100 copies

ITEM:   A couple more books have found their way onto my groaning bookshelves. A mere one hundred people will own this hardback edition. I’m sure many more will grab the paperback. A quick glance reveals that the logo was designed by Todd Klein. The book was printed in Canada. And there is a vast Bibliography at the back. Scarily I seem to own much of the weird and wonderful stuff in that list (although all my 2000ADs and Sounds newspapers were burnt in the great cull of ‘86 !!).  I don’t have any of the Discography though, and I wasn’t aware that Alan produced some artwork for the 1982 B.J and the Bear Annual !!  Now might be the time for the completists out there to snap up one from their local Charity Shop/eBay whilst they are still 25p each ??

And I must look out that old copy of “Escape” to re-read Alan’s hilarious account of his visit to the USA in the mid 1980s.

Although, unlike some people, I don’t believe it to be the centre of the Universe with all ley-lines converging there, I do think that some magic has emanated from Northampton over the last 30 years.

ITEM:   Here is another book limited to 100 copies. However this is more probably to do with the steep cover price. And the fact that they will be hard-pressed to find 100 people like me that are actually still interested in what must be the most obscure comics on the planet !! 

This book is all about the long-forgotten British comics of the 1950s from the small publishers who tried to copy the American comics of the day in both size and format. These pale imitation super heroes were sometimes entertaining but more often just plain rubbish. But looking back through the prism of time fascinating all the same. At 464 pages this work is a labour of love by compiler Mike Higgs. Yes the very same guy who wrote and drew the unique and funny “The Cloak” back in Odhams “Pow” comic in the 1960s. What I’d like next Mike would be a collection of “The Cloak”. How about it ??

Down with Skool

As any fule kno one of the funniest children’s books ever written was this. I only had a tatty paperback reprint until the other day when I found this first edition from the mid 1950s unnoticed and unloved in a local charity shop.

Idly searching the web I found this site which explains what the book is all about.

PS: Although I have collected/read/sold/destroyed comics for over 40 years I’ve never made any particular effort to visit blogs and websites run by the comic creators themselves. (Although I did visit Steve Gerber’s blog regularly in the last year of his life and for a time I looked at Mark Evanier’s extensive ouevre and that’s about it.) Quite by chance today I found myself in the middle of Todd Klein’s blog. That is a name I have seen regularly for the last 30 years or so as a letterer of umpteen (how many I wonder) comics. It was nice to find out more about the person and personality that until today was just a name. Amongst Todd’s hobbies and interests is collecting children’s novels. In fact he seems to be an authority on the subject. I wonder if he is familiar with this book? 

Up the Junction

I’ve just purchased the recently re-issued DVD of the 1968 film “Up the Junction” directed by Peter Collinson and starring Suzy Kendall and Dennis Waterman. Its an account of life in a grim Battersea and Clapham Junction that the swinging sixties hadn’t then reached. The writer of the novel upon which the film was based had herself  moved from upmarket Chelsea to live in the backstreets of working class Battersea. (I’m sure its now a trendy chichi place to live). 

With a soundtrack by Manfred Mann and the cute Adrienne Posta as the brassy factory dollybird ultimately suffering a backstreet abortion the humour is decidedly black. But as a social document of the times its invaluable. Highly recommended.

The book (her first) was written by Nell Dunn in 1963 and it became a BBC TV play before ultimately becoming a film. Nell was then married to Jeremy Sandford, famous for the equally harrowing and even more famous BBC TV plays “Cathy come home” and “Edna the inebriate woman”.

Jack Trevor Story

I try to express myself in this blog but usually fail miserably. There is an art in writing well. Often million-selling novels don’t contain great writing. Great writing is hidden in blink-and-you’ll-miss-them newspaper columns. I love Caitlin Moran’s articles in The Times. Howard Jacobson (in The Guardian?) has a flair for the english language that befits his literary/education background. Julie Birchill in her pop newspaper/Modern Review days. Jeffrey Barnard in The Spectator when he was merely unwell rather than his current situation of being deceased. People whose names I forget (or never actually got round to remembering) in Mojo music monthly. Even MacBiter in “Computer Shopper” magazine who managed to write entertainingly for years about absolutely nothing.

In my opinion one great overlooked writer is the late Jack Trevor Story. How many people have actually heard of Jack and how many of his books are still in print today? For a time he made a living writing TV scripts and pulp detective stories but is probably most remembered for his comic novels about dissolute characters evidently based upon himself. Much more of his writing appeared in blink-and-you’ll-miss-it places like the 1950s monthly pulp Sexton Blake Library or Punch or various newspaper columns.

My favourite novel by Jack is “I sit in Hanger Lane” about a guy forever dashing between wife and mistress until he can’t remember where he should or shouldn’t be at any one time. He only seems to be aware of his surroundings when he finds himself in his car stuck at the Hanger Lane traffic lights. I’m sure the whole book, as with everything Jack wrote was a watered down version of the even more amazing/eventful/mad things that actually happened to him in real life.

JTS was a larger than life character and perhaps his own worst enemy. According to various sources he sold film screenplays for a fraction of their value and wrote scripts for many TV shows and knew many influential people but never managed to capitalise on it. Allegedly throughout his life he was always short of money. And yet he had a succession of wives/girlfriends until late in life. Even towards the end when he became ill he wrote with such passion. The fact that Michael Moorcock (no slouch himself with hundreds of books to his name) thinks Jack Trevor Story is one of the greatest writers who ever lived says it all really.

Follow this link for more info about this fascinating writer. Here is an example of his writing from an issue of The Sexton Blake Library pocket book:-

 

“There is a sadness which grows from the seeds of remembered happiness;
there is a weariness which springs unrequested from the
remembered fountains of youth;
there is a nostalgia conjoured from faraway places and gone people and
moments which have long since ticked into the infinite fog.”

                                                 

Idols Magazine

Bill Harry had been involved in pop publishing for many years (Mersey Beat Magazine, and books about the Beatles) when he launched “Idols” Magazine in the UK in the 1980s. This publication covered a broad spectrum of Movie Stars from the Silent era to current Actors, TV, Pop Stars….anyone who someone else might idolise. Always a great read.