[Rusty Staples]

It's a novel experience to get to my age and be a "new boy"! I've just uploaded a 1954 issue of The Champion that Paw Broon's sterling contributions to your Pulp Fiction section don't include. Eventually I hope to be able to upload other issues to fill in the gaps CB+ has for The Champion between December 1954 and March 1955 when the paper closed and its readers were pointed in the direction of the Tiger comic (a mixture of strips and text stories largely written by the same contributors). Please let me know whether I've followed the upload directions adequately with my first contribution. Holler for sure if I haven't! 

[narfstar]

Thank you very much Rusty. Everything went fine and it is now onsite and available. I have got to read Santa to the Savages when I get a chance. And as a valuable contributor you have now been upgraded to VIP.

[Rusty Staples]

Thank you very much, too, Narfstar. I've now uploaded The Champion #1717, which has further chapters of the "The Come-Back Centre-Forward," more of the picture-strip serial "Samsi, Strong Man of the Nile," a Colwyn Dane 'tec thriller, and a Rockfist Rogan adventure. Don't miss the feature on page 2, "The First Film Star Was a Horse!" The last paragraph (written in 1954, remember) is a hoot: "The final improvement up to date has been the introduction of 'three-dimensional projection.' Before long we are likely to see great strides in this direction which will eliminate the drawback of having to wear special spectacles, as at present." Hmm ... I hear the great strides haven't helped Judge Dredd!

[narfstar]

Much appreciated additions now up. I have not seen the new Judge Dredd movie. It is too bad they can not do a good job with such a good character.

[Rusty Staples]

I haven't seen the Judge Dredd movie either, Narfstar. The consensus seems to be that the makers didn't do too bad a job with the character, but they were let down by distributors who insisted it went out to the theaters in 3D only. Those "great strides" predicted in the newly-posted 1954 Champion were never made, the spectacle-wearing never caught on despite several revivals, and the technology was abandoned by any powers-that-be interested in having a successful production on their hands.

[Rusty Staples]

The Champion began what was to be its last year with "A Super Science-Fiction Yarn of Menace from the Stratosphere" complete in the issue dated Week Ending January 1. An archetypical invasion of Earth by scarlet-robed, winged men from Mars, no less! For Pete's sake, you might say, and could well be right. It falls upon intrepid solar-power scientist Pete Flint to save the planet as he fights back from his research laboratory on tropical Coral Island. Great cover art shows "A Breathless Moment".... Does any clued-up CB+-er know who was behind the pen-name "John Martin"?

Elsewhere in the issue (which I hope will be online in the Pulp Fiction section shortly), 'tec Colwyn Dane finds himself "face to face with the mysterious 'Noose' at last." And, naturally, the villain comes "masked and cloaked from head to foot in black." The picture is there to show us.

You have to wonder about the target audience for this story paper. The advertisements on Page 13 are equivocal. The largest tells you to "Ask Mummy to buy Kellogg's Corn Flakes today," so you can "Make your own Panto!" (I trust US readers will know about the British seasonal tradition of pantomime which I understand still survives in provincial theaters.) But at the foot of the page another advertisement begins, "How to stop SMOKING and permanently overcome that ceaseless craving for tobacco." I was 11 when I bought this Champion and I don't remember any "pals" or "chums" thus addicted. Nor -- sorry, Kellogg's -- wanting to dress up in a face mask as Captain Hook or Little Red Riding Hood. The back page is a full-page recruitment ad for the British Army "which you can join after school leaving age."

The Champion 1718 also contains, for those who've been following the run set in train by Paw Broon, "The Sensational Dramatic Conclusion of our Great Soccer Serial." That's Frank Pepper's "The Come-Back Centre-Forward."

[narfstar]

comic companies sold ads to whomever would buy them. from Charles Atlas to how to gain weight to girldles.

[paw broon]

This is excellent RS.  (As soon as I saw you pop up, I thought of a friend who ran the cons in London for a while, the organisation being known as Rusty Staples -shome coinshidence shurely?)
As for John Martin, according to my copy of "The Men Behind Boys Fiction" by Lofts and Adley, that was his real name.  There is no further info. apart from noting that he wrote for Champion, Modern Boy, Triumph Annual.
I haven't seen either JD movie, nor do I want to.  I live with the memory of those wonderful McMahon drawn stories and don't want that memory sullied.

[Rusty Staples]

Thank you for the "John Martin" info, PB. I don't have a copy of the Lofts/Adley book so I really couldn't comment. Did they draw their facts solely from company records? These are now, largely, long lost. I also know from first-hand experience that the official payment records were frequently suspect, but we won't go into the reasons for that here. Bill Lofts, in particular, was a very trusting soul (and overall a very nice, helpful man).

Yes, the "Rusty Staples" is mere coincidence. I have no connection to the London cons you mention. My last association with the collecting fraternity would have been via Collectors' Digest back in the days of Herbert Leckenby and Eric Fayne. I guess the "Rusty Staples" would have appealed to your friend as appropriate as it does to me today....  "Paw Broon" is pretty neat, too! 

[Rusty Staples]

"A Hard-Riding, Two-Fisted Western Yarn" is the complete story in The Champion #1719, newly uploaded. "Red Against the Ghost Rustlers" has something of a Bar-20 flavour, perhaps intentionally emphasized by the byline "Don Boyd," which in these circumstances you can't help suspecting is a pen-name. Also, hero Red Dugan owns a fine, glossy white horse he calls "Champ." Talks to him, too.

"Sorry, old pal," he whispered, as he slipped the bit between the white horse's teeth. "Thought we wouldn't be riding out again to-night, but it seems we're going to get to grips with these ghost rustlers at last."

Like the villainous Chinese who lisp their words in the issue's Colwyn Dane detective story, it's all delightfully way-back-when. Today, writers for the only UK Western series still running (I believe) are highly discouraged by their publisher from having characters talking to their dumb cayuses!

[Rusty Staples]

More gaps filled with new uploads yesterday and today. Now awaiting approval are #1722 and #1723. Just half a dozen to go before we reach the end of the last weekly boys' story paper to be edited in London ... afterwards, it was comics for a few decades, then virtually nothing from the capital city!

[josemas]

Both approved.

Thanks very much, Rusty.

Joe

[Rusty Staples]

The Champion #1724 was uploaded a couple of days ago and #1725 was uploaded just a few moments ago.

Unfortunately, an advertisement has been clipped from page 12 of #1725. More interestingly, the page 2 feature is called "All the Fun of the Fair!" Now where have we seen that heading before?!

[Rusty Staples]

The programme to fill in gaps in CB+'s Champion holdings proceeds nicely ... just two issues left to be uploaded to carry us through from where we were with Paw Broon to the end of the long-respected British story paper's run some three decades after its inception. Issue #1726 is available now, and I've just sent through #1727. Unlike its "sister" paper, Girls' Crystal, The Champion wasn't converted into a comic. Its contributors (Pepper, Cowan, Belfield, Home-Gall, Thomas etc.) were already writing for Lion comic. Tiger had also recently been launched, catering for the same sports story fans as The Champion but predominantly in picture-strip form. Tiger also further occupied the talents of the same team of editors, writers and artists.

[narfstar]

Thanks Rusty