Hatch, Match & Dispatch – July 2023

We're just about half-way through the year, or in the terms of some classic British Comics that means we've reached the colour spread in the centre pages! Hooray! To celebrate, here's a look at some of the British comics that will be noting an important anniversary in July!

Hatch, Match & Dispatch – January 2023

We're approaching the edge of the cusp of January, so let's take a look at the British comics that will be celebrating an important event in that potentially awesome month!

Comics That Never Were #11

When comic mergers go wrong (or maybe right!)...

Rusty Staples: Year Three

April 15th is the Feast of St. Aples, the patron saint of writing about comics, which is why I chose this date -- exactly three years ago -- to launch my comics blog, which was of course named after St. Aples himself. Happy Birthday to us! Hooray!

Rusty’s Reviews Round-Up

To save you literally whiles of searching through this blog, here are all of Rusty's reviews in one place!

Support the Cartoon Museum, London

The excellent Cartoon Museum in London has a huge collection of rare and vintage comics and cartoons, and regularly features exhibitions on specific themes, artists or publications. Not counting visits to family members, for me it's the #1 reason I'm itching to go back to London. The museum moved to a new, larger premises last …

Journey Planet: Battle Picture Weekly

Forty-five years ago the war comic Battle Picture Weekly crashed down into the British comics scene with such an impact that the aftershocks are still being felt today. Now, in a special double-sized issue, the award-winning fanzine Journey Planet takes a look back at this fan-favourite -- and sometimes controversial -- comic, and presents all-new …

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 …