COMIC BOOKS

In the United Kingdom, unlike the USA, the tradition for comics has been for weekly anthology-type editions, with each individual issue comprising of a number of different strips.  This came about as the UK comics evolved directly out of the children's sections of late nineteenth century women's magazines such as Home Chat (whose children's section was 'The Playbox'), and from the phenomenal success of the pioneering humour comic, Ally Sloper's Half Holiday.  This ushered in a rip-off wave of halfpenny comics specially produced as 'railway fiction'; relatively crudely drawn, cheaply printed and distributed, and designed to be read in small segments on the train or on the bus and then discarded.

It is a tradition that has been virtually impossible to shake in the United Kingdom.   Even given the trans-Atlantic success of the American comic book form in all its guises from romance, western and war comic through to the current tyranny of the superhero, there have been no truly successful UK comics which have broken both the weekly and the anthology rule at the same time.  (There have been those that have come close, such as Mick Anglo's Marvelman family of comics which concentrated on a small number of characters but were issued weekly, and more recently the humour comic Viz which was successful on a non-weekly publishing schedule but relied on the anthology model.)

It was from these anthologies that most of the UK-originated Avengers strips emerged.   Foremost amongst these was TV Comic, a weekly anthology with a self-explanatory title, which ran from 1951 to 1984.  As well as The Avengers, the comic also featured the adventures of such television luminaries as Dr Who, Fireball XL5, Adam Adamant, The Pink Panther, Skippy The Bush Kangaroo and The Telegoons.  The other anthologies which featured Avengers-based strips were 'girls' comics, Diana and June.  This is perhaps understandable given the series' celebrated use of strong female lead characters in Cathy Gale and Emma Peel.

The other comic books which have featured original Avengers material are; in the UK, the rare and unusual The Avengers, published by Thorpe and Porter in 1966 and, straddling the Atlantic, Steed and Mrs Peel, which was co-published by the UK-based ACME comics and American company Eclipse in the late nineteen-eighties.

For further details on each of the individual comics/selections from anthologies follow the links below.

Anthologies:

TV Comic logo - click here for details of TV Comic strips
(Steed, Peel and King, 1965 to 1972)

The Growing Up of Emma Peel
June - The Growing-Up of Emma Peel (Emma Knight, 1966)

Diana comic logo - click here for details of Avengers comic strips
(Steed and Peel, 1966 to 1967)

Individual titles:

Thorpe & Porter comic logo - click here for more details
(Steed and Peel, 1966)

Steed and Mrs Peel comic logo - click here for more details
(Steed, Mrs. Peel and Tara, 1990-92)