TV Comic


TV Comic was a British comic book magazine published weekly from 9 November 1951 until 29 June 1984. Originally started by Beaverbrook, it was published by Polystyle Publications from 1960 and featured stories based on television series running at the time of publication. The first issue ran to eight pages, with Muffin the Mule on the front cover. It also featured many other TV favourites of the day, including Mr. Pastry, Larry the Lamb, Tom Puss, Prince Valiant, Jack & Jill and Prudence Kitten.
In common with other British children's comics, TV Comic absorbed other, less successful titles during its run. These included TV Land and TV Express in 1962, TV Action in 1973, Tom and Jerry Weekly in 1974 and the short-lived Target in 1978.
Editors of TV Comic included Dick Millington, Robin Tucheck and John Lynott. Artists included Bill Titcombe, John Canning, Neville Main, H. Watts, Gerry Haylock, Mike Lacey and Steve Maher.

History

For the first decade of its existence, the publication was aimed explicitly at younger children. As well as Muffin the Mule, other favourites from the 1950s that made appearances were Sooty, Coco the Clown, Noddy and Lenny the Lion. As the decade passed, so the comic began to acquire a slightly more "grown-up" feel, with stories such as Treasure Island, The Lone Ranger and Black Beauty all appearing for a time. Text stories also began to be featured, with religious themes such as "Jesus and the Bible".
TV Comic printed Doctor Who stories from 1964 to 1979. It also featured strip cartoons for the early puppet TV series produced by Gerry Anderson and AP Films—Four Feather Falls, Supercar and Fireball XL5—until Anderson's titles became the focus of a rival publication, TV Century 21.
The issues published in the 1960s are considered the most collectable in the comic's history. As well as Doctor Who and Anderson strips, other highly collectable material included Telegoons, Space Patrol and The Avengers. A number of annuals and holiday specials were also issued over the years, including special editions concentrating on characters such as the Pink Panther and Tom and Jerry. TV Comic also carried a series of strips some months before the original series began to be broadcast by BBC television in the UK from Summer 1969..

Format

From the start, TV Comic featured a mixture of colour and black-and-white pages, a policy that continued throughout its publication. TV Comic had quite a tempestuous history towards the end of its life. In 1976 it was re-launched as Mighty TV Comic, switching to a large tabloid format. Although the pages were larger, the amount of content did not grow, with the frames of many strips simply increasing in size. The first two of the new issues were accompanied by a smaller "Mighty Midget" supplement.
This evidently failed to attract the sales increases that had been hoped for, as the comic reverted to an A4 format from issue 1,377 two years later, now published on cheap newsprint. Although the paper quality eventually improved, the comic came to rely heavily on re-prints of older material, or using scripts from old strips with new characters. The only notable, collectable and original strip of this period was perhaps "Battle of the Planets", which ran from 1981 to 1983.
The publication ultimately closed in 1984, after 33 years, due to declining sales. The last issue contained no warning in its pages of the title's discontinuation, nor of it being merged with another comic; instead, TV Comic simply failed to appear the following week. However, both "The A-Team" and the "Tales of the Gold Monkey" strips, which had been running until this point, concluded with frames stating "The End".

Features

TV programmes