Football! Football! Football!

 

The Long, Slow Death of TV21

It was September 1968. TV21 was well into its fourth year, and looking less and less like the imaginative, ‘twenty first century comic’ it had started out as back in January 1965. No one could have suspected it at the time, but the title had exactly a year to live, and it was during that autumn that the first signs of decline began to appear. Loyal readers soon noticed, and wrote in to complain. Others, however, demanded change – and it was the push for change that helped to speed the comic’s demise.

Until September 1968, TV21 had always avoided sport. This was, after all, a comic rooted in the future worlds of Gerry Anderson, and sport was never mentioned in his TV series: puppets could hardly be expected to play football or tennis. It seemed a safe bet that readers of TV21 were more interested in rockets, robots, spaceships and other futuristic adventures than the prospect of watching 22 grown men kicking a leather ball from end to end of a field. In defence of this portrayal, may I offer up exhibit A: myself.

In January 1967, British comics creator Mick Anglo had launched TV Tornado, a cheaply produced publication that sought to capitalise on the wave of interest in contemporary television adventure series like Batman and The Man From UNCLE. Compared to TV21, TV Tornado was rubbish: the artwork was inferior, the paper was inferior, and it was bulked out with text stories, which required a lot less artwork than comic strips and were accordingly much cheaper to produce.

By late 1968, TV Tornado was on its last legs, and it was decided to merge its smoking remains with the still comparatively successful TV21. In reality, all this amounted to was drafting TV Tornado stories The Saint and Tarzan into TV21. Batman and The Man From UNCLE found homes elsewhere. This happened at issue 190 of TV21, when the long-running (but lately misdirected) Stingray strip ended to free up two black and white pages.

Two weeks later, the operation was complete, and TV21 now had the unwelcome name of TV Tornado grafted into its new masthead (above). It didn’t deserve to be there, yet it would endure until the very last edition of TV21’s original run. But the most worrying thing about issue 192 of TV21 was the free gift included inside: a set of five colour pictures from Panini’s recently launched ‘Wonderful World of Soccer Stars’ set of collectable cards. Football had never been mentioned in TV21 before, football players’ portaits had never appeared in its pages. What was going on? With zero interest in football, I was puzzled but not, as yet, unduly worried. Perhaps I should have been. The soccer star stickers were passed on to my younger brother who went on to collect the whole set: but soccer star portaits were a long way from the ‘Spectraprints’ – portraits of the characters and hardware from Captain Scarlet – that had formed TV21’s last free gifts, six months earlier. The writing was on the wall.

At issue 194 (above), I began to have reservations – this week’s Captain Scarlet story had a football theme, as the Mysterons threatened the life of a Middle Eastern potentate who also happened to be an international soccer star. ‘What’s with all this football’ I might well have asked myself. It was the beginning of a slow drip, drip of sporting content into a comic where it simply didn’t belong. Football in TV21 made as much sense as running a Thunderbirds strip in a footie mag like Striker. Different audiences. They just didn’t mix. But the editorial staff carried on regardless… Issue 197 of October 25 1968 included ‘Spectrum’s Sports Challenge’, a series of sporting questions placed next to an advert for Subbuteo table football. Coincidence? I think not. Admittedly, the feature only occupied a quarter of a page, but that was more than enough…

At this point in time, TV21’s readers were known as ‘Shades’, junior agents of Spectrum, who instead of writing to the editor sent in their reports to Colonel White, whoever he was (probably Alan Fennell). A ‘Shades of Opinion’ column had been initiated earlier in the year, encouraging readers to get their rocks off on any subject that they felt strongly about (today, they’d all be whingeing on social media – I dare say some of them still are…) In Issue 205 (December 21 1968), ‘Shade’ Nicholas Honnor complained to Colonel White of the ‘decreasing value’ of TV21, pointing to the arrival of Spectrum and the merger with TV Tornado as key factors contributing to the comic’s decline. Colonel White who, in private would probably have told young Master Honnor to fuck off, gave his stock reply, asking other Shades what they thought…

Just a week later, there was a football quiz – readers had to identify the real ball in a photo where three more had been stripped in. It wasn’t much, but nevertheless represented another step in the wrong direction, gradually softening up the readership for much more sport and football content to come.

Perhaps as a sop to readers like Nicholas Honnor, and beginning at issue 208 (January 11 1969), a series of thumbnails of vintage covers began appearing in the new ‘Contact 21’ agents’ page. Small black and white images of the first six weeks of TV21 were printed, and although they were very small, you could still read the text, if you used a magnifying glass. I was inspired by the sight of these old covers, and created ‘facsimiles’ of numbers one and two in biro and crayon. It would be a long time before I got to own copies of the originals.

The following week, 50 Mettoy footballs were offered as prizes in a competition. Had the publishers been doing some research into their audience? Football stories featured in most of the popular boys’ papers of the era: Hotspur, Tiger, Victor, Lion and Rover all included soccer strips and stories. But none of them could print full colour photos on their covers. As yet, there was no comic or magazine whose content was given over entirely to football, but this would soon change: Shoot! launched in August 1969, would have been in preparation during the months that TV21 spent introducing football content into its pages.

The first part of the editors’ cunning plan involved a reversion to the newspaper-style covers of the comic’s first three years. Some weeks before the revamp, Roger Spear of Coventry had written in requesting more sport in TV21 and asking for a picture of Bobby Charlton in action. Colonel White was happy to oblige and, as ever, asked other Shades what they thought of the idea. It is, of course, quite possible that Roger Spear’s letter was genuine and just happened to suit the comic’s potential new direction. Equally likely is that the letter was written by the editorial staff as a primer to gauge readers’ reactions to the prospect of sporting content in TV21. In the same edition, David Sowter of Sheffield wrote to say he ‘liked TV21 how it used to be […] when it contained news stories on the front cover.’ Colonel White’s reply promised ‘a number of surprises in store’ with edition 217: ‘one of them concerns the cover.’

Colonel White was a week too early with his promise, as TV21’s next revamp in fact came with issue 218, when the cover reverted to a look very similar to its original appearance. The preceding two weeks had seen ‘transitional’ covers with the existing masthead and photo stories, but with 218 the makeover was complete: a brand new masthead reflected the animated Century 21 graphic seen at the beginning of recent series including Captain Scarlet and Joe 90. Annoyingly, TV Tornado still got a credit.

Two of the 'transitional' covers that presaged the return to full newspaper style layouts at issue 218

Back in issue 216, however, readers had been given a foretaste of things to come, with a whole page photo feature, ‘Soccermania’ devoted to the sport. Colonel White wrote: ‘Following Roger Spear’s letter in TV21 issue 213, many hundreds of Shades and Agents have written to headquarters asking me to include a sports page in TV21. Out of the many letters, football was easily the most liked sport…’

Readers like me were probably thinking ‘thanks for nothing, Roger Spear’. Assuming he even existed. And what about those hundreds of letters? Did TV21 really attract such a volume of correspondence? Whatever the truth may have been, the editorial team were determined to feature football in their magazine, and one way of doing so was to revert to photo-style newspaper covers, providing the opportunity for soccer action photos in colour, which no other comic could provide. For the moment, however, there would be no further football features, and readers would be given a few weeks to get used to the new format before the next round of changes. Issue 218 also saw the debut of a strip based on ITC’s latest adventure series Department S. Its inclusion felt like a nod towards the kind of content favoured by TV Tornado, providing some small justification for retaining the Tornado credit on the masthead. 

Issue 218 made a credible attempt to revive the classic 'newspaper of the future' covers.

The comic’s content continued to be a subject of debate on the letters page: Robin Peeters of Maidstone wanted to see a weekly space pin-up (I presume he meant NASA hardware, rather than Barbarella); but on the same page, Alan Kittles of Aylesbury suggested that there should be a football story in TV21 ‘as most comics have one’. Coincidentally (or, more likely, not), that’s exactly what the editorial team was planning…

Finally, at issue 224, the inevitable happened. ‘TV21 Goes Football’ cried the headline on page 9, previewing a new feature, ‘Football United’, which would debut the following week. Just to keep loyal readers on side, a box-out in the bottom corner reassuringly pointed out that ‘all the regular features’ would remain. Issue 225 was, depending on your point of view, a landmark or a nail in the TV21 coffin: the first ever football cover. Others followed hard on its heels. 227 featured a huge colour photo of Manchester United’s star striker George Best, while issue 229 profiled league champions Leeds United. TV21 had trumped the upstart Shoot! three months before it was due to launch, becoming the first ever British comic to feature colour football photos on its covers.

How to alienate your readers: TV21 goes football, May 1969

Not everyone was happy with the comic’s new direction. ‘TV21 is unique in that it contains no sport!’ complained Brian Milnes of Stockport in issue 229. ‘A 21st Century magazine it is and a 21st Century magazine it should stay! Keep out all sport.’ Meantime, Michael Maguire of Wishaw in the West Midlands suggested a compromise in the form of ‘a modern approach to sport’ such as the WASPs playing the World Navy at underwater events. In reply, Colonel White spoke unconvincingly of the ‘many thousands’ of readers who had written in suggesting the comic incude ‘a modern football story based in the 21st century.’ He went on to claim, even less convincingly, that ‘readers are almost one hundred per cent agreed that Football United is one of the best features in TV21.’ If that was a true reflection of editorial policy and opinion, it’s easy to see why the comic’s days were numbered. And if readers really were that keen on football, they’d be sure to jump ship when Shoot! launched just a few weeks later. It all smacked rather of desperation…

The promised ‘football story based in the 21^st century’ began in issue 231 with the 2-page black and white strip ‘Super League’, illustrated by Malcolm Stokes. To make room for it, the Saint strip had come to an end the week before: but Simon Templar would have the last laugh…

The football covers were too much for some readers, and in issue 232 Nigel Smith of Brighton wrote in complaining about the George Best photo. ‘I think that TV21 is going a little too far with sport,’ he opined. It certainly seemed perverse that, during the summer of the first manned lunar landing, TV21 should become obsessed with such a down-to-earth subject as football. Where were the photo features about the forthcoming Apollo mission? A new space feature, ‘Saturn Probe’ had debuted some weeks earlier, and was very much in the manner of the old TV21, but it was entirely fictional. Joining it, in issue 219, was ‘Space Info’, a weekly look at developments in the real-life space race, and issue 235 (July 19) did manage to find room for a page feature, ‘Moon Man’, focused on Neil Armstrong who would, that same week, become the first human being to set foot on the moon. It’s a shame they couldn’t have run to a colour cover in commemoration of this historic event, but that week’s edition featured a piece of space hardware from Joe 90 and news of a ‘sudden blast off from Glenn Field’. TV21 was in grave danger of losing the plot…

It’s quite depressing to go through the last few weeks of the original TV21. By this time, responsibility for editorial content had passed into the hands of Marts Press, and the comic was being bulked out with generic factual features like ‘Nature’s Flying Machines’, an illustrated half page item about bats that could easily have come from the pages of Eagle or Look and Learn. By issue 237, with ‘Football United’ occupying two pages, four of the comic’s twenty pages were now soccer-related. That same week saw a new wildlife feature, ‘From the Notebooks of Wilson of the Wild’ that again had an ‘off the shelf’ look about it.

The end in sight: issue 238, the last of the newspaper covers and a football cover to boot...

TV21’s nadir came not at the bitter end, but four weeks earlier. ‘Football! Football! Football!' chanted the cover headline of issue 238. Ironically, it was to be the last of the proper newspaper covers – they’d lasted just twenty issues. The week’s contents weren’t any better – generic features that could have come from any boys’ magazine sat alongside the last vestiges of Century 21 content – Thunderbirds, Zero X and Captain Scarlet who this week waved goodbye to the Mysterons. What was TV21 trying to be? A football comic, a futuristic adventure or a run of the mill boys’ paper? In trying to appease too many factions of its readership, the comic had lost its way. It was high time for a revamp.

Issue 238 was also the very last to feature readers’ letters, one of which, from Paul Monaghan of Northwich, asked for information on ‘the neglected artists in TV21’. Not before time. Monaghan correctly identified Frank Bellamy, but ‘Agent 21’ had to put a name to Mike Noble. Was this a valedictory gesture towards two of the comic’s longest-serving and most popular contributors?

The newspaper covers that had been so trumpeted by Colonel White a few months ago now disappeared, replaced by full page colour photos from issue 239 (August 16) which had the Apollo cover that should really have appeared back in July. The sudden change in style of the covers most likely resulted from the departure of a key member of staff – art editor Jim Watson had been drawing Captain Scarlet until the previous week. He was now replaced by John Cooper.

The very last of the original run of TV21 made a final and feeble attempt at a newspaper style cover, but the layout was unimaginative, and the headline font completely wrong. It’s worth taking a moment to consider the contents of this ‘historic’ last edition:

On pages 2-3, Secret Agent 21 – resurrected earlier in the year, and still drawn by Rab Hamiton, making him one of the longest serving TV21 artists. Captain Scarlet occupied pages 4-5, drawn scrappily by John Cooper. Page 6 was the regular ‘Space Info’ feature, with The Munsters opposite, drawn (and signed!) by Peter Ford. Incredible as it sounds, The Munsters had proved to be one of TV21’s most enduring comic strips, appearing every week since its introduction at issue 52. Page 8 was a regular advertising strip ‘Clark’s Commandos’ promoting a range of boys’ footwear, and on page 9 there was a speculative science feature about space stations. Frank Bellamy’s enduring Thunderbirds strip occupied pages 8 and 9 – his work still up to his usual standard of excellence. Department S came to the end of its comic strip incarnation on page 12, whilst the following page comprised a half-page advertisement and a promotional splash for what was coming ‘next week’…

The futuristic soccer strip Super League wrapped up on pages 14-15, while pages 16-17 were given over to a colour photo feature on the Thunderbird craft that looked like it belonged back in the comic’s mid 60s heyday. (This item replaced the Zero X strip which had ended a week too early.) ‘Wilson of the Wild’ was on page 18, while page 19 contained a half page advert for annuals above the regular ‘Corgi Model Club News’, the only feature to have appeared consistently throughout the entire run of TV21. On the back cover was a colour ad for Letraset ‘Action Transfers’ illustrated by Frank Bellamy, who had clearly seen the writing on the wall, and would shortly transfer his talents elsewhere.

Page 13 – unlucky for some – had given readers an idea of what was to happen next week. TV21 was to be merged with its sibling paper Joe 90, which was actually attracting more readers, probably drawn in by the Star Trek and Land of the Giants strips. Despite its title, TV21 & Joe 90 was more of a continuation of Joe 90 than TV21, and contained only a handful of strips from TV21 – Thunderbirds, The Saint and Tarzan, of which the latter pair were really TV Tornado fodder. To add insult to injury, the following week brought no sign of the new comic – I can well remember asking for it in the newsagents and being told that it hadn’t come in. When it finally did hit the newstands two weeks later, the original date had been blacked out and replaced by an overprinted date of 27 September. Goodness knows how many readers had been lost in the process.

This was all bad enough, but worse was to follow. Within a year TV21 would have become unrecognisable, and its title almost totally irrelevant...

Thank you, and goodnight. TV21 closes for business, September 1969. Corgi Model Club News was the last man standing from the comic's original 1965 line-up.