away from Thomson’s by Odhams Press to create the characters and do much of the
drawing for a new comic, Wham (20 June 1964). His crazy style can still be seen in
many modern British comics, although he himself has not drawn for them for many
years. After producing an unsuccessful annual of his own (Willie the Kid), Baxendale
drew for newspapers and Dutch comics, and gathered evidence for a daring law-suit
against his former publishers to claim royalties on his many characters which continued
to perform (depicted by lesser pens), without benefit to him as creator. Finally settling
out of court, Baxendale was more fortunate than Frank Hampson, who died in near
poverty despite the fact that his Dan Dare continued to be a comic star when Eagle was
revived in the 1980s.
In the 1990s British comics are still published in many titles, but are usually tied in
some way with television or video games and toys. Old favourites (Beano, Dandy)
continue, while others (Victor, Beezer) vanish. 2000 AD (26 February 1977) has
succeeded as a cult comic for older readers through the hideous exploits of its ultra-
violent anti-hero, Judge Dredd, and is a science-fiction variation of Britain’s most
violent comic, Action (14 February 1976), notorious as the only children’s comic ever to
be banned.
The surprise here was that Action was published by Fleetway/IPC, the company that
had inherited the fun factory created by Alfred Harmsworth. An outcry in the tabloid
newspapers led to television exposure, and finally refusal by W.H.Smith, the nation’s
largest wholesaler, to handle the comic. The last issue to be printed (number 37) was
not released and has become something of a collector’s item. Two months later the
publisher issued the first of a ‘new series’ of Action, but it failed to please the ‘tough-kid’
market it had been created for, and, like its ancestor, it too was wound up; it was
incorporated with the war comic, Battle, as Battle Action.
Comics began in Britain as picture publications for adults, and it is perhaps fitting
that they should now have come full circle after some eighty years as children’s
publications. Action’s error was in depicting violence for a juvenile market. 2000 AD,
modelled on what had been successful in Action, and what teenagers enjoyed in the
cinema—the new breed of science-fiction—gradually became the best-produced comic in
the country, always raising its standards of script writing, artwork, colour printing and
paper. American editions were produced, and a film starring Judge Dredd released in
- Many other sci-fi-plus-violence followed 2000 AD: Tank Girl added sex to violence
successfully, and W.H.Smith gave way to commercial pressure.
The British adult comic had a rebirth in the late 1960s under the influence of the
American ‘underground’ comic which had been pioneered by cartoonists like Robert
Crumb with his comic/erotic Zap Comics. These were reprinted in Britain and much
emulated in many one-off or short run comics, drawn and published by amateurs in
London and the provinces. The best and longest-lasting of these local cartoonists is
Hunt Emerson from Birmingham, who began with his Large Cow Comix (1974), and
became an internationally admired creator. His style owes much to George Herriman
and his vintage American page ‘Krazy Kat’, but Emerson’s style and sense of humour are
now all his own (perhaps spoiled for some by his obsession with obscenity).
The most successful comic ever published in Britain is Viz (December 1979), which
began as a very small circulation amateur comic, and now sells over 1,000,000 copies
248 POPULAR LITERATURE: COMICS, DIME NOVELS, PULPS AND PENNY DREADFULS