Back in time to Boys Comics

 

It's been a strange week when I went to vote yesterday looking every inch the eternal boy I am while reading comics and annuals as for most of the week it hasn't been good to be out with gale force winds as if we were back in the era I could of any of these boys having fun, getting to grips with the Kodak Disc System camera, taking a memory.

I've sometimes posted around them on here but comics were massive then, front and centre with many of us when it came to indoor things to do apart from watching children's tv and playing a record or tape so there lots of attempts to grab a bit of that big market.

This was a 'also run' comic in the promotional ad from February 7th 1976 where rather than scrolling your smartphone for something to do you'd of picked up a comic and this one was really aimed at older boys who wanted something a bit more cooler, sophisticated with a bit more edge but still just for children.

This was very much for my age range 10-14  with sports stories mixed in with adventure, crime and some free gifts, hardly the sort of thing Walter and the softies would of bought (tossing in comic reference).

Hookjaw was something you could get your teeth into, but tie-in's showed with the link to Magnum P.I. and soccer cards to collect cos we did that which showed the way towards the modern trend of bundling things just as other kinds of cards such as Top Trumps were coming out that we played in the dorm and on school hols.

This isn't a comic but was pretty big too a #1 single in Feb 1976 by the Scottish band Slik that featured a teen Midge Ure who adopted a more preppy sports baseball jacket look.

The trouble was Action couldn't battle it out with the big names in comics targeted more towards us like Valliant, Warlord which I read religiously devouring wars stories and facts back then, Tiger and Roy of the Rovers.

By 19 November 1977 it was 'folded' to use the expression the comic publishers use into Battle which was their answer to Warlord which ought to ticked most bases being right up the alley of more "Boys will be boys" sorts like I was then other than we were committed to the likes of Warlord which from 1974 had grabbed us tying in with our war based play, interest in aircraft, tanks, ships and weapons and  and love of Action Man .

Given we often had at least two offerings, The Beano that was shared with my younger brother, The Dandy Nan bought for me every week and Roy of the Rovers I bought with my allowance that provided different focuses (not for nothing did the storylines in Roy of the Rovers get much support going on to be loved in the game too) we were not likely to switch to it in an instant.

Getting in early and hooking the readers was the way to build up a committed readership and Battle-Action was too late even if had it of come out in 74/75 many of us would of taken to it.

This wasn't the only should of been a winner that missed it'd target though.

It's the early 1980's, things are a bit more sophisticated with animated action cartoons on tv, more electronic games, videos to watch and buy your very own were now a thing and someone decided we needed a new comic.

The focus of this comic was school and yes any of us around in that era know the fun we had in school, the brushes with authority we had and the extent to which we shared jokes and stories about just what happened that afternoon.

It did run long enough to garner a few Summer Specials as comics remained in basic newsprint unlike magazines such as Look-In which used glossy paper the specials being the delux edition to get us through the summer hols also had full colour glossy treatment.

One idea they had was to ask well know people we followed to write about their school days so Keith Chegwin was romantically linked to Tomorrow's World presenter Maggie Philbin otherwise known as "Cheggers" as we all called him who presented many shows on the BBC wrote one such piece what wasn't far removed what many experiences were like.

One feature it had was you could actually nominate people in it for a whacking which would then be illustrated in single comic frame which is fair reflection of the world we lived in then when we'd feel a  sense of  Schadenfreude when another got their comeuppance and needless to say others felt that of ourselves too as we had to wait to be punished in those pre 1987 days at school.

It was a different time with different expectations and norms back them

Around the seventies and eighties, I did by from jumble sales older books aimed at boys which in its own way is something you wouldn't get today either as people see them as collectables with BIG prices but we paid often less than a pound for then as they were seen as old and outmoded for children of the era rather than grown up collectables.

It was around the point I was going through my first and very strong experiences of Age Dysphoria, the sense of still being an younger age than your birth date and the tension between how you felt and how people saw and treated you.

Looking back on it, I was looking for the type stories and adventures I loved as that young boy finding nothing much in young adult fiction and teen life that really connected with me.