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Catching Them Young Information

Catching Them Young Vol.2

Political Ideas in Children's Fiction

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1. Comics:: More EEK! than TEE-HEE

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Comics are important because almost all children read them. Furthermore, except for those comics meant to cater for the youngest age group, children choose to read them voluntarily, they read them eagerly and often in huge quantities over many of the most impressionable years of their lives. They must be important. In view of this, it's rather surprising that they have, until comparatively recent times, attracted little attention from educationists, psychologists and sociologists.

After all, it isn't really necessary to invoke cave paintings, classical friezes, the Bayeux tapestry and Hogarth in order to establish a `respectable' ancestry for comics. It's just necessary to recognise that they must have a considerable influence on the attitudes and values of children.

Comics are hard to define. In spite of the name, many of them are clearly not funny and even those that are meant to be humorous are often no laughing matter. It's probably best to think of a comic strip as consisting of a number of pictures in a sequence which tells a story, though a comic is clearly much more than a collection of these and the definition obviously gives rise to questions about the time-intervals between the `frames'. When does a comic become an illustrated story? Also, the proportion of words to pictures can, and does, vary enormously and although the pictures are always more important it's very rare to find a comic strip without words at all. To say that comics are meant for children also avoids a number of questions. The publishers of many children's comics clearly expect adults to read them, too, and this happens on quite a large scale while, on the other hand, there seems to be a growing market in comics meant specifically for adults. These include `underground' and pornographic comics as well as comics like Mad. The small-format picture stories, in certain welldefined categories such as `western', 'chiller' or `detective', as well as the `war picture' series to be dealt with later, are by now well established. Comics have also been used extensively for advertising and publicity purposes. For instance, the Family Planning Association produced a comic strip pamphlet drawn in the romantic style of the teenage girls' comics to spread information about contraception. The small `cartoon booklets', however, produced by Chick Publications, USA, as Illustrated International Gospel Literature and marketed in this country by the Send the Light Trust are a different matter. It would be hard to find anything more vicious and warped than the booklet, The Poor Revolutionist.

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All this goes to show how powerful the comic medium is. Most parents and teachers have discovered that the quickest way to get a group of children quiet is to give them comics. I've discovered, too, that if I want to have a discussion about comics with a group of students it's no use giving out a selection and hoping for a discussion about fifteen minutes later. They merely sit and read the comics. For my own part, I find the medium very compelling.

Certainly, comics are very much part of the scene now. Comic-style artwork is very common in advertising, comics were a powerful influence on the pop art movement, there was a comics exhibition, called Aaargh!, in London in I97I and there are now numerous collectors of comics with the older issues and first editions fetching very high prices. It's not necessary to go into the history of comics but it's interesting to note that their development in recognisable modem forms followed closely upon the I870 Education Act and were clearly designed to tap the expanding literate market. In fact, comics have always been meant predominantly for working-class children.

p3 In Britain, most comics appear in weekly issues. There are about forty comics on the market at any one time, and though the titles tend to keep changing, the contents only change in superficial ways. Most of these comics are published by the International Publishing Corporation and by D.C.Thomson's, of Dundee. IPC afford facilities to researchers and are helpful to enquirers, while D.C.Thomson's still maintain their by now notorious policy of complete irresponsibility, in the most literal sense of the word, as far as their publications are concerned. Since the contributors to comics in this country are, almost without exception, anonymous, we have a rather strange situation existing in this field of literature. This is unlike the common practice in the USA, where the names are given, not only of the writer and artist, but of the letterer and inker too and, usually, of anyone else concerned in the production of the comic.

British comics for children can be divided into four main groups : firstly, there are comics for small children which are meant to be bought by adults and read to children; secondly, there are the cartoon-type comics which children usually buy, or choose, for themselves and which many people will think of as typical comics; then, moving to an older age range, there's a group of comics aimed particularly at girls aged about nine to fourteen; and, fourthly, there are comics intended for boys of about the same age range or slightly older. Of course, there are overlaps and girls often read the boys' comics (though the reverse doesn't seem to happen). In addition, there's a small group of `educational' or `knowledge' publications which, however, it might be more accurate to describe as magazines. They tend to be very middle-class in outlook and provide information (the impression given is that this is what education is about) of a supposedly useful kind. An issue of Look and Learn (3 April t974) for instance, contains an article on King Faisal, `King of the Oilfields'. This is in a series, `Modern Monarchies' - a contradiction in terms, you might think Faisal `the man whose

 p4 lifted finger could stop the turning wheels of western progress', despite being the ruler of one of the richest countries in the world, we are told, has subjects who lead a 'near-starvation life'. All is apparently well, however, because `he realises how much more important than money, or oil, is knowledge'. Although such magazines do contain a few comic strips, this is far from being their main concern - in fact, they are not, for the most part, concerned with fiction at all. A small group of comics, in which the strips derive from television programmes and films, won't be considered separately. Attitudes and values in these publications are essentially the same as those in the other comics : there has always, of course, been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing of material amongst the mass media. I'll now move on to a consideration of the four main categories of comics, taking them each in turn.

The comics for small children are as `good' and `respectable' as the middle-class suburbia they reflect. They are in colour - red, blue, yellow and green usually; there's much personification of animals, mainly of the furry, cuddly, domestic sort; there's much moralising and many happy endings; often, strips are adapted from children's television series or taken from literature in book form or nursery rhymes; there's a considerable magazine element in most of these publications - simple puzzles of a traditional kind, competitions, letters from the imaginary children who feature in the comic strips - and several of the comics have clubs, with badges, such as the `Twinkle' club and the 'Noddy' club.

Amidst all this cosiness, what could anyone object to? Does the owner of the detached house in middle-class suburbia really own shares in South African gold? How detached is he? How detached can a person get from the world we live in? Comics provide the answer. In this group, for the youngest children, elementary notions of a kind of morality are laid down and socialisation is promoted. Naughtiness, for instance, often amounts to getting dirty while tidiness is seen as a good in itself. The nuclear family, it goes without saying, is strongly reinforced and it seems to consist of daddy, mummy, a little boy, a little girl and a domestic pet of one of the more conventional species.

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Girls are soon put in their place. To begin with, Twinkle is `specially for little girls'. On the front cover of the issue for 30 March 1974, Twinkle is playing with her dolly in the bath. Inside, one strip is about `Nancy the Little Nurse' while in `My Baby Brother' it's the baby brother who plays at being the vet. In `Issue D' of spring 1974, Jack and Jill has a strip called `Nurse Susan and Doctor David'. This is all standard practice, of course, in fiction for children but, while not being remarkable, it shouldn't go unremarked. In this same issue, we find, at an early and elementary level, that preoccupation with clothes and fashion which is thought proper for girls. Jenny Wren, in the strip of that name, is glad it's raining, she tells us, because she can wear her new coat and hat in waterproof material. Later, she sticks some of the same material onto her car so that it matches her outfit. She `loved the latest types of clothes'. A harder line is taken in the issue of Jack and Jill already referred to, where there's a strip called `Joe'. Joe's off to play at his friend Sharon's house. There, he meets Sharon's very trendy elder sister, Pet in Pet's room which appears to be papered with pictures of pop stars and which contains a large dressing-table with lots of make-up on it: `"You've got heaps of make-up," said Sharon. "Look at all this!" "Oh, that's old-fashioned," said Pet. "Nobody wears pale eye shadows these days. Black eyeliner too. Ugh!" "What colour do you like?" asked Joe. "Violet," said Pet. "Or gold, or very dark green ... anything different." '[Ellipsis in original.] While Pet is out buying more make-up -`I have to go out. I must buy some make-up', she tells them - the children play with the make-up, daubing themselves with all sorts of different concoctions. In the course of this, Sharon, no doubt picking up her line from Pet, offers the opinion: `"Mummies are very old-fashioned ... They put on such a tiny little bit that nobody knows they're wearing any make-up."' Pet comes back and is rather dismayed. However, she admits having told them that the make-up they've been

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using was rather `old-fashioned'. She says, in fact, that they do look `extremely old-fashioned' but when Joe makes a pattern on his face with cleansing-cream she cries, `"Oh, super! ... Not a bit old-fashioned!" '

In this strip, based on the BBC Television series it is, of course, Pet, the adult, who represents the acceptable values.

The BBC might not advertise in the commercial sense but it does advertise a way of life. It seems a pity to hook children onto the hectic consumption of the fashion-world, to preoccupy them with dress and appearance. After all, the preoccupation of about half the people in the world is with getting enough to eat. It seems a pity, too, since this strip, `Joe', is, as far as the colour artwork is concerned, so attractive. In this same issue of Twinkle, there's an advertisement for a new comic, Bonnie. The cover of the second issue is shown in the advertisement and on it we see a small girl sitting beside what seems to be her own small dressing-table and displaying the `pretty bow bangle' presented free with the issue. (See illustration.)" In the first issue, the little Bonnie, looking very fashionable, is prancing and displaying the `super sparkling ring' which was the free gift with

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issue no. 1. British comics for older girls and, later, the women's magazines, will give more detailed advice on how they should package themselves for the marriage market.

As far as propaganda of the more obvious sort is concerned, there's often a strip or item in these comics on the Christian religion. In Pippin, in a serial strip called `The Life of Jesus', the issue of 16 March 1974 dealt with the feeding of the five thousand. We are given the reference, Mark 6: 30-3¢. In Playland of the same date, the strip deals with St Francis of Assisi. The characters in both of these strips are portrayed, visually, as children. Later, this element will develop into the charity and do-gooding of the girls' comics. I don't mean to suggest that Christianity must necessarily be equated with charity. That would be an insult to the Roman Catholic priests who spoke out against Portuguese colonialism in Africa and an insult to the many priests in South America who have fought against capitalism and economic imperialism - fought literally, as in the case of Camilo Torres, who was killed.

As in many nursery tales, royalty and the aristocracy are thrust upon the reader, together with civic officials such as mayors. The kind of social hierarchy indicated by this is powerfully reinforced and presented as a fact of life. Indeed, no alternatives are ever considered so children don't even have the material with which they might think divergent thoughts. It makes me think of Or-well's 'Newspeak'. Small children are often portrayed in law enforcement roles, usually playing policemen. This line will be powerfully developed in comics for later age groups, as we'll see.

' In the following, rather nauseating extract from the issue of Little Star of i6 March 1974, almost all the elements I've just distinguished in this group of comics - charity, a class society and law enforcement - are brought together. In fact, if the stolen flowers in the strip, `Bobby in blue and his sister Sue' had been taken from a private garden, the strip might almost have stood as a model of British society. The text, as usual in this type of comic, is printed below the frames and is divided into numbered parts to correspond with them. I quote it in full ;

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1- PC Walker is the only policeman in the village of Blairham. His children, Bobby and Sue, like to help him whenever they can.

2 - Bobby and Sue were on patrol in their pedal car one morning. In the park, the keeper called them over. `Someone has been picking the flowers,' he said.

3- Outside the park, the children saw Petra Price carrying a bunch of flowers. She looked very guilty. `Where did you get these?' asked Bobby.

4 - The little girl burst into tears. `I'm s-sorry,' she sobbed. `I took them from the park. Mummy is in hospital and I didn't have money to buy flowers.' 5 - Later, the mayor came to the Walkers' house. `I want someone to give these flowers to Mrs Parker when she visits the hospital,' he said.

6-`I know just the person,' said Sue. She hurried round to see Petra. `Put on your prettiest dress,' Sue told her. `I have a special job for you.'

7 - That afternoon, Petra felt thrilled as she handed over the flowers to Mrs Parker. The lady was a very important guest. `Thank you, my dear,' she said. 8 - Petra's mother looked on proudly. As an extra treat, Petra had been given a posy of flowers for her mummy. `Now everyone is happy,' thought Sue.

The last picture, which shows the presentation of the flowers, takes up about three-quarters of a page and has beneath it captions seven and eight. Surely, the time's past for such figurative forelock-touching. The whole text here, as well as the pictures, is full of implications, assumptions and values which would repay the closest literary and sociological scrutiny. There are also interesting technical questions such as what happened to the bunch of flowers Petra Price picked.

In these comics, several of the most important ideological lines have been laid down. It's now time to move on to the second main group, the cartoon comics. From now on, comics are bought or chosen by the children themselves and are read independently by them without parental intervention.

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The second group of comics is characterised by the cartoontype artwork which relies heavily on caricature and suggestion rather than on naturalism. However, there are other features, too, which give this group of comics some sort of cohesion. The main aim of the creators of these comics, almost to the exclusion of all others, is to give rise to fun and humour. This is of the knockabout, farcical type though verbal humour, mainly in the form of puns, is also important. The humour nearly always arises through someone getting hurt though this isn't peculiar to these comics. It's the most common source of humour and it's a sobering thought.

A consideration of the mainsprings of comic-strip humour is very revealing. There are only a few basic groupings and all of these seem to have in common a factor which can be described as an extension of or an addition to everyday reality - some kind of exaggeration which involves the fantastic.

Sometimes, it's the possession of an object, usually magical, which gives rise to funny situations. Recent ones in this category include : a torch which makes things invisible in Sparky; 'Val's Vanishing Cream' in Cor!! which does the same; a locket which, when rubbed, produces a genie in Whoopee!; 'Minnie's Mixer' in Whizzer and Chips and even `Adrian's Wall' in Shiver and Shake. Sometimes an animal is involved, as in the strips, `Sam's Snake' in Sparky, and `Sid's Snake' in Whizzer and Chips. Then there are `Andy's Ants' in Cor!! and, in the .same comic, `Wonder Worm' which is, however, a character in its own right. A property in a different sense - a physical one - is a very common cause of fun or ridicule. It may be large feet or big ears and usually these physical features will be quite abnormal. `Big Fat Flo', however, in Buzz, who's merely a fat girl, might give rise to some qualms, though she wasn't ridiculed in the strip I looked at and perhaps this is the main thing. Billy Bunter and Falstaff come to mind here though I must say that this particular area of humour, or that part of it which involves

 

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laughing at some physical defect, continues to make me feel uneasy. A slightly different element within this category of physical properties concerns the possession of some physical attribute such as superhuman strength. This is Desperate Dan's main attribute. He features in one of the longest-running strips ever, in Britain, dating, like The Dandy in which he appears, back to pre-war days. There's nothing unusual in these fictional devices. Here, they are used for purposes of humour but we'll see that, in comics for older children, devices of the same type are used for serious purposes as they've always been used in mythology and folk-lore since before recorded history. The examples given above obviously have their counterparts in Aladdin's lamp, Thor's hammer and Hercules. Another mainspring of cartoon comic humour is closely allied to those already mentioned. Again, we have the extension of a normal attribute to an unusual degree only this time we start from an instinct or a psychological characteristic. In this connection, we have strips such as `Hungry Horace', 'Slowcoach', `The Nosey Parkers', 'Moana Lisa', `Keyhole Kate' and `Tricky Dicky' ('I can get out of anything'). `Loser' and `Fred the Flop', two strips from Whizzer and Chips and Buzz, play upon the same unfortunate failing. Apart from these categories, there are, of course, strips which depend upon a single appealing character without any special attributes, such as Korky the Cat. He, also, has been going since before the second world war.

The cartoon comics resemble one another very closely and form a very coherent group. Language is less important in them than in either the group of comics for younger children or the comics for older age groups, being carried almost exclusively in balloons and always being very much less important than the pictures. Magazine features are few and far between and are less important than in the other groups of comics. There aren't many advertisements, and where they appear they are often in comic-strip form like one for shoes which appears in several comics. Otherwise, war-toys are advertised and in Buzz of 16 March I974, there is, depressingly, an advertisement for cars which emphasises speed. Most of all, these comics advertise themselves.

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Characters in the strips are seen to be reading comics as in one issue of The Beano where, in no fewer than three strips, we see The Beano being read. One of these three strips, in fact, is based entirely on the question of getting, and reading, The Beano. Shiver and Shake of 23 March I974 advertises the new comic, Whoopee! and has, as its `star guest', `Wonder Worm' from Cor!!

As we've seen, there are certain devices used in these comic strips to provide a kind of mechanism, or framework. It's also possible to distinguish certain basic themes which have remained constant over the years.

Some of these can be considered as providing psychological compensation for inadequacies, or for painful problems in real life. This explains the drug-like effect comics often have. In the many strips that deal with wealth and sometimes with a sideeffect, snobbery, the compensation element is very strong. As this is a matter which was touched upon in connection with comics for younger children, and as it's a very important theme in comics for older age groups, too, it'll repay us to consider it in some detail here.

In the course of his famous essay, `Boys' Weeklies', George Orwell made some passing remarks about women's papers and in the issue of Tribune of 28 July 1944 he quoted part of a letter he'd received in reply from a woman who'd written for several of the papers in question. I quote the relevant points from her letter in which she comments on the material of these magazines :

class feeling is not altogether absent. The rich are often shown as mean, and as cruel and crooked money-makers  The stories are conditioned to show that the meagre life is not so bad really, as you are at least honest and happy, and that riches bring trouble and false friends. The poor are given moral values to aspire to as something within their reach .2

Orwell's response to the letter is as relevant now as it was when he wrote it. In particular, it's relevant in all areas of popular mass media, including children's fiction, and it's especially relevant to all types of comic :

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The fact is that this business about the moral superiority of the poor is one of the deadliest forms of escapism the ruling class have evolved. You may be downtrodden and swindled, but in the eyes of God you are superior to your oppressors, and by means of films and magazines you can enjoy a fantasy existence in which you constantly triumph over the people who defeat you in real life. In any form of art designed to appeal to large numbers of people, it is an almost unheard-of thing for a rich man to get the better of a poor man ... Film magnates, press lords and the like amass quite a lot of their wealth by pointing out that wealth is wicked.

The formula `good poor man defeats bad rich man' is simply a subtler version of `pie in the sky'. It is a sublimation of the class struggle.^[3]

I think it's with this in mind that we must see the wealth and, of course, the class element in comics. In `The Toffs and the Toughs', a strip in Whizzer and Chips, the toughs win in the end after the nasty toffs have had their way most of the time but it's all presented as part of the natural order. (See illustration.) The basic social structure is never questioned, a point implicit in Orwell's remarks but which it's necessary to make explicit here since the strongest form of indoctrination is

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that in which any possibility of conceiving alternatives is ruled out. Thus `Tiny Tycoon' in the same comic presents making as much money as possible as a normal and humorous pursuit. (A cartoon comic book from the United States is called Richie Rich all the strips in it except one being devoted to this `poor little rich boy.') `Lord Snooty', your young, everyday aristocrat complete with Eton uniform, has been running for years in The Beano. 'Ivor Lott and Tony Broke' in Cor!! and `Lolly Pop', a kind of rich, northern businessman in Shiver and Shake who keeps his son in poverty, work the fertile field of contrasts again as does the strip, `The Upper Crusts and the Lazy Loafers' in Whoopee! Of course, the Lazy Loafers win but it is, perhaps, in `The Bumpkin Billionaires' in the same comic that this line is taken furthest in cartoon comics in Britain. Here, the strawchewing bumpkins actually do have the money and buy Ma, for her birthday, the crown jewels of Kolinoor, an ocean liner complete with bottle of champagne for launching and a heated swimming-pool. Ma's reaction to these gifts is significant as well as being funny. She calls the crowns `real good pastry cutters' and young Billy tells her, as he hands over the sceptre, `And there be a rolling pin to go with 'em, Ma !' Daisy presents the ship and bottle of champagne which Ma takes for `a bubbly shampoo'. Daisy tells her, `They made me take the ship as well!' Finally, when Pa hands over the swimming-pool, she says, `Yippee ! an extra big sink - so I'll only have to do the washing up once a month!' and in the last frame she comments, `Aye ! I'm roight glad you didn't get me nothing fancy, family ! We be simple folk at heart!' Money isn't important really, and most people wouldn't know what to do with it if they had it. It's an extension of the keeping-coals-in-the-bath argument. We have to look forward to boys' comics to see the end of this particular line, which is the outright rejection of wealth. The Hornet has a strip called `Five Tough Tests for "Lofty" Foster' in which we are told that `Lofty Foster and his friend Brig Coverdale were two very rich people, but they preferred to live as tramps.' Victor runs a strip in which a `wealthy tramp-like character' plays a powerful part.

 

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However, to speak of wealth and not to consider the economic system which determines its distribution, is to miss the

main point. In Comix: a History of Comic Books in America, Les Daniels has carried out a penetrating analysis of the way

in which capitalist ideology is fictionalised in cartoon comic strips although, in my opinion, he fails, in the end, to draw the

obvious conclusions from his insights. Beginning with the Fox and Crow series, in which the Crow is always trying to `chisel'

money out of the Fox, Daniels goes on from this `study of economic manipulaion' which has however 'a noticeable nobility' to 'the more widely known money myths promulgated in the Disney duck stories by Carl Barks'. He continues :

To talk of the content of the `dumb animal' stories in this way may seem at first an overstatement, but there is a strong and persistent moral impulse behind all of the animal comics. While the lessons to be learned are never so obvious as they are in, say, the Greek fables, there is absolutely no doubt that at least part of the intent and effect is educational. That this intent was frequently confused or unconscious in no way makes it less genuine. Children learned about capitalism from Scrooge McDuck and about the degrading, amoral effect of too-easy money from Gladstone Gander.^[4]

Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck's `sickeningly rich Uncle', was the creation of Carl Barks, who worked for the Disney studio. One cartoon story involving him is quoted by Daniels as :

a fable about capitalism, explicitly a lesson for the children about the disaster of daydreaming or loafing. But more serious than the overt content are the implications about the impossibility of equal distribution of wealth and about Marx's contention that he who controls the means of production controls ... fill in the blank. [sic]

At the beginning of the story in question, Donald Duck is fretting at having to work on his uncle's farm and wishing he was rich and didn't have to work. Eventually he's lured off by

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Gladstone Gander, the idler, who wishes a million dollars would drop into his hat. It does, and another million besides, as a tornado has swept up all Scrooge's wealth and distributed it to all the people around. Donald and Gladstone go off to see the world but so does everyone else. No one works, except Scrooge and Donald's nephews on the farm, and society collapses. The lesson is clear and is spelt out towards the end of the strip :

DONALD : Everybody has a million dollars ! NOBODY has to work! (But on Uncle Scrooge's farm toil goes on as usual!)

Scrooge arms the nephews with guns, providing an interesting, if unwitting insight into the workings of the capitalist state :

SCROOGE : Guard these cabbages, Louie ! Won't be long till they're the ONLY cabbages left !

SCROOGE : Guard these eggs, Dewey ! Won't be long till they're the ONLY eggs left! ...

(Soon ... people come to beg jobs and buy meals - and does Uncle Scrooge charge 'em? Yow ! Eventually Uncle Scrooge gets all of his money back, and things are again as they were!)

To extol the virtue of hard work is unexceptionable, though there's no connection in the story between hard work and the possession of wealth. This may be the crux of the matter, however, and everyone might not be able to associate with Daniels in his remark, `we may be happy to see Scrooge get his honestly earned fortune back'. What is strange is that this remark seems so much at variance with his final comment on the story :

what is disturbing is that the economic balance is here made to look like a natural balance. It is a system that justifies Donald and the kids working in the fields at such wages that Scrooge can feel magnanimous at considering a ten cent raise; it is a system that mocks the middle class dreams of instant wealth as surely as it subverts the notion of public responsibility.

Children have constantly to cope with authority in one form

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or another, so we naturally find that there's a great preoccupation with authority, especially in this group of comics. However, as in the case of wealth, the system itself - in this case it can be seen, essentially, as the right to authority - is not in question. Authority, however, unlike the rich, often wins and many strips end with a caning or beating. Presumably, laughing at this kind of thing in the comics is one way of trying to cope with a situation in which a child is totally helpless. Almost every comic has a strip about school or a schoolteacher, in these comics usually a man and almost invariably a stereotype with gown, or at least mortar-board, and cane. Authority, in fact, is often strongly reinforced by a liberal use of the cane, to such an extent that Gillian Freeman in her book The Undergrowth o f Literature and illustrating her point by a particularly vicious frame from Smash says, `It is very likely that sexual caning, that insular preoccupation - the maladie anglaise - has been acquired through the method usually considered proper for the upbringing of youth.' Parents, usually fathers, in these comics tend to lay children over their knees and beat them with slippers. Beating and caning, in fact, are constant preoccupations, but violence used to reinforce authority is different from violence elsewhere in these comics where it is, in my opinion, more acceptable - even quite normal - and where it doesn't demonstrate that might is right. After all, it would be hard to find anything more violent than Tom and Jerry. Often, in the school strips, authority is routed in the last frame, which gives the fantasy element. Just as often, however, the anarchic tendencies of the pupils are brought into line and we leave them sweating under an iron discipline. `Son of Sir' usually comes off worst, as does `Teacher's Pet' - for obvious reasons. Perhaps the best-known strip of this kind running at the moment is `The Bash Street Kids' in The Beano. It is, in fact, a typical example of cartoon comic style and, at its best, combines humour with inventiveness.

Outside the school, a child has parental authority to cope with, and although we often see him, or her, vanishing into the distance at full speed in the last frame, it's frequently with a

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'Grrr you wait!' or a`Come back!' ringing in the ears. It's clear that retribution is only delayed, and that might will win in the end. Outside school, too, there's the authority of the wider society, represented by the police. We've seen how, even in the comics for the youngest age group, the theme of law and order made its appearance and we'll see how it will take on increasing significance until it develops, through the specialised detective comics, into a genre of literature, one reflected in many films and, to the point of utter boredom, in seemingly endless television serials and plays. In the cartoon comics, children virtually never seem to beat the police, even temporarily, though they may do so, in imagination, through the heavily-disguised robber with his black mask, hooped sweater and bag labelled `Swag'. As like as not, he'll have a stubbly chin and cloth cap as well. `Bluebottle and Basher' in Buster reflects the endless struggle between the forces of law and order and the criminal underworld. At some point, most obviously in United States' comics, this seems to melt into a struggle between good and evil which isn't quite the same thing, after all, and to assume superhuman and titanic, if not cosmic proportions with Superman and all his descendants. In Beezer of i8 May ¹974, in two consecutive strips, we see the conventional ending to countless comic strips and stories for children - the police lead away the crooks. Often, in fact, the comic characters are drawn into roles supportive to the police usually working quite independently of them until, in the last frame, they hand over the criminals and, likely enough, collect a reward. This, of course, is the pattern followed in the rest of children's fiction and it is, recognisably, the same as in adult crime fiction where the private detective bows out at the end leaving the law to take its course. There are some differences, however. In the cartoon comics, it's never a question of murder, but always of theft. The criminal, being so heavily disguised, is very obvious and it's simply a matter of catching him. It's interesting that there's such a preoccupation with the safeguarding of property when most people haven't any, to speak of.

As with the themes of wealth and authority, some basic

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attitudes and values are laid down in the case of nationalism and war to be much developed, later, in the boys' comics and removed from the area of knockabout farce to a much more serious level. Here, again, it's useful to bear in mind the vast industry of adult war literature and the endless demand (if supply is anything to go by) for all types of war programmes on television. In the cartoon comics, as might be expected, war is presented as something of a game and we don't actually see anyone being killed. The Germans are usually on the other end and are presented as rather stupid, humourless people speaking funny English. 'Vos der pig-boys cleaning der statue, fat Hans?' asks the German colonel as he scrubs himself in a bath containing the obligatory plastic duck. This is in `The Kids of Stalag q. t' from Buster and jet and we are told in a panel at the beginning of the strip that 'Stalag <sub>41</sub> was a prisoner-of-war camp in Nazi Germany full of British boys who gave their Kommandant, Colonel Klaus von Schtink, a terrible time.' Sparky has `Baron von Reichs-Pudding' ('The Flying Hun from World War Wun !') who says 'Der-Har-Har' as he outwits the `Englander swine' early on in the strip only to end on the note `OOAAH !' in the last frame. `Corporal Clott' in The Dandy is a rather different kind of strip as there's no conflict situation - unless it's one between the unfortunate Clott and his superiors. In one issue, although a petrol tank and a box of ammunition explode, no one gets hurt even though there are soldiers nearby on each occasion. The issue of Buster and jet already referred to also has two half-page and two full-page illustrated advertisements for war-toys, a full-page comic-strip advertisement for `commando shoes' and a full-page comic-strip advertisement for the navy -`Navy plucks crew from jaws of death' - as well as a quiz on the police.

Foreigners are funny, rather than evil, at this stage but we do get the beginnings of national and racial stereotyping here, as we've seen in the case of the Germans. There are usually a few strips of comic Red Indians who keep saying `um' and `how'. On the other hand, it's sometimes difficult to know when poking fun enters a nationally- or racially-sensitive area and becomes

19

something less than good-natured. The trouble starts, in my opinion, when undesirable characteristics are seen almost exclusively as being attached to specific national and racial groups. Nevertheless, it was a little hard to sympathise with the complaint made to the Race Relations Board against IPC Magazines Ltd over their publication of a strip in the girls' comic Tammy and Sandie, featuring the mean Angus McScrimp. No one would question the power of laughter used as a weapon to reform anti-social behaviour but a Scotsman found this offensive and which of us can claim to be free of prejudice? To add to the confusion, the managing editor of the division which produced the comic, the editor of the comic and the writer of the story were all Scotsmen. The complaint was not upheld.

Other themes begin or are carried on in these comics. Sexrole stereotyping, of course, has been going on since birth, both in the media and in real life. In the cartoon comics, it takes, for girls, the special fantasy and compensatory form seen in `Tomboy' from Cor!! This must also be part of the attraction, at least, in the long-running strip `Pansy Potter' (defined in terms of her father as `The strong man's daughter'). However, it was good to see girls playing football in two recent strips.

Children are very much a prey to fears of the supernatural and the many strips centring upon this may perform a valuable therapeutic function in driving out such fears by laughter. Strips such as `Hire a Horror', 'Rent-a-Ghost Ltd.', 'Horrornation St.' and `Ghastly Manor' give a good idea of this kind of interest while Shiver and Shake, a comic devoted exclusively to `horror', has the rather amiable Frankie Stein and the inventive and well-drawn `Scream Inn' (see illustration). With issue no. 3 of Whoopee! we get a `super set of 36 spooky snap cards'.

As in all children's literature, especially in that for the younger age ranges, we find in these comics a great, and understandable, interest in food. Many a strip ends with a merry tuck-in, feast or beano, the latter being defined by the Concise Oxford Dictionary - interestingly, considering the origins and commercial role of these comics - as `employer's annual dinner to workpeople'.

2o

 

The Residents of Scream Inn

Undeniably, this group of comics has many heartening features - perhaps more than the other groups. No one could object when Moana Lisa and Fuss Pot get their deserts while in a strip such as `The McTickles' in The Beano we see the cartoon medium, both as far as the words and the pictures are concerned, used to its best advantage in the creation of sheer fun. Whoopee! no. 3 has a rather unusual, but very successful use of the medium in one strip which satirises `the traditional

21

British holiday camp'. It's when we move to wider concerns that doubts set in and this happens most, as we might expect, in those strips which, by their nature, look forward to comics for the older age groups. Buster and jet, in fact, is a comic which bridges two groups, having both funny cartoon strips and strips in a more naturalistic style not meant to be humorous and usually carrying on a serial story. (I've already mentioned the advertisements, which are significant, in this comic.) Along with Klaus von Schtink, we have `a mad scientist called Manfred Kleine, who had invented an instant-growth serum capable of breeding fish TEN times larger than normal'. No wonder the fish are 'mentally-retarded'. It's sad to see `The Lone Ranger' in Whoopee!, because, although the strip looks forward to an older age group, it's extremely backward-looking in its attitudes, as the first exchange between Tonto,g the faithful Red Indian and the Lone Ranger shows: `"Wah ! Kemo sabay ! It is a mighty IRON HORSE! " "That's right, Tonto ! A locomotive of the SANTA FE RAILROAD COMPANY ! Civilisation is spreading further west all the time!" ' Some people might wish to quarrel with the last statement. However, after the `Mexican bandits from across the border' have been dealt with, we are promised `Another actionpacked adventure in the fight for law and order next week V Whose law? Whose order? By what right? Isn't it time we knew? Some people might think that what is here regarded as spreading civilisation is really nothing more, nor less, than genocidal conquest. Furthermore, as long as we have a`free press', it's unlikely that such people will have much of a chance of putting their point of view to children. All children get is the lore and ordure of the cowboy `civilisation'. Even the title, `The Lone Ranger', carries its message. First of all, Tonto, apparently, doesn't count and what about the glamour attached to the solitary male hero? Doesn't it relate to a fundamental strand in capitalist ideology - individualism - and does this not relate, in turn, to social darwinism, the survival of the fittest? And what has this to do with civilisation? A lot of people think that civilisation has something to do with rising above this. Others seem to know instinctively what civilisation is - like the envoy

 

22

of Charles II, in a Victor strip, on landing in `the new colonies of America' and seeing a solitary Red Indian, who is shackled : `These leg-irons are a sign of contact with civilisation,' he remarks, with unconscious irony.

It's interesting, in itself, that in comics for the older age groups, distinctions are made along sex lines. I'll deal first with comics produced for girls. Boys don't read these generally, but girls often read boys' comics. Of course, in both groups, there are overlaps in material. Funny cartoon strips persist, though they are now greatly outnumbered by serious strips in a more naturalistic style where the story is often left at a point of suspense `to be continued' the following week. Some of the techniques persist, too, so we have, in one strip, a special blazer; in another, a `strange gem'; in another, some juice from bulbs from another planet. All these confer special powers but now such stratagems are almost invariably used for `serious' purposes. In the case of the blazer, the indoctrination could scarcely be more explicit. It appeared in Tammy and Sandie in a strip called `The Clothes Make Carol' at the beginning of which, in the issue of 23 March 1974, we are told, `Carol Carter used to be known as the Scarecrow at school, for she was the slowest and scruffiest pupil. However, when she got a new blazer, her whole life changed, and she even took over from her cousin, Sheila, as the most popular girl.' The fact that the blazer is magical doesn't really alter the message. In girls' comics, there's a strong fantasy element which, in many cases, can be related to girls' roles as seen in fairy stories. Apart from the fictional aspect of these comics, the magazine features take on a new importance, centring on pop, fashion and domestic interests (recipes begin to appear). With the first issue of Jinty, a new comic, a `free smiley bracelet' was given away and with the second issue `your own handy pocket-size hairbrush'. Although in these comics, there's often, in the strips, a stress on the pop and fashion world, it doesn't stand out to a great extent in the advertisements, which are often, for instance, levelled at stamp collectors. It isn't until we come to the related group of magazine comics for older girls that advertising reaches mind-battering proportions.

 23

Certain main themes, few in number, provide the material for nearly all the strips. One theme is to do with impersonation, disguise and mistaken identity. Another, though not peculiar to this group, of course, is theft and recovery. A third, which we saw appearing in the cartoon comics, draws upon the essentially sexist idea of tomboys and includes girls as sex objects, as well, while the fourth, which has many sub-divisions, is the largest group of all. If we think of this one under the general heading of misunderstood girls, that should make things easier, but under this heading we'll have to include matters such as undisclosed relationships, cruelly-treated orphans or wards with wicked guardians, the wrongfully accused and those with guilty secrets which lead to broken friendships, general hostility, and various kinds of blackmail. The last main theme is separable from the fourth, though it has obvious connections. It deals with girls in the power of someone else who are forced to work like slaves, usually at domestic chores.

A strange, restricted, psychological caricature emerges. Girls (and women) in these comics are, on the one hand, catty, spiteful and jealous, and on the other, sentimental, pathetic and romantic. It isn't a simple distinction between `goodies' and 'baddies' as, apparently, it's quite normal, even for `good' girls, to be spiteful, petty and mean at times. A consideration of some of the strips will illustrate the basic themes I've distinguished.

`Lisa - the Lonely Ballerina' from Debbie manages to include a good many of them all at once. Lisa's wrongfully accused of stealing, her mother's dead, she's `the daughter of a criminal' and is going blind, which threatens her career. A pathetic case, indeed. In `The Phantom Ballerina' from Bunty, there's someone who dances with, if not a broken heart, then a suspected `heart condition' which is secret, of course, and which has to be concealed at the medical. Lisa was threatened with a medical, too. The threatened medical was looming, for both girls, in the same week but then the two girls in question had another factor in common. They both were products of the D.C.Thomson empire. So is `The Sad Star' in Mandy but the title would seem to be something of an understatement if we read on in the issue of 23 March 1974. :

 

24

Orphan Annabel Richards, who was a child model, lived with her Aunt Flo and Uncle Fred Barlow and their two daughters, Celia and Sharon. The Barlows treated Annabel very harshly, and forced her to work like a slave. Aunt Flo used Annabel's love for Peppi, a puppy who belonged to her cousins, to make Annabel do exactly as she wanted. When Don Brand, Annabel's film producer, said that she would get no more work at his studio, and that he would arrange things so that no other studio gave her work, Aunt Flo became very angry at the thought of getting no more money.

This is the explanatory paragraph which normally appears at the beginning of instalments in a serial to put us in the picture. The first few exchanges between the participants make it even clearer how the emotional strings are being pulled (I've added the names) :

AUNT FLO : Give me the dog's leash, Sharon.

ANNABEL :(Thinks) Oh, Aunt Flo's going to beat me with Peppi's leash. I wish Peppi didn't have to watch. It's bound to upset him. (But the beating was not for Annabel !)

ANNABEL : NO ! NO ! Don't hurt Peppi ! Hit me instead ! I'm used to it ! PLEASE hit me !

AUNT FLO : I warned you that he'd suffer if you messed things up for us. This is only the start. Hold her still, Fred !

Fred holds Annabel while the dog is beaten.

ANNABEL :(Thinks) I can't bear to watch him suffer, or hear his screams !

PEPPi : YELP !

SHARON : Mum, she's closed her eyes. Force her to watch, mum !

25

As if this kind of thing wasn't enough, `next week', we're told, `Don Brand sets out to break Annabel'. The extracts from this strip give a good idea of the emotional atmosphere of the greater part of the strips in these comics. It's not only the squalid sentimentality which gives rise to concern but the fact that girls are so frequently seen to be acted upon, rather than acting, to be in passive, powerless situations where all they seem to be able to do is suffer, to the point of masochism. (Keeping up a long-established tradition, `Willa on Wheels' was running in Jinty and Lindy in the summer of r976. `Come on, Willa. Let's get you into your wheel-chair' said the first balloon in the r g June issue. `Horse from the Sea', a strip in the same issue, also has a girl in a wheel-chair.) There are a lot of strips in which, even more obviously than here, the girl is treated like a slave, for example, `The Circus Slave'[6] in Debbie, `Dora Dogsbody' in Jinty and `Wee Slavey' in Judy. The ultimate in this line of powerlessness is reached in `Trilby will be Tops !' in Bunty. In the issue of 23 March r974. we read :`Pat Trilby was being hypnotised by a mysterious woman, who wanted her to become a tennis champion using the name of Lydia Brown./Pat had arrived late at her cousin's wedding, because, unknown to her, she had been playing tennis.' The strip obviously derives from George du Maurier's extremely popular and successful novel, Trilby, published in 1894.. The whole psychological syndrome is both interesting and disturbing. It can clearly be related to the role which women have fallen into over a very long period in our society. The tendency is for them to have no autonomy, to speak of, to act as adjuncts to their husbands and to live for and through husbands and children. This, in turn, accounts for the emptiness felt by many women - especially when their families have grown up - and the possessiveness mothers exert over their children, of whatever age, and the havoc this causes. We can see it all happening in comics.

The first issue of Lindy, 2r June i975, is typical. Here we have a strip called `Pavement Patsy' in which Patsy and her sister, orphaned, suffer with their uncaring Uncle Mick and well-named Aunt Sadie. The strips in this issue contain eight suffering girls seven of whom are orphans or have one parent dead.

 26

.Three other girls might be described as struggling and there's one funny strip. One parent and a friend of another girl die in the comic and there are two scenes showing graves.

It's not only a case, however, of girls being invited to identify with a narrow, and unenviable, emotional range. We've already seen emerging some idea of the jobs presented to girls. Most of these - ballet-dancing, for instance - must remain in the world of fantasy for most girls, a fact understood, it appears, by the writer of yet another ballet strip, `Ballerina in Blue Jeans' from Tammy and Sandie. We see the writer reach out to grasp the dream :`Jessie Grubb, a tough East-ender, was found to be a natural ballet dancer, and was offered a contract with the Duveen Ballet Company.' Other occupations featured in girls' comics are : actress or, at least, someone in an important theatrical job; sports star or athletic champion; something to do with animals, especially horses; pop star; a model in the world of beauty or fashion and (more realisable, perhaps) nurse, teacher or law enforcement agent of some kind.

Close on the heels, or perhaps 'demi-pointes', of `Lisa - the Lonely Ballerina' comes `Daisy Dean - Little Beauty Queen'. She, although `a pupil at Madame Margot's school for young beauty queens', is, like Jessie Grubb, just an ordinary lass really and not above dropping an `h' or the odd `blimey !' However, she's definitely on the way up as her `no-good father' speaks out-and-out cockney. On 12 May r973, we left her, at the end of one strip, poised to enter the Little Super Miss Competition, having got over her disappointment at only coming third in the Cream Peach Soap Competition. We see Daisy, `hiding her disappointment behind her well-trained smile' at the very regal `crowning ceremony'. We are allowed to share her thoughts, however, behind the well-trained smile: `Only third ... behind that ginger one with freckles and that toffee-nosed kid with a mole on her chin!' [Ellipsis in original]. By the end of the strip, though, she'd recovered, after seeing her face on advertisement hoardings everywhere, finding that everyone was recognising her in the street and discovering that she liked it. By 23 Marcha year later, Daisy had entered her first competition in the USA.

27

In the issue of Debbie of this date, there are two ballet strips and five strips in which horses appear with varying importance. `Kay of Horseshoe School' is a typical example of horse fiction. Kay is `a junior groom at the famous Silver Horseshoe Riding School' and saves a rather unruly colt, whom she understands, from being put down. Other animals are important in girls' comics - we've already seen the emotional involvement between Annabel and Peppi - but horses come in for the greatest attention and, of course, a whole category of children's fiction is based upon this interest. The occasional story, usually a serial, appears in this group of comics, though not more than one story per comic. There are three stories in the seven comics I have but, out of these, two are horse stories. When the love of animals takes the form of an expression of hatred for fox-hunting, however, as in two strips, we can see this feeling put to good use - which is not to say we need forget they do worse things to people.

It's my impression that strips featuring girls in law-enforcement roles are becoming more important. This would, at any rate, be understandable, given the prevailing political climate in this country. Usually, however, girls are not presented with ordinary police roles : they invariably have special functions of some kind and there's often a link with the wider, international scene where foreign potentates are protected and the natives subdued, molested or even just infected with a sort of pox Britannica. In this area, the girls' comics approach those for boys in which this attitude is much more prevalent. Mandy of 23 March ₁₉₇₄ provides two representative examples. The exposition for 'Babyface Bobbie' informs us :

 

Because she looked much younger than she was, policewoman Roberta Shaw was known as 'Babyface Bobbie', and was given a special job. She had to become a `pupil' at Rowdown Academy so that she could act as a secret bodyguard to Karen Kronor, the daughter of the president of Translavia, who was also at the school. Several attempts had been made to kidnap Karen, so when a new assistant gardener came to work at the school, Bobbie was suspicious of him.

28

Of another strip, `Fay Fearless', which is a weird mixture of ridiculous and more serious elements, we read :

Fay Fearless, brilliant, beautiful and brave, worked in Paragon Stores as an under-cover agent for a secret Government organisation known as S.O.S.

When an American millionaire visited the store, Fay had the job of selling him some African safari equipment

As a result of this, Mr Goldrush, the American millionaire, offers Fay a job as his bodyguard, at a hundred dollars a day plus expenses. She accepts on the advice of her contact in S.O.S. who explains, `Goldrush is helping to finance a development project in Africa which certain unfriendly nations would like to prevent. Our government can't afford anything nasty happening to him.'

What a beautiful paradigm of British foreign policy in the third world ! All the major elements are there : the American alignment, big business, the `development project'. If it's the development of the `fierce natives' which is in question, they don't seem very appreciative as, in answer to a pre-arranged call from the enemy agent, they beat their war-drums and attack Goldrush and Fay, brandishing their spears and shields and crying 'umjuju'. Later, according to tradition - in children's fiction, at least, if not in Africa - arrangements are made to feed Goldrush and Fay to the crocodiles. However, the traditional delay takes place so that they can be set free by a friend, though why help from outside, so to speak, should have been necessary is hard to understand as Fay had previously dealt with a gorilla, a lion (by blowing sneezing-powder into its face from her powder compact), an elephant and a buffalo.

 29

This kind of political indoctrination has always gone on incomics. How constant the features are can be seen from `Nurse Daring', which was running in June and School Friend in 1969. The rubric at the head of the strip on 25 May tells us, `Lisa Daniels was nurse to the sons of the president of Santa Rica. The country was in a state of revolution, so she was accompanying the children in a car, driven by Captain Manuel, to Epnrosa airfield. There, a plane was to take the little boys to safety. But on their way some rebels appeared.' One of the rebels looks just like Fidel Castro. Here, the political alignment that readers are invited to identify with is all too clear and the fact that it's associated with a nurse engaged in the emotional activity of looking after children makes it so much the more powerful. (See illustration.) Such political orientation is thrust even more upon the reader in the group of comics for boys but we might note, in passing, that it's not altogether absent even from cartoon comics. A very similar example but with aristocratic and scientific trimmings, occurred in a strip running in the cartoon comic, Topper on 18 January of the same year: `Professor Jeremy Thatcher has invented a fantastic flying machine. It is called the Sky Shark and it is crewed by the Professor and his niece and nephew, Jill and John Thatcher. The Thatchers work with the Department for International Emergencies - DIE for short - and they are now flying out on a special mission to South America.' The first three balloons ('Somewhere over the Andes Mountains') put us in the picture, in a rather clumsy fashion

30

 `Jill, John, you're quite clear what our job is?'

`Yes, Uncle. Lord Chaldale of the Foreign Office is visiting Cheru - something to do with British aid ...'

`. .. But revolutionaries, led by Buvelo, are active in Cheru. Therefore we're to escort Lord Chaldale around. He's to travel in the Sky Shark.' [Ellipses in original.]

As can be seen, themes in girls' comics merge into social roles which, in turn, melt into a basic ideology. This is as obvious on the home front as it is in Africa or South America, and it's now time to consider some of the main aspects in further detail.

Class-consciousness is quite rampant in comics for girls and enters into and overlaps with the wealth-fantasy which was distinguished in the cartoon comics. In fact, there was more than a trace of class-fantasy in `The Toffs and the Toughs' in Whizzer and Chips, which becomes far more overt, for instance, in a strip in Jinty, `The Snobs and the Scruffs'. Of course, the scruffs win. In numerous strips, the heroine is a ward of, is befriended by, the companion of or the servant to, aristocrats or titled people. Here again, there are overlaps. `Wee Slavey', for instance, whom we last saw in a masochistic context, is 'Nellie Perks, a young maid in the Victorian household of Sir William Selby Smythe' while Prudence, in `A Piano for Prudence' from Mandy, has been given a home by Sir Bertram Thornber and Lady Sylvia. This story's set in I880 but servant heroines are not a thing of the past as is shown by the present-day setting of `No Tears for Molly' in Tammy and Sandie, in which Molly shows loyalty towards her employers, Lord and Lady Stanton. This perhaps merely emphasises the total acceptance of a hierarchical society based on wealth and privilege, the lesson being that, while the titled upper classes have the wealth and privilege, it's the poor and downtrodden who are virtuous. Also, upper-class wickedness in the bad old days is always more acceptable as distance lends disenchantment to the view. To my mind, it's a strip such as `The Children's Champion' from Bunty which clinches the matter. The kind of society we've

31been considering is presented as an unchangeable law of nature and it's charity which makes the wheels go round: `Eighteenyear-old Hester Langley left her wealthy parents to live in the East End of London, where she tried to help the numerous little waifs without home or parents. With her was her maid, Polly.' This strip, too, is set in Victorian times and, in fact, in the issue of 23 March 1974, draws heavily upon Oliver Twist. When Hester's bag is stolen, with all the money and jewels in it which she was going to sell in order to help the children, a local workman gets together his `mates' and they go round with their carts collecting, first, some furniture for the shed in which Hester is looking after the children and then some vegetables to make soup. He's rewarded with a kiss on the cheek from Hester and the words, `You're a dear, good man, and as soon as I can, I will pay for the food' to which he replies, `No call to do that, Missy. Glad to 'elp, we was. Not many nobs would bother themselves about the waifs the way you do.'

Fantasies about status, about rising in the social hierarchy, can be seen, too, in the many strips in which working-class girls become pupils at exclusive public schools. This is a fictional echo of the scholarships many public schools now give to `bright' local education authority pupils, to stave off demands for the abolition of such schools on the grounds that they sell privilege. Where girl heroines in the comics don't win some kind of scholarship, charity is often involved (there are many mysterious benefactors) as we see in `Poor Polly Flinders' from June and Pixie of I I May 1974: `A kind old lady is helping Polly Gray with extra lessons outside school. Polly wants to win a proper place at the snob boarding school where she's kept out of charity, while her mother (who works at the school) is in hospital.' It's worth remarking that the `snob' boarding school is seen as desirable.

By looking at the social attitudes implicit and explicit in these comics, we can, I think, approach some understanding of what seems an incredible fact - that most people grow up accepting a manifestly unjust society, unacceptable morally in its most basic assumptions. In the first place, they are kept

32

ignorant of any alternatives or even of any understanding of their own society. Then, there are the myths and illusions which blur the real issues but which are nowhere more obvious or compelling than in comics. Some of these we've seen at work : charity, which oils the wheels of the system, and which is so useful because it alleviates, at the same time, the distress of the poor and the guilt of the rich; the `ladder' concept of society, which holds out the hope that, through `opportunity' and `competition', anyone can succeed, ignoring the fact that most people can't be on the top rung, nor win the race; then, there's moral virtue which the unfortunate and the unsuccessful usually have - their reward, presumably, is in the hereafter - and, lastly, there's luck. Treasure-finding is important in this context but it belongs, on the whole, to areas of children's fiction other than comics. We do have, however, in June and Pixie of 11 May 1974, a lucky pony who brings a house and job to his 'hard-up' owners and in one strip that used to run in Sandie, a workingclass girl inherited a butler.

After what will probably be quite a long course of this kind of fare, girls are ready to move on to another distinct, but related group of publications, which includes such titles as Romeo, Mirabelle, Pink and Tina, Jackie and Diana. These seem to be aimed principally at girls in their later teens and since, at the upper end of this range, it's scarcely possible to consider them as children any longer and since, in this group, we see fictional elements increasingly giving way to magazine material, it wouldn't be appropriate to spend a lot of time on them here. Romeo, however, provides a kind of link with the group of comics just dealt with as it consists, predominantly, of `love stories in pictures'. An extract from 'Jo and Co' of 11 May 1974 (put into dramatic script form) will give some idea of language, attitudes and assumptions. The setting is, apparently, a flat shared by three girls of about eighteen or nineteen years old. One of them seems to be a black girl, judging largely from the `afro' hair style, though her face (in a black and white strip) is as white as the faces of the other girls :

 33

(Jo's up to something and Mary and Haze are going mad trying to find out what ...

There had been a severe fella famine at the flat all week, but even so Jo was acting very queer ...)

MARY : I know things are bad but are they that desperate?

Look at her - reading a book !

HAZE : Didn't know she could ... (Even the book was queer. . .)

MARY : Since when was she interested in hedging and

ditching?

Jo : I just happen to feel like reading it, see, on account

of I have this brilliant intellectual brain, hungering and

thirsting for learning 'n' culture.

MARY and HAZE : Oh yeah?

(But she started thirsting for a cup of coffee and laid the book down.)

Jo : Don't go losing my place !

The following exchanges take place between Mary and Haze :

HAZE : It's a library book, so ...

MARY : So ... the inevitable conclusion that our brilliant,

intellectual brains are led to is ... somewhere around,

there's a library with a super-hunky librarian.

HAZE : Right on !

(So ... the man-power situation being at such an all-time low ... )

MARY : What I say is ... there's nowt like a good book. .. HAZE : Especially if a dishy hunk is flogging it ...

Although they are divided on whether they are actually going to try to 'hi-jack this hunk of Jo's', they investigate the library, only to draw a blank. Later, they are even more mystified by further strange antics on the part of Jo - such as making a huge pot of stew and peeling lots of potatoes. The others conclude that `some dream man's coming for a meal' but later Jo vanishes with the food and they don't know where she's gone. We see her turn up at the flat below where she's greeted by three boys :

34

Jo : There y'are, fellas. A three course meal all piping

hot and ready for you after your student's (sic) meeting. I 1ST STUDENT : Man we're sure lucky finding this

basement flat with an angel like you upstairs doing our

cooking.

2ND STUDENT : And changing our library books for us. 3RD STUDENT : You're just the greatest ! (The meal was perfect, except that ...) Jo : No ... my two flat mates couldn't join us. They

must've had dates, because they both got dolled up and

went rushing out (Thinks) and that's true. They did !

I ST STUDENT : That's too bad.

3RD STUDENT : They're both gorgeous.

2ND STUDENT : Maybe you'll fix a get-together for us soon. (Maybe. . .)

Jo :(Thinks) Or maybe I won't. Why should I share my secret horde of gorgeous hunks with these two man-eaters? [Ellipses in original]

 

Future instalments seem fairly predictable, especially since one of the boys is (apparently) black and is probably, therefore, marked down for Haze. Even though the strip here is presented in jocular fashion, the messages come over quite clearly : apart from the obsession with romance, books are obviously for squares, or for students - not for girls, anyway. Their role is quite clear, though it's perhaps not so obvious who is the more degraded, Jo or the boys, by the sex-role stereotyping on which the story focuses.

Other strips in these papers are concerned almost entirely with boy-meets-girl romances often in an atmosphere of pop and fashion or against a holiday background. Often, one of the pair gets over a broken heart in the course of a story and the last frame, by tradition, contains the embrace. The advertising is overwhelming and as it often takes a comic strip form, and as the people in the fictional parts resemble those in the advertisements (as sometimes on commercial television and in the Sunday colour supplements) it's difficult to know where one thing starts

35

and the other stops in the general mish-mash, though this is probably the intention, anyway. There are advertisements for the RAF and army nursing services, because girls care for people and look after them, but the stress is, overwhelmingly, on fashion and cosmetics, how to package oneself for the romance market, how to meet boys, how to conduct oneself on dates (but the odd horse still keeps coming in here and there), how to behave - what to do - to be accepted and sought after. In Mirabelle, it seemed that, at one time, about seven members of the Osmond family were selling themselves and the mixture was getting very thin indeed. There's the occasional story along Woman's Own lines and eventually girls, or women, can move easily on to such magazines, perhaps after a course of the lovesecrets, true romance or confessional type of fiction usually published as booklets containing a single story, often entirely in pictures. All these comics and magazines for girls and women are, in fact, in their entirety, advertising a way of life. They are almost all produced in the business interests of two firms acting within a society which manipulates people by exploiting their minds.

It's now time to consider boys' comics including the 'comicbooks' imported in vast quantities from the United States. The devices noted in cartoon and girls' comics are very much to the fore here, too, though with a shift in emphasis. Electronic brains and computers or, for instance, `a tiny ray device capable of shrinking any living thing' make their appearance. Some familiar properties are also carried over : currently in The Hornet there's a boy with `a remarkable sense of balance'. Some of the themes already noted in other comics, together with associated attitudes and values, are found here, too, often much developed and often with different emphasis. A good idea of general direction can be picked up from a strip such as `Gorgeous Gus the First' in Victor of 30 ^March 1974. Sometimes, as here, a strip will contain a cluster of themes and interests as though the writer had tried to press as many buttons as possible at the same time :

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Gorgeous Gus, the Earl of Boote and Redburn Rovers' star player, had succeeded to the crown of Aba Dabba, an oil-rich state in the Middle East. The Elders of Aba Dabba were aware that there were men, such as the villainous Mister Henry Zero, who were determined to kill or kidnap Gus. Because of this they sent over to England as a bodyguard the ferocious Ben Al Auf, who turned out to be a brilliant goalkeeper.

 

Here, we have status, sport, wealth, menace and political and national alignment. Sport, especially football, is very important, Scorcher and Score being devoted entirely to the game. It's interesting to note that a strip in this comic, `Billy's Boots', has a familiar ring: `Billy Dane found an ancient pair of football boots that used to belong to old-time soccer star, ^"DEAD-SHOT^" Keen, and in some strange way the boots enabled him to play in Dead-Shot's style.' Apart from understandable interests such as this, however, it's possible to distinguish three major preoccupations in boys' comics. These are the menace, the superman or power theme, and war. Even these can be further reduced to a preoccupation with the conflict between a clearlydistinguished `good' and a just as obviously delineated `evil' resulting in `goodies' and 'baddies' who can be readily identified as such from the drawings. You just have to look at their faces.

The theme of menace often has a science-fiction base and takes the form of the mad and/or criminal scientist who threatens the world, or civilisation, or the United States (the three are often seen as more or less the same) with some deadly power. Naturally, the three major preoccupations often overlap and this character often carries national and racial characteristics. Earlier, we met Manfred Kleine with his instant-growth serum and his huge, mentally-retarded fish : the `fantastic criminal master-mind' or the `fiendish master-crook' will quite possibly look oriental. Also, Superman, as we might expect, often gets pitted against these evil-doers : in fact, he's often the only one who can cope. British comics are more clearly aimed

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at children, whereas the supermen operate in an adult world, to judge by size and age. Sometimes, however, to assist reader identification at a younger age level, a device is used whereby the superman has a juvenile assistant such as Batman's companion, Robin. The focus is slightly different in, for instance, `Red Star Robinson', `the famous young crime-fighter', from The Hotspur. He has `an evil genius of science' to contend with but in the strip, too, there's `a mysterious super-scientist who waged constant war against international crime'. It's just as well to remember that not all scientists are evil - they just happen to be foreign, or warped, or both, most of the time. The menace often comes from outer space or another planet and the conflict in these cases is clearly at the superman level. Thus, especially in United States' publications, a comic book will usually stage a single colossal encounter in which the reader is not only set reeling at the action but at the ceaseless battering of superlatives. In spite of all the scientific gadgetry used, it's interesting how much space is given over to the old-fashioned fist-fight and especially to its most prominent feature, the sock on the jaw. It's not surprising, however, as, within the simplistic good-and-evil framework, the material of these comics is concerned with the exercise of power in its most obvious form, violence. This perhaps explains, to some extent, the continued interest in crime at an ordinary human level where it's normally presented as a menace to society (as a whole). Here, violence will obviously occur in a more personal way : the reader is constantly shown people hurting or killing others. `Agents' of one form or another, counter-intelligence or detective, fighting the menace from without or within, provide a convenient source of action here. In the first issue of Danger Man (1966), a British comic book, out of three hundred and fifty-nine pictures, ninety-five (on the strictest interpretation) show people suffering hurt or pain from physical attack. The rest of the pictures, with very few exceptions, show the results of such attacks - threatening attitudes, hold-ups and the like.

So far, I've said little about the hero or heroine in comics but, in fact, I've been dealing with them, in one form or another, all the time. In comics, they fulfill the same purpose as

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they do in all other literature - they represent imaginary vehicles which the reader can identify with and by means of which she or he can experience, in imagination, some kind of extension of everyday life or undergo some kind of fantasy. Supermen are presented as god-like heroes and belong, clearly, to the realm of fantasy. At the same time, it's impossible to say just where fantasy begins and I doubt whether it's very useful to try. As far as fictional characters are concerned, who's to say just where superhuman attributes begin in a list such as Hamlet, Hector, Tarzan, Hercules, Thor and Superman? Matters are only clear at each end of the list. It seems to me that what the characters do and what they represent are much more important issues to consider. Superman, the most typical of the costumed super-hero, was the creation of Jerome Siegel and Joe Schuster and first appeared in the United States in Action Comics in June i938 with the prefatory information: `Just before the doomed planet, Krypton, exploded to fragments, a scientist placed his infant son within an experimental rocketship, launching it towards earth!' Brought up by the couple who find him, he hides his extraordinary powers in the guise of Clark Kent, a hopeless and inadequate reporter. This dualism is typical of the supermen only it's usually the inadequate who's the `real' half of the pair. Although this fact has been pointed out as significant by Jules Feiffer and others, it doesn't seem to me to make any difference, in a psychological sense. At the end of the first Superman comic strip, we are told: `Clark decided he must turn his titanic strength into channels that would benefit mankind and so was created SUPERMAN champion of the oppressed, the physical marvel who had sworn to devote his existence to helping those in need!' To change, Clark merely had to put on his Superman costume and although the oppressed and needy seldom seem much in evidence, a kind of pattern begins to emerge here. Captain Marvel, before he lost a lawsuit over plagiarism to Superman (who was for once working through the normal processes of the law) had a 'sacred duty to defend the poor and helpless, right wrongs and crush.

 

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evil everywhere.' He had to say `Shazam' to change from Billy Batson, a young lad. Batman is Bruce Wayne who has trained himself scientifically, after seeing his parents murdered by a thief, `to avenge their deaths by spending the rest of [his] life warring on all criminals'. He is `the avenger of evil' adopting his bat disguise `to strike terror into their hearts'. The Flash came by his powers through a scientific accident. His original self was inadequate at football and therefore hopeless with girls. Then, of the many others within the tradition, we have the Spectre `whose mission is to rid this world of crime' and Hawkman, `the winged phantom of the night who from time immemorial has fought the cause of justice against the force of evil'. In one Hawkman illustration, we see the force of evil in the person of a black, turbaned man and the cause of justice, supposedly, represented by a girl :`the crazed easterner', we read, `leaps for a young, blonde girl'.

These super heroes were all born in the United States, of course, and curiously signalled how that country was to see its role in international politics following the second world war. John F. Kennedy's words might have ballooned from the mouth of a comic book super hero: `The cause of all mankind is the cause of America ... we are responsible for the maintenance of freedom all around the world.'

The trend of the superhero shows no signs of abating. Rather, in recent years, it's developed and taken on new forms largely through the Marvel Comics group and their chief editor, Stan Lee. Though there's been a movement towards the grotesque - notably with creations such as the Human Torch, the Amazing Spider Man and the Incredible Hulk - the essential features remain the same. Even the Amazing Spider Man has, for an alter ego, an unsure teenager who has no success with girls. Few fictional creations can compare with Superman in terms of commercial success. He has spread across the `western' world, at least, and he and his descendants have a vast following, amongst certain adult groups such as United States' servicemen and, if we are to believe George Perry, writing in The Penguin Book of Comics, amongst students in the United States. Since

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such comic books are sold in vast numbers in Britain and since, in any case, there are, thematically, strong links between them and certain important preoccupations in comics produced in Britain (Superman, Tarzan and Marvel comics are all, in any case, produced here on licence) it'll be necessary to examine the values found in them.

Jules Feiffer's silly, but greatly significant, attitude (of course, comic books are escapist and degrading - that's why we like them) is a starting-point rather than the conclusion he seems to think it is. His approach to comics follows the formula typical of most commentators in the field in recent years, such as Carlton Waugh, Don Thompson and Dick Lupoff, Perry and (to a very much smaller degree) Daniels : a formula which can be summed up as history-plus-childhood-nostalgia. Daniels, in Comix: a History o f Comic Books in America does accept that comics have meaning and influence, a position accepted, too, by R.Reitberger and W.Fuchs in Comics: Anatomy o f a MassMedium a book unfortunately marred, on the one hand, by prejudice against `East block countries' (anyone who could object to the artistically-superb and humane Czech comics must really have, mentally, shut up shop) and, on the other hand, by lack of evidence in support of assertions. Nevertheless, these two writers don't fail to realise that comics are of social and psychological importance :

Comics, together with the other mass media, are a substitute for genuine folk-lore and culture and have developed into a self-perpetuating institution, an integral part of the American Way of Life. Of all the mass media, comics mirror the American Collective Subconscious most faithfully, and we know, without McLuhan having to tell us, that comics in turn manipulate and exploit the subconscious.[7]

More evidence is needed, however, and it's only when we come to Gershon Legman in Love and Death that we begin to have some penetrating insights into comic-book figures and their social and psychological significance. The importance of the

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comic books in maintaining the national status quo by building fantasy upon feelings of inadequacy and by diverting frustration against authority on to acceptable hate-figures is put forward with force and persuasion, while the fascist overtones of the superheroes are stressed :`Instead of teaching obedience to law, Superman glorifies the "right" of the individual to take that law into his own hands ... Superman ... is really peddling a philosophy of "hooded justice" in no way distinguishable from that of Hitler and the Ku Klux Klan.' Furthermore, Gershon Legman tells us that, in the face of terrible menace, `only the Nazi-Nietzschean Ubermensch, in his provincial apotheosis as Superman, can save us'. This writer draws attention, also, to the uniforms, riding-boots and insignia of the supermen and to the `undercurrent of homosexuality and sado-masochism'.

I don't think that I'd go quite as far as Legman in seeing Superman in terms of full-blown fascism. However, I do think that it's a question of degree rather than of kind and that it's only the ingredients, and their amounts, which differ. As far as homosexuality is concerned (the sado-masochism seems obvious enough) this is a question most often raised in the case of Batman and Robin. I'm not sure that it matters so much, anyway, and the presence of Robin can, as already noted, be seen as a device for securing greater reader-identification on the part of younger readers. What seems quite clear, and notwithstanding Wonder Woman, is the general dislike for women shown by the superheroes in their pervasively `masculine' world of power, muscle and aggression. Women mean weakness, as Samson came to realise. With regard to fascism, the common factor seems to be, overwhelmingly, that might is right though another factor that has, apparently, escaped notice so far is the close correlation between the historical development of fascism and the literary development of the superheroes. Even Superman himself, in 1938, was not the first of the line as Lee Falk created the Phantom, complete with black mask and purple tights, in 1936.

The stance, that it all means nothing at all, is increasingly hard to defend, in comics as in other areas of children's literature. One day, a few years ago, pursuing my studies of comic

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in the British Museum Reading Room, I received back an application slip I'd put in for a book with the advice that, since the book was in a restricted category, I'd have to have the slip signed by the superintendent. Written on the slip was The Seduction of the Innocent by F.Wertham, a book, as I understood it, on comics. I protested that there must have been some mistake - this was a book about comics, not a rare or obscene book - and I thought that they must have been misled, rather naively, by the title. However, no one actually knew the book so I got the slip signed and was then directed to sit at a special place in the library to read it. I soon saw why it had been placed in a special category. It had illustrations in it from United States horror comics. One showed two men, bound, being dragged on ropes behind a car travelling along a rough road. The two men in the car were making wisecracks about grinding faces. Another showed a nude girl on an operating-theatre table being drained of blood while a third showed a gang of mobsters playing baseball after a shoot-out with a rival gang. They were using a human leg for the bat and a head for the ball while the bases were marked by various other portions of the anatomy.

It's a part of history now, in a sense : how Wertham, in his work as senior psychiatrist at a clinic for delinquent and maladjusted children in New York, became convinced that comic books had a bad influence on the minds and behaviour of his patients; how, after seven years of work on the subject, Wertham published his massive attack (mainly on what had come to be known as `horror comics') in _1954; how his book had an enormous moral impact; how the comic books' publishers invoked freedom of the press in defence of their products; how Wertham was threatened with violence in a letter distributed to the publishers concerned; how dealers who refused the worst comics were beaten up; how the publishers reacted by making (their own) Comics Code and by printing seals of approval on comics. They already had, as Wertham revealed, educationists and psychologists on their payrolls whose job it was, when necessary, to testify as to the worthiness of their employers' products. Even now, the battle reverberates, Daniels seeing

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Wertham as part of the McCarthy witch-hunting movement, in spite of the fact that his aims and concerns were wholly different, the dates don't tally very well, and both France, in 1949, and Italy, in 1952, reacting against the flood of United States horror comics into Europe after the war and, presumably, uninfluenced by McCarthyism, had passed laws to deal with the matter. Britain followed with the Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act in ¹955.

Wertham, amongst other things, had the following to say about the material he studied: `either [children] fantasy themselves as supermen, with the attendant prejudices against the submen, or it makes them submissive and receptive to the blandishments of strong men who will solve all their social problems for them - by force'. And `The atmosphere of crime comic books is unparalleled in the history of children's literature of any time or any nation. It is a distillation of viciousness.' He quotes Hitler's speech to his generals on 22 August 1939 at Berchtesgaden on the treatment of the population in Poland : `It is not a question of right, but of winning. Close your heart against compassion. Brutality does it. The stronger is in the right. Greatest hardness. Follow your opponent till he is crushed' and remarks :

a large part of the violence and sadism in comic books is practised by individuals or on individuals who are depicted as inferior, subhuman beings. In this way children can indulge in fantasies of violence as something permissible.

On an increasingly topical note, Wertham comments, `the law enforcers are criminals in reverse'. But, although Wertham opened up vitally important questions which still have to be answered today, he didn't draw the necessary social and economic conclusions from his material even though one editor told him, `We are business men who can't be expected to protect maladjusted children' missing the point, that Wertham was concerned with some of the possible causes of maladjustment, or implicitly concerned to protect children against maladjusted business men.

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Another major preoccupation in boys' comics is war, though this clearly overlaps with the themes of the menace and the supermen. The second world war still rages, unabated, in the pages of comics though, occasionally, we have glimpses of other wars, as in the case of Baron von Reichs-Pudding. The national and racial stereotypes already noted in other groups of comics are here carried further, to the accompaniment of many cries of `Britisher pigdogs', `Himmel !' 'Banzai' and the like. Captain Hercules Hurricane, leader of a Royal Marine Commando Unit, who's been blasting his way through the pages of Valiant and through the ranks of the `krauts' for five years now, to my knowledge," provides a good link with the cartoon comics, stylistically, with his enormous arms and chest in proportion to the rest of his body, his enormous body in proportion to his head and his enormous jowl in proportion to his cranium. Here he is on 23 March r974, exchanging a balloon with the Germans :

Surrender, Englanders ! You vos outnumbered !

SURRENDER, MY FLAMIN' FOOT, you sausage-noshing, square-headed creep ! The word's not even in my thumpin' vocabulary !

Actually, there aren't many words in his vocabulary at all, but this still seems to be something of a contradiction. It might be argued that Maggot Malone, Hurricane's `pint-sized cockney batman', comes in for much the same sort of abuse, being referred to in one speech as a`twitterin' little twerp' and a `mussel-brained microbe'. However, it's clear that Malone is an inferior (Hurricane's superior officer is addressed as `Sir') and quite clear where the dividing-line comes and where the Captain's loyalties lie. In the same strip, the pair are temporary prisoners of war and - with a`SWIIING !' and a`THWAAM !' - the enraged Hurricane has occasion to deal, in typical fashion, with a guard who mistreats Malone :`there's nothin' to stop me beltin' any blisterin' Berlin boot-blacker that picks on me little shipmate ! Take that, you cabbage-cruncher !' Always hovering

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on the brink of a`ragin' fury', Hurricane sends his enemies flying in all directions when he really lets loose.

Captain Hurricane Loses His Temper

Valiant has a circulation of about half a million and is published by IPC. According to John Sanders, the editorial director of their juvenile magazines, `Captain Hurricane' is the favourite story in the comic. Sanders, as reported by Peter Dunn in a Sunday Times article of 24 February r974, has some interesting remarks to make about war in comics :

It's part of British humour that we knock other nationalities ... It's an irrefutable fact that the second world war is today the most popular feature in boys' comics.. . it may well be because TV is giving it so much exposure ... If I could do anything to change this trend within the commercial structures by which I have to abide, I would. In fact I do that as far as possible but if your readers are constantly clamouring for something, what else can you do?

There are several points here that need attention. The first statement is undoubtedly true. Perhaps it's time we found other

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targets for our laughter, as most other nations seem to have done. Perhaps we need to think, too, of the diflerence between affectionate laughter and contemptuous laughter, a difference emerging in a rudimentary way in. the `Captain Hurricane' strip referred to above. This whole matter, of course, is linked to the obsession with the second world war, correctly noted by Sanders. It might be that there's a kind of national nostalgia going on now for past `greatness' but, if so, it's a pity that the young people of the country are being imbued with an ideology which will so cripple them in the world in which they will grow up. Television is only a part of this whole complex, not the cause of it, and the line of militaristic aggression stretches back through the whole imperial period, with its associated attitudes of contempt for and superiority towards other peoples. Sanders' `commercial' argument we've heard before, in a United States context, and as for the clamour for war stories, it simply must be a fact that people are not actually born that way.

While the obsession with the second world war is quite clear from this group of comics, and is even clearer from the related Picture Library group to be touched upon presently, it's worth noting that, out of five war strips running in The Hotspur of 16 March r974, only one deals with this war. `The Water Bottle Bombardiers', a strip in the series `Young British Heroes', gives a good idea of the colonial context of many a comic strip. The whole thing, in fact, could have taken place in the pages of The Boys' Own Paper in 1890. In fact, it might well have done. The reader is promised `Thrills galore in the battle for India's North-West Frontier' and told that `Turbaned terrors guard the walls of the pass !' We are given the prefatory information :`In the days when the Honourable East India Company had its own army, many of the officers were very young. Lieutenant Harry Lumsden was only 17 when, in 1846, he was given the task of clearing the Huzara country.' Naturally, we start with the usual half-dozen assumptions involving questions like who has a right to be where and doing what to whom. As so often, it's what is unexpressed and merely taken for granted that's so powerful as indoctrination. In the sixth

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form at school, I took a whole history paper on `British India' in the course of which no questions of the kind indicated were ever raised. In the strip, Lumsden is the only white man, leading `loyal' troops to defeat `tribesmen'. The Wizard of the following week has two second world war strips, one set in Burma and one in Australia and both featuring the `Japs'. The same issue, however, has `The Story of King Solomon's Mines' in picture-strip form.

However, the trend seems clear as is shown by Warlord, a comic which started in autumn i974.. Here, out of eight strips and one story, seven are concerned with the second world war. Navy, army and air force, together with marines and fleet air arm are all represented, and Japanese and Germans alternate in the strips as enemies. Battle, which started in spring 1975, is similar but even more specialised. All seven strips in it are set in the second world war and in six of them the Germans are the enemy. According to Perry, each comic had a circulation of 200,00o by February i976.

Boys interested in war stories can move on to booklets such as the Commando series of `War Stories in Pictures' (I have no. 836) published by D.C.Thomson at 6p. IPC publish sixteen titles per month, eight in the `Battle Picture Library' and eight in the `War Picture Library'. Usually, each booklet of about 7 inches by 52 inches or slightly less, contains a single story lasting for sixty-four or sixty-five pages at two or three frames per page. The pictures are black and white, in a naturalistic style, and the story is carried on in a mixture of balloons and captions. A number of other publishers, such as Top Sellers Ltd. (I have no. 85 in their `Pocket War Library'), have found the second world war a profitable business. Edward Bensberg, the editor of the IPC series just mentioned (if IPC seem to be getting all the attention here, remember that D.C.Thomson don't talk) holds an opinion similar to that of his colleague, Sanders, on the question of the influence of television. Reported in an article by Colin Smith in the Observer colour supplement, Bensberg said that the series were intended for children of ten to fourteen but that there was a large adult readership, most of

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them, apparently, and not surprisingly, amongst the armed forces. He saw the series as consisting of character stories merely with a war setting - not about the war as such, not particularly anti-German and not political. It should be remembered, too, that several United States publications of a similar kind are available in this country, as well as their other war-comics in the usual format of one-sixteenth of a sheet of newsprint, in which the Vietnam war against the `gooks' and the 'Charlies' was carried on in considerable detail.

Details of the grislier aspects of war, however - the blood and guts, the torn limbs, burning bodies and torture and rape - are not shown. Perhaps it would be better if they were. In comics, war is often presented as a game in which nobody gets seriously hurt, rather as in `Captain Hurricane', though this attitude was made even more explicit in a strip running in recent times in Tiger: `Charlie Champ, the World War Two soldier . . . fought his battles with sports equipment.' In the issue of 7 July t973, he deals with a crowd of German soldiers by knocking them out with tennis balls `served' from his racquet. It just takes five tennis balls to put the `jerries' out of action. This attitude to war is one way of avoiding the reality and it's one undoubtedly adopted by practising servicemen quite often. A major I knew talked about booby-trapping in just this spirit - if you were clever at the game and tricked your opponent you won. On the other hand, war is presented in comics as affording opportunities for glory and heroism. This is by far the commoner of the two approaches, it increases with the age group of the readers and it's the only approach in the war-picture, booklet type of comic. In this kind of story, the focus is often on a single combatant who is presented as afraid or as having lost his nerve at the beginning and who, in the course of action and often through devotion to a friend, shows that really he has outstanding courage. This is a common theme in both United States and British publications.

The name-calling, already noted, is important in reducing the enemy to sub-human status. Killing another human being is one thing but killing a `dirty yellow rat' (the `yellow' is the

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racist bit) or, as in a `Pocket Western' booklet, `red skunks' and `varmints' is somewhat different and must be a whole lot easier. This is a process we can observe in any war and lack of imagination and political ignorance can assist it.

Since there are people who believe that what children read has no effect on them, it's as well to recall that some research has been carried out in some of the areas we've been considering. An article, `What do children learn from war comics?' by Nicholas Johnson was published in New Society on 7 July 1966. Having noted strong agreement amongst sixty primary schoolchildren concerning their national preferences, he went on :

How is it that primary schoolchildren have come to agree about the relative merits of various countries? Who tells them that England, Australia, America and France are to be liked, while Russia, Japan, China, Germany and India are to be disliked? The answer must lie largely in what parents, teachers and other adults tell the children, and, of course, this source is a difficult one to investigate. When we turn to the mass media, however, it becomes possible to analyse the content of the material presented, and to evaluate the effect of the media by comparing children exposed to it with those who are not.

The whole article is very instructive, but the results of testing and analysis, and the conclusion, must suffice here :

Comparison ... between children who read Boys' or War comics (27 children) and the others (33 children) is very striking. The pattern of differences is exactly as we would predict when comparing people more and less concerned with the antagonisms of the second world war. Notice that the enemy nations, Germany, Japan and Italy, are liked less by the children who read War or Boys' comics while the allies, America, Australia and France, are liked more. Russia, India and China, which do not appear in the comics as involved in the war, show the smaller differences in preference between the two groups of children.

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When we consider the size of the sample used in this experiment and the wide variety of uncontrolled influences which distinguish and differentiate the children composing this sample, the differences in preference associated with the readership of certain kinds of comics ... are made to seem even more suggestive. It seems likely that the effect of readership of war material by young children is far from trivial. It may, of course, also be long lasting.

And this name-calling, this national stereotyping, this hatred of foreigners, this obsession with power, violence and war is found nowhere so much as in comics published in the United States and in Britain, the United States having the edge when it comes to aggression and a crazed fixation on power. Having, myself, a collection of comics from over thirty countries - and there aren't many primary producers of comics - I can state this with some confidence. This doesn't mean that other countries don't have comics with these characteristics. All too often, they have United States and British ones.

Advertisements in boys' comics range from stamp collecting, conjuring and practical jokes of the `amaze your friends' variety to an obvious mirroring of the fictional content. Where there's such a stress on physical strength, we naturally find advertisements for body-building courses. Charles Atlas often comes in, as if on cue, wanting to prove that `you too can have a body like [his] !' though you don't have to have one like his. You can `Just choose the body you want and post the coupon.' Where there's such emphasis, as we've seen, on law and order and war, we naturally find many advertisements for war toys and models as well as heavy recruitment campaigns for the police and the armed forces. The latter stress the travel, adventure and learn-a-trade aspects, not, it need hardly be said, the killing.

 

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Comics see slow changes but not fundamental ones. In thelaw and order line it's a sign of the times to note, as on television, a more ready acceptance of unpleasant and unlawful acts by the official agents of the law and the `goodies'. In the issue of The Hornet, 23 March 1974, the `master crimebuster' tortures the criminals, by noise, before handing them over to the police. This is `to teach them a lesson'.<sup>[9]</sup> Following the United States' pattern, the in-fighting is getting dirtier as anybody can see from the first issue of Action (14. February 1976). The first strip presents us with Dredger, who has the job of guarding an Arab prime minister against `Arab assassins'. (This is so that the `oil deal' can go through - not that Dredger cares about that. He just enjoys fighting and killing people and appears desperately bored the rest of the time.) A nut-shell biography tells us that Dredger was `Five years in the Royal Marine Commandos. Kicked out for brutality. Disappeared for a while. Then turned up in '6g, as a mercenary in Africa.' His chief wonders, `Beats me why D16 should use such a man,' but, by the end, he says, `Yes, Dredger's dirty, all right - but he gets results. He's going to be a useful man on future jobs.' British hero - latest model.

Amongst other slight changes, the token black face now appears sometimes outside of the `uncivilised native' context, in a pop group, for example, in girls' comics or as a small bystander in `Jenny Wren'. I see no reason, however, to disagree today with the conclusion arrived at by Jennie Laishley in an article in The Times Educational Supplement of 24 November 1972: `Comics have experienced at least ten years in which the multi-coloured, rather than simply multi-racial, nature of Britain has been obvious. There is still no sign of any real response to this fact.' For black heroes, we have to turn to Orbit, the Zambian magazine for children with its black space-traveller and `Alphabet of African Freedom Fighters' - though even this publication is very derivative, in many ways, of `western' examples.

In fact, having seen something of what is in comics, this last point brings us to the very important question of what is not in comics. I don't agree with the sometimes expressed view

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that comics represent a real aspect of working-class culture, or that they express a non- or anti-establishment viewpoint. I hope we've seen enough now of ideological manipulation to realise that comics express their publishers' interests best of all and these interests don't coincide with any that might be considered as in opposition to the system those publishers are so successful in. Apart from this, where are those aspects of working-class culture as revealed in the games, rhymes, traditions and songs brought to attention in such vast quantities in recent years? They are totally absent from comics. Where's working-class history? Where are the strips about the Tolpuddle martyrs or the Luddite movement? Pit rescue attempts and strikes in the North-East alone would keep a comic in dramatic stories for a year. Even Robin Hood, the champion of the poor, is, according to legend, the Earl of Huntingdon (much, I feel, as the white Tarzan, `lord of the jungle' is, allegedly, Lord Greystoke). Robin Hood, too, is very much distanced in time. And, if we have to go to South America, what about a strip series on the daring exploits of the Tupamaros or something on the heroic life of Camilo Torres? But I know what the answer would be : these matters are rather `political' or `controversial' - whereas what already happens in comics, of course, is not. I cannot agree, either, with the uninformed view expressed in You're a Brick, Angela! by Mary Cadogan and Patricia Craig - that comics are `part of the unsentimental, spontaneous folklore of twentieth century childhood'. This is sheer nonsense, if only because comics are not created by children and therefore don't fulfil the first requirement of folklore.

It's surely time for a serious look at comics and if that sounds rather contradictory, if not heavy-handed, we should remember that most material in comics is meant quite seriously. Elsewhere, we might question, sometimes, just what we are being laughed into.

There's no need to take up the attitude teachers and parents sometimes take up - that comics are `bad'. The possibilities of a medium which has given rise to Herriman's unique 'Krazy Kat', which has provided a second vehicle for the delightful

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Mickey Mouse and which gives us the endearing Asterix should never be dismissed. The medium itself is neither bad nor good, like other media such as radio, books and television. What's important is the use to which the medium is put. After all, the comic medium is undeniably powerful. It combines the visual and the verbal to a remarkable degree, often with the added attraction of colour and a lively sense of movement.

The visual `language' of the comics would, in itself, repay study. As with the language of the cinema, it works at a scarcelyconscious level. Starting from the obvious point of `goodies' and 'baddies' who are distinguishable by their faces, we can move to the picture frames themselves. Their size and shape is important and there are other devices as, for instance, a broken outline to a frame or a cloud-like outline both of which can indicate flash-backs within the main story. This applies to the outlines of balloons, also, but, in addition, spiky balloons can indicate an extreme emotion such as fear or anger, and a series of diminishing balloons leading from the main one which contains the words indicates the unspoken thoughts of the person in question. All sorts of other visual devices are common in comics : a knocked-out person has stars whirling above the head - if not little birds flying round and round and saying 'tweet-tweet'; there are a series of symbols to indicate bad language; a lighted bulb in a balloon can indicate a good idea while 'zzzzzz', often accompanied by a picture of a saw half-way through a log of wood, indicates sleep. Other conventions, less figurative, are by now virtually obligatory : a person surfacing from a pond blows a little water-spout with a fish on it; men have funny underpants; people with false teeth lose them in moments of extremity. Words themselves, and phonetic representations of sounds, are used very visually, their contours, size and shape lending support to their meaning.

More to the present purpose is verbal convention. Some consideration of this was touched upon in the context of boys' comics when name-calling and national stereotyping were in question. Language conventions operate at a very simple level - villains tend to laugh, 'heh, heh !' while joke-players laugh,

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`tee-hee !' Surprised or alarmed, comic characters are likely to scream `eek !' At another level, however, it's significant to note that an instalment of `Adam Eterno' in Lion and Thunder of i6 March t974., is about Texan `freedom fighters' (Americans fighting for their independence from Mexico). We've already met, in `The Lone Ranger', but at a later point in history, Mexican `bandits' coming back across the border. It's impossible to imagine people fighting for their independence from British or United States rule being called `freedom fighters' and unlikely, in fact, that there could ever be a comic story about this. Guerrillas fighting against British rule in Malaya following the second world war were known as `bandits' though I feel that now they would be known as `terrorists'. I've no wish to go into rights and wrongs here - I merely wish to show that words are used to manipulate people unconsciously and that this process prevents a consideration of rights and wrongs. In The Wizard of the following week, a white man (but a Spaniard) who has joined the Red Indians is called `a stinkin' renegade' and `a renegade white man'. Tonto, on the other hand, is never referred to as a renegade. In the same issue of The Wizard, there's a strip entitled `El Condor - he fights for freedom'. Readers are obviously meant to identify with this heroic `guerrilla' in his `small state in South America' as he fights for freedom against Spanish rule. Things can get a bit complicated at times, but the general line seems clear. This manipulation of attitudes through language is crude compared with, say, the practice of the BBC but here we are dealing with children.

British comics go, in general, to former British colonies. I haven't seen any translated. On the other hand, comics produced in the USA have swamped other capitalist states - and have also made massive inroads into Yugoslavia, judging by the examples I've seen - being either simply exported complete, exported as matrices for translations to be inserted or as strips licensed on copyright. Often, it seems to be the older strips that are undergoing a new lease of life abroad. It seems strange to come upon the Katzenjammer Kids in a Yugoslav comic, or Dennis the Menace in Swedish, Blondie in Turkish, the Fox

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and the Crow in Norwegian, and Tom and Jerry in Persian. Walt Disney Productions, of course, are everywhere - or everywhere in the `western' world, at least - and Superman bestrides the narrow world like a colossus.

References and Nates for Chapter 1

1. The same picture, with a few small details changed, was used for the front cover of the `Holiday Special' issue of

Summer, i976.

 

2. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.), The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Vol. III, London,

Secker and Warburg 1968, pp.196-97.

 

3. ibid. pp.197-98.

 

4. Les Daniels, Comix: A History of Comic Books in America,

London, Wildwood House 1973, 1973 p 53

 

5. Tonto means `stupid' in Spanish.

 

6. The word `slave' appears time and time again in these comic strips.

 

7. R.Reitberger and W.Fuchs, Comics: Anatomy of a Mass-Medium, Toronto, Little, Brown and Co. 1972, p.7.

 

8. He seems, at the moment (October i976) to have turned his attention to the Japanese.

 

9. On  2 September 1976, the European Commission of Human Rights published its report condemning Britain for the use of torture against detainees in Northern Ireland. Loud and continuous noise was one of the five techniques used.

 

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