Comical comics
Comical comics |
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Page 6 of 34  'Billy Bunter', Knock-out (Amalgamated Press, 1942). Art/script: Frank Richards. Thus, it was not until the late 1930s that the boom in humour really began, when the Amalgamated Press were challenged by a newcomer to the comics field, DC Thomson. The company, based in Dundee, had previously published story papers, but now took a fresh approach to comics with a line that included The Dandy (1937) and The Beano (1938). These titles will be familiar to most Britons: they more than any others have defined modern perceptions of a comic in this country, and it is a testimony to their phenomenal success that they are still being published in the 1990s. What was so special about them? In one sense, they built on the legacy of the Amalgamated Press: they were likewise published on cheap paper with colour covers (and some colour internal pages), and they too featured funny animals ('Korky the Cat' was the cover star of The Dandy for forty-seven years). But in other respects, they were years ahead of their time: most strikingly, they dispensed with captions underneath the pictures and concentrated instead on keeping the dialogue within word-balloons. This style led to a much less static approach to rendering, and opened the way for more fluent joke-telling - the real secret of the comics' success.  'Ginger', The Boozer, (BC Thomson, 1961). Art/script: Budley Wathins. |