A celebration of TV Century 21
Depending on how you look at it, the comic TV Century 21 is either 60 years old or minus 40 years young this week – launched in January 1965, with a cover dateline one hundred years hence, a conceit it would maintain for the next four years.
Enough has been written elsewhere concerning the history and creation of this fondly-remembered comic, the first ever publication whose contents were entirely derived from television series copyrights, but I can’t let the occasion pass without paying homage. It was by no means the first comic to take television as its inspiration, with earlier titles including TV Comic (1951), TV Fun (1953) and TV Express (1956). Indeed, considering those dates, TV Century 21 was rather late to the party – but it put those earlier efforts in the shade.
Conceived by AP Films’ merchandising man Keith Shackleton, TV Century 21 was an astute move, launched some nine months ahead of the Thunderbirds TV series. The British comics market of the early 60s was aggressively competitive, and new titles often sank within a few months of being launched, or else were revamped or amalgamated with their more successful siblings. TV Century 21, uniquely, was launched in the certain knowledge that it would upgrade in around a year’s time to feature the Andersons’ latest creation. The story of Supermarionation to date had provided an object lesson in how character merchandising could yield huge profits: Supercar, Fireball XL5 and Stingray had all landed lucrative merchandising deals, and A.P. Films would have had every reason to expect even greater things of Thunderbirds. It therefore made sense to have a ready-made comic vehicle on standby for when the series went to air. With this end in sight, the first few weeks of TV21 teased the upcoming series with exciting photographs of some of the hardware that would be seen on screen – although none of the Thunderbird craft was unveiled.
The biggest nod towards the work in progress came in the form of a Lady Penelope comic strip which would have caused early readers to scratch their heads: who was this new character? Issue one provided the backstory as to how Lady P and Parker got together and saw the pair off on their first adventure. Lady P even found time to visit Elstree Studios for a perfunctory interview with Roger Moore!
The model for TV Century 21 was the hugely successful Eagle, pre-eminent amongst British comic papers since its launch nearly fifteen years earlier. By 1965, however, a series of takeovers and editorial reshuffles had sent the title into a slow decline, and some of its key artists, sensing the writing on the wall, were more than willing to jump ship. The big coup was enticing Frank Bellamy, a task which reportedly took editor Alan Fennell over a year to pull off – Bellamy would not make his TV21 debut until 1966.
The new comic was carefully planned and prepared, with nothing left to chance: its three main illustrators were amongst the top names in their field – Ron Embleton, late of TV Express, Mike Noble (Girl, Express Weekly, TV Comic) and Eric Eden (Eagle). In addition to the three big Supermarionation series, the contents included titles licensed from elsewhere – Burke’s Law was a popular detective series starring Gene Barry, then running on ITV, whilst My Favourite Martian was an imported US sitcom, unknown to much of the ITV network through the vicissitudes of regional scheduling (the first comic strip give readers a brief introduction to the characters and situations for those unfamiliar with the show).
Biggest of all the bought-in content were the Daleks, whose back cover colour strip began by telling the origin story of the evil aliens. Though credited to their creator, Terry Nation, the weekly strip was in fact penned by Dr. Who script editor David Whitaker, with Nation doing little more than rubber stamping his storylines. Adding them to the TV21 mix was an astute move, as 1965 would see the phenomenon of Dalek mania take the United Kingdom by storm.
It’s interesting to speculate how much the Daleks contributed to the success of TV Century 21. Gerry Anderson told the story of how he was alarmed to find piles of unsold copies in his local newsagent during the comic’s first week, only to return a few days later to find them all gone. The Daleks were being used to sell everything from soap to wallpaper, but there was no mention of them on the first TV21 cover. Did word get around? Did the new comic ‘go viral’, to use modern parlance, in the playgrounds of Britain? “Look, it’s got the Daleks on the back…!”
Whether or not the Daleks had anything to do with it, word of mouth certainly seems to have played its part – there’s no way that anyone could make a case for the first TV Century 21 cover being visually dynamic or eye catching, certainly when seen against the backdrop of a typical week’s comics of the time. Different, certainly, but in a good way? After all, it looked like a newspaper. Okay, so there was a big colour photo of Stingray, but the layout was sedate to say the least: no flashes, starbursts, or huge banners to entice potential readers. You really had to look inside to get a proper idea of what was in store. The newspaper covers would, in their time, become the stuff of legend, but one has to try and get inside the mind of a six or seven year old kid in January 1965, confronted with something that looked like his mum and dad’s daily paper. No wonder it took a few days to sell; but when it did, it did so in spectacular fashion – issue one sold out.
The newspaper cover was a huge gamble that might well have misfired. Ultimately, when the format was ditched three years later, readers immediately wrote in demanding its return. When all’s said and done, the concept wasn’t even original – a couple of Eagle issues had already done the ‘futuristic newspaper’ cover idea in the 1950s – but it took the genius of TV Century 21’s creators to realise its full potential.
The new comic was, according to the late comic collector Denis Gifford, one of the first titles to use television advertising to promote its launch. Now, at the age of three going on four, I was admittedly a bit young at the time, but I was well aware of television advertising, especially as regards new comic launches. In the coming years, I would be persuaded to ask for titles as diverse as Pippin, Playland, Pow! and Solo purely on the strength of their TV launch campaigns. Yet in January 1965, I was utterly oblivious to TV Century 21 – ironic, considering that it contained some of my favourite TV series. It’s conceivable that the launch ad didn’t even air in the ATV Midlands region where I was watching, although it would be perverse if that were the case, as ATV’s money had helped to get A.P. Films off the ground.
I’m not sure I had sight of TV21 until the summer of 1966, when I was bought a copy one Saturday in place of my usual weekly, Teddy Bear, which for some reason was unobtainable that week. I had it bought for me again later in the year when I learned that this week’s copy included the incredible free gift of a cardboard Thunderbirds hat. From thereon in, my consumption of TV21 remained sporadic: I was still getting it in December 1966, as a rough copy of a competition entry has survived, relating to issue No. 98; and my earliest surviving copy dates to March 1967. Thereafter, it fell off my radar until later in the year, when I became aware, belatedly, of the arrival of Captain Scarlet. From this point on, I would stick with TV21 until its demise in the summer of 1969, by which time the comic had been through further format changes and was in danger of transforming into a football weekly.
My entry for the jigsaw competition in TV21 issue No. 98, December 1966
So, exactly what was in that first TV Century 21 of sixty years ago? Well, following the newspaper cover, the first two pages were a black and white strip of Burke’s Law. The CBS television series would be revamped later in the year as Amos Burke Secret Agent, but by that time, he’d parted company with TV21. The strip was well drawn, in a style reminiscent of Alex Raymond’s Rip Kirby, and the scripting was tight, telling a complete story in a mere two pages. If anything, it was a little adult in tone for the readership, but it was a decent effort.
The following two pages comprised the first instalment of the Fireball XL5 comic strip. Mike Noble was already working on his version of the strip, which would commence at issue 6, and had seemingly prepared the masthead (presumably retained from the dummy edition); but for the first five weeks the artist in residence was Graham Coton, marking his only contribution to the comic. His work was sound but lacked the slick professionalism of Noble et al. The opening instalment ended with Steve Zodiac apparently dead, having been zapped by a mysterious bat-creature. Given that we were only on issue one, it was a safe bet that he’d make a full recovery…
The following page was the first in a series of factual articles about space travel, providing an overview of the current state of play and a look forward to possible future developments. It’s interesting to note that, as of January 1965, no astronaut had ventured more than a few hundred miles out into space, none had escaped the Earth’s gravitational pull, and no one had walked in space (although Alexey Leonov was just three months away from his epoch making space walk of March 1965).
The next page was My Favourite Martian, competently drawn in black and white by the ever reliable Bill Titcombe, who would go on to illustrate other sitcom-derived comic strips for numerous titles over the coming decades. To this day, I have never seem an episode of this US sitcom, and I know it only from its appearances in TV21. Am I missing anything? I kind of doubt it...
Following a page of advertising matter, prominently featuring Quercetti toys’ desirable Fireball XL5 catapult-launching model, came the Contact 21 feature – essentially a jazzed-up ‘letters to the editor’ given a spy-fi twist. Readers were encouraged to send in reports to the mysterious ‘Twenty One’, who described himself as the ‘head of a vast Secret Service organisation.’ The comic had come with a free gift ‘Identicode’, enabling readers to use one of two colour codes, red or blue, in order to read and send secret messages. At this stage, Twenty One did not have his own comic strip, as is often erroneously stated by some commentators – that would not arrive until issue 20.
The centre pages were occupied by Ron Embleton’s stunning Stingray strip, taking full advantage of the spread to present the artwork in four horizontal bands. A few photographs were inserted between the illustrations, each with a border of ‘sprocket holes’: this trend would continue for the first dozen or so issues. Anyone who’d turned straight here from the front cover might have been surprised to realise that the strip did not quite match the 'Stingray Lost' headline or the accompanying article: nowhere in the strip does Marineville lose contact with Stingray. So was the cover created independently of the strip, perhaps held over from the original dummy edition? As this has never come to light, there’s no way of knowing. Either way, Embleton’s artwork gave a foretaste of what readers could come to expect for the next couple of years.
The aquatic theme ran onto the next page, another black and white feature entitled Oceans of Mystery, which detailed some of the attempts being made to probe ever deeper into the sea. Another advertising page followed, and then came the poorest effort in the whole comic – Supercar, turned into a comedy strip. The artwork was fine, as comedy strips go, but this would prove to be TV21’s least appealing feature: the first, self-contained story didn’t veer too far from the tone of the TV series, but over the coming months it would become increasingly ludicrous. Running to just one and a half pages, it was joined by a short travelogue feature Orbit Over, describing itself as a ‘special report from TV21’s space satellite.’ Which I’m sure really existed…
The next two pages marked the debut of Lady Penelope, drawn in colour by the competent Eric Eden – a wizard with the airbrush, but a little less sure of himself when it came to figure drawing, although the likenesses of Penelope and Parker were excellent.
Alan Fennell's charming letter of welcome to his readers in the first issue
The final black and white spread included a comedy news section, Cosmic Capers, and an interesting column by composer Barry Gray, giving some insight into the business of three-track recording in a professional studio. Editor Alan Fennell welcomed his readers with a friendly letter, urging them to write to him whenever they liked. Finally, a half page advert/editorial item from Corgi Toys and a short feature on jellyfish rounded off the interior contents. That just left the back page, where we met the Daleks, in colour, and drawn by Richard Jennings. His rendering of the Daleks themselves left something to be desired, but his artwork was energetic and colourful, featuring a lot of fine detailed cross hatching.
And that was it – week one of what would prove to be nearly five years of adventure in the twenty first century. TV21 would stray off course at times – the unwelcome merger with TV Tornado, the misguided attempt to shoehorn soccer into the mix – but it was still arguably the last great British comic of the Silver Age. By 1970, the title still existed, but it was unrecognisable. I think I packed it in later that same year, by which time the Gerry Anderson content had been reduced to nil, and Star Trek was the only game in town. When Mike Noble left (to take up his commission on Look-in) there was no reason to go on.
Could it have lasted longer? Arguably, yes: in 1971, Countdown proved there was still a market for a comic that strongly featured the worlds of Gerry Anderson, trading off the back of the brand new series UFO. But it was a shrinking market. Once the Supermarionation series began to drop off people’s radar, as ITV broadcasts came to an end, it was hard for any publisher to maintain readers’ interest in material that was rapidly becoming nostalgia fodder.
There have been various attempts to produce Gerry Anderson comics for the modern era, but none has stayed the distance: when your comic is tied specifically to a single title such as Stingray or Thunderbirds, you’ve got nowhere to go when your audience moves on. TV21 had that much in its favour – a format that allowed it to adapt and bring in new series as they came to television. Perhaps its biggest mistake was in not admitting Joe 90 into the format: by launching him in a separate title, the publishers split their audience, and within less than a year the two comics had been merged, with disappointing results.
The original run of TV Century 21 have long been highly collectable – prices seem to have stabilised of recent years with the average price per copy being around £20. That’s not bad when you consider they were fetching between £2.50 and £5 each forty years ago and you factor in inflation. It took me over thirty years to complete my own set, although my number one is minus a back cover and one or two of the later editions are a bit the worse for wear. I’m now contemplating re-reading them as a project, one a week over the next five years. I’ll let you know how that goes sometime in the summer of 2029… all being well...
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