Knockout artists (including myself) were encouraged to model their comic style on
McNeill.
The years of the Second World War were drab ones for the comics. A national paper
shortage helped kill off many of the less successful titles; others suffered from reduced
content (down to twelve pages from twenty-eight) and frequency (down from weekly to
fortnightly). But the blacked-out 1940s also saw the birth of the British comic book.
Gerald G.Swan, a market salesman no longer able to import American comic books,
turned himself into a publisher and issued his own. New Funnies (January 1940) was
the first, sixty-four pages for sixpence, but, unlike the American comics, only the cover
was in colour. Further titles followed (War Comics, Thrill Comics) and even a nursery comic
complete with hyphens, Kiddyfun. Many other small publishers flourished during the
war, including A.Soloway (Comic Capers, All Star), Martin and Reid, (Jolly Chuckles, Jolly
Western) and the Philipp Marx Group (The New Comics, The Miniature Comic). Of these
minor publishers soon L.Miller and Son would emerge as the most prolific and longest
lived. This firm began by reprinting American comic books from Fawcett Publications.
When their best-seller, Captain Marvel Adventures, had to be discontinued as a
consequence of the law-suit between Fawcett and National-D. c.Comics (who claimed
that Captain Marvel plagiarised their Superman), Miller converted his comic to an all-
British superhero, Marvelman (6 February 1954). Billy Batson became Micky Moran, his
magic cry changed from ‘Shazam!’ to ‘Kimota!’ (more or less the word ‘Atomic’ spelled
backwards!). Marvelman caught on immediately with comic-hungry children, and was
soon joined by Young Marvelman, replacing Captain Marvel Junior, and The Marvelman
Family, in which Kid Marvelman replaced Mary Marvel, the All-American superheroine.
Don Lawrence, whose artwork rapidly became among the best in British comics, began
his career in the Marvelman comics.
The 1950s began superbly with Eagle, launched on 14 April 1950. This large-format
comic in full colour photogravure had been designed by a cleric, the Reverend Marcus
Morris, and drawn to his specifications by a failed pilot with his head in the stars, art
student Frank Hampson. Hulton Press, publishers of the best selling weekly magazine,
Picture Post, took it on and Eagle rapidly flew to become top comic in the country. Its
circulation soon touched the magic million mark once achieved by the pre-war Rainbow.
‘Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future’ was the leading strip, and Hampson quickly turned this
science-fiction adventure into a true saga, his artwork improving week by week. Young
readers loved the serial for its apparent accuracy, achieved by the unprecedented idea of
Hampson’s to build scale models of Dare’s spacecraft, the futuristic cities of Mars, and
so on, so that these would appear authentic from all angles when drawn into the comic.
The success of Eagle against the hide-bound traditions of the Amalgamated Press and
D.C. Thomson comics was to a great extent due to the fact that the entire art and
editorial staff of the comic had never worked in either comics or strip cartoons before.
Frank Hampson and his many followers (Frank Bellamy, John Burns, Ron Embleton)
changed the face of the British adventure strip. Meanwhile over in the funnies this was
being done by a new cartoonist, Leo Baxendale. His strips for Beano, including ‘The
Bash Street Kids’ and ‘Little Plum’, stood out against the standard and somewhat
mechanical slapstick comic art in a way that was both new and very funny. (Beano had
finally gone into 100 per cent picture format on 5 March 1955). Baxendale was lured
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