paddykool2

Back in the early 1960’s, in the UK and Ireland, comics were not the world – conquering communications medium that they are now regarded as. After the pleasures of the easily accessible, more locally produced children’s comics[bought at the newsagent shop with the daily newspaper], any imported from,for example, America, were more of an “underground” pleasure in that they had to be sought out from obscurity and were erratically distributed.In Ireland and the UK, unlike in America, distribution was, at best, spotty. Many comics were loaded into  ships’ holds as bundles of ballast that eventually filtered through to small family -run Mom and Pop shops in towns across the country. They ended up on spinner racks or in a haphazard bundle in the corner of the shop. They were treated as cheap goods for children  to be bought with the newspapers and cigarettes.They had certainly not become the world -straddler that inspired film directors to make large amounts of money nor indeed re-branded as “graphic novels” to  conjure up critical  intellectual reviews in the quality newspapers.

“WHERE IS TONY ROCHE ?”

BREAKING NEWS!!!!! JANUARY 2017 :

Since writing this original article some years ago  about the origins of Comics Fandom in Ireland and the UK  in the mid 1960s, there have been a few recent developments. Just when I thought the story was  all but over , it seems that some fifty years later , Tony  has  finally been given the opportunity to tell the  whole tale in his own words, as to how Comics Fandom began in Ireland with only a handful of  us enthusiastic teenagers.Myself , Tony and possibly one other Irishman came in on the ground- floor with some thirty -odd English enthusiasts also joining in the fun , to start that particular ball rolling . It is a very enjoyable story, told in some detail and I (and my late mother, who assuredly saved Tony’s teenaged life with applications of tea and sandwiches at one point(!) )….am pleased to have played some part in its telling.Tony  , having started something of a cultural phenomenon later  went on to become a professor at UCD (University College Dublin’s School of English, Drama and Film ) until his recent retirement in early 2016. Fifty years later, he looks back Read it all here in “Journey Planet “#31 :http://journeyplanet.weebly.com/uploads/1/5/7/1/15715530/jp31.pdf

DECEMBER  2018 :

Just as the digital ink was “drying” on the virtual presses of “Journey Planet”#31 with its excellent interview with Tony, , “Heroes Unlimited” # 8 rolls off the ink and paper  21st Century presses some 50 years after what we all thought was the final issue in 1969…Now relegated to penultimate status , it is succeeded by the very fitting last issue as promised by Tony all those years ago, as we left our teenage-selves behind.Tony posted me a hard – copy earlier in the month , but for all those who might never feel its heft  in their trembling hands, here the stalwart lads of “Journey Planet ”  and major cheerleaders of the  princely ‘Heroes Unlimited”, have  come to the rescue and provided a special issue of their fine e-zine in its honour for all fans old and new to fully savour. Here is the whole thing plus introductions .This time I get to blow my own trumpet, once again, after 50 years  and I feel suitably proud to be in their company. :

http://efanzines.com/JourneyPlanet/JourneyPlanet41.pdf

…..and  take a look further down at some of those protean literary efforts….

CLICK ON ABOVE COVER TO SEE A FLIPBOOK OF THE COMPLETE ISSUE.

Tony Rochewas the  originator of Comics fandom in Ireland and the UK back in the mid 1960’s when I too was caught up and contributed my comics  enthusiasm to his two comics fanzines, “Merry Marvel Fanzine” and  later “Heroes Unlimited” . The MMF came to my attention in the letter pages of “WHAM” comic.

Wham # 140 Feb. 1967

Wham had been launched  as  a rival to the Beano comic and featured some great artwork from ex -Bash Street Kids artist Leo Baxendale among others. By the time Tony Roche’s letter appeared in issue #140 in February 1967, the comic had begun to feature reprints of Marvel Comics characters such as the Fantastic Four.It was soon followed quickly by “Pow”, “Smash” , “Fantastic” and “Terrific”, all featuring various Marvel stories.

Tony Roche’s letter in Wham #140 Feb.1967 on the launch of the Merry Marvel Fanzine.This is the moment when Tony reached out to comic fans throughout the UK and Ireland.

Tony’s enthusiasm for comics spilled off the page and he mentioned that he was starting a new “fanzine” dedicated to the form.That is where I came in. When that issue of”WHAM” #140 arrived in the little local  newsagents  on 18th February 1967, I was  still only fourteen ,and had been quite  infected by this  comics madness ever since my Uncle Paddy had  started me on this road by buying  me “The Topper” and “The Dandy” weekly comics, as a boy in the 1950s. From there I found “The Beano” and I was already a “collector”, reading every kind of comic that I could find. There were all manner of  comics around at the time .There were the UK comics such as  The Eagle , Boys’ World, Rover and Wizard, The Hotspur,  Buster, The Hornet, The Victor, Buster, The Valiant, The Beano, the Beezer and so on.The Beano was a near -surrealistic experience and at that time was full of schoolboy in-jokes . anarchic humour and truly excellent comic art by the likes of Dudley D. Watkins and Leo Baxendale.

Then there were  the  glossy covered American DC comics such as Batman , Superman , the Flash and Green Lantern, World’s Finest , Jimmy Olsen and so on.  The fat annuals and “80 page Giants” were a great way of finding older “origin” stories for all the characters and were particularly great value.Dell, Gold Key and  Charlton produced solid comics work too but they hadn’t the more glamorous characters even though they featured excellent artwork.

In the 1950s some superhero comics , Westerns and the like, such as “Marvelman” were produced  by L. Miller &Sons ,a UK company, but they were pale imitations  of the American originals , having mostly limited colour. These were produced throughout the 1950s but were running out of steam as the 1960s were beginning.

I had been buying the  UK produced “Alan Class ” thick reprint collections  at a shilling each, before I  ever realised that much of these tales  were old Marvel horror  and sci-fi stories drawn by Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko. These were dressed with  titles such as “Astounding”, “Amazing” and indeed they were  .  Many of those  stories were little morality tales masquerading as monster or sci-fi tales; good versus evil with some time-travel thrown in and usually a snap, shock -ending much like the stories of O Henry, which I’d previously consumed .

Then there was this strange little dowdy company ,”Marvel”. with its oddly coloured covers and cheaper inner paper newsprint .These comics were radically different , somehow.They had a mystique about them .The duller colours  against the shoddier newsprint seemed to give them a sense of realism and of course, the characters within operated ,not in some other -world like Superman’s “Metropolis”, but in then present day America ,or a version of present-day New York , but also including the inner-worlds of the likes of  the mystical Doctor Strange , the fantastical mythological reaches of Thor’s Valhalla and the alternative universes  and space-ways of the  Fantastic Four. Essentially , Marvel comics provided  an ongoing ,always  sprawling, but inter-connected melodrama  and dare I say,  a soap-opera  of huge proportions. The characters were very real but they always had a fatal flaw to make them more interesting even as the sock-it -to -them power-plays were acted-out  with an ever -ending cast of super-villains. Daredevil was improbably totally blind ,but also possessing  an extraordinary sense of spatial awareness ;the Thing was encased in a carapace of ugly rocky rubble and although he had extraordinary strength and power he never felt lovely or worth loving; the Hulk was completely out of all normal control, generally unable to predict  his violent transformations from sane scientist to raging childlike colossus..

The super-villains were incredibly inventive too. I’d never seen anything like those characters.Doctor Octopus, Galactus, Doctor Doom, The Green Goblin ,The Lizard, Dormammu, the Red Skull, The Sandman, Absorbing Man,The Sandman, Black Widow.Each one had a fascinating back-story if that wasn’t enough to sate a twelve year old’s fascination with which character was the strongest in a straight-up fight. Was the Thing stronger than the Hulk. Thor was a “god”…could he take on Spider-man and win? How decidedly weird was the Green Goblin and how did he manage to stay on that balletic  flying machine? Then there were the romantic and angsty relationships of the characters. There were even married superheroes .These things mattered at that age!!!The Fantastic Four were super-powered and super-strong but they could still be evicted from their homes . None of these “good guys” ever thought of simply kicking back and breaking the law.That’s before we even mention the  very idea of mutants and the idea of a teenage band of mutants called the X-Men. Most of us had never heard of mutants…or even the word “mutants”, but here was a bunch of outsider-teenagers , who may have been gay, black,odd or all three. Any teenager could identify with some of that.

 I was already reading the, then very rare Marvel comics  by the age of twelve and  had come across  my first Spider-man comic, “Spider-Man #9 featuring Electro ” produced in March 1964, plus a battered copy of the first “Marvel Tales Annual” which featured all the origin stories of many of the characters. and several other titles such as the “Fantastic Four” , “The X-men”, “The Avengers” (I came in with the revival of Captain America in issue #4  where Captain America was revived from a frozen state within a block of ice,(a copy of which I still have), Daredevil” and “Strange Tales”, “Tales of Suspense” and “Tales to Astonish” which carried  the then peripheral characters such as Doctor Strange, Captain America, Iron Man, The Hulk, Ant Man and Captain Fury and Agents of SHIELD. There were even a few Western and War comics titles  such as Two Gun Kid and Sgt Fury and His Howling Commandos . this latter title set  the Sgt Fury character  twenty years earlier in World War Two  in the 1940s , long before “Agents of SHIELD” with Nick Fury as its head ,was created on the back of the James Bond books and films   and TVs “The Man From U.N.C.L.E” craze in the early 1960s.

Marvel also began a series of fat reprints in titles such as “Fantasy Masterpieces” and “Marvel Collectors Item Classics” and further issues of “Marvel Tales” , in which they dipped back into their 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s catalogue; all the horror and suspense stories were there alongside the original Captain America stories ,the  Human Torch and the Sub Mariner. All of these creations would go on some fifty years later to dominate the cinema screens of the world ,but to some of us  back then they were simply a secret  underground pleasure in the shadow of the much duller, if better printed , Superman DC  National comics lines .Such was the feeling of mystique that I was  primed and ready to get involved further. I wrote to Tony  and subscribed to to his little  “Merry Marvel Fanzine” ,arguably the first substantial attempt at a magazine about comics anywhere in Ireland or the UK.

At this time in the early to mid-1960s most regular American comics arrived with a ten cents price tag or later “12 cents”. Most of the time this was over-stamped with either “ten pence” (10d) or twelve pence inky stamp (12d/  which was  1/- One Shilling) . Most were “American  priced” but some were already bearing the UK price tag printed on the cover before it left the USA. At  the time most fans did not care overmuch. which price featured . The Annuals or 72page Specials were usually priced at 25 Cents or 1/6 (one shilling and sixpence- pre decimal  currency).This was quite a price-hike compared to most UK comics  at the time which were usually between three pence (3d) and six pence(6d).The only other source of these was possibly in second-hand shops, market stalls or  with other collectors ,where the price asked depended mostly on the condition.

Marvel  was already creating a club-like mystique in which readers were invited to join.Readers were encouraged to believe that the Marvel “Bullpen” was some expansive ,creative , friendly family of  talented writers and artists working out of a teeming office  on Madison Avenue in glamorous New York city. They had already  formed and promoted their own marketable club called the Merry Marvel Marching Society (MMMS!) complete with club membership packs with badges , stickers , notepads and stationery. They even had their own flexi-disc record featuring the voices of many within the mystical bullpen ,which could be played at home. Stan Lee seemed like a favourite uncle leading the promotion.

 T-Shirts and sweatshirts of their comic characters were  to follow.All of this could be ordered from the advert pages within the comics. Most of this great hustle was beyond most  fans living  outside  the USA, of course . It was difficult enough finding these comics in the local newsagents ,because comic-shops did not  yet exist.For myself, my finances never stretched  beyond  scrimping and buying the  actual comics and in the long-ago pre-internet days “foreign”purchases could only be made by buying mysterious “International Money Orders” at the Post Office. That was an expense beyond my meagre budding teenager’s  means.T-Shirts sporting any kind of printed logos or comic characters  were something that only happened in 1960s America. American slang and food were rarities  in those times in the UK and Ireland.(I have found some of these images on the internet to illustrate both the T-Shirts and the MMMS merchandise looked in the comics.) I would exchange  long , rambling letters regularly with Tony Roche in relation to his two fanzines “MMF” and “HU” and Marvel Comics  and because he was already a member of the MMMS his replies would usually arrive on their superhero -decorated  notepaper. I wish I had kept some of those letters!

In the beginning , known comics fandom seemed to consist of about only thirty five of us enthusiasts spread across Ireland and the UK .Certainly, in my own hometown of Armagh in Northern Ireland I knew nobody who was quite as obsessed with comics as I was. At my grammar school there were only two in my class remotely interested in art of any kind and I had to fight to get an art- class started .My first art  teacher was an excellent  local painter  called Hugh Largey who  quietly showed me a few basics while the remainder of the class “sagged-off” to enjoy a rare free-period. He advised on my modest quiver of  brushes and colours and encouraged me to throw inhibition aside and “just paint”. His concentration was on the artists from Giotto to Cezanne and he attempted to give me a grounding beyond the books I was consuming. This was my first  “real” art instruction from a proper painter who understood these arcane notions of tone , composition and philosophical meaning . I was later to go to the Jacob Kramer College of Art in Leeds to be tutored by abstract painter and best friend of the actor Peter O’Toole , Patrick Oliver and eventually land up in Manchester Fine Art , but it all started here. Comic art  was something else entirely and would then have been viewed  by general society as a “commercial”, slightly  philistine  or  “unclean affair”…a poor relation to  proper gallery art. There had been no critical books in circulation about this novel form back then. The 1960s began that trend with “The Penguin Book Of Comics”. Even comic artists did not seem to appreciate the uniqueness of their own specialised artform. They were printed mostly on the shoddiest material available and most people thought of them as “kids-stuff”. my mother would have called them “Comic Cuts”  after a comic of that name from her own younger years.At one time they’d been referred to as “Penny Dreadfuls”. There was one other lad at school, called Eugene  who was only slightly infected with the  comics virus  and I encouraged him to subscribe to Tony’s fanzine , but I have to concede that I must have been something of an oddity in that I was the only other comic fan in the whole of Ireland who initially answered Tony’s call to arms.Another southern  Irish fan later joined in time for the launch of  “Heroes Unlimited” after the three MMF issues, but we were very  few on the ground.

It wasn’t as though I was some anti-social nerd either, who never left the sanctuary of his bedroom .Indeed , I had a wide circle of friends of both sexes, but none of them were into comics in the same way as I was .For me , comics  were a kind of magical talisman that transcended childhood’s  first enthusiasms.Ultimately it was all about storytelling, a trait that was in the family DNA already .My father was an excellent storyteller and my aunt was writing stories for “Woman’s Own” magazine and the like.We “real” comic fans must have been  a small group of either visionary ,or very odd fish .I think in retrospect we were a little of both.  That would have been the extent of both those involved and  the size of those   first print runs.In those days when virtually all correspondence was made through the mailbox, I picked up pen and paper and began to write  long , rambling letters of encouragement  to Tony. The instantaneity of  the modern  internet did not exist nor the instant gratification of something like Amazon, so each letter or package through the post was impatiently awaited with bated breath for possibly weeks.Sometimes Tony replied on his own MMMS special stationery ,replete with the Marvel heroes printed down the margins,  which I thought was truly impressive. From such small beginnings……..The very first issue was only three  large “foolscap”(Imperial size) pages of introduction without  anything so grand as an illustrated  cover,. After that Tony went for the  smaller ,more compact “quarto” size for all the remainder of his “MMF” and “Heroes Unlimited “fanzines.It was what was available to him at the time and that was how it began.Initially the inking was a bilious blue ,but later it was black for “Heroes Unlimited”.By issue #3 Tony had found two worthy artistic enthusiasts who supplied him with the cover for that issue and after that “Heroes unlimited sported a new cover for each issue with additional interior artwork from the likes of Paul Neary  and Ken Simpson.

You can link to a FLIPBOOK of   a complete issue of MERRY MARVEL FANZINE # 2 here :   http://www.calameo.com/read/00274690234ada4f74160

The first fanzine in the UK and Ireland, subsequently  ran for three issues from  1966/ early 1967 and  then the successor “HU” was laid to rest after issue number seven in the Summer of 1969.Both Tony and myself were already moving on…..Looking back at my fourteen year old self I am struck by the innocent enthusiasm pouring out in my half-formed letters to Tony and his efforts.I was  completely uncritical and probably incapable of criticising anything Tony and his other contributors  did.This was totally new territory.I had never seen anything like a fanzine before and I was enthralled that there were  comic fans with a passion similar to my own spread about Ireland and the UK.My letters of appreciation, some printed in Tony’s fanzines ,were the letters of young teenager.That said , we were all youngsters but the little magazines still stand up proudly.There I was on the letters page sandwiched between Ges Cleaver and Marvel’s ownAssistant Editor, Gary Friedrich, These fanzines  really were that  good..,

 

After this came a plethora of zines each taking advantage of the new technologies. The Merry Marvel  Fanzine and Heroes Unlimited, created and edited by Tony Roche and aided and abetted by  the likes of Ken Simpson, Ges Cleaver, Robert Poole  and Paul Neary , were, by general consensus, the first comic fanzines in the UK and Ireland, though, and like their creator are increasingly very difficult to find anywhere. I became one of a small group of subscribers, supporters  and letter writers. Fortunately , as a natural collector, I kept the majority of mine and bought back the missing issues  at some quite high prices . I have long-since been  parted  from my own copy of  MMF #1 [ the long foolscap issue] so if anyone has one and   is interested in sharing scans of this first issue, let me know! I still remember , as a fourteen year old fan , painstakingly one-finger typing out a copy of MMFANZINE #1 on a rackety old Remington typewriter so that fellow comics  fan Eugene Murray could  have his own personal copy and share in this great new discovery.The original was printed in that old blue fuzzy ink . Unfortunately Eugene’s copy could only be reproduced in black and white. There were no handy scanners or photocopying machines in the library back then. Dedication was a requirement!! Eugene , thankfully subscribed  to the later issues if memory serves, relieving me of any further typing chores.

I have now  uploaded  “Flip Book ” versions  of my two issues of the “Merry Marvel Fanzine” and the full seven issues of “Heroes Unlimited”. You can see the full issues as flipbooks from the links below. Simply click on the covers and they will open for your enjoyment:

MMF #1 

https://paddykool2.wordpress.com/comics-comix-and-fandom/merry-marvel-fanzine-

MMF#2 http://en.calameo.com/read/00274690234ada4f74160

MMF #3 http://en.calameo.com/read/002746902d7facdb070b9

HU#1 https://paddykool2.wordpress.com/comics-comix-and-fandom/heroes-unlimited-1/

HU#2 https://paddykool2.wordpress.com/comics-comix-and-fandom/heroes-unlimited-2/

HU#3 https://paddykool2.wordpress.com/comics-comix-and-fandom/heroes-unlimited-3/

HU#4 https://paddykool2.wordpress.com/comics-comix-and-fandom/heroes-unlimited-4/

HU#5 https://paddykool2.wordpress.com/comics-comix-and-fandom/heroes-unlimited-5/

HU#6 https://paddykool2.wordpress.com/comics-comix-and-fandom/heroes-unlimited-6/

HU#7 https://paddykool2.wordpress.com/comics-comix-and-fandom/heroes-unlimited-7/

HU # 8 http://efanzines.com/JourneyPlanet/JourneyPlanet41.pdf

*** SPECIAL BONUS :THE FIRST UK  COMIC CONVENTION OF 1968 https://paddykool2.wordpress.com/comics-comix-and-fandom/1968-the-first-u-k-comic-convention/

You can find links to them above but in the meantime  here are some covers and pages to give a flavour of our teenage passions.I’ll scan and add as many as possible in the future , time and patience permitting. Tony  dropped out of sight after Heroes Unlimited(See below for an update)  , probably pursuing other teenage interests like girls and music, but my own artistic leanings were to take me to art college three years later where I re-acquainted myself with comics through imported copies of classic underground comix and Dez Skinn’s door opening”Fantasy Advertiser”.

The first wave of American underground comix was all but spent by then but such was the alternate underground press that copies were coming through from  the Real Free Press in Holland and UK versions were being produced too.I picked up a copy of a UK produced version of Robert Crumb’s “Fritz the Cat”, whilst an art student  in Leeds. An excellent bookshop named  “Books” was the initial source . This excellent shop stocked all sorts of literature and was where I found a treasure trove of  bundles of underground comix and books on art.

FRITZ THE CAT # 2 UK PRINTING ROBERT CRUMB ARTWORK

It was situated just off the student campus. I happened upon an advert for Dez Skinn’s “Fantasy Advertiser inside this comic. That was my re-connection .

At this time I’d begun attempting some comic strip ideas myself, spurred on by the idea of those underground comix ,which required much  less space and materials  to produce than large oil paintings…..

 Tony was long out of circulation by this time.I hadn’t seen him for about six or seven  years by then and had , at this stage ,personally evolved into a long-haired hippy Fine Art student.He  still remains ,in large measure, some fifty years later, somewhat like Steve Ditko creator of Spiderman, an enigma. A part of my teenage past. Not entirely forgotten though.

It doesn’t take much, but Dez Skinn’s [Who started off his career in those same little fanzines and  subsequently became Mister Comics UK, the Stan Lee of UK Comics and the originator of most of the comics spawned here  in this past thirty years.}

kind  words of praise [ …see comments below….] has encouraged me to upload some of these fanzines in their entirety so if you flip the tabs above  you will find drop-downs for various issues of HEROES UNLIMITED as I find time to upload them.Recently, whilst browsing with Dave in Liverpool’s Waterstones, I came across Teal Triggs  “FANZINES” and therein was the cover of a hand-coloured copy of  HEROES UNLIMITED # 2.

I wonder was that one of Ges Cleaver and Robert Poole’s artistic jobs on Paul Neary’s artwork. It’s a funny old world out there.

HEROES UNLIMITED COVER #2 POSSIBLY COLOURED BY GES CLEAVER AND ROBERT POOLE

HEROES UNLIMITED COVER #2 POSSIBLY COLOURED BY GES CLEAVER AND ROBERT POOLE

You will find more detail of my involvement in MERRY MARVEL FANZINE and HEROES UNLIMITED in a nostalgic ramble  over four web pages at the following link ….

http://www.harrymcavinchey.worldonline.co.uk/THE%20COMICS.htm

 

and hopefullyas I scan and upload a selection of individual issues in the future, you’ll be able to check them out on the individual  dropdown tabs above in this section.

Also of interest is this link which appears to further bring the story up to date, especially page 17-22 which references my own memories .http://efanzines.com/JourneyPlanet/JourneyPlanet22.pdf

Below  here is my own copy of “Merry Marvel Fanzine  #2 ” which has somehow become part of the focus for Dublin’s bid to bring the World Con to Dublin in 2019…

http://dublin2019.com/3927-2/

BREAKING NEWS!!!!! JANUARY 2017 :

Just when I thought the story was over , it seems that fifty years later , Tony has  finally been given the opportunity to tell the  tale in his own words as to how Comics Fandom began in Ireland with only a handful of enthusiastic teenagers. It is a very enjoyable story, told in some detail and I am pleased to have played some part in its telling.Read it here… “JOURNEY PLANET” # 31 :http://journeyplanet.weebly.com/uploads/1/5/7/1/15715530/jp31.pdf

Wham # 140 Feb. 1967

MR COMICS UK , DEZ SKINN

HEROES UNLIMITED COVER #2 POSSIBLY COLOURED BY GES CLEAVER AND ROBERT POOLE

HEROES UNLIMITED COVER #2 POSSIBLY COLOURED BY GES CLEAVER AND ROBERT POOLE

Tony Roche’s letter in Wham #140 Feb.1967 on the launch of the Merry Marvel Fanzine.This is the momentwhen tony reached out to comic fans throughout the UK and Ireland.

THE MERRY MARVEL FANZINE # 3

FRITZ THE CAT # 2 UK PRINTING ROBERT CRUMB ARTWORK