Comics now and then

 It is Friday and that means comic day with me as I catch up with the Phoenix and Beano, the two weekly comics I get.

Phoenix seldom has any school based stories although a number have involved school age children but the Beano for a very long time has stories that at least reference school if not being set in a school of which The Bash Street Kids is the most famous one.

School today is very different at some levels than it was when this edition from June 16, 1962 was around with much less cricket being played, that chilling reminder of a Tawse at the top of strip being long gone although it reminds us that D C Thomson was very much a Scottish publisher and elements of scottish life do creep in to what were UK wide titles and this was the first strip drawn by the late David Sutherland who was scottish.

Given these changes and indeed even I could tell in the mid 1970's it was different to what things were even then never mind today, although the strip still runs, everything around has change because the children's world who read that comic has itself changed.

Today it is full colour, back when I read it originally only the front and rear was in colour, the reminder just used red and black in the main so for us annuals and the summer specials where when we saw our comic heroes in full colour and unlike then when we had newsprint, today the paper is better quality.

I do wonder sometimes if given the number that must go to recycling after a week or two if perhaps using modern newsprint might not be cheaper and better for the environment as todays newspaper too use colour pictures unlike the primitive black and white dots of the 70's and 80's.

The Pheonix does softback reprints of cartoon strip series which are more for collectors and fans of the likes of Looshkin and the Beano does a kind of illustrated "boomic" series of Dennis and Gnasher ones around a extended storyline.

Boomic is a brand that means Book but comic mash up really.

The D C Thomson fan books that have reprints of older classic strips around  a topic are popular - I have them every christmas - for bring back memories  of strips we no longer see such as Lord  Snooty and Pals, Little Plum and the like.

Comics are still a thing children do look forward to even in age of tie in weekly or monthly magazines to things in popular culture such as tv shows and films.

The 2023 tape sort

One thing I usually do every so often is to look through my recording media and consider if I need any new ones or if those I may have which bearing in mind only a small amount of new cassettes are made and as far as I'm aware no new blank MiniDiscs are being made at all some may be in less than great shape if heavily used.

I had a small amount of very basic "normal" Maxell tapes that are fine for things like voice recording but not really best suited to good quality music being a little restricted in high frequencies  and not able to take highish levels to help keep hiss at bay.

 I picked up a number of still sealed by sadly no longer made very high quality type II cassettes that perform exceptionally well in that oddball tape length, the C46.

C46 was really for the "average" lp length album where you didn't wish to wind on to find the side of a C90 you put an album and usually had thicker tape, less likely to wearout and were less popular whereas the C90 was the length of choice for those who made their own compilation mixtapes and usually are harder to get new.

They had a nominal 23 minutes per side but often went to more like 24 which is useful.

They work well for my purposes and I picked up while I was at it a couple of the 90 minute versions  and a pre-owned but lightly played metal oxide tape which are "The Best" but being out of production for over 25 years tend to be extremely expensive as new sealed items often bough more by collectors of tapes than those of us who use them for what their intended purpose was, making recordings.

Retro updates

 One of the great successes in the field of traditional children's comics has been the reintroduction on  bi monthly basis of Monster Fun which does have actual children reading rather than legally adult retro fans  but recently a communication came that indicated all new cartoon strips with new characters would be featured from the beginning of this year.

As well although understandedly guarded, it was indicated there had been discussion about how extra issues of Monster Fun exclusively for Fang Club members such as me although they can't say how but we're to expect further news in the year about that.

Another unexpected hit was Now's Yearbook series launched in 2021 that took on cd a main volume of four full to the brim chart hits from one specific year and added a three cd Extra set.

It also proved popular in vinyl although that had a truncated three lp edition and recently a set of five lps covering 1980 through to 1984 with a selection from the cd Extras that had not had a vinyl issue at all.

Currently last Friday saw Now Yearbook 1985 Extra issued on cd and many had considered what the next step in the series was going to be following a Now Yearbook Additional volume '80-84 on four cd book form and three lp vinyl.

Now it appears that for cd a Extra set dedicated to that wil be issued late February wrapping up that era.

Whither in March we leap into 1986 which is a bit marginal given only tracks issued on HITS 4 are missing on cd compilations as NOW7 and 8 were reissued a few years back on cd and HITS 5 was a long single cd as well as the norm of the double lp and tape or we leap back into 1978 remains to be seen.

I'd rather have 1978 personally, lots of memories of FA Cup, World Cup, Grease! school trips and so on.

Saying hello to better radio

Today's post is a little different to going into a major change in part of my stereo system that had remained constant for a good decade or so.

There is a longish history to putting together a hifi system and usually I tried to get matching amplifiers and tuners at least visually if not by manufacture rather than the more commonplace two in one of a "receiver" in North America simply because you requirements of the amplificationin one may be  in excess of you needs of the radio unit aka a "Tuner".

For me that translates as having great stereo FM for services such as BBC Radio Three but not needing a lot of presets and while AM reception is useful I normally use a quality portable for things like TalkSport Radio and the like.

With the first Rotel system a RA313 amplifier was matched to a fairly simple manual tuned tuner  and when that after some sideways moves that didn't quite work out I got a Rotel RA820B, I bought the matching RT820L that offered long Wave for Radio 4 but again manually tuned.

Recently though it didn't just lose its illumination for the tuning dial which can be fixed but it lost sensitivity on FM which meant it was time to change it over.

The first thing to say about the Tangent Tuner II is it's quite a bit smaller and has two different wavebands on it.

The first is VHF/FM which first arrived on the scene here in 1955/6 after some experiments around how the signal was modulated and from the late 1960's stereo multiplex transimssions were added.

The other is more recent and that is Digital Audio Broadcasting, usually abbrevated to "Dab" which in reality is VHF Band III and digital broadcasting using two differing coding techniques that was initially launched as an experimental service in 1995 and for which most stations are transmitted on the same frequencies around the country to help boost reception.

There is a period of change and a good deal of instability around if the VHF/FM service will remain or indeed if both will be replaced by internet streaming at home and on Smartphones while out.

Part of that is around concerns over the technical quality of the signal - some broadcasters are using relatively poor sounding mono - favouring more stations rather than higher fidelity although this model has an output so for better stations you can route the digital signal to a external higher quality digital to analogue convertor for the best possible sound which is what I have done apart from the traditional RCA line outputs you connect to an amplifer to.

In that way it does cover all bases as today there is very little on the Long and Medium wave am bands that is exclusive in the way that in my childhood you had to listen to Radio Four Long wave for cricket and Radio One on Medium wave only for your chart pop music with fading and whistles from nearby televisions affecting reception.

Digital does bring silent backgrounds so you can here the coughing of the audience in a live concert to a silent background and better high frequencies compared to the A.M.