Scanned and delivered   (20.06.12)
  

   When I was a lad, I used to love my Fleetway comics. Starting
   with "Monster Fun Comic" in 1975, I spent eight or nine years
   in their company, revelling in the joys of those famous fun strip
   stars. And that enthusiasm never really left me, so when I
   rediscovered that passion for "Whoopee!", "Krazy", "Whizzer
   and Chips" and "Buster" a few years back, I embarked upon an
   online journey down Fleetway St. in order to share my passion
   with the world.

   Now the thing about these comics is, it's vey hard to represent
   them properly online. You just can't replicate that newsprinty smell
   and texture. They're sensations from an era that was pre-Internet,
   pre-digital, an era where millions of kids read weekly comics
   and had them delivered to their doorstep, regular as clockwork.
   And when it comes to replicate their colour covers and interior
   pull-outs, well, it's a nightmare and, to be frank, the first time I
   attempted to put some of those amazing Fleetway fun posters
   online I kind of came up short. I ended up touching up scans
   too much and over-adjusting colours to the point where the
   essence of the original printed art was lost. You might say
   it was almost scan-dalous...

   Ouch.

   Anyways, that's why I've now gone back to the beginning. Over the
   last couple of weeks I've pulled out all the relevant comics in my
   collection and I've begun to scan those posters all over again, just
   as they are, faded, folded, discoloured, misprinted, for better or
   worse. I've scanned the comic covers too, so you can see their
   original home, and now I think we have the makings of a far more
   interesting gallery. See, those imperfections are precisely what
   made these posters great. Those gloriously imperfect double-page
   spreads were the icing on my fun comic cake. They were rarely
   heralded in advance, too, so most would arrive as a huge surprise,
   smack in the middle of an issue. Did many folks actually remove
   them and stick 'em on  their wall? - I know I didn't. They were
   notoriously fiddly to remove. You could use scissors, but I recall
   this particular kid simply plunging in with his fingers and
   invariably snagging his nails and jabbing his nail bed. Hmm,
   better leave them be. Now those same staples have wrought
   more damage anyway, rusting over time and irreparably scarring
   the pull-outs in situ. And you can see all this for yourself, warts
   and all, in the new and - I think - massively improved
   Fleetway St. gallery.

  

   The pull-outs gave those Fleetway artists a chance to really shine.
   And I'm sure Mr. Fleetway liked them too, because they saved on
   the weekly strip content!

   We're closing in on thirty pull-out poster scans over there, with
   more due very soon, and seeing them together like this, my collection
   in one place together with their parent comics, gets me in a massively
   nostalgic mood... I'm eight years old again... I'm hovering by my
   letterbox, waiting for the paperboy... waiting for Kid Kong and Gums...
   Draculass and Frankie Stein... all those jolly munsters on my
   doormat... But what's this in the centre pages? - It's offset, it's
   colours are all-over the shop, but even so... it's a great goggling
   pin-up... Whoopee!
      
                                                                   More: Fleetway St.

 
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