STEVE WINDERS REVIEWS STEVE HOLLAND’S
RECENTLY REISSUED AND UPDATED BOOK ABOUT THE 1960s FLEETWAY COMIC
A new edition of Steve Holland’s book about
the comics Hurricane and Champion now covers the twelve annuals
in addition to the weeklies and its detailed index has been updated with some
new information about the creators of the strips and a new cover by Jordi
Penalva. As with his other books, Steve has written a thorough account of the
creation of the two weeklies, their content and their styles. He provides many
examples of pages and other illustrations from the comics to support his text
and as always, his work is well researched, with contributions from Gil Page,
the former editor of Champion (and briefly also editor of EAGLE)
and assistance from several comic experts including David Roach and our own
Jeremy Briggs.
The book is full of interesting details
about the two comics and provides an insight into the way Fleetway worked
in the 1960s. Hurricane was the longest running of the two, lasting 63
issues (February 1963 – May 1964) before merging into Tiger, although its
annuals ran until 1974. It introduced two long running strips in Typhoon
Tracy, a peacetime version of Valiant’s Captain Hurricane and Skid
Solo, a racing driver, whose adventures would run for a further sixteen
years in Tiger. I recall Typhoon Tracy being Hurricane’s front
page hero, but learned from the book that for a short while he was replaced on
the cover by a football strip called Hurry of the Hammers. It wasn’t West Ham, but Hammersfield Town and it was actually a
reprint of the early Roy of the Rovers from Tiger, a decade
earlier with the text altered. ‘Hurry’ was actually Harry Cane, which
coincidentally is almost the name of the current real England captain and Harry
Kane also has the nickname Hurri-Kane.
A large number of Italian artists were
employed on Hurricane and the book includes examples of pages by
Giovanni Ticci, Giorgio Trevisan, Nino Caroselli, Nevio Zeccara and Renato
Polese, as well as the Spanish artists, Jordi Penalva, Juan Gonzalez Alacreu
and Angel Nadal. Examples of art from Hurricane Annuals includes work by
Ian Kennedy, Graham Coton, Reg Bunn and Don Harley.
With a mix of science fiction, sport, western, historical and humour
strips, Hurricane ran a range of stories, like its companion paper,
although Steve suggests that initially it was probably aimed at the older end
of the market. He gives a detailed account of the changes introduced in attempts
to boost sales of Hurricane and indeed the introduction of repeated
material to save on costs, but the arrival of serious competition in the form
of TV Century 21 caused Fleetway to give their boys’ weeklies a
makeover. They increased the content to 40 pages and merged Hurricane with
Tiger, which was suffering from falling circulation at the time. The
merger worked, giving the combined paper a healthy circulation and Tiger went
on to outlive all the other Fleetway boys’ adventure weeklies that were running
at the time, eventually being merged into the new EAGLE in 1985.
Champion took
the name of a previous story paper, which had run from 1922 until 1955. However
it was quite different from its predecessor. Half the new paper consisted of
reprints of strips from the Franco-Belgian Tintin and Spirou magazines
and the book examines these. From Tintin there was Jet Jordan, the
adventures of a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force. The strip, which had
strong science fiction elements was called Dan Cooper in the original
French language version. This was Champion’s colour cover strip and each
episode opened with a large new frame to attract attention. The reprinted
frames were edited to fit the pages. Also from Tintin were a strip about
a wildlife photographer fighting ivory poachers in Africa, a science fiction
adventure and The Knights of Konigsfeld, a motor racing strip, not a
medieval adventure, which featured the long running character Michel
Vaillant. Hugely successful in France and Belgium, his adventures in albums
are still available today. Tintin magazine also supplied the humour
strip Modeste et Pompom, which became
Jinks. From Spirou came two
humorous strips. There was the now famous Lucky Luke strip, who was known as Bingo in Champion and a strip called Starter,
which was relocated to Liverpool
and called Whacker. There were also four new British
adventure strips and one repeat. The most enduring adventure strip was the
superhero story The Phantom Viking, which ran for two years in Lion after
the comics merged. There were two new
humour strips, both of which had science fiction themes. A science fiction text
story called Bartok and his Brothers completed
the predominantly science fiction character of the paper, although according to
Gil Page, this was not deliberate. Most of the strips had been passed on to him
from the unused strip department as a fait accompli!
Examples of artwork from Champion by
Albert Weinberg (Jet Jordan / Dan Cooper), Jean Gratan (Knights of
Konigsberg), Edouard Aidans and Ferdinando Taccconi, as well as Eric
Bradbury, Carlos Cruz and Mike White, who would later contribute to the new EAGLE
are included in the book.
Champion
ran for a mere fifteen issues (February to June 1966) before being merged
into Lion, never having the benefit of a makeover or relaunch. But
despite its extremely short life and partly because of it, its story is an
interesting one and much credit goes to Steve Holland, who has researched and
told it so well. The book now runs to 60 black and white pages, with a full
colour softback cover. It is published by Bear Alley Books and retails at just
£8.99 with £4 postage and packing and I can confidently recommend it.
