COMIC PAPERS BY SMALL PUBLISHERS 1945-1950

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In the 1930s comics publishing was booming.  The mighty Amalgamated Press (AP) was issuing more weeklies than it had ever done.  Titles such as Comic Cuts, Funny Wonder, ?Chips, Puck, Rainbow, Film Fun, Radio Fun et al had huge circulations.  Then came the 1939-1945 war which decimated the AP?s business.  Artists, writers and editors were recruited  into the Armed Forces or associated services. Rationing was everywhere, including paper.  The result was that titles were cancelled, or reduced in size.  This remained the case throughout the 1940s.

Meanwhile things had been happening in Scotland. The Dundee based publisher, DC Thomson (DCT), became interested in publishing comics.  It started in 1936 when the firm decided to create a Fun Sectionsupplement for its Sunday Post newspaper.  This led to DCT launching the weeklies Dandy (1937) and Beano (1938) which were sold throughout the UK.  The duo?s bright future might have arrived earlier than it did but for the war.  The conflict meant that the two titles were reduced to fortnightly publication with reduced page counts and print runs due to wartime paper rationing.  This continued until July 23 1949.

The nation celebrated Victory in Europe in May 1945.  But it wasn?t until 1950 that publishers ramped up again.  This created a five year gap.  Enterprising businessmen took advantage of it.  A number of small firms began to produce irregular publications, many of them one-shots as wartime restrictions were on-going.  Meanwhile, men and women were returning from the war which inevitably created a baby boom.   Children who would soon be interested in comics.

Between 1945-1950 literally hundreds of titles were issued by anyone who could find some paper.  Mostly, they had looser editorial control: scripts could sometimes be vulgar, the artwork a tad less careful, but aficionado?s believe this gave them a vitality and a freedom that ?establishment? publications didn?t have.  By the early 1950s the big publishers were back and almost all of the small firms publications had vanished and were simply a footnote in comics history.  Of note is the fact that most things the reader will see here will not be found in the British Library.  These truly fly-by-night pirates of publishing rarely deposited them.