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    • Home
    • Menus
      • Norwich Characters
      • Blitzrat to Bookseller 1
      • Blitzrat: 2
      • Blitzrat: 3
      • Blitzrats 4
      • Blitzrats 5
      • Norwich Cinemas 1945/61
      • Norwich Cinemas (Local)
      • Norwich Cinemas (Ind)
      • Norwich Cinemas (Circuit)
      • Norwich Cinemas (Others)
      • Books 1: US classic pulp
      • Books 2: Angry Young Men
      • Books 3: Nouveau Roman
      • Books 4: Signed editions
      • Books 5: Norfolk Books

  • Home
  • Menus
    • Norwich Characters
    • Blitzrat to Bookseller 1
    • Blitzrat: 2
    • Blitzrat: 3
    • Blitzrats 4
    • Blitzrats 5
    • Norwich Cinemas 1945/61
    • Norwich Cinemas (Local)
    • Norwich Cinemas (Ind)
    • Norwich Cinemas (Circuit)
    • Norwich Cinemas (Others)
    • Books 1: US classic pulp
    • Books 2: Angry Young Men
    • Books 3: Nouveau Roman
    • Books 4: Signed editions
    • Books 5: Norfolk Books

PASTIMES

Indoor activities

Books

  

   

    

   Dad read to me all the books he had read to my sister; so many times, I was told, that she knew them by heart, and would correct him if he got a word out of place. We didn’t have many possessions, but there always seemed to be a book close to hand. My mother and father were voracious readers, and she would regularly bring piles of books home from the library. 

The library in question at that time would have been the central public library which formed the right angle on the corner of Duke Street and St Georges. It was an imposing Victorian structure made of massive grey stone blocks, and properly intimidating: this was hallowed ground and not to be entered lightly. Coming from the bustle and brightness of the street, the interior was immediately another world. It was dark and quiet with wooden floors, wooden shelves and panels, all polished, and smooth with a glistening sheen from the lights overhead. The invisible murmur of a voice, a squeak of a floorboard, the soft shuffle of a footstep, or books being moved, were the only sounds to break the illusion of time frozen and a world stood still. On a summer day it had the sudden calm and chill of a Cathedral, and had the same effect on me: I could no more have raised my voice in here, than shouted in church; I was chastened but also uplifted, for here among the smell of polish, and the motes drifting in the shaft of sunlight from the large window, were books: racks and shelves, higher than I could reach; corridors and corners, a labyrinth composed of books. Bewildering ranks of rough textured, cloth bound books with gilt titles, often faded, but some familiar to me, even then. I was always allowed one for myself, for I had my own library card, which my mother used to augment her own pile of books, and happy was the day when I spotted the names “William”, "Bunter" or "Biggles" among a row of titles.

I had my own books at home, which I suspect had been handed down to me from my sister or brother, most notably “The Golden Touch” a Disney annual with a memorable story and illustrations, and “My Favourite Wonder Book “ whose sinister illustrations of Hoffman's story of " Nutcracker and Mouse King" haunted my childhood imagination. These and a hardback copy of “Morgyn the Mighty”, from the pages of one of my brother's comics "The Rover", were read and re-read by me, until they embedded themselves in my memory, where they still lurk, as fresh as in those post war years when I was first captured by them. This immersion in my books meant that, with my father’s help, I had taught myself to read by the time I started school, and I was soon able to indulge in the piles of books freshly borrowed from the library every week. I was captivated by the “William” books of Richmael Crompton, Frank Richards’ Bunter, the occasional Biggles or even Enid Blyton, but over the years I also explored the books my parents read. 

My Father’s taste was for history or romantic adventures, and he let me share with him the joys of P.C.Wren, Conan Doyle and the Edgar Rice Burroughs “Mars” books, and a    special favourite “Black Bartlemy’s Treasure” by Jeffrey Farnol. He could at times be persuaded to look at a thriller, but he always insisted on reading the last page first, to see if the dénouement was startling enough to justify bothering with the preceding 200 pages.

My mother would always pick thrillers, or romantic dramas, especially with a medical background from the likes of Frank Slaughter. When I was old enough to go to the library alone, by this time, the Mile Cross library on Aylsham Road, she would sometimes send me to replenish stocks, if she had run out of reading material. When I asked what she wanted me to get she would say “Oh, you know what I like – a good thriller – look at the titles, anything with ‘blood’ or ‘murder’ in it.” I’m not quite sure what I would have brought back from these errands, but it was great fun scouring those fascinating shelves, and knowing I could take whatever I wanted. For a number of years I absorbed scores of these mainly pre-war treasures, and spent innumerable hours in the impeccable company of Blackshirt, Bulldog Drummond, the Toff, The Saint, and their All-American counterpart Ellery Queen.

Books

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Pastimes 2

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Cigarette Cards

   


Another great passion of Dad was military history, and he indulged that interest by, alongside his voracious reading,  collecting cigarette cards. Cigarette cards had been issued since the late Victorian era, and by the twenties and thirties was a major collecting craze, and had only been discontinued with the advent of war. Single cards were issued in packets of cigarettes, originally as card stiffeners, and covered every imaginable subject, with a photographic or brightly coloured front, and a biographical or historical description on the back. 

Although intended from the start as ephemeral advertising material, by the early thirties they had captured the public imagination to such an extent that the first catalogue recording the different issues was published, and the hobby of cartophily was formally established. Most sets consisted of fifty cards, which, when complete, exactly fitted into an empty packet of 10 cigarettes, something my father took full advantage of. After the war, cigarette cards were everywhere, in their millions, and fascinating objects for small boys to play with, in our various cigarette card games, and to collect. They were so pervasive in our world that they became a form of currency, and we would trade cards for other cards, the ratio determined by rarity and desirability, comics, sweets, or whatever other commodities we had access to. I would sometimes be sent by my father to look at a collection advertised in the paper, to see if any of his military subjects were among the boxes of miscellaneous cards on offer.

 He collected military subjects, especially the regimental histories, and had a collection of 15 cigarette packets, some neatly labelled, to house his precious sets. On a quiet afternoon or evening, I would sometimes ask if we could look at his cards, and he would gladly bring out the box that housed his mainly green and brown Woodbine packets, with a couple of Players, and a very impressive dark blue "Churchman's TENNER Cigarettes", that I felt sure must hold the very best set. Looking at Dad's collection was always a special occasion for me, and he would carefully take out the bright cards and we would look at each one as he explained the significance of the different cap badges, and the history behind the miltary uniforms. Some of the fascinating worlds we visited were "The History of Naval Uniforms" by Carreras; "Interesting Customs and Traditions of the Navy, Army & Air Force" by Lambert & Butler; " The Story of Navigation" by Churchman", and many other serious and informative aspects of the military world that so absorbed my Father, who guided me through this intriguing world of which I knew little, with a wealth of stories and information, and an enthusiasm which was always infectious. 

Pastimes 3

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Meccano

   


One of the other great joys that I shared with Dad was the wonderful Meccano sets that we somehow acquired. I assume they were meant for me originally, or perhaps my brother, but the only person in the house who could fully appreciate their wondrous complexity was Dad. He had been an engineer, he could read plans and he had infinite patience. We must have had a comprehensive set because of the elaborate models we made, but I assume they were bought by other members of the family, and augmented by buying second hand sets and spares advertised in the local paper. The sets that we had were the classic red and green, and consisted of metal plates, strips and girders; with pulleys, wheels and gears machined from brass. Add to this a box of tiny brass nuts and bolts, a little screwdriver and spanner, and we had a magical melange waiting to be transformed into the extraordinary objects described in minute detail in the bewilderingly complicated instruction book. I would play with this on the table, under the single bare bulb, and maybe put together a simple square box, or a rudimentary tower on a good day, but when the time came for serious work, I would go through the instruction book with Dad, and we would decide which model we would attempt. I had full confidence in him, and it was not misplaced: whatever the task, he would somehow make the dream a reality. He accomplished all this with the many tiny parts on a board on his stomach, while on his chest, he delicately assembled the complicated structure from the different shaped metal parts that he screwed, and bolted and threaded, into a thing of beauty and wonder. All the while I sat wide eyed beside him for many hours, handing him brackets and angles, girders and gears, and an unending amount of the bright brass nuts and bolts. It must have taken many days to build some of our more elaborate models, but the results were breathtaking, so much so that even my mother had to admit that our time had not been entirely wasted. The two masterpieces that I remember with most affection are the working loom we built, which, when supplied with endless balls of different coloured wools, enabled us to make covers for the backs of the chairs, or even a bed cover. I don’t know how long we kept this remarkable object, but eventually it would have been disassembled and reworked into our most ambitious enterprise. This was a model that required some far from standard pieces, that we must have obtained somehow, but when we had all we needed, we began our greatest project. We somehow constructed a large battleship, and a submarine; the battleship had a hidden spring mechanism at its centre, and the submarine had another similar mechanism that fired our specially constructed torpedo. I can still clearly remember the thrill of standing the battleship in front of the fireplace, and lining up the submarine a few feet away; upon releasing a lever the torpedo sped across the carpet and hit a plate in the middle of the battleship. After a couple of tries I got it to strike exactly the right spot, at which point the deck of the ship erupted, and deposited guns and bridge onto the carpet. My excited yell matched Dad’s familiar chuckle, as we wallowed in the joy of achievement, his more than mine,as, not for the only time, we transformed our grim reality into pure pleasure as a result of imagination and endeavour.

Pastimes 4 (a)

Comics (British)

 
 


Comics

   


Although the books were important to me, and taught me much, I had another overriding passion, shared with previous generations of boys, and sometimes, girls. Comics were an integral part of our lives, although I suspect I was a more obsessive reader than most of my friends. We had such a cornucopia of words and pictures to choose from that most of us would pick comics or stories at random according to taste, a natural way to handle this deluge of delight. As always however, I became immersed in this world, and had to have and read everything; a trait that has remained constant all through my life, and which has led to my becoming a collector, and finally, dealer.

I was lucky to be around while the golden age of British comics still flourished, although the war had diminished the market to some extent. British comics had taken a different route to the great American comic book industry, although for some years in the forties and fifties the two traditions existed side by side. From the early years of the century America had developed comic strips into a unique art form, usually printed in newspaper "funnies" sections, but later to be printed as stand alone "comic books" that had no equivalent in this country. British readers had no access to this extraordinary art form until the war, when American servicemen brought them into this country, and they slowly seeped into the mainstream, eventually changing the comic culture in this country for ever.


Before that change however, I was lucky enough to grow up in an era when the great British story paper comics still flourished. They had begun before the First World War in the form of "The Gem" and then "The Magnet". They were closely printed, densely written  story papers, with few illustrations, and the Magnet especially had a great influence due to the legendary stories of Greyfriars school, written by Frank Richards, and featuring Billy Bunter. These essentially middle class stories featuring public schoolboys were devoured by myself and countless other working class slum dwellers, living and playing among the shattered detritus of our neighbourhoods, and yet we accepted this privileged world as easily as our own mean streets. I was as familiar with the idea of Latin prep, quadrangles, ivy covered walls and mortar boards, as any Eton alumni, which gave my first introduction to grammar school some years later a pleasing shock of the familiar, when I first cycled through the imposing gates of the City of Norwich school. These two seminal publications had already ceased printing by the time of my first comics, but I was lucky in that Billy Bunter continued his exploits in a series of books which I read obsessively, to augment the old copies of The Magnet which would be provided by various uncles, mainly I suspect for my father to read. Although I was born too late for the Magnet and Gem, I was just in time to absorb the last great flourish of the DC Thomson story paper empire.


Before the war DC Thomson had published, among many other titles, what came to be known as "The Big Five", the best selling story papers in the country. The first comic was The Adventure, first published in 1921, followed by The Rover and The Wizard in 1922, and some years later The Skipper in 1930, and finally The Hotspur in 1933. The Skipper died with the advent of the war, and so I had the remaining four titles to occupy me in the forties when my reading began in earnest.

I had read odd copies of these, discarded by my brother, until one day, walking home down Dereham road with my mother, just before Midland Street and the Baptist Church, we passed Smiths the tobacconist, and I spotted newspapers and comics inside. I dragged her in, and we were told that they would happily supply a weekly comic order. I went back later alone, having been told to pick my favourite comic, which I could have every week. Once inside the dark, exotically smelling interior though, and being confronted with so many colourful, exciting covers,  there was obviously no way I could make a choice, and so I airily ordered one of each. When I told my Mother she rather bemusedly said "I didn't expect you to buy them all", but said no more, indulged my need, and so allowed my four 3d comics to add another shilling to a frugal household budget. I probably read every story of every issue for the next five years or more, and no shilling was ever better spent, than absorbed in those 60 closely printed pages featuring characters, worlds and exploits that have stayed with me to this day. 

                                                                    "The Adventure"

The Adventure had science fiction, thrillers and war, but also a staple of the genre, a football story, in this case " Baldy Hogan - the brains behind the team". Baldy Hogan was the player manager of Third Division Burhill United, a down to earth, working-class environment that frequently appeared in these comics, and that we knew intimately from our own experience.

                                                                      "The Rover"

The Rover had more school stories than The Adventure, but also one of the most memorable characters of english literature: "Alf Tupper - The Tough of the Track". Alf Tupper first appeared in 1949, about the time I began reading the comic, and is one of the great working class heroes of the post-war years. Alf lived with his Aunt Meg in Anchor Alley, slept on the kitchen floor, and worked in a welder's shop for 25 shillings a week; his staple diet being fish and chips wrapped in newspaper. Despite his environmental disadvantages and his truculent working class temperament, he joined the essentially middle class Greystone Harriers Athletics Club, and by sheer will he forced them to accept him and became a success. Alf was a far cry from the hallowed halls of Greyfriars or Red Circle, but he was rooted in the working class life that we all knew, and was one of the first of the angry young men that flourished in mainstream fiction over the next ten years, and is not a million miles from Alan Sillitoe's  " The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner". My other favourite in The Rover was a fanciful character called "Morgyn the Mighty, The World's Strongest Man", a loin-cloth clad figure who lived on a jungle island. I was especially impressed by him because I had somehow acquired a hard back book, with a glorious coloured dust jacket that featured him in a full length adventure story, illustrated by the wonderful Dudley Watkins, better known for his work on the DC Thomson comic strips including The Beano. The images from that book never left me, and many years later I tracked down another copy which is now one of my proudest possessions.

                                                                   "The Wizard"

The Wizard had lots of adventure stories, not many school, but a good selection of sports stories, one of which, "Wilson", has become a legend. Wilson was "The Man in Black" who was already 150 years old when he first appeared in the comic, and was essentially a supernatural being with astonishing athletic abilities, who figured in real life events like the 1948 London Olympics, and the ascent on Everest, but also in remote regions of the world where his he pits his physical attributes against exotic adversaries. I recently had an old man totter into the shop, and ask if I had a Wizard comic with a Wilson story in it - he wanted to show his family who this exotic character was, that he obviously still talked about, to an increasingly sceptical audience, 70 years after he had first encountered him. I think he was beginning to wonder if his memories of Wilson were all a dream, but luckily I found him  a copy and sent him away happy, clutching his prize, the memories of his childhood secured.



The Skipper ceased publication in 1941 due to war time paper shortages, and so I never had the opportunity to add it to my reading list. It had the lowest circulation of "The Big Five", and featured mainly adventure stories, but no outstanding characters, although it is still fondly remembered by a dwindling band of loyal ex-readers. 


                                                                The Hotspur

The Hotspur was the last of "The Big Five" to appear, in 1933, and had a miscellaneous collection of adventure stories, but was held together by the core story of "Red Circle School", which was the mainstay from the first issue. Red Circle was a public school after the Greyfriars model, and for some years in the thirties competed head to head with it on a weekly basis. Although it was as important to me as the much more famous Magnet stories, it has largely faded from most peoples's memory, and never achieved the afterlife that Greyfriars did, when its parent publication expired.  



Although the story papers had been predominant for thirty years, and would survive for another twenty, by the end of the thirties other influences had begun to take hold, and the comic strip reared its inventive head. DC Thomson, publishers of The Big Five, had had comic strips published in Scotland for some years, but in 1937 introduced The Dandy, followed the next year by The Beano. These early issues still had text stories, but comic strips dominated, and over time took over the whole comic. Film Fun and Radio Fun were also being published at this time, and again, comic strips dominated. The impact of these comics was strengthened by the publication of annuals, a uniquely British concept, released for Christmas, and one of the highlights of Christmas day for me, and thousands of others. I read all these comics as they came my way, with the annuals especially prized, and their images burned into our imagination in that grey post war environment. The art work brilliantly captured our world, or our world as we would wish it to be: especially the images of food, displayed in such abundance that it should have seemed cruel in our miserably rationed post war reality; but we loved the tottering edifices of cakes and ice cream, the steaming drum sticks and piles of creamy mashed potato studded with fat sausages, that seemed to be the inevitable component of so many stories. We never starved, even in those bleak days, and I don't remember even being particularly hungry; but we feasted vicariously in the pages of our favourite comics, so much so that real food, even in these plentiful days, has to be very special to match the magnificence of those wonderfully laden tables in the comic book world.


The weekly read

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Always Bunter

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Always school

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Sometimes strips

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Always adventure

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Wilson getting ready for the Olympics

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Always sport

Pastimes 4 (b)

Comics (American)


Growing up in Norwich after the War, gave me and my contemporaries, access to a treasure trove of comic material that other parts of the country never had, due to the amount of American air force bases in Norfolk. The Americans had 1000’s of comics at their camps and they gradually found their way into our hands. I was especially lucky in that I had two young aunts, Joan and Celia, who would bring American boyfriends to our house in Adelaide Street, where they would be more welcome than at home under the gaze of my fearsome grandmother. I would be indulged by the Americans, as would the rest of the family, in those straitened days, and comics would have been in the house for my brother even before I could read them. When, in 1948, my Aunt Joan became a G.I. Bride and moved to America, Christmas would always bring a box of delights for the whole family, including piles of comics which I felt should have been exclusively for me as only I could really appreciate them, but had to reluctantly share with my cousin. I haven’t changed.

These full-colour, ten cent comics with their glossy covers far exceeded in quality and content anything being produced in this country, and we were irretrievably hooked, in my case, for life. Alongside all the other reading I was doing, I wallowed in the visual and intellectual excitement of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Elastic Man, and, my particular favourite, Captain Marvel. They all had their attractions, but only Captain Marvel had that all important emblem that set him apart from all other superheroes, only Captain Marvel had a lightning bolt across his chest! What could be more appropriate or more glamorous, or more vividly sum up the fantasy world that I spent so much of my childhood years immersed in. 


British publishers tried to compete and put out numerous one shot comics in the late 40’s but, although collectable now, they didn’t impress us too much, although my appetite was voracious, and I was willing to try anything. More successful was the attempt by Miller and Son in 1953 to cash in by reprinting Captain marvel comics in black and white; this soon foundered however, when The Marvel comics in America had to stop publishing when a long running law suit by Superman publishers prevailed, and Captain Marvel was deemed to be a Superman rip off, and was consigned to history. Miller comics, ever inventive, immediately stopped their Captain Marvel reprints and changed overnight to “Marvelman”, a British drawn and written superhero, a close cousin of Captain Marvel, who survived the demise of the superheroes in the fifties, and survived for ten years until the American new breed of superheroes had a resurgence that has lasted until the present day.


In the fifties the British comics that I read most, apart from the story papers, were the superb annuals of Captain Marvel, Superman and Marvelman, although I did try “ Eagle” for a few issues.

In 1950 I was reading the story papers avidly, but was also becoming obsessed, as all my contemporaries were, by the colourful American ten cent comics supplied by the G.I.’s, especially the Horror comics, of which more in a moment. A lot of us turned to these because the British counterparts contained pages of text and were black and white, and the American full colour strips were a revelation. This was a trend noticed by a British publisher of religious texts, John Morris, who disapproved of the increasingly extreme content of the American comics, and decided to challenge them with his own wholesome alternative. In 1950 he published the first issue of “Eagle”, a large glossy comic full of stirring stories, comic strips and educational material. It was mainly in black and white, and may not have survived, had it not been for the lead story of “Dan Dare Pilot of the Future”, which took up the front cover and was a science fiction story in vivid colour, and magnificently drawn by Frank Hampson. It was unlike anything we had seen before and remains a masterpiece of comic book art, the main reason “Eagle” thrived, although it also had a brilliant line in merchandise that enlightened many a Christmas morning, and drives a healthy collectors market now. I bought a copy of the first issue in April 1950, when I came out of the Regal after the children’s matinee, and we all found the Dan Dare section amazing, but the rest soon palled, and I never bought it on a regular basis. It was the kind of comic that your parents would approve of, the kiss of death, and I waded through many annuals, supplied by Uncles as Christmas presents, but it always seemed a bit dull, compared with what else was on offer. 


I had enjoyed the staple of the American comic book with the superheroes, the funny animals, the small town stories of “Archie” and “Blondie”, that had flooded the market for a decade, but by 1950, American comics had taken a new turning into darker, more perverse, areas that comic books had never ventured into before. “Horror Comics”, as they came to be known, hit the newsstands with a blizzard of new titles in 1950, and for a few years they were the dominant force in comics. E.C. comics were the leaders, with all the other titles a pale imitation, and in 1950 they blitzed the market with seven new titles, with three more over the next two years, including the legendary “Mad”. The comics were Horror, Science Fiction, Crime and Action, they all used superb new artists who stretched the art of comic imagery, and all employed a heightened form of pulp writing that added a uniquely rancid flavour to their twisted tales of death and disembowelment. In their lurid pages flesh rotted corpses would seek vengeance, murderous axemen stalk the unsuspecting , and always the ever present disorientation of a world seen from a different viewpoint, that revealed the abyss of despair and terror lurking beneath the everyday. A terrible beauty was in those pages, perhaps borne out of the real terror the world had so recently experienced, and reflected in the unsettling Film Noir masterpieces coming out of Hollywood at the same time. The crime stories especially drew on the pulp and Noir novels and movies of the 30’s and 40’s, and their subversive undertone concurred with the feeling of paranoid suspicion taking root in America at that time with the advent of the communist panic.  Add to this the audaciously anti-establishment stance taken on topics such as race, anti-semitism and drugs, and it was obvious that the comics were heading for a confrontation with the government, that, in the authoritarian fifties, they would be unlikely to win.

They ravaged my young imagination, and peopled my world with images of the grotesque and the bizarre, that have never left me. I was completely besotted with them, and sought them out wherever I could, not easy as they were not published in this country, and all copies were second hand, as they filtered out from the American servicemen who had them supplied to their bases. There were a few British black and white reprints that helped fill the gap, but the treasured originals were sought after, and fought over, as they appeared on a market stall, or in a second hand shop, or just in a bundle of comics that someone had acquired, probably from an American friend of the family. 

Horror comics were one of the most important influences of my early life, and for four years I could indulge myself with no restraints, but it was not to last. For years there had been an outcry in America about these comics, that had transferred itself to our guardians of the status quo, and in 1954 the forces of righteousness triumphed, and my beloved comics were no more. The turning point was the publication of a book called “The Seduction of the Innocent”, a spurious psychological treatise by an equally spurious Dr Fredric Wertham, who argued that the comics were harmful to children, effectively enough to get the press inflamed, and call for their ban. I watched the furore with apprehension, my first experience of the forces of the establishment trying to control popular culture, but not the last. The battles of the next 20 years saw the dead hand of the authoritarian state challenged in many areas, including the freedom of popular culture to express itself, and freedom eventually won a victory of sorts, but with many casualties along the way, including my Horror comics.

This virtually ended my love affair with comics, especially as a new comic code came into force that sanitised the industry, that sent it into a depression for a decade. It would be 15 years before I again found any comics to attract me, and they were subject to the same hysterical attacks that had blighted my first love affair with this extraordinary medium – but that’s another chapter.


      

Epilogue

Those magical hours spent with Dad, cocooned in our world of books and history; great adventures and faraway places, awakened my young imagination, and embedded in my mind forever a knowledge that these books, magazines and cards, and all the other objects I would come across in my life, hid a world of wonder within their prosaic reality: they were a key to a world of imagination more vivid than reality; they could make memory speak, and recover time. These splinters chipped from the framework of our life are gathered by collectors to reassemble our lives in a form that creates a shape out of the chaos. My father taught me to dream, and, for good or ill, I’ve been dreaming ever since. For that, among many other things, I thank him.

Imagination stirred

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The height of the craze

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A legendary comic book until the Code started to bite. 23 irreplaceable issues

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UK reprints. Only the covers were in colour

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My main man

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UK rip off

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Another favourite

Imagination shaken

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Reprint with a great Jack Davis cover

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Not all horrors came from beyond the grave

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Except the rotting work of the great Jack Davis

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Nightmare for a dime

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Something is always watching

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Mixed messages for young minds


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