I am a collector of comics published in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s and this blog collects my memories of being a reader of these comics as a child, my observations as a collector today and an attempt to catalogue the comics from a fan’s perspective. My first post on the blog was posted on 31 August 2015 and for the first 28 months I focused solely on comics published by IPC. Since then I have occasionally looked at comics published by other houses (such as DC Thomson) but the focus remains mainly on IPC.
Over time, I will try to index as many of the issues, stories, characters and their talented creators as I am able. This is mostly a nostalgic appreciation of wonderful storytelling, art and design, but I’m also searching for something more significant. For me and for so many others of my generation, these comics were our literature, our social media and our companions when the telly was switched off – I’m sure that they must have had some sort of impact on how we understood and related to the world both then and today.
At first I was writing mainly about my own experiences and memories of reading comics. In 2016 I started to write ‘On This Day’ posts, looking in detail at particular issues that bore the cover date of the day of the blog post (the cover date was usually the day that a comic went off-sale rather than the day it was published).
Please follow me or say hello on Twitter (GNFAR and OPITN) or Facebook. Thank you, and happy reading!
Mike Western draws the great International Pancake Race, contested every year by women from Olney, Buckinghamshire, and Liberal, Kansas. Shrove Tuesday 1975 saw the 26th race run, and it still takes place today. Two days ago this year, Liberal won the competition for the 38th time (Olney have won it 29 times). There's lots of history on the race here: http://olneypancakerace.org/
