London Comic Shops - Memories of Dark They Were & Golden-Eyed in the Seventies by Ian Baker

Hey folks - baggsey (Ian Baker) here. As Superstuff73 is a shared blog with Nigel Brown, and he’s been doing the heavy lifting of late when it comes to writing articles, here’s some memories from me of the famed Fantasy & Science Fiction shop in London from the seventies - Dark They Were & Golden Eyed.

For a boy living in grey Britain in the early 1970’s, American comics painted an exciting and colourful world of heroes. Of equal impact were the ads for fabulous toys (from huge Hot Wheels sets we could only dream about in the UK, to the mysteries of X-Ray specs and fascination of Sea Monkeys) which all contributed to the mystique of a glamourous American world beyond our horizons. And when you’re twelve or thirteen, and the hormones are kicking in, and an awareness of the adult world is starting to intrude, comics became a reliable constant in a changing world.

In those early days of the seventies, part of the mystique of American comics was the very scarcity of the items. I now know that my hometown was relatively well served by newsagents and second-hand book shops when compared to other regional towns in the UK, but the feeling we had while collecting comics in Portsmouth can be likened to panning for gold. Never sure of what was to be found, but sustained by a faith that fortune lay just beneath the surface.

It was a magical time. Yet once we had been to our first Comic Mart, and then been exposed to the wonders of the nascent comic and science fiction shops in London, we would leave behind that old world of scruffy bookshops and worn comics with Thorpe & Porter stamps , to be replaced by a world of certainty and plenty.

Considering what an impact that London Comic and Fantasy shop Dark They Were & Golden Eyed had on our young lives (and I imagine the lives of many other early 1970s UK comic fans), there is remarkably little information out there on the internet. 

As my good chum Nigel Brown documented in the Days of the Great DC Comic Hunt , our teenage comic collecting days were transformed when we traveled to London on our own for the first time, taking the train from Fratton to Waterloo without parental oversight, and first visited Dark They Were & Golden Eyed (named after a Ray Bradbury story) at their premises at 10 Berwick Street, Soho. There we were confronted by a cornucopia of piles of non-distributed comic books for the first time, piled on the bare wooden floorboards inside the front door, with all manner of fantasy, science-fiction and pulp-reprint paperbacks filling the shelves.

Remember, our previous experience of comic collecting had been scouring the local newsagents and second-hand shops in our native Portsmouth, on the last Thursday each month for DCs and the 2nd Wednesday for the limited set of 16 Marvel titles that World Distributors imported.

In my memory, 1974 in Britain was a rainy place dominated by miners’ strikes, 3-day working weeks and power cuts that shut television down at 10pm. There was no easy access to American pop culture outside the mainstream of music, films and television  - it had to searched out.

Nigel and I both struggle to place the exact date we first visited DTWAGE.  My best guess is probably the last week of July 1974, (the first week of the summer school holidays, plus Nigel and I had both recently turned 15);  certainly prior to the groundbreaking BBC broadcast of the documentary The Dracula Business on 6th August 1974 in which the shop was featured (but not named).  

Nigel’s Uncle was a London taxi driver, and he met us at Waterloo train station and dropped us off at 10 Berwick Street, deep in the heart of Soho, a place surrounded in equal measure by Fruit & Veg stalls,  strip joints and dubious magazine emporiums. This was an area (and era) later to be celebrated in the TV drama Our Friends in the North, or more recently in the BBC documentary series Bent Coppers. 

Berwick St in the 1970's...DTWAGE out of sight on the right

I’m sure that my parents would have been quite concerned that their 15 year old son was moving anywhere near these circles. However, the rubbing shoulders of American comics and saucy magazines always seemed to go with the territory. The spinner racks in Portsmouth newsagents often seemed to have salacious mags at the top and American comics at the bottom, and I always felt obliged to divert my eyes as I assiduously thumbed my way through the unsorted new batch of DCs stuffed into the lower rungs.  Similarly the second hand shops we frequented always stored piles of “mags” and American comics in equal measure, usually in close proximity. I always felt the comics suffered in adults’ eyes through this unsought association. But it was the seedy seventies, folks.

But back to Dark They Were & Golden Eyed: According to Stan Nicholls in his fascinating account of the history of Dark They Were & Golden Eyed and Forbidden Planet in fanzine Prolapse #11 (what a title! It sounds like a medical journal) which can be found here on page 19, efanzines.com/Prolapse/Prolapse11.pdf Stan notes that Derek (“Bram”) Stokes, the owner of Dark They Were first started the business as a mail order operation called Vault of Horror.  

Stokes then set up the first DTWAGE at 28 Bedfordbury (a back street in Covent Garden) where it became very successful. Having outgrown the premises, in December 1972 Stokes then moved the business to a shop rented from the Salvation Army at 10 Berwick St, Soho.

What appears to be Boris Johnson entering DTWAGE in 1973 (from The Dracula Business broadcast by BBC1 6th August 1974)

Nigel Brown and I both became aware of the existence of DTWAGE either as a result of an advert seen in Comic Media News or a similar zine, or perhaps learning about it at our first Comic Mart experience at the Spring Comic Con held at Emsworth, Hampshire on May 25th 1974 . The idea of being able to buy comics in England that were one or even two issues ahead of what we were able to buy in our local newsagents was mind-blowing. It was though we’d be able to reach into the future!

And so we eager supplicants made our first pilgrimage to the cramped premises of DTWAGE. My memory of the place is dominated by the piles of non-distributed comics we first encountered on the unvarnished wood floor inside the front door, and by the narrow bookshelf passage on the right hand side of the shop towards the back. This section held a good selection of Bantam Doc Savage reprints with James Bama covers, and would later also carry reprints of Shadow pulps with Steranko covers. I believe there were also more books and comics in the basement, along with a good selection of Warren magazines and science fiction paperbacks.

A "non-distributed" (ND) issue of House of Mystery 220 from September 1973

I’ve posted some screen grabs taken from film of the inside of the shop featured in The Dracula Business. The issue of House of Mystery 220 on sale places the filming in the period Sept 6th-Oct 9th 1973. The shot of the lads in the narrow passage could easily pass for Nigel and myself, perusing the pulps and American Sci-Fi books.

The Pulp Reprint Shelves (from The Dracula Business broadcast by BBC1 6th August 1974)

Take a look at   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e48aCY8shKc  starting at 27:36 for the full film clip.

This was the time of the DC explosion. There were so many new US DC comics being published - Demon, Kamandi etc. - many of which were “ND” (non-distributed for the uninitiated). Similarly many of the US Marvels were no longer on sale at UK newsagents, deferring to Marvel UK’s desire to prevent cannibalisation of their UK weekly comic book business. I believe that I left DTWAGE with a goodly selection of the latest DCs, issues of Steranko’s Comixscene and a number of Doc Savage paperbacks which included a copy of the Bantam Doc Savage #77 (The South Pole Terror, published Feb 1974). 

The memories of subsequent visits become jumbled. On a later visit, I vaguely remember seeing Justice Inc #2 for sale. (1975-04-17). Funny how certain comics stick in your mind.

But that first visit was a defining moment for us. The thrill of going to London alone, of buying fresh, bright comics from the future, of having access to a store which stocked every Science Fiction and Fantasy book that we could possibly want was intoxicating.  

But it also closed a chapter on our Portsmouth-based comic collecting. Never again would we search for new comics locally with such enthusiasm. We became dismissive of buying a new comic with a Thorpe & Porter stamp. Because once you buy comics from the future, you have to keep running to stay ahead. And so comics that we once shelled out 5p,7p,10p for on a newsagent’s spinner rack we now happily paid 25p for in order to get a pristine copy of the very latest issue imported directly from the States.

Looking back through my diaries and our self-produced Superstuff fanzine in that 1975-1976 period, school holidays were dominated by at least one trip to London, incorporating a visit to DTWAGE, to Alan Austin’s Fantasy Unlimited in Lower Clapton Rd, to record shops like HMV and later Tower Records,  and perhaps a trip to the cinema. 

By early 1976 my collecting interests were moving towards paperback pulp reprints, and the attraction of new comics was starting to wane. In retrospect, the innovation in comics that had captured my imagination in those early bronze age years had started to dissipate, with key creators (with some exceptions) moving out into different fields as the second half of the seventies rolled around.

By 1978 the Berwick Street premises of DTWAGE had became too small and Stokes “decided on another move, to a shop in St Anne’s Court, between Wardour Street and Dean Street, at the heart of Soho. The shop was big, new, shiny and very expensive. These overheads were almost certainly an important factor in the eventual closure of DTWAGE in 1981.” as per Stan Nicholls’ recollection.

But once the move to St Anne’s Court had completed, something had been lost in the transition. The place was too slick, a little out of the way. From memory, the focus on the ground floor seemed to move towards more hard Science Fiction and “alternative lifestyle” paraphernalia , with comics taking second place. There seemed fewer customers and the buzz was no longer there. Comics and pulp reprints were relegated to the basement, I believe, and so on subsequent trips we started to drift towards the new Forbidden Planet on Denmark Street which was to become our new spiritual home-away-from-home for the remainder of the decade.

The last time I can remember visiting DTWAGE was for a Harry Harrison book signing in 1978 for “The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You”.

By the time DTWAGE closed down in 1981, I cannot even remember being aware of its passing.

Slabs & Grails : A warning to the comic readership - by Nigel Brown

 Slabbed comics have become a fixture on the comic collecting scene for a while now. At first they were a novelty, seemingly one more step along the way of storing those comics we love to read.

When comics were first collected as an ongoing hobby, nobody gave serious consideration to comic book storage. Ordinary plastic bags were as far as it went. It’s not uncommon to find photographs of comic collectors in the 1960s and 1970s with their collections displayed all around them, all unbagged comics, including prime titles like the first Marvel comic (Marvel Comics No. 1 October 1939) held in proud hands. 

When I first began to attend comic marts and conventions in the early 1970s, most comics were unbagged, stacked vertically in boxes for easy perusal. Sometime later, plastic bags became de rigueur, with individual cardboard backing boards to support each comic, whether it was a common-all-garden average issue of an unpopular title, or a key early Marvel or DC comic. From there, it was a small step to bagging comics in plastic like mylar, developed by the archiving industry, considered to be chemically neutral for hundreds of years beyond the lifetime of the comic collector themselves.

Slabbing, at first, seemed like another small step in this direction. The concept originated in numismatics, as a way of preserving coins from damage. Both sides of the coin were visible. The sealed, slabbed coin had the advantage of benefiting from a standardisation of grading. This enabled collecting for investment to be placed on a surer footing for non-hobbyists, who wished to invest in what were quickly becoming high-value items.

The problem is that comics are not coins. They have an interior that slabbing makes inaccessible, and so – once slabbed, certified as being in a particular condition and registered as such – that comic cannot be read and enjoyed as a comic. It has become something else.

Slabbed or Unslabbed?  You decide.

I first saw this pointed out by Peter Bickford of ComicsBase on his YouTube video ‘ComicBase Livestream #3.5: What are your comics REALLY worth?’ where he clearly explains how slabbing a comic turns it into a different type of collectible, with a consequent different value (at 36.45 mins to 42.21 mins).

He also states (at 5.26 mins): “I’ve never had an Action No. 1. I’ve held one in my hands, but I don’t own one myself.”

In other words, he hadn’t read that particular copy (I assume!) but he’d been in personal proximity to it.

After seeing this video, I came across the Swagglehaus Comics videos on YouTube, where there was mention of a new category of comics. I was used to hearing about condition categories (mint, good etc) and the category of key issues, but this was a new one to me: grail issues.

These are issues that are most sought after (and perhaps it’s a more personal category, as that can be a very subjective determination). It reminded me of the first time I saw this description about comics, on the excellent www.mikesamazingworld.com website – Mike describes Action Comics No. 1 as his “personal Holy Grail”. At the time, I took that as a metaphor, not a recognised comic book category!

So now we have a growing religious terminology seeping into the lexicon of comic collecting.

Veneration of sacred objects has probably been around for as long as human beings have walked this planet, and I totally understand the awe felt when one sees objects of great historical interest and/or significant items relevant to an engrossing hobby, but we seem to have moved comic collecting, with this ritual encasement, from the realm of the numismatic to the numinous.

Well, fair enough, if that’s what comic collectors want. Nowadays, with cheap digital photography, there’s no reason why certified photographs of the interior of slabbed comics cannot now be supplied with the slab.

But I do wonder that, as more and more early comics are encased in slabs, will there come a point when pretty much ALL desirable early comics are encased in this way? That won’t matter to those comic owners who are pure investors, but what then, for the comic book reader who wishes to read these comics not just in reprint form?

And don’t argue that, to read the comic, the slab can be opened and the comic can simply be removed! Given the dollar differential between slabbed and unslabbed comics, the hapless comic book reader will be paying a high price for this pleasure.

 

 

Copyright. Nigel Brown

Science Fiction, Southsea and Robert Fludd Bookshop by Nigel Brown

 Sometimes all that matters is to be in the right place at the right time.

I’ve previously described the hunter/gatherer lifestyle of the early 1970s Southsea-dwelling comic book fan. [ http://superstuff73.blogspot.com/2011/07/mad-dc-comic-hunt-or-tales-of-fabulous.html ]

Alongside those activities, for me, was the equally absorbing interest in science fiction.

The earliest books I remember relishing are the Enid Blyton Famous Fives, Secret Sevens and especially the 'Mystery' books, for example: The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage. These taught me that favourite books can come in series, and I learned to look out for them, collect them; there was a continuity in some of them as well, a sense of progression from book to book, so I discovered that characters could change over a series of books – a revelation: the characters seemed much more real.

Then onto the C.S.Lewis Narnia books and the E.Nesbit books (especially the time-travelling The Story of the Amulet). I had sets of them, and re-read them constantly. I was lucky: I must have read The Lord of the Rings at around the perfect age of 12.

But it was the ‘Moon adventure’ trilogy of the Dr Dolittle books (Doctor Dolittle’s Garden, Doctor Dolittle in the Moon, Doctor Dolittle’s Return) that really pointed me in the direction of science fiction. Although strictly fantasy stories, they had a semblance of science about them, and captured in full the sense of wonder that science fiction has to offer.

 

 

Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, without the on-tap information that is taken for granted today, was a time when one would come across key pieces of historical detail almost by accident. I knew that Charles Dickens had been born in Portsmouth (there was a museum dedicated to him, although he left Portsmouth in 1815 aged just 3 years old), but it was at random times throughout those years that I would stumble across other nuggets of information until I built up a more comprehensive sense of Southsea’s literary history.

One of my favourite science fiction authors, H.G.Wells (some would say the founder of the genre)  worked in Southsea for three years as an apprentice draper aged 14 to 16 (an experience from which he later wrote several non-genre novels, including The History of Mr Polly and Kipps). At the same time, a certain doctor decided to move to Southsea and start his medical practice there. He filled the empty hours between seeing patients by writing short stories; and it was there that Dr Arthur Conan Doyle wrote A Study in Scarlet, the first of his Sherlock Holmes stories. He went on to write a number of science fiction novels and stories, including The Lost World. And Rudyard Kipling – author of many science fiction and fantasy stories – once lived in Southsea, too. As a child of nationals living in India, he boarded in Southsea, as a boy, for six years. (He left Southsea just three years before H.G.Wells arrived in the town.)

One couldn’t claim that the science fiction genre was prominent in Portsmouth, but, given the above, it would be hard to deny that there wasn’t a faint literary scent of it in the Southsea air.

The 1960s allowed free access to science fiction classics in the form of – in my case – a small library in Elm Grove, Southsea, located just opposite Albany Road (by happenstance along the same road that Dr Arthur Conan Doyle’s medical practice had been situated). This treasure trove of books had a comprehensive science fiction collection in the children’s section – all hardback books – including a run of the Heinlein ‘juveniles’ published in the UK by Gollancz, such as Time for the Stars and Between Planets. These books, together with the collections of Arthur C. Clarke short stories, alongside the Isaac Asimov books on the library shelves, completed the triumvirate, the Big Three of science fiction, as they were known in those days: a heady inoculation of science fiction given at an impressionable age.

 

 

Besides the libraries, W. H. Smith & Son (now known simply as WH Smith) had a branch in the main shopping road in Southsea, Palmerston Road, that also stocked a respectable number of science fiction books. Not the American imports that one would have to undertake a journey to London to obtain (at the specialist shop Dark They Were And Golden Eyed at 10 Berwick Street, Soho) but certainly enough to be going on with. In those days there were ample pickings amongst the paperbacks, with titles by Robert Silverberg, AE van Vogt, Edmund Cooper and many others, often with the distinctive artwork of Chris Foss that seemed to define the era. 

WH Smith in Palmerston Road was where I bought what is probably the most influential science fiction book I’ve ever read: The Early Asimov: Volume One (Panther Science Fiction). Isaac Asimov’s autobiographical descriptions about writing his earliest stories, and the thrill of sending them off to science fiction magazines in the hope of publication, made me aware of possibilities that I hadn’t yet thought of myself.

 

Also of importance, so far as delving deeper into the realm of science fiction was concerned, WH Smith stocked the American science fiction magazines of the day. This was a crucial presentation of the genre as a more immediate and ongoing entertainment, with new magazines arriving like clockwork every month.

I recall the first issue I saw of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It was the October 1972 issue, with a striking cover by Birmingham artist David Hardy, featuring stories by Philip José Farmer, Zenna Henderson and Harry Harrison (who was later to become a good friend).

 

And I remember the excitement of discovering the second issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in the Palmerston Road WH Smith in the summer of 1977. With the first letter in its letter column being a congratulatory note from Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov’s response to it, one felt a member of a fun, exclusive and elite club. At the time, Asimov was actively encouraging readers to send in stories for possible publication. I was a regular buyer of that magazine from then on.

 

(Despite much searching I was never able to obtain the first issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine until a visit to A Change of Hobbit bookstore in Santa Monica California in the spring of 1981. There, I was informed by the owner Sherry Gottlieb – who had her pet boa constrictor ‘Wrinklesnakeskin’ draped around her neck – that they had none in stock but she would take my name and address and put me on her list, although there were eight names ahead of mine. Several years later I received a card by air-mail that they had an issue in, if I still wanted it (which I did). That’s what I call service!)

 

 

Of the numerous Portsmouth second-hand shops detailed previously in The Mad DC Comic Hunt, I don’t recall seeing many science fiction books for sale, apart from a basket full of Perry Rhodan paperbacks in the Strand Gift Shop, but that didn’t matter given the abundance elsewhere.

I only knew of one independent bookshop in Southsea, E.L. Foster, positioned beyond the end of the Palmerston Road, situated just past St. Jude’s Church at 4 Grove Road South. It was an academic bookshop with a bowed front that had small window panes and dark narrow timber glazing bars, giving it the appearance of a shop unchanged from the 18^th century. The owner was a distinguished gentleman with the air of a genteel tailor: short, balding and dressed in a smart suit, who used a walking stick. Given that this was the late 1960s/early 1970s, it was perfectly possible that his stiff leg (an artificial limb?) had been acquired in World War Two (or, as we spoke of it in those days: ‘The War’). His bookshop served what was then known as Portsmouth ‘Poly’ (Portsmouth Polytechnic, later to become The University of Portsmouth in 1992). As a non-fiction bookshop I’m sure it was excellent, but if it sold science fiction books I was never aware of them, and consequently I only visited it when I needed particular textbooks to do with schoolwork.

© Courtney Photographic 1980. E.L Foster bookseller

Then a second independent bookshop named 'Robert Fludd' opened at 65 Palmerston Road Southsea, at the other end of the shopping centre, and access to science fiction books moved into high gear.

© Courtney Photographic. Polyfoto Cameras became Robert Fludd books

The significance of the name Robert Fludd completely passed us by in those days. Robert Fludd (1574-1637) was a mystic cosmologist and English physician (amongst other things); it was a suitable name for a shop dealing in a wide range of esoteric books, including science fiction.

Robert Fludd bookshop was open by 1974. Its location, in its day, was a good one. The bustling shopping centre of Southsea in Palmerston Road boasted two department stores: Handleys, that later became Debenhams, along with Knight & Lee, part of the John Lewis group. They faced each other on the crossroads with Osbourne Road and Clarendon Road. Robert Fludd bookshop was close to one of the opposite corners, in the part of Palmerston Road that led down to the seafront.

I remember getting the bus home on Saturdays when school finished at noon, sitting on it for one extra stop past my own stop to arrive outside Debenhams (still known as ‘Handleys Corner’ in those days), then going to WH Smith to spend my 60p pocket money given to me that morning by my father (I would often buy stationary with it!). Fludd’s soon became the preferred port of call, the visit a reward to look forward to at the end of the school week.

The shop had two large plate glass windows with a central door, bordered by two tall marble strips. As I write this in 2021, the bookshop has been gone for over thirty years, its place at present taken by Southsea Spice World Ltd, but you can still see that grey speckled marbling, a last remnant of the frontage that survives today.

Curiously, there must be many other remnants of Robert Fludd bookshop left, possibly scattered all around the world. Although computers existed in the early 1970s, an independent bookshop had no access to them for stock-keeping (the first personal computer, the Altair, became available in 1974 – around the time that Robert Fludd first opened. This computer was used mainly by computer hobbyists). So Robert Fludd had a simple system of stock control. They stuck a label inside the front flap of every book in stock, with a pencilled note of the book’s title. On purchase, they would simply tear off this part of the label across its perforation, leaving a small sticker advertising the shop, with its telephone number for possible future sales. A simple, quick and effective system that has kept their name alive throughout the years!

 

Robert Fludd bookshop was spread across a ground floor and a rear mezzanine. On entering, you faced a book-lined ground floor, with two islands of books in the centre and the till to your immediate right. It was manned by two gentlemen: a taller man with half-moon spectacles, a moustache, grey hair and balding, rather like a benevolent Basil Fawlty, and a shorter man, stockier with a Robert Robinson comb-over and a face similar to Julian Bream, the classical guitarist. That last image was appropriate, because one of the joys of this bookshop was the classical music that often played throughout the day. Now, musical accompaniment in shops is common; back in the mid-1970s it was a novelty. The sweet tones of Handel and the soothing arpeggios of Hadyn seemed to lift the atmosphere of the shop to a higher intellectual level, and enhanced the pleasure of an afternoon browse.

As well as books, Robert Fludd bookshop also sold 8-track music cassettes (now as redundant as the Edison Phonograph cylinder), and fountain pens (still used today, but some would see them as outdated as quill pens).

As an independent bookshop, even in the 1970s, the difference in quality of books offered for sale, compared to a chain like WH Smith, was a revelation. The breadth and scope of books was an enticement to venture into new worlds, and I took full advantage of the opportunity.

There were academic books to cater for the poly students, coffee table books, and books of a more general fiction on offer.

There was also a good selection of more literary books. Later on, when my interest in science fiction waned for a time, Robert Fludd bookshop helped me to discover that 'literature' could be equally entrancing (something I'd avoided up until then after English lessons at school had stunted my interest). I discovered a number of books that really sparked me off.

(They were: The Floating Opera by John Barth. A book that really was important to me, because it showed it was possible to have a whole novel where the structure in itself – a commentary on one single important day in the life of the main character – made for an integral part of the story. I also admired the skill with which it was written, together with the gripping plot which hinged on nothing more than an internal decision of this main character. I found The White Hotel by D.M. Thomas was also fascinating due to its structure, but in a different way. To go from lyrical poetry, to a mad, sprawling prose, to a, seemingly, 'normal' story... and then onto its unexpected end, showed me that supposedly 'mundane' literature (ie. not science fiction, fantasy or pulp) could be just as wondrous as science fiction. And The Magus (the 2nd edition - revised!) by John Fowles totally twisted my mind around. I couldn't believe what was happening in the book. Not only did it keep my eyes glued to the page, but it hinted at mysteries and possibilities within the form of the novel (or any fiction) that I hadn't considered before. None of the science fiction writers I'd ever read up to that point had come close. They talked of a 'sense of wonder' *out there*. The Magus hinted at the same thing, but *down here*.)

 

 

If Robert Fludd bookshop was still open today, I have no doubt that the graphic novel, yet-to-be in the 1970s, would have been fully catered for. It was on one of the central display islands, however, that I first saw the books Superman: From the ‘30s to the ‘70s, together with its companion Batman title, both in UK editions. These collections reprinted a number of key stories concerning the characters, but it was of more interest to see the reproductions of many early comic book covers previously unseen. DC comics were not distributed in the UK until late in 1959, and only a relatively small number were available to buy from specialist dealers in the 1970s.

But I’ve saved the best for last: the genre books. This is where Robert Fludd bookshop really excelled.

Consider that although Palmerston Road was the major shopping centre of Southsea, it was still only one of several, and not even Portsmouth’s main shopping area (that was centred around Commercial Road). Yet in this relative backwater one could obtain Ballantine and Bantam books that, otherwise, would have only been available by post or by that train journey to London.

I’ve mentioned that the shop had two floors. Past the central islands of books you would go up a short staircase. To your immediate left, there would be shelves ceiling to floor crammed with the latest science fiction and fantasy books including, most importantly – to me, at any rate – a large number of the Ballantine 'Best of' books: The Best of James Blish, Hal Clement, Stanley Weinbaum, Fredric Brown, Cordwainer Smith... the list goes on.

Notable features of these books were their eye-catching covers and their introductions, usually by fellow science fiction authors, that added a lot of background and context to the stories.

 

For example, James Blish was a name I knew from his juvenile novel Welcome to Mars, which I’d taken out multiple times from Elm Grove library. I later knew his name from his masterfully written Star Trek books, where he took scripts from the original 1960s series and turned them into elegant, vivid short stories. But his The Best of James Blish was another thing entirely. Here, a selection of his work was presented unencumbered by the current fashions in publication. Stories like Surface Tension (1952) and Common Time (1953) were pure sense-of-wonder and displayed the full revelatory potential of the genre. These stories would rarely be reprinted in the science fiction magazines of the day, which published new fiction, and so it was a joy to have them readily available.

 

And the same can be said for the work of the other writers featured in the rest of this series. The editor was Judy-Lynn del Rey, wife of the veteran science fiction author Lester del Rey, who did an exemplary job of selection and presentation.

These books made plain that the genre of science fiction was a particular thing in of itself, a self-referencing body of work with its own distinct literary past.

But science fiction has also always been at its best when it’s looked outwards, not inwards; when it delivers the addictive drug known as ‘sense of wonder’ (Arthur C. Clarke called science fiction “the only genuine consciousness-expanding drug”).

Reading science fiction can enhance one’s sense of the span of years: of centuries stretching into the far future (I’m thinking especially of Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men) and reaching deep into the past (Robert Silverberg’sHawksbill Station is a good example of this).

This sense of time resonated well with me, because anyone brought up in Portsmouth could not help but have a sense of history in their bones. It was impossible to ignore the 16^th century castle of King Henry VIII (Southsea Castle), the still powerful presence of Nelson and his navy (the Royal Dockyard and Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory, in dry dock but still in commission), Portchester Castle’s origin as a Roman fort, and, overlooking the city, the line of red-brick faced Palmerston forts along the top of Portsdown hill (a second defence of England’s hinterland against Napoleonic invasion had the navy failed). 

To say nothing of the defences still visible along the seafront in case of Nazi invasion in ‘The War’. Those of us brought up in Portsmouth throughout the 1960s and even 1970s would walk down streets that had houses missing like teeth with gaps. They were a constant reminder of the bombing inferno that Portsmouth had endured, in those days, just a few decades before. I myself grew up in a house built on a former bomb site, and throughout my childhood there were still the shattered remains of three large Victorian houses next to our house that were only cleared and built upon in the 1970s.

It would be an absurd exaggeration to include the name Robert Fludd bookshop of Palmerston Road in this list of historical icons, but as an influence in our personal lives, growing up in Southsea in the 1970s, it surely does deserve its rightful place in the record of those times.

[Edit March 12th 2026]. Sadly Robert Fludd Bookseller closed for trading in February 1986, having been in business for at least twelve years. The Portsmouth News advertised the closing down sale starting on February 6th 1986.

 

 

copyright. Nigel Brown

 

Many thanks to Ian Baker for help with research for this article.

 

What is Superman’s real Super-Strength? From Judge Dredd to Mahatma Gandhi…by Nigel Brown

Superman’s career, from the very beginning in 1938 to a pre-reboot ending in 1986, reveals an interesting moral convergence of his inner and outer strengths.

To appreciate this, we must first lay aside the standard explanation for differences in the same DC characters across the decades; the multiple-universe concepts of Earth-1 and Earth-2.

The truth is more interesting.

 

Superman’s use of violence evolved in three phases, driven by two outside factors.

The first phase was the most uncurbed level. When Superman first appeared in Action Comics #1 (June 1938) the concept of a hero meting out justice to evil-doers was a familiar one to readers of popular fiction, especially of the pulp magazines. The Shadow gunned down gangsters with monthly regularity. It would have been no surprise that, as early as the second issue of Action Comics (July 1938) Superman was seen hurling a torturer to his death.

 

                                [Action Comics #2, July 1938]

 

Superman seems to relish threatening criminals with his super-strength, and they would be wise to not call his bluff. These aren’t idle threats as a number of criminals died in these early Superman stories, without due process.

 

                                [Action Comics #16, September 1939]

 

                [Superman #2, Fall 1939 –reprinted from the newspaper strip]

 

Also, on several occasions Superman allowed, through inaction, for them to meet a horrible end.

 

                                    [Action Comics #13, June 1939]

 

                [Superman #2, Fall 1939 –reprinted from newspaper strip]

 

This first version of Superman doled out his personal justice like Judge Dredd, performing executions of criminals as he saw fit. To anyone brought up on the Silver Age and Bronze Age Superman, the epitome of morality, these acts of manslaughter (if not murder) are a shocking sight.

 

But very soon after this time, Superman’s attitude towards violence changed.

 

[Superman #5, Summer 1940]

                                    [Superman #5, Summer 1940]

 

                                    [Superman #5, Summer 1940]

 

By the summer of 1940, Superman is allowing justice to be served by the law of the land. So what actually brought about this second phase, this change of Superman’s mind?

Not specified within the narrative of the Superman stories at the time, the answer must lie with the outside world, and the imperative of maximizing financial success of the character for the owners: most notably Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz. Once they saw the success that they had in their hands, they were swift to exploit as many opportunities for ‘Superman’ as possible. Besides selling ‘Superman’ as a newspaper strip (the original ambition for Superman by Siegel and Shuster), the obvious move was on to radio – early films, cartoons, and later on to television.

 

The radio serial The Adventures of Superman began regular broadcasts from February 1940, just 21 months after the first appearance of Superman on the comic-book racks in May 1938 (although Action Comics #1 was cover-dated June 1938).

 

When Siegel and Shuster had first signed their contract to supply Superman to Detective Comics Inc. for publication, Siegel had a relatively free hand to write the stories. Shuster supplied the art (soon with the additional supporting artists in his ‘studio’: Paul Cassidy, Jack Burnley, and – even this early – the distinctive 1950s/1960s Superman artist Wayne Boring).

 

But once Superman’s unexpected success was apparent to Donenfeld and Liebowitz, they knew that they needed better editorial control over their lucrative comic books. They employed Whitney Ellsworth to get a firmer grip on the material. He became the second editor of Action Comics, replacing Vince Sullivan from Action Comics #21 (February 1940).

 

By this time, with a radio show, Superman’s popularity would have been limited if his moral code was not acceptable for family listening. It’s likely that word must have got back that Superman had to stop killing crooks with such abandon. I suggest that this first outside factor explains Superman’s change of attitude between the autumn of 1939 and the summer of 1940 (by which time the radio show was in full swing).

 

These concerns anticipated the growing alarm of parents who feared their children would be brutalized and corrupted by the material in the ‘funny books’. The comics industry eventually founded the Comics Code Authority in 1954, especially after the attacks by the psychiatrist Fredric Wertham. (But as we have seen now, Superman’s publishers had reeled in his more base instincts years before this happened!)

 

After this, hundreds of Superman stories embedded this strict ethical code of behaviour into the bedrock of Superman’s being: so much so that his oath ‘never to kill’ became a staple of Superman comics throughout the Silver Age of Comics – and also the plot engine of a number of stories themselves when he had to devise ingenious methods to keep this oath, yet defeat his enemies.

 

(Another interesting by-product of Superman’s new radio presence was the demise of Clark Kent’s editor in the comics, George Taylor. Taylor’s last appearance was in Action Comics #30 (November 1940) and Perry White (just ‘White’ then) was there in the next published Superman story in Superman #7 (November-December 1940). But the character of Perry White, as Clark Kent’s editor at The Daily Planet, had already first appeared in the second episode of the radio serial, broadcast back in February of that year. This was a case of the comics being brought into line with the radio show – as did also happen later with the introduction from radio to the comics of Superman’s vulnerability: kryptonite.)

 

By the Bronze Age, the cultural landscape of America had changed from the moral certainty of the Eisenhower era and the depths of the Cold War in the 1950s. This became the second outside factor to change Superman.

Vietnam and the countercultural pressures of the 1960s and 1970s began to have their effect on Superman’s new generation of writers. One of them was Denny O’Neil, who had begun to write the innovative socially-aware Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories. He was brought in to renovate the Superman title in 1970 by new editor Julius Schwartz, debuting with Superman #233 (January 1971) with a story defining a new direction for the character in ‘Superman Breaks Loose’. ((Spoiler Alert!)) The kryptonite on Earth is rendered harmless to Superman, but at the end of the story arc – over a number of issues – Superman himself is permanently physically weakened. Okay… he was still ‘Superman’: he just couldn’t toss planets around as easily as before.

After these physical changes, the moral certainty of Superman himself was challenged. A notable story was published a year later in Superman #247 (January 1972). Written by Elliot Maggin, ‘Must There be a Superman?’ was an exploration of the problem of Superman always being on hand to help planet Earth, thus potentially stunting the natural development of humankind. Perhaps Maggin got the idea from Star Trek’s well-known ‘Prime Directive’ – but no matter. He raised interesting questions about the relationship between the helper and the helped.

 

But perhaps a more significant story was also published in that landmark issue, one that marked a third phase in Superman’s relationship with violence.

 

The first in a short-lived series ‘The Private life of Clark Kent’, this Denny O’Neil written story describes how Clark Kent defuses by persuasion the kind of situation that Superman would have dealt with by force. Clark Kent muses, afterwards, that perhaps ‘Violence isn’t always the answer’. Note that it’s ‘Violence’, not ‘Killing’. He’s moved closer to Mahatma Gandhi’s personal practice of nonviolence with this new understanding.

 

                                    [Superman #247, January 1972]

 

Incidentally, that story also displayed another change in prevailing attitudes since the early 1940s. In Action Comics #21 (February 1940) Superman is considering a problem as he sits at home smoking his pipe.

 

                                [Action Comics #21, February 1940]

 

In Superman #247 (January 1972) he wonders if he’s been missing something by not trying tobacco – and the message to the readers is clear!

 

                                    [Superman #247, January 1972]

 

But returning to the issue of Superman’s changing attitude towards violence and killing, it was the perceptive writer Alan Moore who realized that, by the end of the Bronze Age, this was the foundation on which this version of Superman rested. Remove that, and it would be enough to end his career.

Moore got the chance to demonstrate this when he wrote the two-parter ‘Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?’ in Superman #423 (September 1986) and Action Comics #583 (September 1986). ((Spoiler Alert!)) Moore’s plot contrives to force the immovable object (Superman’s ethical code) to meet the irresistible force (the demand of the plot: he must kill the newly totally evil Mr Mxyzptlk to prevent countless innocent deaths). The immovable object breaks under the imperative of saving future lives, and Superman must be no more.

 

                                [Action Comics #583, September 1986]

 

This shift, from having such a cavalier attitude to criminals’ lives to Superman’s ‘oath never to kill’, illustrates a rather different conception of strength than what is usual in super-hero comics.

In the Book of Proverbs (16:32), it’s stated that ‘He who is slow to anger is better than a strong man, and a master of his passions is better than a conqueror of a city’. This is summed up by the sage Ben Zoma, who said, (in the Ethics of the Fathers 4:1): ‘Who is strong? One who masters his evil impulse.’

Here we have a philosophy of self-restraint as being the true marker of strength. Scale this up to the super-powers of a Kryptonian under a yellow sun, and we can see how it would take a super-strength of the mind, not the body, to resist the temptations on offer when living as a Superman on a non-Super planet Earth.

Yet Superman showed this inner strength from the very beginning, in his origin story. He was willing to live as a normal person and not to use his super-powers for any kind of self-aggrandisement, self-enrichment or power over others.

34 years later, his attitude towards his outer, physical strength finally caught up with that inner strength. He finally accepted that violence was not necessarily the answer to doing good – even if you’re Superman.

 

 

 

copyright. Nigel Brown