Treasury Of British Comics, s&d

https://treasuryofbritishcomics.com/

Some rich guy's vanity project is the accusation I most often see thrown at it, but hell I wish more millionaires funneled their wealth into this kind of stuff tbh.

My knowledge of classic UK comics outside of the 2000AD stuff is still rather shaky - got an Eagle hardcover and a lot of Misty stuff but not much else. What would the ILX comics collective recommend?

Recommend is a strong word but I have a lot of nostalgia for (The) Victor

I think it was in the early 80's when Eagle was relaunched. There was some really crummy photo-stories like Sgt Streetwise (lol) Doomlord (lolol). Dan Dare was still seeming like a 1940's version of the future, but they gave Dan a black sidekick called Sugar Ray (some JK Rowling crude racial stereotyping) who called the Treens "green honkies". Obviously this isn't a recommend, just a flashback.

I grew up on Dandy, Whizzer & Chips, Beezer and Beano.

oh yeah Buster as well, which became Buster & Jackpot during period of merging.

Ivor Lott and Tony Broke (and) Milly O'Naire and Penny Less : these were characters that were preparing us for 40 odd years of neoliberlism and absolute class war!

Biffo The Bear absolutely sucked shit, but like a lot of British things that suck - it been around for few decades and it had become an institution. But to me as a kid it seemed so fucking dull and pointless!

I need look up the parody that Viz did of Biffo, it was quite amusing iirc

My favourite strip which i always go on about was Alf Tupper, the Tough of the Track. Pure class war and middle distance running

is that from Victor and Valour sphere? Never got into that but Alf Tupper - what a name! But sometimes I was exposed to loads of this stuff when people would sell old comics for 2p outside their house. But my memory much fuzzier on that stuff.

was Pongo Snodgrass classic? idk but I loved it when I was a kid.

Treasury of British Comics/Rebellion basically have the reprint rights to the IPC back catalogue (Whizzer & Chips, Action, 2000AD etc), nothing from DC Thomson (the Dandy, Beano, Victor, The Broons etc).

Looking at what's available on their (quite difficult to navigate) site, I would recommend the following:

The Trigan Empire – luxurious full colour artwork by Don Lawrence, one of the three or four giants of illustrative British comics, along with people like Ron Embleton and Frank Bellamy. Scripts are a slightly dry and repetitive SF retelling of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. All these things were intended to be read a few pages at a time, once a week, when Trigan Empire was a mind-blowing dayglo highlight of Look & Learn magazine, an otherwise comics-free educational weekly that was very very boring but the only funny book approved of for wet playtimes.
The Spider - Arch crook who eventually turned 'goodie' for no discernible reason. Great look and costume. Some scripts written by a blacklisted by DC Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman.
Robot Archie - this one seems especially fondly remembered by men of a certain age. Grant Morrison featured RA in Zenith for 2000AD. He's a big robot, you know the drill.
The Steel Claw - Again the draw here is the artwork, dark and moody black and white linework by Jesús Blasco. Big favourite with Brian Bolland, who has drawn new covers for the hardcover editions. The stiff, ersatz borrowing and relocation of American sci-fi tropes can sometimes make for a surreal, dislocated reading experience that is the unique and local signature of Brit adventure comic strips.

The humour side of British comics has always been poorly represented in terms of graphs novs, in part because large and key parts of it are controlled by the entirely insular Thomson, who have still never issued or authorised decent collections of Dennis the Menace by David Law, or The Bash Street Kids by Leo Baxendale. TOBC have brought out sweet collections of late IPC work by Baxendale and Ken Reid (the UK's answer to Basil Wolverton, often championed by Alan Moore) but I don't think sales have been nearly strong as with the non-humour stuff.

Next year's banker is the first year's worth of Action Comic, 'Britain's most controversial comic', uncensored and never before reprinted.

Yeah Alf was in the Victor, dunno if he appeared in other comics. He was a welder who would inevitably turn up to a race meet late after hitching a ride on the back of a coal wagon, then the posh lad who everybody thought would win would sneer at him, then Alf would beat him in the last 10 yards and the posh lad would look angry and Alf would have a big bag of fish and chips for tea

Occasionally the posh lad would admit Alf was the better runner but only once in a blue moon

the movie that Chariots of Fire could have been! (tbh never watched it- it looks shite)

I did watch Chariots of Fire when it was new but i remember nada and assume youright

https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/article1322909.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/Alf%20Tupper
Peter Serafinowicz in the Alf Tupper movie we've all been waiting for

https://images.rebellion.click/productImage/0a/a8/00.large.jpg
the hair on this couple in The Haunting Of Jilly Johnson

https://shop.treasuryofbritishcomics.com/catalogue/RCA-H0003
I quite like the look of this.

Been meaning to get the Karl The Viking and Maroc The Mighty books, I like Don Lawrence in black and white much more.

I really hope someone's been working on getting more Ron Embleton stuff collected, because that's what I want more than anything else from old british comics (that I actually know of).

Always keeping my fingers crossed that something really exciting will be unearthed someday. I almost never see these comics in back issue shops and I wonder if it's like that in other countries that had a comics industry. Does feel like they're being rescued from the edge of oblivion and there's potentially a lot of hidden gems. Wish I liked more of these reprints, there's never been a lack of skill but it seems like there's a lack of enthusiasm in a lot of them.

There does seem to be some commonality between the way British films and British comics have been 'reevaluated' over time - a guilty sense that a large and interesting collective industry has been ignored and undervalued in comparison to American product.

As far back as the 1950s and EC, there were American comic book dealers buying up multiple copies of EC books from wholesalers and shady distributors. From about 1965, US dealers were again buying bulk copies of Marvel and DC titles, so that key Silver and Bronze Age comics are relatively speaking not that rare, even in high grade condition. Absolutely nothing existed like that in British comics, so back issues are much scarcer; the weekly accumulation of long-running paper periodicals is also a big barrier to collectors - you need a much bigger garage to store 80 years of the Beano etc.

Thanks for the input everyone!

their (quite difficult to navigate) site

You ain't kidding! Spent an inordinate amount of time searching for a search function.

my favourite comic was Oink! - if they put out a big hardback compilation of those then I would shell out for it.

British comic annuals seem to be an exception because a lot of people tended to keep them (totally different format than the weeklies, they're always hardcover). I read all my dad's Beano, Dandy, (Beezer? Topper?) and Broons annuals when I was young.

https://gwthomas.org/british-fantasy-comics-1955-1984/
https://gwthomas.org/warrior-tales-of-sword-sorcery/
I had no idea this kind of stuff was in Warrior until recently. I need to keep an eye out for David Jackson but he's not easy to search and there's not a lot of reprints.

In addition to all the comics that haven't been preserved (in terms of American comics, I rarely ever seen romance comics in back issue stores), think of all the newspapers and magazines that had comics.
Despite porn collectors being as dedicated as monks preserving religious items, there's some stuff in adult magazines that I doubt I'll ever find. I emailed an artist about adult magazine work he did in the 80s and I'm guessing he ignored me and would rather let that work be forgotten.

I've been surprised that Japan actually isn't the greatest country for preserving culture either. I think a lot of manga is just going to be lost and some videogames have been poorly preserved.

I picked up the Treasury Of British Comics Annual, has the same kind of nicely curated mixtape feel that those 2000AD best ofs have. Just a healthy smattering of random stuff, the oldest comic being from 1962. Nothing mind blowing but it's a lot of fun travelling between different eras with different styles. There's one strip in there about a group of kids travelling in a tank in North Africa during WWII, searching for their parents. One of them has a pet monkey.