In his autobiography Comic Book Hero, Barrie Tomlinson, the former Group Editor of Fleetway’s Boys’ Sports and Adventure Comics, who launched the 1980s EAGLE, describes starkly the attitudes
of senior management to their publications in an anecdote about his apointment
as editor of Tiger, earlier in his
career: “I was the eager, enthusiastic new editor of Tiger comic. I
had worked out lots of new ideas for the title. I rushed into the office of the
managing editor and listed my plans for Tiger.
A few minutes later, I left the office somewhat deflated, having been told
‘It’s only a comic!’”Inspired
by the example of the original EAGLE that
he had read as a boy, Barrie established a Tiger
Sports Star of the Year Award and signed famous sports stars to write for
the paper. He also began to sign the editor’s letter to establish a real link
with readers, as Marcus Morris had done in EAGLE,
a practice prevously unknown in Fleetway’s
comics.
When EAGLE was relaunched in 1982, Barrie
again signed up famous names to write for it, as the original had done These
included the athlete Daley Thompson and the disc jockey Mike Read. He also
followed the original in introducing reader participation features. A popular
one was the Glamorous Teacher feature,
which would no doubt be considered sexist today! There was also Superdad, where readers would write
about their special dads and Big Mouth,a
chance for readers to sound off about issues that concerned them.
