Rusty Staples: Year Two

Blimey, it hardly seems like a year since we last looked back at the first year of Rusty Staples, and yet it is. Year Two of Rusty's life started slowly, with only one post per month in April, May and June of 2019, and then nothing at all until October. This was thanks to work …

The Eagle Timeline

The Eagle Family Tree was one of the first major posts on this blog, back in May 2018, but it's always bothered me a little that I did it the lazy way, showing only the hierarchical relationships between the comics and not a proper time-line. Plus, unlike some of the later timelines on this blog …

Enfari’s Syndrome: Thunder

IPC's Thunder started strong and finished strong, albeit rather abruptly and far too quickly. A couple of minor exceptions aside, its initial line-up of strips remained constant throughout its twenty-two-issue run. Thunder was launched in Autumn 1970 (the cover-date of issue #1 is 17 October), and it maintained the same price right through to the …

Hatch, Match & Dispatch – March 2020

There are lots of British Marvel comics in the list this month, folks! Can you name them all? Hmm... I bet there's at least one you've forgotten about (or maybe not even heard of)! We've also got a lot of titles that became part of the My Guy family tree, including My Guy itself and …

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 …

Comics That Never Were #2

Launched in 1975, the hard-hitting all-war comic Battle Picture Weekly was a major hit for IPC/Fleetway. It was created in response to rival publisher DC Thomson's successful Warlord, and when word came that DC Thomson was preparing a semi-spin-off all-action comic with focus on more than just war stories, IPC figured they should do the …

Branding: Battle Picture Weekly

Prepare yourself for a shock, comic fans: We are now further away from the last issue of Battle Picture Weekly than its first issue was from the end of World War II. Battle, to use its street name, is arguably one of the most important and influential British comics of all time. Of course, that's …

Eaglution of British Comics, part 1

  Update 20200414: Click here for the massively updated and improved Eagle Timeline!       As I mentioned before (in Deciphering the Logo), in 1969 the legendary British comic Eagle ended its nineteen-year run when it was absorbed into Lion, which was then absorbed into Valiant in 1974, which was in turn gobbled up …