filled it with cartoons and strips that had already been published in the past by
Henderson! Harmsworth himself had been an editorial employee of Henderson, and well
knew that most of his employer’s cartoons were reprinted from back numbers of the
American comic weeklies, Judge, Life and Puck. Henderson, however, had a perfect right
to do this, as he had financial arrangements with the American publishers; Harmsworth
had not. In consequence it was not long before Harmsworth was advertising in Comic Cuts
for British cartoonists to contribute to his new paper. Henderson had moved in with a
writ! Thus, through Harmsworth’s undoubted perfidy, a brand new market for British
cartoonists was opened up. Contributions poured in and were used to fill the four
illustrated pages of the eight-page Comic Cuts, plus the additional pages of Illustrated
Chips. The runaway success of Harmsworth’s new comic had virtually forced him to
produce a companion comic, and Illustrated Chips was launched on 26 July 1890. Both
papers succeeded beyond Harmsworth’s expectations, not because of the quality of their
cartoons (or indeed of their paper itself, which was of the lowest quality and dyed pink),
but because both papers cost exactly half the price of his rival Henderson’s comics:
Harmsworth sold his comics for a halfpenny each, instead of one penny!
The halfpenny comic boom continued through to the new century, and through it
many new cartoonists were discovered. None was greater than a youthful Nottingham
lithographer named Tom Browne (1870–1910). Browne scorned the closely cross-
hatched style of cartooning so prevalent in the old-established humorous weeklies such
as Punch, and favoured the new, simple style popularised by Phil May. Applying this
formula of linework plus solid blacks to strip art, Browne began freelancing the
occasional comic strip to such London weeklies as Scraps: his first ever, entitled ‘He
Knew How To Do It’, appeared in the issue of 27 April 1890. A prophetic title: Tom
Browne certainly ‘knew how to do it’, and soon abandoned lithography in Nottingham for
a studio in Blackheath, London, from whence he turned out as many as five different
front-page series a week, plus posters, postcards, advertising art, illustrations and water
colour paintings. His most popular and famous characters in comics were Weary Willie
and Tired Tim, who first appeared as casual tramp heroes in a one-off strip described as
Weary Waddles and Tired Timmy in Chips for 16 May 1896. Immediately popular with
editors and readers alike, these classic comic heroes, one short and fat, the other tall
and thin, remained on page one of Chips through the comic’s entire life, right to the final
edition on 12 September 1953. This fifty-eight year run is something of a record, but one
which Tom Browne did not live to see. He died in 1910, some five years after giving up
his characters and, indeed, comic work altogether. But he had lived long enough to
know that his bold black-and-white style of art, and his working-class type of hero, plus
his slapstick, action-packed comedy, had set the style, the standard, and indeed the
look of British comic art, for half a century to come.
Incidentally, it is a sad sidelight on British comic history that the cartoonist who drew
Weary Willie and Tired Tim from 1907 to their very last appearance, was never once
permitted to sign his work. His name was Percy Cocking, and he continued the classic
Tom Browne style of comic drawing to the very end.
Harmsworth’s huge financial success led to many smaller publishers entering the comic
market, each with one or more titles, and all modelled on the originals. Indeed they
invariably featured tramp double-acts on their front pages, virtually carbon copies of
242 POPULAR LITERATURE: COMICS, DIME NOVELS, PULPS AND PENNY DREADFULS