yes they probably appeared elsewhere. Always loved them as a kid. My end of the world you are looking at at least $20.00 plus postage per Issue.

      Like

      • Thanks! Weirdly, Picture Library *Specials* don’t seem to cost a lot here. Picture libraries, yes. Specials, yes. Picture Library Specials, no. Will try to run up a list of contents for them tomorrow.

        Like

        • Anonymous says:

          You can look the specials up here and see which stories there are.

          war picture library holiday specials.
          https://www.comics.org/series/69667/

          battle picture library holiday specials from two sets of years (and two publishers)
          https://www.comics.org/series/66759/
          https://www.comics.org/series/174159/

          battler britton holiday specials from 2 sets of years (and two publishers)

          https://www.comics.org/series/174155/

          https://www.comics.org/series/66761/

          Like

        • Anonymous says:

          Not sure where my reply went. You can search the comics dot org repository for eg “War Picture Library Holiday Special” and get the whole lot, and most of them have been indexed to show which stories are in it.

          Like

          • Thanks! I think Boutje has the comments set up so that anything with more than 1 link has to be approved to cut down on spambots.

            Right, between Google and GCD. this is what we have: –

            Battler Britton HS ’77 (Typhoon)

            • Old Pilots Never Die/BPL #521 have
            • All or Nothing/AAPL #474 have
            • The Cauldron/AAPL #510 have

            Battler Britton HS ’81 (Lancaster)

            • Target Impossible/BPL #577 have
            • Hurricane Force/BPL #625 have
            • Daylight Raid/AAL #351 have

            WPL HS ’78 (lads with nice matching berets)

            • Last Campaign/WPL #289 have
            • Tank Crew/BPL #713 have (guessing it was printed in WPL at some point but also 70s IPC was like the Wild West)
            • The Executioner/BPL #633 have (ditto)

            WPL HS ’81 (radioactive giant Tommy eating a field gun)

            • Fight to Survive/BPL #724 need
            • Hoodlum Patrol/BPL #362 have
            • Battle Strike/WPL #428 have

            BPL HS ’76 (chap being chased by big lion)

            • Last Man Last Round/WPL #239 need
            • Road to Berlin/WPL #222 have
            • Up in Arms/BPL #891 need

            BPL HS’ 77 (small red exploding Germans)

            • Onslaught/BPL #138 have
            • Rearguard/BPL #169 have
            • Old Battlewagon/BPL #154 have

            Not going to lie, leaning very much to just scanning the covers and patching the rest together from extant scans, the bum-ache of scanning fat picture libraries for page numbers might be a bit anoraky even for me.

            Also we need a Wiki. Like, a good one.

            Like

        • cjkerry says:

          All six have actually been indexed on the Grand Comics Database (GCD). That surprised me as British material often isn’t done. Some of the stories even have a notation for where they were reprinted from.

          Like

  4. Jimmy Brown says:

    Hey, I have a bunch of UK annuals from the 80s and 90s (mostly) based on TV shows, if you’re interested. I have yet to scan them. Various years of, for example-

    Madballs, The A-Team, Mr. T, Danger Mouse, Super Gran, Inspector Gadget, The Flintstones, Street Hawk, Fantastic Max, Potsworth & Co, Popeye and a few more.

    I have never done this before so if you want these, let me know what to do once I have scanned and I’ll get it done asap.

    Like

    • boutje777 says:

      Thanks for the offer. When you have them ready, it’s best to upload them to a filesharing site and leave a link in a comment to download them, i will make sure they will be in an update and eventually on the page where they belong.

      Like

  5. https://www.mediafire.com/file/331mbjjv4wsc9m1/CrackersX18.zip/file

    18 issues of Crackers, a couple missing pages and the earliest ones having heavy fold damage. Not to be confused with Cracker by the Miserable Scottish Git, this was an Amalgamated Press weekly which ran from 1929 to 1941 and ran for 615 issues (this seems to be an accurate-ish figure).

    • It debuted on 23 February 1929 as a replacement for Lot-o’-Fun; straight replacement seems to have been the prewar equivalent of a merger, with the odd story continuing. As AP was rarely challenged from the end of WWI to the launch of The Dandy they could kind of do what they like with this sort of thing.
    • The title was initially a 12-pager using 12″ x 14″ pages. For anyone lucky enough not to have to deal with a 12-pager they’re an absolute pig; rather than being three sheets divided into four pages each there’s one massive one that has pp. 1-6 and pp.11-12 printed on, with an insert featuring pp.7-10. As such, often with old 12-pagers, pp. 7-10 will be missing.
    • Crackers laid the framework for most of AP’s new titles with an increase in both colour pages and the new-fangled adventure picture strips.
    • Editor was Stan Gooch, who like most group editors at AP had something of a company-within-a-company of regular artists – Roy Wilson, Reg Parlett, George Parlett, Alex Akerbladh and Louis Briault were among the most prolific contributors.
    • Many of the “first wave” adventure artists like Vincent Daniel, Jock McCail, Alan Gelli, George Heath and Hilda Boswell also contributed. Most still did the whole ‘picture book’ thing, though.
    • Stalwart characters included Reg Parlett’s chirpy Injun papooses Wildflower and Little Elf, namesake Crackers the Pup (introduced in 1932; around this time IIRC several established comics suddenly came up with eponymous characters, which suggests it was possibly some edict from Harold Garrish, or even higher up), flapperish schoolgirl Kitty Clare by George Parlett, and Roy Wilson’s Happy Harry and Sister Sue.
    • Gooch does not appear to have been a man who liked retiring characters, though, and like many of his books Crackers had revivals – including “Strongheart”, a Lassie rip-off who’d outlived something like three or four comics and came onboard when the comic incorporated The Sparkler in 1939, and “George the Jolly Gee-Gee” after everyone realised what a stupid strip it was to have on the front of Radio Fun.
    • Crackers survived the May 1940 paper rationing purge of AP comics, albeit as a fortnightly and with the paper size cut to 8.5″ x 11.5″ (the same size as Radio Fun at the time). However, this only lasted a year, and the comic presumably was no longer profitable enough to justify its’ paper allocation. After the 31 May 1941 edition it was merged into Jingles, and even Strongheart seems to have been nobbled by that one.

    Like

  6. Anonymous says:

    Hi Boutje.

    Notice Boombox mentioned the picture libraries & piecing them together.

    I have most picture library holiday special, special issue, winter issue, extra issue etc, though i seem to be missing:

    “[1986] – War Picture Library Holiday Special”, thought i had this, if anyone has a copy good or bad, can you upload it. Thank you.

    Boombox said might be a bit anoraky even for him to scan every page . I must be the “Anorak” that scanned them (LOL).

    These are my old unedited raw scans.

    Think most most will end up on ebay, with someone else claiming the credit for them. I have hundreds more but will see how these go first !!!!.

    Regards

    “The Highwayman”

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/tfdl7kemneg7far/%255B1963%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/zga94w8s0dtu3x4/%255B1964%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/63omakjkjdtkkhd/%255B1965%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/vg7f4azldglzxyq/%255B1966%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/9wktab9js3i2t0m/%255B1967%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/vakgkk2lqhzl8ac/%255B1968%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/5scy4exu3yj7l2n/%255B1969%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/xeeckokyvb4iupi/%255B1970%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/s3ke4xlvd7484zw/%255B1970%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Special_Extra.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/x1h80gx20kjs9xf/%255B1971%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/v5jnqv00egcp7l1/%255B1972%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/mr2xtnhqj4qbpxs/%255B1973%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/9s6tmspzipwu3ip/%255B1974%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/1jg1yw8b5cn3anz/%255B1975%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/dni8fw45s2u1y6b/%255B1976%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/4iing7neruucqwv/%255B1977%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/p5gtq4m6263eva4/%255B1978%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/lo77rfgitkrqs7t/%255B1979%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/9fgzhy5d7rm1let/%255B1980%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/a5dc4tjyj2b6zgh/%255B1981%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/k2q7gtqqsnw5j0q/%255B1982%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/7bizviy7zlguvao/%255B1983%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/zai6e3g69v9o0s3/%255B1984%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/r25s9dhnkdke6be/%255B1985%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/2c8exb5euatow2z/%255B1985%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Special_Issue.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/9ksqw1x8dz3aj1x/%255B1985%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Winter_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/rz7byhgemvj5nav/%255B1986%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/98rna7knj5cwgkj/%255B1988%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/drbrun9yzesoa67/%255B1989%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/66hjea6ttzpu91p/%255B1990%255D_-_War_Picture_Library_Holiday_Special.rar/file

    Regards

    “The Highwayman”

    Liked by 4 people

    • Outstanding! No offence meant, we’re all anoraks here =D Was more just trying to manage expectations as being mainly stuff we already have knocks them right down my scanning order.

      eBay DVD sellers really are a genuine bane as none of them add anything that isn’t online… if someone went out and bought all of Misty or Battle or whatever, scanned it all in hi-res and sold it online that would be irritating but sort of understandable.

      The ones out there that just download the same scans that’re everywhere on the internet for free in order to basically take advantage of people are total G. H. Cantles and no mistake.

      Liked by 1 person

    • boutje777 says:

      Thank you very much, great work. I’ve download them and will save them for the next update.

      Like

    • Tom says:

      Hi Highwayman

      Gave you a like but it wasn’t enough. The major Fleetway pocket libraries are a favourite, and the holiday specials were a bonus. With a few days of polar blasts going to settle down with these.

      Thank you

      Like

    • Anonymous says:

      Oh Wow, thank you so much for these. If you got any Air Ace specials, it would make my summer to see them!

      Like

  7. Anonymous says:

    Hi Boombox.

    No offence taken, i am an Anorak, though, i’ll spend hours editing to my standard. That’s why i didn’t put my edited ones on here.

    Yes, the same old crap is always available on ebay sadly & sadly, people buy it thinking their getting a bargain, sadly their not but, their lose.

    Regards

    “The Highwayman”

    Liked by 2 people

  8. Anonymous says:

    Hi @boutje777

    I a have a Thunderbirds comic compilation file I’d like to share and I was wondering how I could upload it?

    Like

    • boutje777 says:

      Thank you for the offer, you can upload it to the fileserversite you prefer and leave a link in a comment so everyone interested can download it, i will save it for the next update and place it at the Thunderbirdspage. Perhaps you can leave a link in the compilations site also.

      Like

  9. https://www.mediafire.com/file/vp2wxe4wfftea70/LotOFunX4.zip/file

    4 issues of Lot-o’-Fun.

    Lot-o’-Fun was a comic published by James Henderson & Sons and then Amalgamated Press from 1906 to 1929. It was devised by James Henderson & Sons as a replacement for Nuggets, which was one of several Hendersons titles reprinting American gag cartoons in the style of early Comic Cuts (see also Scraps and Snap-Shots). Lot-o’-Fun instead followed the more contemporary style by then in use on Comic Cuts, Illustrated Chips and so on with “sets” featuring recurring characters and themes rather than one-off jokes as the main cartoon component. It was initially a halfpenny 8-page title, sized 12¼” x 15¾”. Alfred Barrett – a hugely interesting man who later wrote vast numbers of pulp novels, often under the pseudonym A.N.Other, and was later hauled up in court for creating Link, a magazine that let horny singles meet up in World War I (no, seriously).

    The front page of Lot-o’-Fun originally featured unconventional autograph hunters “Findem and His Friends” (drawn by Pip Martin) in full colour, while the centre pages and rear cover featured an overlay – red and yellow, respectively. Martin contributed several other sets, including “Milligan, Mulligan and Miggs” and “Uncle Bungle”, while G. M. Payne drew “Midshipman Breezy”. There were still American reprints (Hendersons had licencing agreements with most of the big American magazine publishers), though these tended to be of newspaper strips rather than gags. The back page debuted tramp story “Dreamy Daniel” (by George Davey), which would be a fixture for much of the comic’s life, later moving to the front page.

    The first issue was dated 17 March 1906, and the comic came out on Tuesdays. While Puck had led a tilt towards children in the industry, Lot-o’-Fun was still initially pitched to the same older readership comics had aimed for in the Victorian era. Nevertheless the comic was a solid success, to the extent it inspired the publisher to add colour to the long-running Comic Life as well.

    World War I caused paper prices to rise, and Lot-o’-Fun increased price to 1d then 1½d, while from 1918 the page size was reduced to 12″ x 12″. Despite these cost-cutting measures, the publisher went heavily into debt in the conflict and was taken over by Amalgamated Press in 1920. They opted to continue Lot-o’-Fun but in 1922 decided to reconfigure it to a format closer to Puck and The Sunbeam as a 2d, 12-page children’s comic. An influx of work from AP regulars followed the takeover with strips by Julius Stafford-Baker, Joe Hardman, Freddie Crompton, Don Newhouse and Bertie Brown appearing, as well as early adventure picture strips by Vincent Daniel.

    By the late 1920s the title was beginning to flag, and after the 16 February 1929 edition was replaced by the new Crackers after 1196 issues.

    Like other 12-page comics, these were physically made up of only two large sheets – one of 8 pages, and a 4 page ‘insert’ that was not fastened to the rest of the comic at all. For Lot-o’-Fun this was pages 3-6, which are missing from the two 12-page numbers I have.

    Like

  10. Tina #3. I’ve managed to accrue six of these on my £5-or-less rules, but they really don’t come up often. The bad news is this one is missing several pages. The good news is they’re mainly “My Chum Yum-Yum”, which was shit.

    https://www.mediafire.com/file/cxams7awukn4lct/Tina+1967-03-11+03.cbz/file

    Tina was basically created in response to Fleetway’s exports, which were booming for boys’ adventure but flagging in the girls’ sector as the prevalence of school stories didn’t travel well. John Sanders, his reputation having taken a thump from his association with Ranger, was given the job of overseeing a change in direction for the girls’ division. The fictional host was Tina, who had painted-on pigtails.

    That opening line-up in full: –

    • Jane Bond: international superspy, playgirl, racing driver, ballerina, model and many, many, many other things. Drawn by the great Mike Hubbard, who had been Norman Pett’s understudy and then successor on Jane. No-one seems to have told him at any point that the strip was aimed at children or girls.
    • Dick and Dinah: plantation mystery fun, and an outlier as possibly the only story that’s like something out of School Friend and therefore was even slightly appealing to female readers of the time.
    • Here Come the Space Girls: welcome to the air hostesses of tomorrow! Sally, Kathy and Fran blunder their way through a variety of intergalactic travel snafus. Art by the legendary Keith Watson, who just plain drew Dan Dare as Captain Pepper.
    • Westward the Wagons: a shorthanded settler convoy is forced to have a young girl as its’ chief scout. Thankfully, she’s Glory ****ing Gold and she kicks arse.
    • My Chum Yum-Yum: white girl has incredibly dumb Asian servant girl. The writer of this weird forties throwback is unsurprisingly Ron “Nobby” Clark; Jean Sidobrel was the first of three known artists trying to curb the script.
    • Barbie – The Model Girl: this actually seems to have beaten Sindy’s appearance in June to the punch by a couple of weeks. The story followed Barbie’s attempts to overcome her dreadful hairstyle and become a model, and it was drawn by one A. E. Allen.
    • Jackie and the Wild Boys: Jackie Jackson is a normal girl with occasionally insane facial expressions who attempts to join amateur rock and/or roll combo The Wild Boys, three not even remotely wild boys who all seem to play guitar. Leo Davy is your artist.
    • The School in the Sun: got to have a school story. So Tina makes it a slightly sinister island school for the kids of UN bigwigs, and a cast made up of girls from countries they were hoping to sell syndication rights to.
    • Black Beauty: Carlos Roume paints nice pictures while some random sub-edit slices Anna Sewell’s book down to 500 words a week.
    • Two on Cockatoo: the Odd Couple on a desert island; dizzy brat Carol and practical air hostess Ann find themselves marooned together on an island. Art by Bill Baker
    • Gi-Gi and Go-Go: circus funnies with an idiot girl and her idiot pony.
    • The Trolls: based on the doll things, and drawn by Hugh McNeill. Which is a bit like when Anthony Hopkins turned up in Transformers 5.

    Fleetway’s masterstroke was that the comic was sold as a package to a slew of Western European publishers, who would just switch in translated text. What they didn’t foresee was that the last thing the British girl of 1967 wanted in their comics were a host of mould-breaking, kick-ass female heroines (amazingly, letters were received calling Jane Bond “too masculine”) and UK sales were disastrous.

    Ordinarily, Fleetway would have just cancelled the thing but by all accounts were locked in to producing the thing anyway, and with high-quality production values to boot. So they blended it with Princess – which was flagging badly as all the posh parents hurried to switch their poor kids to the even more boring Look and Learn – as Princess Tina, which reputedly did just enough to keep the comic profitable in the UK (though it was apparently never a very strong seller).

    As a footnote, once the fires had been put out Fleetway/IPC put together an exhaustive market research programme to try and find out what girls actually wanted. The answer was orphans, cruelty and animal pin-ups – leading to the creation of Tammy.

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    • boutje777 says:

      Thank you very much, great work.

      Liked by 1 person

    • boutje777 says:

      Tina is the biggest girl related magazine/comic here in the Netherlands, First issue in 67 and still alive. There are also Tina festivals every year. There are Tina awards for like singers, writers, Youtubers.

      Liked by 1 person

      • Wow, I knew it was big with you guys but no idea it was that big!

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        • boutje777 says:

          Would you believe that those festivals before covid attract 30.000 visitors and was fully soldout almost every year.

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        • Anonymous says:

          And indeed, I clearly remember about half the opening line-up from my earliest Dutch Tina’s: Jane Bond, Here Come the Space Girls, My Chum Yum-Yum, Barbie, Jackie and the Wild Boys and the Trolls…

          ( I myself am a bit younger)

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      • Anonymous says:

        Can I ask if there is a particular or preferred type of scanner used for scanning the comics? I managed to buy The Hotspur no 467 a while ago as it was missing from my collection and want to scan it. I’m aware that The Hotspur is no longer allowed on this site but if I do a decent job of it I may look at buying others that are not already on this site and scanning and then uploading. Thanks.

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        • boutje777 says:

          Me myself and i have no knowledge about scanning or scanners, but i am sure there are contributors who are willing to help you with advice.

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        • Honestly for newsprint comics basically any flatbed will do (in my experience, comics don’t tend to react well to camera style scanners, I guess the frames mess up the recognition pr something). I use a HP flatbed because it’s small and light. Software-wise I use the built-in Windows scanning wizard, XNView for most editing and GIMP for anything fancy like combining oversized pages.

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  11. rayhgte says:

    thanks

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  12. Anonymous says:

    Hi Anonymous.

    I use, Epson Gt – 20000 & have a Epson Gt – 15000 as a back up.

    Both are A3 scanners.

    They have Home Mode, Office Mode, Professional Mode.

    Settings for Paper, Newspaper, Magazines, Photo’s.

    They maybe old but worth their weight in gold to me.

    You can get a full comic opened up on these, so there’s no need to mess about with stitching pages together.

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