Comics on Sea

In August 1974, our family were on holiday in Llandudno, North Wales. It was our fourth and last visit to the resort. Days were spent mooching around the town, playing games of miniature golf, and taking various trips out. Most of my diary entries for the week, however, are lists of comics. On our first day, outside a newsagents, my eye had been drawn to a wire carousel on which were displayed a lot of American comic books. They all bore the imprint of the publisher Charlton, and they all featured Hanna Barbera cartoon characters, depicted in a series of colourful covers. I’d never seen anything like them before – this was my first ever encounter with genuine American comic books. There were plenty to choose from, and I selected a Top Cat title, No. 19 in a series, and dated inside to December 1973. The price was 6p, over-stamped in a roundel on the front cover – the original price having been 20c. During the week, I picked up more titles including Yogi Bear and The Jetsons.

How had they got here, and why had I never seen these comics before? They weren’t available in the shops back home in Birmingham. Later, comparing notes with other comic fans, I found out that these ‘comic books from the seaside’ were what we’d now call a ‘thing’, and for a time during the 1970s were liable to pop up at almost any coastal resort. Later still, I heard about how they’d come into the country as ballast in freighters. However they got here, they were here, and more to the point, they were in Llandudno in the summer of 1974. By the end of that holiday, my brother and myself went home with a small mountain of them – and I still have them to this day.

The stamped cover price on some of those comics includes the letters T&P, and online research reveals this to have been the imprint of a publisher and distributor called Thorpe and Porter, who had pioneered the importation of American comic books into Britain at the end of the 1950s. In 1959, they had become the exclusive UK distributors for DC, Marvel, Dell, Charlton and American Comics Group titles. Some had their covers altered for UK consumption back in the States, whilst others, like the examples we’d found, were simply ink-stamped with the British price.

Detail from a Top Cat comic cover, showing Thorpe & Porter's price stamp

These Charlton titles fell some way below the standard of the Gold Key series, an imprint of Western Publishing, whose titles made up the content of many British annuals sold by the Manchester publisher World Distributors. Many of the Charlton strips are credited to Gwen Krause and Ray Dirgo, and the likenesses of the comic characters were always very good. The pair must have been working flat out, though, as there were literally dozens of Charlton titles appearing during the early 1970s, and occasionally the artwork looks rushed. The printing was of an acceptable standard, with occasional examples of plates off register, but on the whole the panels didn’t look a lot different to the Gold Key examples I’d seen in annuals. The stories, however, were very poor stuff, scarcely lasting for more than six pages, some of them consisting of a single gag – whereas Gold Key’s storylines could run to twelve pages or more, and employed smaller panels. Alongside the cover stars, a typical Charlton comic included lots of advertising, much of it encouraging young readers to sell a newspaper called ‘Grit’ or cheap greetings cards in exchange for cash or prizes. Other adverts, less well targeted, featured hair restoring products and cheap jewelery, with headlines addressed to 'military men'. One curious example is headed ‘Help Save the Beatles’, and offers a selection of 8mm film material featuring the Fab Four, available by mail order. There were, of course, the usual tacky pages of tricks and novelties like Frankenstein masks, x-ray specs and the curious ‘sea monkeys’. Despite all this tat, the comics still felt like good value at 6p for 36 pages, and the covers were always colourful and attractive. 

A typical page of tat advertising from a Charlton title.

At the time, it struck me as unusual that comics featuring the likes of Top Cat and Yogi Bear should still be in production – the shows having had their heyday on British television over a decade earlier – but publication was almost certainly in response to the TV series continuing to live on in syndication. 

Aside from the stash we discovered at Llandudno, I never saw these comic books again, save for one occasion when I spotted a few Gold Key titles and a couple of later Charlton editions at a newsagents near Birmingham. These aside, it seems that, for the most part, those ‘comics from the seaside’ never penetrated much further inland. Whether this is in any way related to their use as ballast on ships, I’ve no idea, but I’ve seen reports online of large piles of American comics being found in dockside locations, so there may be a connection.

I’d discovered Charlton comics during a time at which the brand, then 29 years old, was undergoing a revival by artist/writer/editor Nicola Cuti. The Hanna Barbera titles, many of them previously licensed to Gold Key, had begun appearing in the mid-60s, becoming one of the company’s staples, particularly after the cancellation of their earlier superhero comics. But the writing was on the wall for the publisher. Many titles were cancelled in 1976, and the majority of those still in print were suspended for eight months the following year. The comic book industry was entering a period of decline, and following a number of attempts to rally the company’s fortunes, Charlton went out of business in 1985.

For true comics fans, Charlton’s high watermark had come during the so called ‘silver age’, although the company never quite managed to create an iconic character to match those of its rivals. War stories, ghostly tales and horror abounded, along with comics based on monster movies, before the move towards TV cartoon characters. I’m sure I’d have snapped up the likes of Gorgo or Reptilicus if I’d seen them, but from what I can remember, the bulk of the comics we found on that carousel in Llandudno were from the Hanna Barbera range.

Seasides were also a good place to find toys that were nearly a decade out of date. From shops in the Torbay area, circa 1971, my brother and myself were bought Fireball XL5 Rocket Guns. These toys, originally sold in Dan Dare packaging, were produced by J&R Randall and sold under their ‘Merit’ brand in the mid 60s. The same shop still had scores of old Thunderbirds toys on its shelves, which, in their original boxes, would have made a fine haul if we’d been minded to ask for them. Whilst the ballast connection may explain the presence of American comics at the seaside, these out-of-date toys are less easy to account for. And it wasn’t just one shop, either – around Paignton, we came across several retailers selling similar ‘new old stock’ items, including die-cast toys by Corgi and Dinky. 

The shop where we bought those comics lasted a long time. Google Streetview showed it still thriving in 2014, when apart from some modern signage, it presented very much the same appearance as I remember from over fifty years ago – the comic carousels were beneath the awning, close to where the newspaper headline board is sitting in the Streetview picture below. Sadly, when Google returned a decade later, the shop appeared to have ceased trading.

I don't know how long the 'comics on sea' phenomenon lasted: for me, it was just a few days in 1974. Maybe today there are still seaside retailers selling comics from a few years ago... but finding a title from 2023 in 2025 wouldn't be quite the same, somehow...