Super Stuff in the Bronze Age

Wednesday, June 8, 2022

Searching for comics in Portsmouth, 1970s style: Part Two

[Continuing the recounting of the route that comic fans Nigel Brown and Ian Baker took, hunting down American comics in Portsmouth & Southsea in the 1970s. Read Part One here . ]

baggsey's Carlton Corsa bike

Stop #8: Harmony House second-hand shop in Albert Road, near to the King’s Theatre at 66 Albert Road (1972-1978)

Like many (if not all) of the newsagents and second-hand shops that formed the weekly ports-of-call, Harmony House is no longer in operation. Now it forms one half of a restuarant.

Heading west from Albert Rd traffic lights, we continue our journey to start at Harmony House, before doubling back to Albert Road traffic lights to head south to the Strand.

“I believe that the stock of this small second-hand shop was primarily focused on LPs by the likes of Yes and Camel, and had flower-power/alternative posters on the wall.” – Ian

“I remember there was a Superman 52-page ‘Swanderson’ in stock, Superman # 241, but the chap who owned it made a complimentary comment about my anorak, reaching out to feel it, so we made a hasty exit!” – Nigel

Stop #9: R.W. Kittredge, Newsagents at 9 Waverley Road, opposite Wadham Stringer Car Parts

"The area of the Strand in Southsea was blessed with a small number of shops and newsagents which provided me with comics, A&BC trading cards, paperbacks and sweets in the 1960s and 1970s.

“The newsagent R.W. Kittredge was a DC shop, and where I picked up many issues of Detective Comics in the earliest days of collecting DC comics in 1971. I have strong memories of buying Detective Comics #413-#416, #418-#424 there. I remember that my copy of Detective #413 had the '5p' printed on the cover (a "UK pence" price variant rather than a 15-cent copy with a T&P stamp), and I also remember being impressed by the fine inking of Irv Novick's pencils on the splash page of Detective #414 by Dick Giordano." - Ian

"I also remember picking up Batman Double Double #3 there, which included World's Finest #175 "The Superman-Batman Revenge Squads" glued into the contents, which I subsequently separated from the binding and attempted to re-draw/re-construct the cover using one of those DC house ads as a guide. ” – Ian

Stop #10: The Strand Gift Shop, Southsea

The Strand Gift Shop. © (Katherine Donougher nee Sprackling photo)

This shop was unique in that it was the only “seaside” gift shop that stocked comics in Portsmouth, and brought out on a seasonal basis. They did not get comics on a monthly basis, but must have got stock from some wholesaler, which also included Alan Class comics. The gentleman who owned the shop was (from memory) a medium height gentleman with glasses and a moustache. I believe he was called Mr Sprackling.

“Apart from the saucy seaside postcards, the main attraction of the shop to me was that this shop stocked both DCs and Marvels. They used to put away their stock for the winter, and I got both old Marvels and DCs there (ie. Mid 1960s) in excellent condition. I did buy 5 copies of rare Silver Surfer # 10 there, which I later sold to Alan Austin of Fantasy Unlimited for 75p each.

“They also had a tray of paperbacks outside the side door in Clarendon Road. I remember buying the Batman paperback “Batman vs. the 3 Villains of Doom” written by Winston Lyon from that tray, as well as a Man From Uncle paperback published by 4-Square “The Finger In The Sky Affair” by Peter Leslie – must have been around 1967”. Also I bought a Batman “jamboree bag” there, which included a Batman ink pen, a badge and a paper Bat-Plane." - Ian

“I remember getting some early Tales to Astonish (Sub-Mariner) issues there, and the first issue of Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, with its striking Steranko cover" – Nigel

Stop #11: Lewis A. & Co, Tobacconists & News, 61 Osbourne Road Newsagents

2022 location of Osborne Rd newsagents

Like many places we frequented, the exact location fades from memory, as shop facades change over the years beyond all recognition. Such is the case of 'Lewis A. & Co, which was primarily a tobacconist with a side business as a newsagency. However, a look at the 1971 phone directory refreshed our memory of the exact location.

“I think it first became an Estate Agent’s, opposite where Le Petit Escargot used to be. It was about halfway down that parade, about where the Rancho Steak House is now. I recall they not only had a rotating rack of Marvels, but also a pile of comics for sale beside it. All new comics. I remember getting early Marvel Collector’s Items and Marvel Tales from that pile.

"I can confirm that the Marvel Tales (dated Feb '67) # 7, and the Marvel Collectors Item (dated March '67) # 7 were the issues, and I bought them about 1971/72 so they may have been sitting in a warehouse for a while before then. I distinctly remember a pile of maybe 15 or 20 comics sitting on the shelf in the newsagents, alongside the usual spinner rack of comics.

"Incidentally, I recall this was the shop that I first bought Scientific American from, in 1972. [Checking up on JSTOR] I can confirm the Scientific American was issue August 1972. Why did I notice it and buy it? (And it was relatively pricey then, but I don't recall how much). That was because - and I hadn't seen or heard of this magazine before - the title was two words I was interested in: 'Scientific' and 'American'. Also, this particular issue had an article on 'The Birth of Stars', which was also of interest to me.

"You have to remember that, back then, a lot of British publications were printed in black and white (at least most interiors) with poor quality photographs, and I was quite taken by 'The Birth of Stars' article, with its high quality images of star nebulae, their vivid colours and beauty.” – Nigel

Stop #12: Simpson of Southsea Newsagent, 37 Osbourne Road

This was one of relatively few newsagents that stocked US Marvel comics.

“Round the corner from our house in Ashburton Road, this was our local newsagents, delivering every morning my parents’ Daily Express and for me, the UK comics Cor!, Joe 90, Fantastic, Terrific, Look-In and later Countdown. The first issue of Look-In was cover-dated January 8th 1971, and the first issue of Countdown came out just over a month later in February 1971. These two title debuts bracketed the February 15th 1971 change to decimal currency in the UK.

“Simpson’s displayed Marvels on a rotating rack, and sold them right up to when distribution was cut back following Amazing Spider-Man #120, being the last UK distributed issue due to Marvel’s perceived own competition from Spider-Man Comics Weekly which debuted in February 1973. I remember getting Amazing Spider-Man #s 100-120 from there as they came out. It was devastating to see adverts in later distributed US Marvels about the unattainable events happening in the newly non-available Spider-Man’s # 121 and 122 (decades-late spoiler alert (!) – they featured the death of Gwen Stacey).” – Nigel

"I also have memories of picking up a copy of Amazing Spider-Man #120 that same day with Nigel. I also have much later memories (around the end of 1980) of picking up copies of Daredevil by Frank Miller and early Moon Knights by Bill Sienkiewicz in his days of drawing in a Neal Adams pastiche." - Ian

Stop #13: 2nd Hand Shop two doors inside Kent Road from Castle Road

“This was our equivalent of the Mile High Comics discovery of the Edgar Church collection! I’ll never forget the surprise and wonder of going into this shop – a place I’d never visited before – and faced with piles and piles of DCs stacked up all around the interior, going back to the early 60s. I think they either had some comics in the window that I noticed as I sped by on my bicycle, or there were some in a box outside the shop. They’d obviously just acquired a huge collection from someone. I bought what comics in the Superman lines that I could (one was Action Comics #314 ‘The Day Superman became The Flash’) then cycled madly round to Ian to rave about the place. I recall telling Ian at his front-door, I hadn’t even waited to go inside the house.

“At that point, after I’d bought up what I wanted from that shop, I remember that was the maximum extent of the numbers of American comics I had – there was barely room in my bedroom for them. I recall my Mum made an unhappy comment about the untidy piles of comics on top of cupboards.” – Nigel

“I think I only bought comics there once – probably the only time they had American comics to sell. They had a big pile of second-hand DCs, 2p each. I think we bought them all between us. I got the Batmans and Detectives originally, but went back with my Dad for the Lois Lanes and Jerry Lewis’s later.” – Ian

[Well, that's it for this week. A lot more to come as we head to the areas of Portsea and Landport in subsequent installments.]

Saturday, May 28, 2022

Justice Inc #2 - "The Skywalker" - from book to comic

I’m sure a lot of you reading this will have acquired multiple copies of the same comic, of different versions of the same story. I’m as guilty of this as the next collector, as evidenced by the three versions of The Avenger story “The Skywalker”, which first came to my attention as a DC comics adaptation by Jack Kirby in July-August 1975. I subsequently picked up the 1972 Warner Paperback reprint of the original pulp story, and finally picked up the Sanctum Books facsimile reprint of the original pulp story from 1941 back in 2009. So in effect I worked my ways backwards in time to the original source.

Despite being quite a compelling character, The Avenger has never made it to the top tier of popular culture heroes. Created as an amalgam of Doc Savage and The Shadow, the premise - Richard Benson’s wife and daughter are murdered and his face is frozen from the shock, thus making it possible for him to rearrange his features to fool criminals, supported by his crack team of agents and his weapons “Mike” and “Ike” (a gun and knife) - would make great TV series fodder. A Mission Impossible of the 1940s. (Some similarities to The Punisher).

But back in 1975, Warner had licensed various publication rights to a number of Pulp heroes from Conde Nast, and had decided to integrate them into the DC comics universe. The Avenger went on to meet The Shadow, who in turn had met Batman, so quickly The Avenger became six degrees of separation from every DC comics hero.

I had become a big fan of DC’s Shadow comic, so was pleased to learn of the new Avenger series. I actually picked up the DC issue #1 from a local Southsea newsagent, but I had already picked up issue #2 from famed London comic store Dark They Were & Golden Eyed as a 25p “import”, so Jack Kirby’s depiction of The Avenger had been my first exposure to a comics rendition of the character.

Unlike DC’s depiction of the Shadow by Mike Kaluta and Denny O’Neil, it became clear that DC did not start with a clear vision of the Avenger. Issue #1 had kicked off with a superb cover by Joe Kubert and underwhelming interior art by Al McWilliams. By issue #2, the art chores had been handed over to Jack Kirby, continuing plotting and dialog by Denny O’Neil. Like issue #1, the story in issue #2 was an adaptation of an early Avenger story , in this case “The Sky Walker”. Warner, the parent company of DC, had the publication rights and had republished the original pulp story in their Warner Paperback Library line a few years earlier.

It is interesting to compare the evolution of these publications. Looking at the O’Neil and Kirby version, the art layout is uninspired (mostly 6-panel, 5-panel, 7-panel pages, no compelling splash pages) , but the action within the small panels is dynamic Kirby, evoking memories of his In The Days of the Mob one-off. There may be no “Kirby Krackle” in the fights, but it is a solid entry. The story adaptation by O’Neil sings along. Essentially the story is about an evil businessman who acquires an invention to render metal invisible and to disrupt the molecules of major structures for nefarious ends. He flies an invisible plane and destroys skyscrapers and train tracks to test the invention.

In subsequent interviews with The Jack Kirby Collector (TJKC #23 and #45) , O’Neil revealed no strong memories of writing, or editing, these comics. O’Neil and Kirby did not work collaboratively in the Marvel style; O’Neil was in New York and Kirby was in California. O’Neil sent Kirby the finished script and relied on Jack to create the look of the characters, the era, the guns and the gangsters. As far as O’Neil recalled, Kirby picked up the assignment because he was prolific and Al McWilliams was unavailable.

I liked it enough to seek out the paperback of the original story written by Paul Ernst under the house name of Kenneth Robeson, tempted by the gorgeous cover painted by the late Peter Caras.

Reading the original book, in is clear that Denny O’Neil adhered to his own guidelines (as published in The DC Comics Guide to WRITING Comics by Dennis O’Neil) in adapting and structuring the story. You’ll see the focus is always on ‘major visual action’.

Denny On Comic Story Structure:

Act I

The hook
Inciting incident
Establish situation and conflict
(Major visual action).

Act II

develop and complicate situation.
(Major visual action).

Act III

Events leading to:
The climax
(Major visual action).
Denouement

Denny on Adapting screenplays for Comics:

First, define what the story is about- that is, locate the spine. Next, choose which scenes are important. Then, choose which lines of dialogue and bits of action within the scenes are important. You’ll also want to decide which lines that aren’t integral to the spine of the story are so interesting and memorable that they’ll have to be included…….(You’ll be wrong as often as not, but make the effort anyway.)

Denny had stripped away the extraneous elements of the original story of The Sky Walker to deliver a fully-scripted straightforward pulp narrative ideally suited to Kirby’s artistic talents.

As a result, the Kirby/O’Neil story starts with a bang - a train crash in the desert…the story jumping well past the slow burn setup in the novel of people drinking in a bar in Lincoln Park, Chicago and seeing a cocktail glass shatter, or a subsequent scene of a farmer being mystified by a man appearing to walk in the sky. The comics adaptation starts with The Avenger already happening to be in the sky above the train by chance, and seeing the rail tracks ahead of the train being targeted by the villain, and immediately following the crash, spots the Skywalker in the sky. (Very much conforming with the instruction “Start with the Inciting Incident” in Act I).

As LoC writer Scott Jeffrey subsequently noted in the letter column of DC’s Justice Inc #4, other changes included omitting Avenger agents Nellie Gray and Fergus MacMurdie from the story, along with a superfluous sub-plot featuring inventor Robert Gant’s brother Maximus. The technical aspect of rendering metal invisible is changed. The name of the villain Darcy is also changed from “Darcey” in the original pulp.

O’Neil does not seem to have lifted specific dialogue, but the comic is very dialogue heavy, with upwards of ten or more speech bubbles per page. The number of words does not exceed the 210-word limit per page set by Mort Weisinger, but the panels are small and very busy. There are very few thought bubbles - perhaps four in total in the entire comic - and what they contain could easily be included in a panel caption. The Avenger - like most pulp heroes - is not an introspective character. This is an action-oriented narrative.

Jack Kirby had a track record (see what I did there) of drawing train collisions, and the opening pages of the Justice Inc comic draws on similar imagery from Mr Miracle #17, published two years earlier.

It is interesting to compare the drawings of the original pulp to the DC adaptation. Although Paul Ernst's original story starts with random secondary characters in a bar in Chicago (remember, Ernst was paid by the word), the original pulp features the train crash on its cover, painted by Harold Winfield Scott.

Comparing the imagery in the pulp spot illustrations and in the comic, Kirby may well have referred to a copy of the original pulp - both the cover of the train crash and interior illustrations. The final panel of the comic carries the motif of the Avenger’s face in the sky overseeing the scene - the image of Justice meted out - which was common across the Avenger pulps, but not the paperback reprints.

The original pulp’s interior artwork by Paul Orban focuses on two story elements - the Skywalker in the sky, and the train crash. Orban’s drawing style was quite sedate, and his realistic style does little to punch up the action or threat of the evil genius in the story. Philip Jose Farmer wrote about the “Apocalyptic” lives of pulp heroes like Doc Savage and The Avenger - always fighting to banish anarchy and restore balance to society - and Kirby is much better at communicating this than Orban.

Train Wreck as envisioned by Paul Orban and Jack Kirby

First View of the Sky Walker - by Orban and Kirby

DC's Justice Inc only lasted four issues before cancellation, with issues #3 and #4 being original stories created by the O’Neil/Kirby team. O’Neil was unaware of the reason for cancellation, as sales had been fine. Other than each story featuring the villain falling to their death, the tales were imaginative and held promise for a long run of the comic. It was not to be.

I can’t help but think what a great comic book series it would have been if Stan Lee had written it. Stan had lifted many elements of the Fantastic Four from The Avenger, Doc Savage and other pulp heroes (a team/family based in their own building in New York, bickering team members, incredible foes, scientific weapons) and had used the pulps as his template for many of the Marvel superhero comics in the early sixties.

Monday, May 23, 2022

Searching for comics in Portsmouth, 1970s style: Part One

This is Part One of an on-going series dedicated to those wonderful newsagent shops of our misspent youth

Map derived from © Google

by Nigel Brown, Ian Baker, and…. we invite others to add to these recollections of hunting comics in Pompey!

“It’s been eleven years since we first posted an item on hunting for comics in Portsmouth in the 1970s (The Mad DC Comic Hunt July 2011). Enough new information has now come to light to enable us to revisit those golden days of the Bronze Age.

“Our cruel fate, as pupils of Portsmouth Grammar School in those less enlightened times, was to endure three compulsory hours of Saturday morning school, ending at 12 noon. On the upside, our limited rugby and cricket sporting skills exempted us from Saturday afternoon sport. This enabled us to undertake our own, out-of-school, enthusiastic cycling activity where the route was marked out by possible sources of comics, old and new.

“Our bicycles weren’t the mechanistic marvels of today, with their electronic shifting, lightweight carbon frames, disc brakes and high performance tyres. Clunky heavy frames resting on thick rubber tyres were the order of the day.

[ Comment from Ian: “This was true for me until my 14th birthday in July 1973, when I became the proud owner of a green Carlton Corsa racing bike, which opened up the prospect of cycling further afield, beyond Portsea Island”.]

“We would empty our school haversacks of schoolbooks and other detritus (a weekly purge that perhaps other schoolboys did not benefit from), arm ourselves with the week’s pocket money – in my case 60p (about £ 8.50 in 2022 value) – and set off on our quest.

“Thinking about it now, we probably did more exercise biking around Portsmouth on Saturday afternoons than if we had been press-ganged onto the school’s rugby or cricket ground!

“Our route was determined from our starting-off point. From my parent’s house in Ashburton Road, on the western side of Southsea, we would head towards Castle Road, then northwards to take in Gibbs in New Road, with the farthest target being North End with the shop close to Angerstein Road. We would then sweep down southwards, in an easterly direction to check out the shops on the eastern flank of Portsea Island, ending up at Ian’s parent’s house in Nettlecombe Avenue on the eastern side of Southsea. If we set out from there, the route was in reverse, back to Ashburton Road.

“Our reward for this effort was ever-growing comic collections. In those days, just over a decade after the debut of the first Marvel Silver Age comics, to come across a ten-year-old comic (not impossible) meant finding early issues of Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and the like, on offer for one to three pence each (14p to 42p in 2022 value). Alas, we tended to stick to what we perceived as ‘the titles we collected’ and thus many an early issue now sold for hundreds of pounds was spurned in place of the odd mundane DC bought just to ‘fill-a-gap’.

“Nevertheless, that wasn’t the point. The point was that it was all great fun at the time.” – Nigel

For clarity, we have divided up Portsea Island (a rough vertical oval shape) into different sectors, as shown on the map at the top of this page.

The southern area is below the A2030, and the vertical midline consists of that made up by Lawrence Road, Waverly Road and Fawcett Road.

We start our journey in the South East sector; [you'll need to click on the map below to see the locations of our key stops in this blog entry]

South-East

Stop #1: The Book Exchange, 26 Devonshire Avenue, Southsea

The shops’ attraction was that it had a high turnover of second-hand comics, and had a great selection of paperbacks. Considering the number of comics we got there I am now surprised that we did not bump into other local comic collectors.

“This was a second-hand bookshop that we frequented more than any other place in the 1975/76 period. It was run by an elderly couple. The husband seemed to suffer from emphysema, and passed away around 1975. According to commentary on 'Memories of Bygone Portsmouth', his name was Mr. Smart.

"I picked up my first Doc Savage paperback there, #7 The Monsters. It was the worst possible condition - creased, water-stained - but I was captivated by the iconic logo and superb cover by James Bama” – Ian

Stop #2 : Small Newsagents and grocery in Cromwell Road, opposite Eastney Royal Marine Barracks

The Shop was on the far right of this photo

"I first became aware of this shop in the late 1960s as a place where a loaf and a pint of milk could be bought on a Sunday evening, in those days when Sunday shopping was tightly regulated. My Dad was a model steam locomotive enthusiast, and often we would return from his model engineering society in Southampton on a Sunday evening to pick up some provisions. The spinner rack was just inside the door on the right. The shop’s claim to fame is that you can almost see it in the film ‘Cockleshell Heroes’ in an early scene set inside the entrance of Eastney Royal Marine Barracks.

“I got Shazam #1 and early issues of Swamp Thing there, more notably issues #1 and #7, and early DC Shadows by Mike Kaluta.” – Ian

“That shop was a little out of our way, but was worth the effort. I recall it would have DCs for sale that we didn’t often see elsewhere. Perhaps it was because others were snapping up those comics in the other shops before we got to them, leaving us to find the more commonly distributed titles in Albert Road and the larger newsagents.” – Nigel

Stop #3: Post Office/Newsagents, Highland Rd, somewhere on the block between Adair Rd and Kassassin Street

The block in the photo was a neat little row of shops back in the 1970s, one of which was a newsagents, and another was a second hand shop. We're unable to determine which shops exactly with the distance of 50 years. Portsmouth was so full of second-hand shops in those days; they could be a goldmine for a comic collector.

“I believe that the shop was actually a joint Post Office/Newsagents, opposite the old Police Station in Highland Road." - Geoff

"I picked up a Bantam Doc Savage paperback #20 ('Secret In The Sky') in a second-hand shop along that row on Tuesday April 20th, 1976. It was the Easter holidays and I was enjoying a run of finding "Doc's" in various second-hand shops that week, locating numbers 14, 21 and 22 elsewhere in the city." - Ian

Stop #4. I.D. Williams, Newsagents 109 Highland Rd, between the Gravediggers Arms and the corner of Winter Road

"I think I went to this shop because schoolfriend Paul Thompson (who lived in Essex Rd) made me aware of it. It was one of two local shops for him, the other being Southsea Newsagents at 161 Winter Rd. Like most of our comic haunts, this was a DC shop. I have no special memories of it." - Ian

Stop #5: T.E. King – Newsagent – 6 Highland Road, Southsea

T.E. King - the shop with the green shutter today

“This was the location of my first exposure to American Comics in the 1964/65 timeframe. I used to go there every week with my Dad where he used to pay his paper bill, and buy me a copy of ‘Treasure’ when I was aged 3-5, and then ‘Ranger’, ages 6 plus, which later amalgamated with ‘Look & Learn’. All the American Comics at 10d each were hanging on clothes-pegs from wires strung across the ceiling. They were colourful and out of reach. I distinctly remember seeing a Jimmy Olsen comic with a large T&P 10d stamp printed on the cover.

“This must have been around the time when Batman trading cards came out, and my Dad would buy me a packet from The Cabin tobacconist and sweetshop just further along Highland Road.

“I suppose the Batman TV craze got me interested in Batman comics, and I think I collected comics in the range of Batman #186-200 starting around then (Nov 1966 – March 1968), before losing interest and collecting Captain Scarlet and Joe 90 cards, and getting Fantastic and Terrific each week. It wasn’t until after I met Paul Thompson at PGS when we were in the 3rd Form that I started getting interested in comics again, as he was a great Superman fan. I got back into comics around Batman # 233 (July 1971).” – Ian

“I remember this being a major stop on our route, as there was always such a large and reliable stock of DCs for sale, and it was fairly close to your house on Nettlecombe Avenue. I think they had two spinner racks of comics. I distinctly recall being outraged when, at these racks, I first saw that DC comics were now priced at the princely sum of seven and a half-pence each!

“On the plus side, I did buy the classic Batman # 251 Neal Adams/Denny O’Neil ‘The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge’ at this newsagent in the summer of 1973.” – Nigel

Stop #6: W.T. Churchill, 3 Festing Buildings, Highland Rd, same side as Fine Fare, opposite The Festing pub [The shop was originally 5 Highland Rd]

“A DC shop, this is now a ‘One Stop’, I think. I remember getting knocked over by a woman on a push-bike as I ran across Highland Road to see the latest comics. The tale is recounted in this blog at http://superstuff73.blogspot.com/2020/12/key-comic-book-memories-justice-league.html . On that occasion I ended up with JLA #99, but I previously remember getting JLA # 94 (Jan 1972) there, where most of the art was by Dick Dillin and Joe Giella, but Neal Adams drew each page with Deadman on it.” – Ian

Stop #7: Gardener’s Newsagents at 164 Albert Road opposite Tesco

“A DC shop, always the first shop to get comics on the last Thursday of the month. The first comic I bought there was Batman #233 (Batman Giant), immediately to be followed by those Batmans in the range # 234 onwards, which of course were the best Neal Adams/Denny O’Neil issues. Funny how you could always guarantee getting Batmans and Supermans and World’s Finests there, whereas some of the more obscure newsagents hidden away in Eastney seemed to have the more obscure DC titles. I have strong memories of seeing World's Finest #207 and Action #406 on the spinner rack.

"This newsagent was owned by Mrs King. I had a paper round there in the 1975/76 timeframe.” – Ian

Well, that wraps up Part 1 of this journey around the newsagents of Portsmouth & Southsea in the 1970s.

We'll post Part 2 in a while. In the meantime, if any readers have memories of comic collecting in Portsmouth, please add to the comments section below.

Thanks! Nigel & Ian