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What boys comics did you grow up with?

Absolutely - WPL and Battle Picture Library. WPL had the edge as far as artwork was concerned.

You know what's scary? As a kid, looking at the numbers (Desert Devils was 731 or summat), and thinking that Commando was an "old" comic. Now, reading some of the sites and seeing issue numbers like 3500, and realising that nigh on 30 years have passed. Where?!!
 
Times wus hard at Plume Towers when I was a young 'un and combined a fit of vaguely middle-class snobbery & MotherPlume's disapproval of guns I didn't get comics except when poorly along with Lucozade in a proper glass bottle wrapped in orange cellophane which would then be pressed into service making things. I did get the odd annual & think the Victor one on page 1 is up in the loft still along with a Warlord or Victor with a cover of a downed Pilot being rescued from Dunkirk, standing on the foredeck of one of the small ships blowing Stukas out of the sk with a Bren Gun fired from the hip.

I did have passed on my elder cousins' Look and Learns and still have a huge collection of 1960s Mad magazines which belonged to my Uncle, although the film parodies went completely over my head. I was also allowed Asterix and used to get Tintin from the local library. I think these were deemed to be educational & also the Aged Ps liked them. I have a habit of buying Asterix in Britain for each new language I study - tracking it down in Serbo-Croat was hard work.

I had a flirtation with 2000AD at secondary school, but found it got a bit too silly. Love the references to Rouge Trooper above - surely that belonged in Bunty?

Because I'd been brought up without TV reading had always been hugely important so I would get through several books a week and more in the holidays between building Airfix (& later as I grew up) Tamiya models. A local bookshop had a second hand section where paperback Biggles books could be had very cheaply - I was supposed to sell them back but never did so again the loft is crammed. It's a wonder I didn't become a Crab, but I discovered I was allergic to polyester & was then sent to Public School.

For anyone wanting to read about childhood reading I'd like to recommend "The Child that Books Built", but have found it very frustrating as the writer is completely up his own arrse. He only mentions one actual book in the first two or so chapters & I find it very hard to believe that anyone could have read the Hobbit followed by the Lord of the Rings trilogy by the age of seven and comprehended much of them, especially when reading them in a day is mentioned.

As for grot Club I was for winners. A primary school friend also introduced me to some of his father's publications which would be at the extreme end of hardcore even today, the funnier as the father is an absolute pillar of the local community. The porn fiaries seem to have gone the way of white dog poo with lollipop sticks wedged in it. In no way did we know a certain couple of local pill boxes where copious supplied of pictures of very, very hairy clunges could be found...
 
For anyone wanting to read about childhood reading I'd like to recommend "The Child that Books Built", but have found it very frustrating as the writer is completely up his own arrse. He only mentions one actual book in the first two or so chapters & I find it very hard to believe that anyone could have read the Hobbit followed by the Lord of the Rings trilogy by the age of seven and comprehended much of them, especially when reading them in a day is mentioned.

The claimant of that feat is an obvious Tolkien walt. The hobbit possibly in a day, but the full Monty?
 
The claimant of that feat is an obvious Tolkien walt. The hobbit possibly in a day, but the full Monty?

I think he claimed The Hobbit in a single day (the first book he ever read) on his sickbed at the age of six, the remainder in a day each by the age of seven.

The book improves massively by chapter four or so when some actual books appear although these are all very worthy indeed. Author is an academic's son, so this is perhaps to be expected.
 
This thread has taken me back years, although I'm probably the only person on here not to have read 2000A.D.

Graduating to the lingerie sections in the catalogues, (and you could buy the Relum Tornado air rifle in them in those days), Razzle, Club, Mayfair, Hustler, Electric Blue (?) and Shaven Ravers.

I think my son has my original set of Combat and Survival magazine - the porn mags are all stuck solid I'm afraid.
 
Memory's an amazing thing. We have all manner of things stashed away, quite forgotten (in my case) for decades. This thread immediately brought up the name 'Appleby'. I haven't given this guy a thought since we were swapping comics in 1945! I traded my Beano or Dandy with him for his Hotspur or Champion. And otherwise I can't remember anything at all about him. Dandy and Beano were alternate weeks because of the paper shortage. One of them ran a strip called "He's Musso da Wop, He's a Big Adda-flop", so I must be remembering that from 1943 before the Eyetie surrender. Can't imagine a similar strip on Berlusconi getting to the news-stands now.

Lord Snooty, Pansy Potter, Desperate Dan, Korky the Cat ..
 

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