which dominated its content, topical, even political, following the promise of the
magazine’s subtitle: ‘The Comic Companion to the Newspaper’. Thus we see the first
important point a student of the comic should always remember, that originally comics
were intended as light entertainment for the adult reader, and not for children.
And so we come to our second essential to the comic, the continuing cartoon
character. The first true comic strip hero (after one or two minor false starts) starred in a
full-page cartoon episode entitled ‘Some of the Mysteries of Loan and Discount’. He was
created by the astoundingly talented Charles Henry Ross, a prolific author of serial
stories, novels and plays, a journalist, an editor, an actor and a cartoonist; and his
name was ‘Ally Sloper’. Ally was supposed to have been an abbreviation of Alexander, but
in fact the name was designed as a pun, a favourite form of verbal humour of the
period. Being forever workshy and penniless, Ally Sloper was one who ‘sloped’ up the
‘alley’—that is to say, he slipped around the corner with great alacrity whenever the
landlord came to collect his rent!
Charles Ross was already drawing a regular comic strip page in the weekly joke
magazine, Judy, which had been founded in 1867 as a rival to the successful humorous
journal, Punch (1841). Having now hit by sheer chance on a character who would stand
repetition, Ross reintroduced Ally Sloper in his subsequent contributions to Judy,
probably to save himself the trouble of continually creating new comic heroes. Sloper
took the public’s fancy as his efforts to avoid hard work and make a comfortable living
became ever more outrageous. An annual cartoon publication, a burlesque almanac
entitled Ally Sloper’s Comic Kalendar was introduced from December 1873, followed by a
mid-year special, Ally Sloper’s Summer Number (1880). Eventually Ross sold his
character to the famous Victorian engravers and publishers, the Dalziel Brothers, and a
complete weekly comic was built around the old reprobate: Ally Sloper’s Half-Holiday
from 3 May 1884.
Ross’s original image of Sloper, crude but full of action, was lost when the artwork for
his adventures was taken over by W.G.Baxter. This brilliant comic draughtsman
established the vast Sloper Family, including the sexy chorus girl Tootsie Sloper, who
ran the fashion features, depicting them in the bumper Christmas Holiday issues in
huge centre spreads of Yuletide activities. Unhappily Baxter died far too young,
suffering, it is said, from the curse of drink that so befuddled his cartoon hero, and for
the remainder of his long comic career Sloper was drawn, in the Baxter image, by
W.F.Thomas.
Sloper’s comic life in his own weekly ran for some forty years. In addition he was the
first strip character to be merchandised, and can be found to this day in such venerable
collectibles as china busts (with removable top hats!), ashtrays, a pocket watch, a glass
sauce-bottle and a brass doorstop. It was the last of these antiques that became the
model for the annual (but now defunct) Ally Sloper Award, instituted in 1976 as a mark
of appreciation towards veteran comic artists. Although Sloper died officially in 1923, he
has refused to lie down, being revived by two comic publishers in 1948, and again as the
title for the first British comic magazine for adults (1976).
The true boom in comic weeklies began on 17 May 1890 when an enterprising young
publisher named Alfred Harmsworth produced Number One of Comic Cuts. Harmsworth
modelled his weekly paper so closely on James Henderson’s Funny Folks that he even
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