If you were reading along yesterday, today's star of Sunday Morning Funnies will likely come as no great surprise. Please welcome-
As mentioned yesterday, Adam had an ongoing strip in TV Comic from #s 788-835. Americans might have a little difficulty grasping long form story telling in short segments, something we'll see in much greater depth when we get to The Trigan Empire. But in UK comics, it's quite common to have lengthy stories told in one or two page chapters. (Well, maybe American audiences can feel somewhat familiar with getting only one or two pages of story per issue with the recent trend of "decompression" storytelling) At any rate, here's Adam Adamant's final tale in TV Comic. It came out just about the same time as the Adam Adamant annual, so it's a bit hard to be sure where his final story appeared. Of course, i could be entirely wrong and there are still other stories unknown to me waiting to be discovered. This final tale is only five single-page chapters:
Over in his annual, Adam gets the deluxe star treatment. (That means colour) Though dated 1968, it was released December of 1967, just as his run in TV Comic was winding up. As mentioned yesterday, three of the seven stories were presented in comic format. Here's the second of them:
As is often the case with early BBC series, many of the shows were lost to time. Only 16 episodes survive* from a mix of 35mm and 16mm prints. But they have been collected on DVD, and do include the first and last episodes. And so, Adam Adamant Lives on-
As mentioned yesterday, Adam had an ongoing strip in TV Comic from #s 788-835. Americans might have a little difficulty grasping long form story telling in short segments, something we'll see in much greater depth when we get to The Trigan Empire. But in UK comics, it's quite common to have lengthy stories told in one or two page chapters. (Well, maybe American audiences can feel somewhat familiar with getting only one or two pages of story per issue with the recent trend of "decompression" storytelling) At any rate, here's Adam Adamant's final tale in TV Comic. It came out just about the same time as the Adam Adamant annual, so it's a bit hard to be sure where his final story appeared. Of course, i could be entirely wrong and there are still other stories unknown to me waiting to be discovered. This final tale is only five single-page chapters:
Over in his annual, Adam gets the deluxe star treatment. (That means colour) Though dated 1968, it was released December of 1967, just as his run in TV Comic was winding up. As mentioned yesterday, three of the seven stories were presented in comic format. Here's the second of them:
As is often the case with early BBC series, many of the shows were lost to time. Only 16 episodes survive* from a mix of 35mm and 16mm prints. But they have been collected on DVD, and do include the first and last episodes. And so, Adam Adamant Lives on-
pages written by Thomas Woodman, art by Patrick Williams and Selby Donnison from TV Comic #s 831-835 and Adam Adamant Annual (1967)
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*(My information here may be out of date. There has been an active search for missing episodes, and i know that the audio for another one turned up this past year. Chances are good that there are currently more than 16 episodes.)
The artist of the first story is Patrick Williams, who drew the Dr. Who Sky Ray cards, the 'At Night Stalks The Spectre' strip in Smash!, and the Fireball XL5 strip in the 1965 TV21 Summer Extra. I've got that DVD set, and the production of the show wasn't quite as polished as The Avengers show (Steed & Peel) of the same time.
ReplyDeleteThank you for that correction, Kid. There were no credits that i could find, and i was forced to assume that the artist was the same on both. I'll add a correction to the post now that i know better. I agree completely on the comparison of the two productions, hence my "spiffier shine" remark in the previous post.
ReplyDeleteOf course, The Avengers (Steed & Peel) got a lot more comics, too.
Yeah, I read your first post second (if you know what I mean) and was glad to see that I'm not the only one who noticed the lack of polish on AA. They sometimes seemed liked rehearsals more than the finished product. Incidentally, Verity Lambert also produced a popular British show called Minder in the '70s & '80s.
DeleteIndeed? I can't say i have any familiarity with Minder. At most, a vague feeling of having seen the name without awareness of what it was. Thanks for giving me a new itch to scratch. (Sincerely)
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, there's a British comedy show called 'Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads' from the '70s (which was sort of a sequel to a '60s show, 'The Likely Lads' - with the same actors) which I think you'd enjoy. It's uproariously funny and one of the best British comedies ever made.
ReplyDeleteI was marginally familiar with The Likely Lads - oddly enough, from having known one who used the name Likely Lad online. But he hadn't mentioned the follow-up series and i had no awareness of it. I do very much enjoy good Brit comedies.
ReplyDeleteYou should be able to catch WHTTLL on YouTube, but it works better if you see them in their original broadcast sequence, as the first series of the '70s show had almost a serial aspect to it. The second and final series was even funnier than the first.
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