TV Comic


TV Comic was a British weekly comic book published from 9 November 1951 until 29 June 1984. Featuring stories based on television series running at the time of publication, it was the first British comic to be based around TV programmes and spawned a host of imitators.

Publication history

Originally started by News of the World, TV Comic was later sold to Beaverbrook Newspapers, and then to TV Publications in 1960.
The first issue ran to eight pages, with Muffin the Mule on the front cover. It also featured many other TV favourites of the day, including Mr. Pastry, Larry the Lamb, Tom Puss, Prince Valiant, Jack & Jill and Prudence Kitten.
In common with other British children's comics of the time, TV Comic absorbed other, less successful titles during its run. These included: TV Land and TV Express in 1962; TV Action in 1973; Tom and Jerry Weekly in 1974, which unusually didn't change the contents of the publication at all, given that Tom and Jerry already featured on the front page of TV Comic at the time; and the short-lived Target in 1978.
Editors of TV Comic included Dick Millington, Robin Tucheck, and John Lynott. Artists included Bill Titcombe, John Canning, Neville Main, H. Watts, Gerry Haylock, Mike Lacey, and Steve Maher.

Title changes

  • TV Comic
  • TV Comic + TV Action
  • TV Comic
  • TV Comic plus Tom & Jerry Weekly
  • TV Comic
  • Mighty TV Comic
  • TV Comic
  • TV Comic with Target
  • ''TV Comic''

    Content

For the first decade of its existence, the publication was aimed explicitly at younger children. As well as Muffin the Mule, other favourites from the 1950s that made appearances were Sooty, Coco the Clown, Noddy and Lenny the Lion. As the decade passed, so the comic began to acquire a slightly more "grown-up" feel, with stories such as Treasure Island, The Lone Ranger and Black Beauty all appearing for a time. Text stories also began to be featured, with religious themes such as "Jesus and the Bible".
TV Comic printed Doctor Who stories from 1964 to 1979. It also featured strip cartoons for the early puppet TV series produced by Gerry Anderson and AP Films—Four Feather Falls, Supercar and Fireball XL5—until Anderson's shows became the focus of a rival publication, TV Century 21.
The issues published in the 1960s are generally considered the most collectable in the comic's history. As well as Doctor Who and Anderson strips, other highly collectable material included Telegoons, Space Patrol and The Avengers.
A number of annuals and holiday specials were also issued over the years, including special editions concentrating on characters such as the Pink Panther and Tom and Jerry.
The only notable, collectable and original strips during TV Comic's latter years are arguably Battle of the Planets ; these ran from 1981 to 1983.

Format

From the start, TV Comic featured a mixture of full colour pages and black-and-white pages, a policy that continued throughout its history.
While generally always a steady seller, TV Comic endured a somewhat tempestuous latter decade. In 1976 Polystyle relaunched the title as New Mighty TV Comic, switching to a large tabloid format on cheaper paper. However, although the pages were larger, the amount of content in each issue actually reduced, with the frames of many strips simply blown up to fit the new size. The first two editions of the New Mighty TV Comic were accompanied by a smaller "Mighty Midget" supplement featuring reprints of previously published Doctor Who and Star Trek strips respectively.
This relaunch clearly failed to attract the sales increases that had been hoped; the comic dropped first "New" and then "Mighty" from the masthead after several months and reverted to a standard size two years later. However, it was still printed very cheaply on newsprint and so appeared a poor offering in contrast to its competitors, especially Look-in. While the overall production quality eventually improved, the comic continued to rely heavily on reprints of older material, or re-using scripts from old strips with new characters.
The publication ultimately closed in 1984, after nearly 33 years, due to declining sales. With no other Polystyle title existing into which it could merge, TV Comic simply ceased publication without any printed warning of its impending discontinuation. The closest to this was that both The A-Team and the Tales of the Gold Monkey strips, which had been running until this point, concluded with frames stating "The End".

Legacy

TV Comic remains the UK's longest-surviving example of an anthology weekly comic featuring licensed strips based on a range of Television properties; it ultimately survived for more than 32 years. Its nearest rival, in terms of longevity, was Look-in, which ran for 23 years, ceasing publication in March 1994.
The challenge always faced by TV Comic, as well as by rivals such as Look-in and TV Century 21 was being able to promptly licence and produce strips based on whichever TV shows and characters were popular at the time. This was not always easy to do or maintain in the longer-term. Occasionally a much-hyped programmes would prove less successful with readers than had been originally expected; alternatively, licenses to particular shows were simply beyond their reach, held by other publishers. For example, in 1978, the nearest TV Comic could get to the successful TV series based on Marvel's The Incredible Hulk was to publish an original spoof strip, The Incredible Bulk.
TV Comic also faced the long-term challenge of serving an often remarkably diverse readership in terms of both age and interests, finding itself running strips about anthropomorphised animals alongside adaptations of action adventure shows more popular with teenagers.
TV Comic was succeeded by Poylstyle's BEEB, a weekly, children's magazine focused specifically on the BBC's most popular programmes at the time and – somewhat belatedly – promoted as a BBC-orientated "answer" to ITV-focused Look-in. Although including far more feature-articles than TV Comic had ever done, the publication was still dominated by a diverse range of comic strips: from older-children's favourites such as Grange Hill and The Tripods to cartoons based on Bananaman and The Family-Ness. However, it appears that, by this point, Polystyle simply didn't have the commercial resources to continue publishing BEEB long-term. The title only survived 20 issues and, like TV Comic before it, disappeared without any warning.
Similar BBC tie-in magazine Fast Forward, published directly by the BBC themselves from 1989, survived somewhat longer—long enough, in fact, to incorporate sister title Number One, a pop-music magazine chiefly aimed at younger teenage girls. However, its six year run rather suggested that TV-based anthology comics were no longer sustainable.
Although numerous weekly, fortnightly and monthly comics based on television properties remain a significant area of magazine publishing in the UK today, most of the titles focus on specific properties, rather than many. Any remaining anthology titles opt to focus on similar shows, and are also aimed at very specific age-groups.

Features

TV programmes

  • Adam Adamant
  • Animal Magic
  • Astronut
  • The A-Team
  • The Avengers
  • Barney Bear
  • Basil Brush
  • Battle of the Planets
  • Bob Monkhouse's Mad Movies Featuring the Keystone Kops
  • Bootsie and Snudge
  • Bugs Bunny
  • Buzby
  • Cannon
  • Captain Pugwash
  • Catweazle
  • Charlie's Angels
  • Dad's Army
  • Deputy Dawg
  • The Dickie Henderson Family
  • Doctor Who
  • Droopy
  • The Dukes of Hazzard
  • Fireball XL5
  • The Flaxton Boys
  • Foo Foo and GoGo
  • Four Feather Falls
  • Grasshopper Island
  • Hägar the Horrible
  • How?
  • The Inspector
  • Ken Dodd's Diddymen
  • Jack & Jill
  • Kojak
  • Larry the Lamb
  • Laurel and Hardy
  • Lenny the Lion
  • Mr. Merlin
  • Mr Pastry
  • The Milky Bar Kid
  • Muffin the Mule
  • Noddy
  • Orlando
  • The Pink Panther Show
  • Popeye
  • Prudence Kitten
  • Road Runner
  • Rod Hull and Emu
  • Roobarb
  • Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
  • Sooty
  • Space Patrol
  • Star Trek
  • Supercar
  • Tales of the Gold Monkey
  • Target
  • Tarzan
  • The Telegoons
  • ''Tom and Jerry''

    Others

  • Arthur!
  • The Bakers' Dozen
  • Beetle Bailey
  • Black Beauty
  • Coco the Clown
  • Dad
  • The Incredible Bulk
  • Lochy the Loch Ness Monster
  • The Lone Ranger
  • Mighty Moth
  • Nellie and Her Telly
  • The Range Rider
  • TV Terrors - Cuthbert, Buttons and Monica, and their nemesis Hoppit
  • Texas Ted
  • Rudi Rabbit
  • ''Treasure Island''

    Notable issues

  • Issue 1 First Muffin the Mule cover. Prince Valiant begins a run that will last until issue 44.
  • Issue 192 Sooty takes over full-time on the cover, although it had occasionally appeared there as a Special number since earlier in the year.
  • Issue 267 First Enid Blyton Noddy strip begins. It starts off its two-year run on the cover, before finishing with issue 371.
  • Issue 345 First Lenny the Lion cover.
  • Issue 384. The comic's longest-running strip, Mighty Moth appears for the first time and runs until the comic ceases publication.
  • Issue 439 the strip adaptation of the first of three early Gerry Anderson-produced TV series, Four Feather Falls begins, running until issue 564.
  • Issue 444 The Lone Ranger begins, running until issue 507.
  • Issue 456 First Popeye cover. The strip had started with issue 449, but even after Popeye was dropped from the cover, the strip continued inside the comic into the 1980s.
  • Issue 482 the last appearance of Muffin the Mule in TV Comic as he is quietly dropped from the pages in only a half-page black-and-white strip.
  • Issue 483 another Gerry Anderson favourite, Supercar starts. It runs until issue 667.
  • Issue 508 The Range Rider begins, running until issue 658.
  • Issue 565 the third and last Anderson strip to appear in TV Comic is Fireball XL5, which runs until issue 672.
  • Issue 619 Telegoons first appears, running until issue 787.
  • Issue 668 Space Patrol, always in full colour in the centre pages, makes its first appearance and will run until issue 719.
  • Issue 674 Doctor Who comic strip begins. Apart from a brief absence for a few issues at the end of 1969, it runs until issue 999 and then moves to Countdown comic.
  • Issue 720 The Avengers begins its first run, which will last until issue 771. The first Doctor Who colour centrespread appears.
  • Issue 788 First Doctor Who cover. This commenced a six-month period of Doctor Who and the Daleks covers, which are perhaps some of the most collectable issues.
  • Issue 810 First Ken Dodd's Diddymen cover.
  • Issue 877 The Avengers return, running until issue 1,078.
  • Issue 909 First Tom & Jerry cover.
  • Issue 1,058 Dad's Army begins its first run up to issue 1,100, after which it moves to TV Action.
  • Issue 1,133 TV Action merges with TV Comic. Dad's Army returns until issue 1,275 ; Doctor Who also returns.
  • Issue 1,292 Relaunch with first tabloid-style issue of Mighty TV Comic. Free Doctor Who ''Mighty Midget comic book. Star Trek features until issue 1,382.
  • Issue 1,377 Mighty TV Comic returns to its original format. Cover stars vary from Pink Panther to Charlie's Angels, Buzby and Scooby-Doo, among others.
  • Issue 1,393 First TV Comic, Incorporating Target. Charlie's Angels begins, running until issue 1,451.
  • Issue 1,430 Final issue featuring Doctor Who. Since issue 1,386, the strip had consisted of John Canning reprints with the character of the Doctor re-drawn as his fourth incarnation, as played by Tom Baker in the TV series.
  • Issue 1,530 Battle of the Planets begins, running until issue 1,671.
  • Issue 1,656 Tales of the Gold Monkey begins
  • Issue 1,697 Final issue of TV Comic; Tales of the Gold Monkey'' concludes