15 November 1980: Jackpot
Fight School! Vic Neill was the regular artist on Jackpot’s Top of the Class, which had been called Class Wars for its first 71 episodes.
The popular strip played to the tropes of working class kids being scruffy, rough and dirty, and better-off kids being well-heeled, prissy and refined – although not so mannered to prevent an all-in dust-up at the end of each instalment.
This violent pitching of haves against have-nots was common in 70s and early 80s comics. Jackpot’s Milly O’Naire and Penny Less (artist Sid Burgon), Buster’s Ivor Lott and Tony Broke (Jim Crocker), Knockout’s The Toffs and the Toughs (Reg Parlett), for example.
Was Jackpot political? Well, yes, I think so. But not in a good way. It launched in the same week – almost the same day – as Thatcher’s Tories came to power in the UK, and was all about money, competition and winning big.
Richie Wraggs (Mike Lacey) and Jack Pott (Crocker) were poster boys for individualistic opportunism, The Winners (Jimmy Hansen) were a hardboiled nuclear unit of family success and achievement, and Kid King (Robert Nixon) presented a myth of benevolent wealth and power.
I loved Jackpot. It’s disheartening to suddenly notice these right-wing values running through. I’m silly to have assumed anything else from the press of the day (or any day). Comics were an influence on young minds, and I’m sure helped form the worldviews so many hold today.
