I thought it
best to make more of an effort with my blog so please tune in more often. The
thing is I only use it to post short stories and don’t get much time to plot
them all. So here goes with a more “book review,” set of posts where I write
about some of my favourite reads. They will include the mainstream and the
self-published, novels, short stories, fiction and nonfiction, comics, graphic
novels, books my kids enjoy and well, anything really; no borders here;
whatever I feel like (my blog my prerogative alright?!)
So after
having a look at the last book I read I thought I should turn the clock right
back to the beginning for one of my most important influences. Knee-high to a
grasshopper I was when I boarded my Rayleigh Tomahawk and peddled as fast as my
chubby legs would take me to the newsagents. Grasped firmly in my hand the 15p
pocket money Dad gave me. It was a Thursday and no coincidence my pocket money
was that day; The Beano was out. It cost 9p; leaving me 6p for sweets and at a
halfpenny each you get a hefty dozen of fruit salads, blackjacks and flying
saucers. I recall the woman behind the counter’s frustrated sigh as she stood
with a scoop in hand awaiting the important halfpenny decision and a queue of
kids behind me.
I would get
home, munch my sweets and read my comic; revelling in the stories of Dennis and
Gnasher, Lord Snotty, Billy Whizz, Little Plum, Smudge, the Bash Street Kids
and so many more. The comic though was more than a read as later I would grab
myself a pencil and paper and copy the adventures. As time went on I began
creating my own characters and plots based on the in-house style. It was a Bash
Street Kids story where the teacher took the kids on a visit the Beano studio
that really took my attention. I am sure it was a fun strip for the staff, a
chance for the artists to caricature the writers and the writers to mock the
artists but for me it was so much more than that, for the first time I gave
consideration to fact that people actually sat and wrote and drew these things,
for a job! In awe of the concept I set my ambition that day to become a
cartoonist.
In a world
that looked very dated, the children all wore shorts and the teachers wore
traditional cloaks and mortars, burglars wore masks, stripy costumes and carried
a bag with “swag” written on it and prisoners wore suits with arrows on.
However it was always daring and not very PC by today’s standards, Dennis the
Menace armed with catapult but would always end up with the retribution of his
father’s slipper. Although his beating was gradually faded out, when I first
began reading it the last panel of Dennis the Menace would always have him over
his father’s knee while the dad ceremonially held his slipper ready for a swipe
and later on they only planted the thought into children’s heads by showing him
calling for Dennis while holding a slipper or else drawing a door with
effective “Thwack!” sound effects. We relished in the styles of yore and the
mountains of mash potato with sausages stuck out at all angles, we savoured the
speech they used to cover up obscenities like “Golly!” the world that convinced
me that a haggis was a hairy, dumpy little creature with fangs that lived in
the Highlands of Scotland where every man walked around with a tree trunk under
their arm.
That world
broke the rules of English as well as stereotyping everything in its
pages. For years after reading the Beano
I pronounced Dennis’ dog G-Nasher (sounding the silent G) and they didn’t help
much by adding a “G” to every word beginning with an N that came from Gnasher’s
mouth, G-news, G-night, etc. Well, if Shakespeare could make up words
willy-nilly why not DC Thompson? However the comics opened us to a world that
couldn’t be replicated so easily in film as it could with modern CGI and we had
no choice but to read. We read the whole thing from cover to cover and eagerly
anticipated the next Thursday to come along. I read, unlike most children today
and although it was not the best piece of literature it was keyed in with our
likes and dislikes. It sorted the men from the boys, telling us who the “menaces”
were and who were “softies.” It taught us if we lived by the sword we died by
the sword, all the characters meeting a fate of their own foolish consequences.
It taught us that the rules of language were there to be broken and it gave us hours
of laughter and enjoyment.
In an
interview I did some years ago I was asked of my influences, “what comics did
you read as a kid?” I answered the Beano and so the interviewer asked if I had
any desire to read any Fleetway or perhaps even venture into American superhero
comics like Marvel. I simply said no, but now, thinking about the question a
bit more clearly I should have said, “Of course I did, I would have loved to
have every comic ever made but heck, I only had 15p!”
So loyal to
the Beano I was and only if I was lucky to find some money on the floor, been
good enough to warrant my father giving some extra or cunning enough to get
away with slipping a Dandy, Beezer or a Nutty Comic inside the Beano without
the shopkeeper noticing did I ever venture beyond that comic. However there
would be occasions when you could further your reading experience. Those
opportunities would be thus: 1- the creation of the comic library where full
length stories of, not just Beano characters but features of ones from the
Dandy and Nutty (like Bananaman) too would be available, though this was not
until the mid-1980s. 2- Summer holidays and a massive A3 sized summer special
would be a treat worth every penny from the camp shop. 3- the most important,
the annual, normally reserved as a stocking-filler on the Christmas holiday.
The annual was so important; it was like all the characters would put on a
special show.
So then,
imagine if you will a jumble sale in a school hall in the early 1980s, musky
old 70s clothes, jigsaws and unwanted toys priced exceptionally low in order
that someone might desire this tat. My
mum is hurrying through, perhaps looking for a winter coat when I am distracted
by a Beano annual from 1973. My mum protests, why did I want that old thing
when I read the modern Beano? Why indeed? I justified my argument by the fact
that it was the year that I was born, and it paid off.
This event
opened my eyes to the Beano of yore, a place that still cradled serious
adventure stories in its pages, something the Beano of the 1980s had long
dropped. I was thrilled to see my heroes inside, but drawn by slightly
differently. I was also keen on the ones I had not met before, wondering why
they were dropped. I recall getting a bit of a crush on the leather-clad masked
catlike Katie from Billy the Cat! I was also quite correct, the art in the
Beano of the 1970s seemed more polished than that of the 1980s and so I ventured
off to discover the world of the Great British comic book style, although the
artists were never allowed to sign their own work so I never knew any of their
names they were the William Hogarth’s of their era.
It would be
decades later when my comic “Rat Arsed and Shit Faced 2; Escape from Newport,”
would be reviewed by Dez Skin of Comics International. He compared my style to
that of a man called Ken Reid. I called his office and spoke to him to thank
him for the great review and he mentioned the guy’s name again, I didn’t know
he was, taking him to be an American underground cartoonist like Crumb and
Shelton.
When I
admitted this to the man on the table next to me at the Bristol comic con who
was the Thrud cartoonist Carl Cristlow he told me that he was a very great
British cartoonist that drew for the DC Thomson and Fleetway, if Dez said I was
like him than I should take it as a very high compliment. He told me that he
drew Roger the Dodger and many others and it suddenly fell upon me that despite
citing the many underground cartoonists like Crumb and Shelton as my influences
Dez had managed to decipher the clear influence I had as a youngster reading
the Beano. This is when I set about discovering all those artists names, the
newly arrived internet helped. Ken Reid, Leo Baxendale, David Law to name but a
few, with the crème-de-la-crème, Dudley Watkins.
It really
felt at that point we had come full circle and I still hold a deep love for
these comics to this day. It is shame to see their demise in popular culture as
the kids download games to play on tablets. We saw the final Dandy Comic a year
or so ago and I fear for the future of the Beano now too. From 1937/38 they
ruled children’s lives, they bought fun and laughter and they inspired so many
to take up reading and writing.
If I am to
write blog posts about my favourite books these have to be, without question at
the top of the list. DING – DONG! (You will only get this if you were a member
of the Dennis the Menace fan-club!)
If you liked
this idea of me babbling on about my favourite reads please let me know by
commenting and liking as it will spur me onto to write more.
