Tracing Scottish Comics History (2 of 3) by Chris Murray

The end of a comic book era!

Valentine & Sons

During the course of my research on Dundee’s forgotten comics I heard whispers of some comics produced by Valentine & Son, a publisher much more well-known for postcards. James Valentine started his printing business in Dundee in 1851, building on the previous business owned by his father, John Valentine, who was involved in textile printing in the city. The business later moved into photography, and became world-renowned as a printer of photographic postcards and greetings cards. Valentine & Sons produced two one-off comics in 1948. These were Ace Comics and Super Bumper Comic and are extremely rare and little is known about them, other than the fact that they were largely produced by artists who worked in the studios, such as Len Fullerton (who ran the studio with Bill McCail), Sam Fair and George Blow. The lead strip in Super Bumper Comic was ‘Clint Cairns’, an American style Western strip drawn by Fullerton about a daring cowboy adventurer who takes on thieves who rob a stagecoach (Fig. 11). However there were also humour strips in the British tradition, including ‘Bertie Bulger: The Fat Boy of St Merlins’, which was based very closely on Billy Bunter by Frank Richards, who originally appeared in the weekly story paper The Magnet, published by Amalgamated Press between 1908 and the 1940s. Bulger displays many of the characteristics of Bunter, from his vanity to his playful deceitful pranks which inevitably lead to trouble. Following this was a crime story about mysteriously vanishing train, and a science-fiction story, ‘The Menace of Asteroid X’. Fullerton also drew ‘Alpha’ and ‘Hugh the Rover’ for Ace Comic.

Fig. 11: Clint Cairns by Len Fullerton, in Super Bumper Comics (Valentine & Sons, Dundee, 1948)

It is not known why Valentines decided to embark on this experiment with comics, but for whatever reason second issues of Ace Comics and Super Bumper Comic never appeared, but it seems likely that their mix of British and American style comics was not as appealing to readers as the more blatant copies of the American comics style that were being produced by Cartoon Art Productions and the other small publishers (see below). Fullerton continued to work for Valentines, producing postcards and calendars, finding that his true inspiration was drawing from nature rather than drawing adventure strips. Fullerton left comics behind and embarked upon a very successful career as a nature artist. Valentines continued to operate in Dundee until 1994, but never ventured into comics again after that experiment in 1948. The long history of Valentines in Dundee has left its mark on the city. There are many buildings associated with the company, and the Publishing Department was housed in the main administrative building at 154 Perth Road, just a short walk from the University of Dundee where comics are studies and produced today (Fig. 12). This is likely the location where the two comics were developed in the late 1940s, at the same time that the McCail studios were supporting the comics industry in Dundee. It has been fascinating to visit these places and to consider what might have been. The appetite I was developing for visiting places where Scottish comics has once been produced quickly led me to Bath Street in Glasgow.

Fig. 12: Valentines & Sons, 154 Perth Road, Dundee, 2019.

Cartoon Arts Productions

The company that started life as International Comics and then became Transatlantic Comics, and then finally Cartoon Art Productions, seems to have operated out of several locations in Glasgow from the mid-1940s until at least 1950. Glasgow was a natural home for such an outfit as there was a significant American naval base nearby and American comics often found their way into the hands of children on the West coast of Scotland via that route. The company reprinted American material, but also produced some original material that attempted to mimic the American style. One of their first attempts was Dynamic Comics (1945) which featured a superhero called Mr Muscle by a young Denis Gifford (Fig. 13). The influence of American wartime propaganda comics like Captain America is clear. By 1946 the company had changed its name to Cartoon Art Productions, and was sometimes referred to as CAP-toons.  They were now ready to scale up their operation and to produce more American style comics. The result was Super-Duper Comics (1946-1950) which was an anthology featuring a mix of genres, comics and text stories (Fig. 14).

Fig. 13: ‘Mr Muscle, Britain’s Superman’ by Denis Gifford, in Dynamic Comics (International Comics/Cartoon Art Productions, 1945)

Fig. 14: Super Duper Comics #4 by Dennis M. Reader (Cartoon Art Productions, Glasgow, 1947).

These comics were smaller that standard British comics, looking more like American comic books, but they were often quite slim, sometimes running to just eight pages. Cartoon Art Productions also had a very clever but slightly dishonest marketing strategy, putting an American price on the cover (usually five cents) in order to give readers the impression that this was an authentic American comic, or that the company traded on both sides of the Atlantic, an ambition signalled by their earlier names (International Comics and Transatlantic Press), but this was far from the truth. It was a clever ploy and hinged on having artwork that could pass as American. Fortunately they had employed a talented young English artist called Dennis M. Reader, who had first found work with Swan in 1944, where his ability to create comics in the American style was instantly recognised. Reader’s work soon brought him to the attention of Cartoon Art Productions, where he produced a number of crime comics, and many superheroes, including Powerman, G-Boy and Wonder Boy, Electro Girl, Phantom Maid, and Acromaid.

https://www.dundee.ac.uk/stories/comicsopolis-public-appeal-unearth-more-dundees-comics-history

Bio

Professor Christopher Murray is Chair of Comics Studies at the University of Dundee. He runs the MLitt in Comics and Graphic Novels (https://www.dundee.ac.uk/postgraduate/comics-graphic-novels-mlitt) and co-edits Studies in Comics (https://www.intellectbooks.com/studies-in-comics). He researches British Comics, and is author of The British Superhero (University Press of Mississippi, 2017) and Comicsopolis – A History of Comics in Dundee (Abertay Historical Society, 2020). Murray is director of The Scottish Centre for Comics Studies and Dundee Comics Creative Space, and is editor if UniVerse Comics. He has written several comics, including a number of public information comics on healthcare and science communication themes.