Print

[crashryan]

I've been scouring the indispensable downthetubes website and stumbled across a fascinating 1973 interview with writer Frank S Pepper, co-creator of Roy of the Rovers and author of countless text stories and comic strip features. I'll post a link to the entire interview, but I wanted to share this excerpt. Pepper describes the mechanics of the post-WWII British magazine/comic market. It sheds light on why and how many of the odd British comics on our site got published.

"For the first few years after World War Two, the paper shortage was terrible. Big publishers, like the Amalgamated Press as it then was, couldn't put any plans for expansion into action because they were so tightly rationed that even their existing papers were little twelve-page pamphlets. But there were some small printers who were in a much better position.

The paper was rationed on a quota of pre-war consumption. Printers who had specialised in things like expensive catalogues, or other advertising material, were entitled to buy their percentage of whatever they had used before the war, even though nobody was bothering to produce catalogues because there was such a shortage of everything that advertising was a waste on money.

Consequently, these people had paper to spare, and many of them launched into publishing magazines, because there was such a dearth of periodicals that you could sell absolutely anything. Hence the era of the horror comic. Most of these printers knew nothing about editing magazines and didn't even try, because there was an inexhaustible supply of ready-made material in America. You could buy a complete set of plates for an issue of an American horror comic for about 50 pounds, churn out a few thousand copies until your paper ration was exhausted, sell them like hot cakes at sixpence or a shilling a time, and make a bomb.

However, some small firms did make serious attempts to originate new papers, although none of them survived once the chronic shortage ended. One of these launched Sun and Comet. The Amalgamated Press, questing around for some means of expanding, bought the firm in order to get its paper ration. This was in 1948 or 1949.

The two papers were put under the managing editorship of Monty Haydon, who was responsible for Knockout, Sexton Blake, and magazines of that sort. The papers were supervised for him by Percy A Clark. I was contributing to Knockout, and so was asked to do some serials for them.

After a while the paper situation eased. First Lion and then Tiger were launched by RT Eves, for whom I had been doing a great deal of work since 1950. I became heavily involved in both these new papers, creating, among other things Captain Condor for the first issue of Lion and Roy Of The Rovers for Number One of Tiger. I kept Captain Condor going for about twelve years, and am still doing Roy Of The Rovers today!"

Here's the full interview:
https://downthetubes.net/creating-comics-an-archive-interview-with-roy-of-the-rovers-co-creator-frank-s-pepper/

[The Australian Panther]

Thanks Crash.

[paw broon]

Excellent.  Thanks crash.
Hoarding paper, or buying up paper from bankrupt companies is exactly how the likes of Gerald G Swan and others managed to churn out so many comics.  As I've been trying to find out about Valentines of Dundee - with not a lot of success - It's possible they were able to produce some comics because as greetings card producers, they had access to paper.
DC Thomson were newspaper publishers but even they had to reduce the page count to 12 on their story papers.