Noncomics: Superheroes, edited by Michel Parry

From a time before it was common to encounter superheroes in prose fiction comes this intriguing anthology of superhero-themed short stories. Editor Michel Parry introduces the book, and he does seem to know his stuff: he's dedicated it to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster (creators of Superman) and Stan Lee (of whom I'm pretty sure …

Hatch, Match & Dispatch – February 2020

Among the comics whose anniversaries we're acknowledging this month is a rarity indeed: a British boys' comic that's named after a female character. There's a prize of nine points for anyone who can guess what it is without checking! (Yes, I know, the standard prize is ten points, but these blogs ain't cheap to run, …

Oddities #20200124

1015 was a Saturday supplement to the British newspaper The Times that ran for several years in the mid-to-late 1990s. Possibly beyond, too, but info on it isn't easy to find. At a guess, it's called "1015" not because someone behind the scenes was up against a deadline to suggest a title and just happened …

Oddities #20200117

Dis-entombed from the archives comes this, the very first issue of The Jasper! "Ah, now, c'mon, Rusty!" I imagine that I hear you say. "What in the heckest of all blinkin' flips are you tryna pull here? Shirley this isn't a real comic?" Correct, it isn't! The cover is designed to resemble a comic -- …

Oddities #20200110

I don't know whether the Sunday papers still produce magazines (I'm not entirely sure that the Sunday papers still produce Sunday papers), but Eagle-eyed readers of the Telegraph Sunday Magazine, number 49, dated August 21 1977, will have spotted that that cover of that issue bears a remarkable resemblance to the cover of the first …

The Buster Timeline

IPC's Buster comic waved good-bye on 4 January 2000, exactly twenty years ago. To commemorate the demise of that great comic, here's a revised edition of the Buster family tree that debuted in June 2018 on this very blog. Back then, I was more interested in the family tree aspect -- showing how the comics …

The Mysteries of Wonder!

If you've spent any time peeking at or poking into the history of British comics there's a very good chance you'll have come across mentions of The Wonder, or The Funny Wonder, or The Jolly Jester, or The Halfpenny Wonder, or Jester & Wonder, or some variation on those titles. You might even have thought …

Most Popular Posts of 2019!

I'm happy to announce that Rusty Staples' sophomore year ("sophomore" is American high-school slang for "second") was even more successful than its first, even despite the four-month drought in the summer when I was too busy to post anything (due to a heavy workload, a week's holiday in London, the World Science Fiction Convention in …