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world, The Dandy, The Beano, and Comic Cuts, are all British, although in modern times British comics have been largely superseded by American comic books and Japanese manga.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.
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 :
British Comics 
I received a email that WordPress got a dcma takedown notice for material on this site, it will be done in several days because it is a lot to take down. I will read everything tomorrow to get an overview what will be deleted. Let’s not panic for now. I will let you know the details tomorrow.
LikeLiked by 1 person
UPDATE TAKEDOWN
As far as i can see the takedown is for all material from Rebellion Publishing Limited and Rebellion 2000 AD Ltd, they represent alot of companies. Not only for this blog but also for Comics For All. I have to wait and see what will be taking down, somewhere next week most will be finished i assmue. So i can see what is actually removed and make a decision on how to continue, without those deleted or close these blogs forever, because i don’t have time to begin from scratch again, i did that 2 times allready. So we have to wait and see, best is not to place links anymore for comics for the time being.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Hi Boutje, Firstly I think it would be terrible if you are forced to undo and remove All that may be effected, and especially all the hard work you have put in to gather all the relevant material. Secondly I do not beleive it will benefit Said New Publishers with any future published/printed materials. I beleive this is a purely selfish and money motivated ploy on there part, and will not affect any of there future sales, as people will still buy hard copies for there enjoyment. I am so sorry that you have been put in this position, especially with All the Good Work and Time you have devoted. Kindest Regards Bosco. XXX
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, i always keep in mind that something like this can happen, so it’s not a big shock to me. I will think how i want to continue when everything is clear. I don’t even have to delete something, WordPress does that for me, the last time it happens i had to remove everything myself.
LikeLiked by 1 person
For what it’s worth, and with the caveat that it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference I don’t believe that Rebellion weren’t aware of this site until now. I feel it is more likely that someone has been bothering them about it and their hand has been tipped.
From my limited, amateur understanding IP enforcement is an all-or-nothing deal. If you allow scans of 2000 AD it’s hard to then, say, stop someone making and selling an unauthorised Judge Dredd film or whatever.
Public domain in Britain is much muddied too; I believe it’s 70 years after the death of the last contributor. Bertie Brown, for example, died in 1974.
LikeLike
I think also that a blog/site can become too popular, for instance if you do a Google search British Comics, this blog mostly come out as first in the search results.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I daresay you just might be right about someone forcing Revolution’s hand. I do recall that Lew Stringer complained about a compilation of Clumsy Colin on the Compliations blog. He could complain about the compilation but possibly not about the issues of Buster the strips originally appeared in as that was the only item of his in it. However if enough creators badgered Revolution they might have caved in just to get some peace and quiet.
LikeLike
I think it’s unlikely it was an actual creator. I find it very odd that this has come right after increased talk about DC Thomson, and think that someone has directly contacted Rebellion in either good or bad faith.
But again it’s a bit meaningless amd doesn’t actually change anything.
LikeLike
Life goes on.
Another year of Donald Duck Sundays.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qwYb0gQZC0oJVFfiMdu4znDDLRJdKGh5/view?usp=drive_link
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, i will update this tomorrow.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Such a shame if all the Humour titles have to go, I’ve really enjoyed adding to it over the years. Thanks boutje for all your hard work and everyone who has contributed.
LikeLike
Thank you very much, more news about continuation next week i hope.
LikeLike
I would also like to say that I feel this is a great shame, while obviously not something we can argue with.
The vast, vast, vast majority of the material on this site is not commercially available and never will be, particularly to those outside the UK. The publishers and creators get no more money from someone spending £10 for an old issue on eBay than they do for someone getting it for free online. And I can’t believe there are a sizeable amount of people downloading GBs worth of material as an alternative to buying a TPB.
Few of these titles have full extant archives and some of the issues shared here may even be the last extant examples. This to me has always been about preservation and raising awareness of the depth and variety of a dying artform with an aging fanbase for future generations. Little bits of history saved and shared digitally.
If this is the end, I have greatly enjoyed working with all of you, and would like to thank you very much for your time and help.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank you very much, well said, it’s just what i think also about my blogs. Thank you for sharing so much material.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’ll prey for that will be just a little cloud and not a storm
Anyway, so much thanks to have preseved such wonderfull british artists !
Philippe
LikeLike
Thank you very much, more news about continuation next week i hope.
LikeLike
I think two things need to be said here:
1) Rebellion are entirely in their rights to be doing this (as DC Thomson and Dez Skinn were before them). This is their intellectual property and whatever specific reasons they have for initiating this process they are fully and properly entitled to do it.
(I’m aware of the argument that almost all of the material that will be removed was created by writers and artists who were forced to surrender their IP rights to the original publishers and also lost out on proper compensation for their work due to shameful practices by those publishers. That is entirely true but it doesn’t detract in any way from my point above.)
2) It’s still a great shame. This is an important resource and source of great fascination and nostalgia. Amalgamated Press and its descendants were an even more dominant force in British comics than DCT so this will leave a huge gap, but also lots of little ones: I can’t describe the nostalgic pleasure I got from finding issues of Whizzer & Chips that I missed on original publication and thought I’d never get to see.
This also isn’t a commercial site and I can’t imagine it has anything more than a minimal impact on Rebellion’s commercial prospects. As a girl, I loved Skate Mates in W&C. Rebellion will never publish a Skate Mates collection and my attachment to the strip wouldn’t be strong enough to make me buy one if there were. But it was enough to know that I could see at least some of the strips on here if I wanted to, and it’s a shame that’s gone. The only material effect, if there is one, will be to drive comics fans to the unscrupulous sellers on commercial sites who’ve downloaded material from here for their own profit.
But it’s also a shame because of all the hard work that’s gone into making the site what it is. Boutje’s efforts and those of other contributors who’ve found oddities and sought out rarities and plugged gaps in the huge collections here go wayback. This site represents the collective, industrious, magpie spirit that’s among the better qualities of comics fandom.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I agree wholeheartedly in that we’re bang to rights. I’d also echo that it’s a shame in that it will just make a huge proportion of material unavailable. For very sound economic reasons Rebellion’s pre-1970s reprints have mainly been limited to boys’ adventure. We probably only got the Jane Bond book because of the character’s name. Older girls stuff will only squeak out if Mills or Burns or someone else the 2000AD cultists like had something to do with it. I can’t think of anything from School Friend or the Crystal likely to have the clout for a collected editon
Similarly I’m not sure they’ve ever reprinted anything older than the fifties, so again there’s unlikely to be releases of anything from Comic Cuts or The Jester or Radio Fun.
It would be nice if they were clearing the way for some sort of online portal where you could view the comics for a monthly sub or micropayments but honestly I just think someone’s been a busybody that meant Rebellion could no longer pretend they don’t know about this place.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The other problem with older material is that some of it was licensed material. If they no longer have a license than Rebellion wouldn’t be able to reprint it if they wanted to. DC had that problem in the seventies. When they reprinted some stories from Bill Boyd Western they had to change the name of the feature as they no longer had a license for the Bill Boyd name. They retitled it Monty West Sherrif.
LikeLike
That’s true, there’s no way Marvel a d DC would let them do Smash these days.
LikeLike
Sad about the dcma takedown notice, but I think that’s just the way things are going these days. I feel a fair comparison can be made with the 8-bit software houses of the 1980s. As well as loving comics I am a huge retro gaming fan and have amassed thousands of games for the Spectrum, Amstrad, Commodore 64 etc in digital formats such as .tap, .dsk, .sna, . format and so on. However, starting a few years ago, those old companies started to take an interest in their old catalogues. So Rare Ltd – that used to be known as Ultimate Play The Game in the 1980s – have now blocked as many sites as they reasonably can from hosting digital copies of Knight Lore, Sabre Wulf, Jet-Pac and so on (though they still can be found on the more obscure sites that don’t show up on the first five pages of a Google search). Ocean software have done the same with their games too, though Codemasters, peculiarly, don’t seem that interested at the moment and you can still freely get hold of their Dizzy 8-bit titles as well as their other budget games from the 80s. But yes, sadly, I think that’s the way things are going as companies begin to realise there’s money to be made from their old IP.
LikeLike
This is bad news indeed. I agree with boombox about the digital archive aspect of these blogs. The sentimental value of being able to access comics and annuals from your youth is also important. Many of the comics, and especially the annuals, would have been bought by parents and other close family members (sadly most, if not all of whom, are probably dead now), perhaps as Christmas or birthday gifts. I only discovered this site over a year ago and some of the listings have certainly reawakened happy memories. I hope this is only a blip and that boutje and all contributors can continue this important work. Reagrds Ian.
LikeLike
WOW, WOW, WOW and OCH, OUCH, OUCH. My Childhood memories have just been obliterated. I do hope someone has a a Conscience…
Just looked, all the following titles have been removed….
Battle, Buster, Comet, Film Fun, Hurricane, Knockout, Lion, Radio Fun, Sun, Tiger, TV Fun, Valiant, Wham and ‘ALL’ The Picture Libraries…..
It’s Heartbreaking, So So Sorry Boutje….
XXXXX
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank you, don’t be sorry for me, it’s a pity for all those that enjoy the comics that they otherwise never would have got a chance to read, young and old. For some also for nostalgic reasons.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sigh.
i was waiting for rebellion to do this.
LikeLike
I am not surprised that some jobsworth issued this blog with a takedown notice. You have done a brilliant job preserving comics and the like.
I know this will sound selfish, but even with Rebellion Publishing removing many comics, can you please keep what is left going as there is still plenty of good stuff to download and read!
LikeLike
Anyone else find it “odd” this happens after someone tried to get DC Thompson stuff re-instated and got politely rebuffed ? Sour grapes maybe ?
But what I’m not clear on is what do Rebellion Publishing have the rights to ? The items disappearing seem very diverse – are they really all with that one publisher ?
LikeLike
Not only many publishers but many authors also, so if titles published work from those authors they will be removed also.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Put simply, Rebellion have the rights to all the Harmsworths/Amalgamated Press/Fleetway/IPC Magazines titles, which includes all the companies that were taken over by those publishers over the years like Henderson and Odhams.
There are a few bits that were licenced, and I believe the Eagle is owned by a separate company, but that’s the gist of it. They own the rights to a gigantic amount of stuff, most of which they will never, ever do anything with.
LikeLiked by 1 person
UPDATE TAKEDOWN
I am afraid i will close this blog forever. I scrolled through the endless list with removed titles, and what is to removed still, and it is alot, and i mean really alot, big titles like Buster, Lion, Valiant, Tiger, Whoopie! Many Libraries and Nursery, Girls. For me it’s not encouraging enough to continue with that little titles left. With DC thomson it was not so hard because there were still enough titles left. I will think it over a few days and then i will decide if the hammer will fall.
LikeLike
This is very sad you have done a fantastic job over the years reuniting me with Eagle, Dan Dare, Lion, TV21 and Countdown and also I-spy books. I recently scanned some of my old space fiction picture libraries which can be viewed on “another” popular archive, I don’t have a big presence but they can be found if people search for the titles carefully, Only 10 pic libraries but a complete series, a drop in a very big ocean. I knew DC Thompson were over zealous guardians of their publications but I’d missed IPC/Fleetway’s IP being bought out by Rebellion. I hope you can keep going with your other blogs which are great and if there is any chance once you’ve had time to think things over please do continue with this one, but I perfectly understand if you decide to step back. Again many many thanks for re-introducing me to my childhood reading, I hope you can be very proud of the happiness you have bought to a now greying generation!
LikeLike
Not sure if anyone here has seem the TV show Detectorists, but it rings true for a lot of the hobby as I see it. It’s also very soothing and funny.
LikeLike
While it would be a huge shame I see exactly where you’re coming from. It leaves very few publishers of original material, and even then we wouldn’t know for sure if Scion or Marx or whoever sold their assets to AP or someone and it’s simply never come up, and that’s a personal risk no-one here can reasonably ask you to take.
That would just leave a rump of chopped up American reprints, and again then only until you get a DMCA or worse.
DCT is easy to do because they’ve had the same name. The amount of takeovers, mergers, buyouts and transfers in the history of IPC means the full extent of what Rebellion own is probably gigantic.
LikeLike
All of serious comic fandom is sorry. Please keep your own archives safe. I’d popped in for Enid Blyton Famous Five magazine. We will remember your hard, sincere work on this and other blogs. And yes, that ‘magpie spirit’ mentioned somewhere above, is something more narrow-commercial minded professionals will never share with connoisseurs. Keep that fine chin up!
LikeLike
Well, all I can say is thank you for all the hard work you did in maintaining this site and collating and organising all the different comics over the years. I’ve no idea when I discovered this site and started using it. I’m guessing around 2015 as some of my Topper comics and annuals say 5/02/15 in the ‘Date Modified column’ ! So 9 years I have been visiting this site and I shall miss it a lot. All the best for your future and thank you again!
LikeLike
This is a massive blow. I have loved this website for many years. Would it perhaps be possible to do what the Trove did and move over to a torrent update. At least the comics would be preserved then. I’ve been so lucky with what ive got from here but I missed what was posted here https://britishcomics.wordpress.com/2018/01/08/judge-dredd/. I presume the links still work but obviously i cant access the page. i even tried the wayback machine. does anybody have any ideas ? best wishes and many thanks
LikeLike
I would personally advise against anyone sharing links to anything with even a faint hint of Rebellion ownership here going forward, or even discussing any alternative hosting venues or plans, for reasons that should be obvious.
LikeLike
sorry, just woke up and saw this
LikeLike
If you go, you will take with you the thanks of all of us for everything you have done over the years. I still remember the excitement of stumbling across this site and thinking ‘it can’t be true!’ I will make sure to share everything I have downloaded with as many people as possible to keep these comics alive, stuff Rebellion and DC Thompson. Best wishes for the future, Phil
LikeLike
what about moving this to a Discord or something similar?
I know a couple old blogs that did.
it keeps it alive but a different format.
LikeLike
Hello, How about trying Discord?I know a couple sites that have done that and it has been working for a long time.
Yahoo Mail: Search, Organize, Conquer
LikeLike
Do we have everything archived? Even the DC Thompson stuff? I really hope so…
LikeLike
Do we have everything archived? Even the DC Thompson stuff? I really hope so…
LikeLike