As I mentioned in my article Sparkyology 101 two years (and one day) ago, the researching of British comics can take you down some very unexpected paths. You stumble across something intriguing, follow it to another clue, follow that… and after some time you find yourself looking around thinking, “Wait, how the heck did I end up here?”
This happened to me with City Magazines’ comic Boyfriend, which appears in the list below.
Boyfriend was launched in May 1959, and aimed at female readers in their mid-to-late teens. It feature romance-themed comic strips and articles on fashion and pop-stars. But it gradually began to drop the strips and become more of a magazine. Then it reinvented itself as Trend and Boyfriend (with “and Boyfriend” in considerably smaller text) for a few weeks, then Boyfriend & Trend (with the “Boyfriend &” part in even tinier text, but now that it was at the start of the name it was easier to hide away: you can just about see it tucked away above the “nd” in the third cover here), and then it was absorbed into the successful women’s magazine Petticoat, which appropriately became Petticoat/Trend for about a year.
In this case, my “How did I get here?” moment came when I realised that I’d spent a solid couple of hours of hunting for info on Petticoat. That time that would probably have been better spent doing something more appropriate, like, for example, not hunting for info on Petticoat and filling my hard-drive with hundreds of scans of women’s magazine covers that had no relevance to anything because the search had long since stopped being about comics.
But if you must know… Petticoat (launched 19 Feb 1966) was relaunched as Hi! (17 May 1975 to 3 Jul 1976), which was absorbed by OK (12 Apr 1975 to 1 Jul 1978), which was absorbed by Fabulous (18 Jan 1964 to 3 May 1980), which was relaunched as Fab Hits (10 May 1980 to 27 Sep 1980), which was absorbed by Oh Boy! (12 Oct 1976 to 12 Jan 1985), which was absorbed by the grand monarch of photo-strip publications My Guy (4 Mar 1978 to sometime in the 90s, maybe — we still don’t know)… So in other words, it effectively became a comic again, and with that in mind maybe there was a point to all that research after all.
(This info can also be found on the My Guy Timeline, which is well worth a look!)
Standard disclaimer: unless I decide otherwise, these are only the “big” anniversaries (25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 60, 70, 75, 80, 90 & 100+ years); dates are cover-dates where known; monthly comics with no confirmed day of launch default to the start of the month; and this list is accurate only to the best of my knowledge, so do please let me know of any important errors or omissions!
Previous episodes of Hatch, Match & Dispatch:
2019: Oct, Nov, Dec
2020: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2021: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2022: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May
30 years ago:
01 June – Aliens launched.
Publisher: Trident Comics/Dark Horse International
From: 01 Jun 1992
To: 01 Apr 1994
Duration: 1 year, 10 months
Issues: 39
Published by Trident Comics from #1 to #16, then Dark Horse International thereafter. After issue #17, the issue numbers were reset for volume #2.
June – Motormouth and Killpower launched.
Publisher: Marvel UK
From: Jun 1992
To: May 1993
Duration: 11 months
Issues: 12
Initially Motormouth, title changed to Motormouth and Killpower from #4.
June – The Knights of Pendragon (1992) launched.
Publisher: Marvel UK
From: Jun 1992
To: Sep 1993
Duration: 1 year, 3 months
Issues: 15
Continues from The Knights of Pendragon (1990).
June – Warheads launched.
Publisher: Marvel UK
From: Jun 1992
To: Aug 1993
Duration: 1 year, 2 months
Issues: 14
20 June – Secrets (2) final issue.
Publisher: John Leng & Co./DC Thomson
From: 5 Dec 1932
To: 20 Jun 1992 (maybe)
Duration: 59 years, 7 months (or thereabouts)
Issues: 2950 (ish)
A long-running story-paper… Secrets (1) was a six-issue test-run (24 Sep 1932 to 29 Oct 1932) that was clearly successful enough to be relaunched (with the same title) on 5 Nov 1932. With issue #403 it absorbed Flame (24 Aug 1935 to 13 Jul 1940, 256 issues), and kept the title Secrets and Flame until the late 1940s. The end date and number of issues remain unconfirmed (so it’s possible that this title doesn’t even belong on this issue of HM&D) but the most recent issue Ive been able to find is #2733, dated 23 Apr 1988: if we put that data into Madcap, and the final issue was dated 20 Jun 1992, that would be issue #2950. That would place Secrets quite highly in the British Comics Top-10 Issue-Count Chart, except that it wasn’t a comic.
35 years ago:
June – Grun launched.
Publisher: Harrier Comics
From: Jun 1987
To: Dec 1987
Duration: 6 months
Issues: 4
A spin-off from Avalon.
13 June – Acorn Green final issue.
Publisher: Marvel UK
From: 11 Oct 1986
To: 13 Jun 1987
Duration: 8 months
Issues: 36
Absorbed into: Muppet Babies
(Despite doing this sort of thing for years, I’ve only discovered today that Acorn Green was absorbed into Muppet Babies! I have of course appropriately updated the Marvel UK 70s & 80s Leftovers Timeline.)
13 June – Suzy final issue.
Publisher: DC Thomson
From: 10 Sep 1982
To: 13 Jun 1987
Duration: 4 years, 9 months
Issues: 249
Absorbed into Bunty.
30 June – Centurions PowerXtreme launched.
Publisher: London Editions
From: 30 Jun 1987
To: 29 Feb 1988
Duration: 8 months
Issues: 10
40 years ago:
05 June – Wow! launched.
Publisher: IPC
From: 05 Jun 1982
To: 25 Jun 1983
Duration: 1 year
Issues: 56
Adam and His Ants was a revived version of Andy’s Ants from Cor!!.
45 years ago:
11 June – Tarzan Weekly launched.
Publisher: Byblos
From: 11 Jun 1977
To: 22 Oct 1977
Duration: 4 months
Issues: 20
18 June – Disney Time final issue.
Publisher: IPC
From: 29 Jan 1977
To: 18 Jun 1977
Duration: 5 months
Issues: 21
Absorbed into Mickey Mouse.
50 years ago:
24 June – Pixie launched.
Publisher: Amalgamated Press
From: 24 Jun 1972
To: 13 Jan 1973
Duration: 7 months
Issues: 30
Gussie the Girl Guide was a redrawn version of Deed-a-Day Danny from The Knock-Out Comic and later appeared in Sun, Comet (1946), Big One and Giggle.
55 years ago:
17 June – Boyfriend final issue.
Publisher: City Magazines
From: 14 May 1959
To: 17 Jun 1967
Duration: 8 years, 1 month
Issues: 428
Early issues of this weekly contained romance comic strips, but the title was rebranded as a magazine, Trend and Boyfriend, from #352 (19 Mar 1966 to 7 May 1966), then Boyfriend & Trend from #360 (15 May 1966). Ultimately absorbed into Petticoat magazine, which was branded as Petticoat/Trend for the following year before reverting to Petticoat. (Some dates unconfirmed!)
90 years ago:
23 June – Sparkler (1931) final issue.
Publisher: Provincial
From: 12 Sep 1931
To: 23 Jun 1932
Duration: 9 months
Issues: 20
Not sure about this one… Denis Gifford’s comics chronology lists #25 (27 Feb 1932) as the final issue.
95 years ago:
04 June – The Briton launched.
Publisher: Peele
From: 04 Jun 1927
To: 03 Sep 1927
Duration: 3 months
Issues: 14
100 years ago:
24 June – School and Sport final issue.
Publisher: Popular Publishing Company
From: 17 Dec 1921
To: 24 Jun 1922
Duration: 6 months
Issues: 28
110 years ago:
01 June – The Dreadnought launched.
Publisher: Amalgamated Press
From: 01 Jun 1912
To: 12 Jun 1915
Duration: 3 years
Issues: 171
Retitled Dreadnought and War Pictorial from 26 Sep 1914, then Dreadnought Boys’ War Weekly from 7 Nov 1914, then back to Dreadnought from 2 Jan 1915.
125 years ago:
18 June – Big Budget launched.
Publisher: Pearson
From: 18 Jun 1897
To: 20 Mar 1909
Duration: 11 years, 9 months
Issues: 614
Absorbed The Boys’ Leader in 1905. Relaunched as The Comet (1909)
135 years ago:
25 June – Jack and Jill (1885) final issue.
Publisher: W. Long
From: 07 Mar 1885
To: 25 Jun 1887
Duration: 2 years, 3 months
Issues: 121
Retitled Jack’s Journal from #115.
145 years ago:
01 June – The Boys of London and Boys of New York launched.
Publisher: Henry Wells Jackson
From: 01 Jun 1877
To: 15 Sep 1900
Duration: 23 years, 3 months
Issues: 1219
Reprinted tales from the US publication The Boys of New York.
Rusty Staples 
OMG! I have also been down the rabbit-hole that is Boyfriend [insert headache here] and had concluded there was nothing else worth knowing after the merger with Trend as it was effectively no longer a comic. (Small print: Definitions of a comic continue to vary. Please check the box. Warranty voided if opened. No correspondence will be entered into.) And now you’ve completely blown that out of the water by showing it still had another comics chapter in its future.
Yes, there is a massive grey area between girls’ comics and girls’/women’s pop/teen magazines, particularly in the late ’60s, early ’70s – with some bizarre results.
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I remember Tarzan Weekly well, because it was the first comic I ever read myself without adult assistance. It might be said to have lasted more than four months though, because, if I recall rightly, it became a monthly for at least a year afterwards, increasing its page count from 32 to 52 and including a glossy colour cover.
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Hi Jasper,
Tarzan Weekly was relaunched as Tarzan Monthly in November 1977, but as far as I can tell it only lasted five issues, coming to an end with the March 1978 issue. Given that it had a different title AND reset the issue-numbers, I’ve chosen to treat it as a separate comic! (It’s often hard to know where to draw the line, but in this case I’m happy with that!)
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I’m happy with that too, many thanks for the clarification. I didn’t realise the Monthly only lasted five issues, it seemed to go on much longer in my recollection. But given that I was still in the Infants when I was reading it, that’s probably only to be expected. Five months was a long time when you were still getting free school milk.
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