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[gregjh]

I don't mean the Showtime TV series, although that was pretty good, too. I mean PDs in general.

I am reading a book called "The wicked boy" about two boys who murdered their mother in London in 1895. The book discusses the moral outrage that occurred in that period because of penny dreadfuls. It transpired the two boys used to read them, which fueled the moral panic.

That knowledge has spiked my interest and I was wondering if
A) Can PDs be classed as comics?

B) Are there PDs available here on on any other site forum members can point to?

I did look for myself here and on duckduckgo (my search engine) but while there is plenty of discussion about PDs in general, I can't locate any scans.

[Captain Audio]

I ran across scans of the most popular Penny dreadful of its day . It was about "Lord Varney the Vampire" Not sure the exact title though.
It was illustrated to some extent but not a comic book style. Many of the storiesprinted in news papers of the time were uncommonly well illustrated, the Sherlock Holmes stories especially.

Can't remember off hand where I found Lord Varney but it turned up on a search with no problems. I really got creeped out by these stories, more so than by more modern vampire stories.

Heres the Wiki page on Varney with links to text and illustrations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varney_the_Vampire

[crashryan]

When I was in college Dover Books published a Varney the Vampire book reprinting the penny dreadful story. I've no idea if it's still in print. I tried to read it but found it boring. I was much more interested in the modern introduction, which described the penny dreadful writing process. As authors were paid per typeset line there was a strong incentive to pad the hell out of the stories. Supposedly James Rymer would party most of the night before settling down at the printers'. He'd write a first line and a last line for the first page, which the printer set in type. Next Rymer would crank out filler line by line until the compositor told him the page was full. Rymer then wrote two lines for the next page, and so on. This technique would go a long way toward explaining Varney's leisurely pace. I wonder if this was a common practice.

I wonder also whether payment by the line was responsible for the odd practice in American dime novels of setting every sentence as a separate paragraph. It never made sense grammatically but it would bump the line count considerably.

[BlackCat]

Speaking from memory (and without looking up the Wikipedia entry) I seem to recall that Spring-Heeled Jack, the famous victorian urban legend, made it into the penny dreadfuls. But I'm not altogether sure about that...

According to my copy of 'The Penguin History of Comics', the first modern comic book was 'Ally Sloper's Half Holiday' (circa 1884) which featured a sort of slightly drunken-looking W.C. Fields type of character. But I don't know how reliable that information (or the book) really is.

I think that what I'm saying is that penny dreadfuls are not really classed as comics, probably because they don't contain the sequential art that comics do. Or something like that. But I stand to be corrected, if anybody else knows better... 

[The Australian Panther]

Black Cat posted,

I think that what I'm saying is that penny dreadfuls are not really classed as comics, probably because they don't contain the sequential art that comics do. Or something like that. But I stand to be corrected, if anybody else knows better...   

I don't like to think of myself as 'someone who knows better' but I am fairly familiar with this site.

I think 'Penny Dreadfuls' were the precursors to the PULPS, not the  comics, although their is a clear relationship between the Pulps and the comic books, not least because they often had the same publishers.
But in the CB+ pulp section we do have some 'Dime Novels' which I believe were the American equivalent.
Beadle's Dime Library
https://comicbookplus.com/?cid=2544

Beadle's Half Dime Library
https://comicbookplus.com/?cid=2482

And Beadles would have been only one of a number of publishers. 

Note,

the stories were of Indians, pioneers, backwoodsmen, or the sea. Later, detective stories became the rule.

and

The stories were mainly Adventure stories, Detective Stories or Westerns, with a complete story in each edition.

So, obviously the Dime Novels and Penny Dreadfuls were aimed at the same market as the Pulps and the comic books.
Also the subject matter was wider than that.
In the half-dime library we also find on CB+ - Gulliver's Travels and the adventures of Baron Munchausen and we have here only 22 issues of a weekly magazine that ran for 28 years.
That's 1456 issues - a lot of reading.
I think the term 'Penny Dreadful' was deliberately derogatory.
We can't have the masses reading that rubbish.
Exactly like the attitude to the pulps and to comics until recently.

I think that hosting some Dime Novels and Penny Dreadfuls on CB+ makes sense.
Can someone post some 'Penny Dreadfuls' for comparison?
A pretty good analysis here. 
Dime Novel
https://poemanalysis.com/genre/dime-novel/
Quite a few good relevant links on that site.
Including this one
Penny Dreadfuls ~ Episode 1 ~ The Birth of The Penny Bloods
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-L_BDjRzsQ
cheers!       
   

[paw broon]

BlackCat, the Ally Sloper claim does have some chance of being correct but the Glasgow Looking Glass is suggested as the earliest:-
https://secretscotland.org.uk/index.php/Secrets/GlasgowLookingGlass

Penny Dreadfuls and Dime Novels can't be considered comics.  The lack of sequential art, or anything resembling it, precludes them.  Same with pulps and the British story papers we have on site (although some story papers do have the occasional short, sometimes 4 panel, comic strip).  But they are related to adventure, superhero etc. comics.
The Spring Heeled Jack character has a considerable history:-
https://thepulp.net/pulpsuperfan/2020/01/13/penny-dreadful-press-vol-2-spring-heeled-jack/
In recent times, superheroes based on the idea have appeared in comics.  British weeklies Hotspur and Hornet, featured Spring-Heeled Jackson in adventures set in Victorian London.  If anyone would like to read the stories, pm me.
There was a female version, Spring-Heeled Jill.  Another character in the same vein was in Victor, Springheeled Jack.  Another historical and again he sports a fright mask.
Philip Pullman wrote an illustrated book for younger readers, Spring-Heeled Jack.
I remember arguments in a comic group many years ago when some members claimed it wasn't a comic if there were no word balloons.  They were adamant even citing the word fumetti.  But they were wrong.  It's not the word balloons, it's the sequential way of telling a story with pictures and words, whether in balloons or captions.  Anyway, Prince Valiant is a comic strip and it doesn't have word balloons

[BlackCat]

@ paw broon

Thank you very much for your comprehensive reply.

The entry on the 'Glasgow Looking Glass' (1826) was interesting. I wish that it had included some examples of the publication so that we could see its contents and judge for ourselves.

Spring-Heeled Jack is a fascinating character who immediately lends himself to a good comic book adaptation. I did once draw a version of him myself (just a single image) standing atop the smoky rooftops and wearing his spring-heeled boots.