Editorial Judgement
With indexes to The Ballad of Halo Jones, Beano Comic Library (partial), and a working draft of Blue Peter's books...
When there is no editor breathing down my neck, demanding copy be handed in by a certain date, any task at hand can rapidly escalate; what would have been a simple matter of jotting down a singular entry becoming a mammoth undertaking where all connected material to a subject is considered. While I have, mostly, been circumspect on the extent to which this is taking place, this last week's worth of research demands self-reflection.
One of the grand things about writing primarily for my own needs, and not concerning myself with what others might think, is that I can use Editorial Judgement. Hopefully at least some of you, reading those two words, will have the appropriate accompaniment of thunder rumbling in the background.
When someone looks at something I have compiled and states "this isn't pertinent" I look them in the eye and say, very precisely, "Yes. It. Is." My longstanding dissatisfaction with what others have written on juvenile books - being titles aimed at younger readers, and not titles which are lacking in sophistication - is that so much accompanying material is either overlooked, discarded as irrelevant, or is completely misrepresented, either through a lack of understanding or care.
While I'm focused on compiling a history of comic titles, it doesn't mean that I am going to neglect associated works, and it certainly isn't going to be a threadbare accounting of the basic information, absent context. This is, after all, primarily being undertaken for my needs, yet if it benefits anyone else then so much the better. To this end I will be making available all files which are created, although I must insist that people do not accept, without question, anything in these - maintaining accuracy is more important than bolstering my ego, and indicating where I have erred, or omitted something, is far more useful, to me and everyone else.
There is good reason to begin the letter B with Babar, rather than skipping straight to Eddie Campbell's Bacchus, especially since Babar had an annual in 1971. I've noted that this addition has yielded a wealth of undocumented information on original British publication dates in the mid-1930s (thank you Methuen), but even in this I am missing important dates. It's also worth noting that I've hit something of a wall with Madcap's 1980s titles by Lesley Young, but it has been a very fruitful experience cataloging everything which has hitherto been ignored. My list is patchy, missing many titles, and there doesn't seem to be any indexes of Babar books already undertaken, so this is mostly fresh territory.
I have, in this process of discovering titles, rekindled my passion for the work of Peter Firmin. Very few authors have been so badly treated by bibliographers, with lists of titles he authored being mangled, compressed, and often presenting later editions (under different titles) rather than first editions. While I don't have the necessary books to properly rectify this abysmal state of affairs at present I am keeping this in mind for the future. I only have three or four of Kaye & Ward / Scholastic's Starting to Read series (a line split roughly evenly between Noggin the Nog and Basil Brush) but I am almost certain that the entire line consists of Firmin art. Confirmation or refutation of this would be welcomed.
The three Bagpuss annuals really needed the character's books indexed properly (the internet has not been particularly kind to this property's legacy in print either), and once again Firmin's name arises. Firmin's work alongside Oliver Postgate - specifically their Ivor the Engine work - remains among my favourite expressions of the picture book form, perfectly melding text and imagery to create a whole which exceeds individual aspects. I should also add Postgate to my list of authors requiring proper bibliographies, as his extensive credits aren't represented properly either. These tasks are somewhat connected to my primary goal, so aren't entirely outside existing plans, and there are probably enough books present to double existing lists, even if my results aren't comprehensive.
Then there is Barbie...
Okay, that property is largely being side-lined at the moment, as it's giving me a tremendous headache.
Although my expectations weren't particularly high, I've been disappointed by how spottily people have recorded the publishing history of notable toy lines as a whole, and girl’s properties in general. Barbie, which had so much attention paid to the franchise thanks to it's film adaptation, has barely been covered by anyone who has attempted to list books from the series - the pathetic Wikipedia article on Barbie's books doesn't even attempt to convey anything of use, and merely suggests that a great amount of material exists. How many books? "More than 400..." Well, thank you for being so precise.
It's comic list could easily be doubled had anyone bothered to properly check what has been published, and no mention whatsoever is made of ephemera that was never intended to be kept. I’m not spending much more time fruitlessly trying to cover everything, as I simply do not possess enough books to make this task proceed without great effort.
Sindy's history is even less well-documented, and the doll's cultural reach is extremely underplayed, with the sole reference on Wikipedia being to a 1960s comic strip. Nothing said of the annuals, nor other publications over the years, but what was I to expect? Of course people weren't going to lay out her history properly, as that would make far too much sense. It isn't merely toy spin-offs which are under-served at present, with the complex publishing history of Brownie annuals being almost impossible to pick through using current internet resources.
I was dreading approaching the Brownie annuals, and it has proven to be with good reason.
Despite digging, and looking for anything in print, I still have no idea how The Brownies' Annual, from the sixties, connects to The Brownie Annual, from the seventies and eighties. It's a title which ran from some point in the late fifties (under it's original title) through to at least 2016 (as, simply, Brownie Annual), and much of it's history has been completely ignored. Of the few online resources which pick around the edges of these books, there isn't a single index which addresses all aspects of this title's existence. Is it one series or two? Who knows... Any improvement on a list of titles is likely going to require consultation with people actively engaged with that group, so a proper listing of titles isn't going to appear any time soon.
I've mentioned pulling information on all of The Ballad of Halo Jones collected editions, and a rough list is (for the moment) complete:
There are aspects I will probably change, and there remains information to be gleaned, but it is as close to done as I can without anything else turning up. The material was also reprinted in at least one Best of 2000 A.D. issue (which came with an Ian Gibson poster of the character), but I think I have all of it's standalone printings. Having noted this, I’m sure someone will pipe up that I’ve missed something, but isn’t that always the way?
There's a Beast Quest Annual from Orchard Books, published back in 2011, which led me to making a list of the Beast Quest books. They are intrinsically connected to the annual, therefore it made sense to get them noted down. I hadn't expected there to be quite so many titles in that series (or, more properly, in those series' - being interconnected lines), which was a real shock. Then I came to the Bear Grylls Adventure Annual 2020, and... Well, I couldn't leave that title unexplored. So I've found myself looking up the Bear Grylls Survival Skills books, his Mission Survival series, the twelve "A Bear Grylls Adventure" books, plus the Will Jaeger, Beck Granger, and New Jungle Book lines, as well as all his other writing.
My first though was “How the hell has Bear Grylls found time to write damn near seventy books?” before realising that he had been working with ghost writers on these, including Richard Madden and Damien Lewis. Then I lost more time trying to place correct attribution to all of those titles…
Indexing Bear Grylls’ literary output was my first moment of realization at what I was doing. Almost seventy non-comic titles to place a single annual into context - that's dozens of pages of information I've written to provide context for, I will reiterate, a single annual. I'm not sure, looking at the small pile of handwritten notes, why it was so important to get all of this documented properly, but there isn't anything comparable online that I can find. I’m going to give it another couple of passes, and put it all into a better order, and will consider posting it as an extra little piece on it’s own…
There's a legitimate reason to have all of the Blue Peter books listed, as well as the yearly "Books" (later Annuals), so those have been of pressing concern this last week. Many lists of British comics and annuals include them, so it feels right to present that information within the main body of my list, but it doesn't make sense - when so little of those books are technically comic strip anyway - to omit the remainder of titles. I have some information on their Mini Books, the Special Assignment titles, and lavish titles of recent years, and although I have yet to add in everything it is going to take more time than I had anticipated.
Here's One I Made Earlier was kicking around somewhere, and I am certain that I saw at least the Earthwatch book (Oceanwatch and Planetwatch I am less certain of), so this is only a draft at present. Most of the annuals are behind other things, requiring careful arrangements to arrive to them without ending up like Homer Collyer. My first attempt at a Blue Peter list, many years ago, was a rather half-hearted listing of known titles, but coming back to this list I felt that a far better show could be made of documenting all the books. While not perfect (I'm unlikely to feel more than passing satisfaction until all dates are accounted for) it will at least be a solid foundation from which others might progress from.
Wikipedia, for all it's faults, generally tends to be fairly good at providing bibliographies, although in Blue Peter's case it was a disappointment. There are specific sites covering it's history, and those were the next obvious stop, and I had anticipated that all of the work ahead of me might possibly have been carried out previously. Such hope, while buoying me through initial steps, soon proved to be misplaced, the more I sought information the greater my sense of disappointment became.
Soon enough I was forced to return to a refrain which has marked most of my life: fine, I'll do it myself.
I have a feeling that some of the dates - especially The Blue Peter Action Book, from 1993 - might be found in contemporary magazines (Look In or it's replacement, Now!), or from publications associated with the BBC (Radio Times, perhaps, but that's a long shot), and I'm not particularly concerned that anything is greatly amiss. Some page counts have been sourced from the internet, so there may be some discrepancy there which needs to be addressed, as with my current dates, but the sheer number of titles I've found, compared to other lists of this type, showed me how little has been done to preserve Blue Peter's history.
It's especially aggravating that the Blue Peter wiki has so badly let the side down. If one resource ought to strive for a full accounting of titles, then it is a wiki dedicated to the show. A far better resource turned out, unsurprisingly, to come from someone who appears to simply have a love of the series, and wishes to share with others - If you enjoy the series at all, then you should definitely give Pete Millington your thanks for maintaining such a wonderful blog.
Editorial Judgement isn't merely in deciding what is included, but how that information is presented, and this likely needs elaborating:
While academic citation requires a certain standardised layout in presentation, it is, for the most part, useless outside of academia. This blight of poor record keeping we have long had to endure isn't necessarily a direct link back to people getting into bad habits in universities or colleges, but it's one of a few easy targets which could do with being held accountable. Book sellers are another bane of my existence. Lists of titles, and their authors and publishers, need more than the year of their publication to properly place them into a historical context. While I am still messing with my arrangement, page counts, an indication of whether the contents are in colour or black and white, and their SBN's or ISBN's are always needed when providing such lists.
I will add that a year, alone, is pretty much worthless. Many titles may appear in any given year, and being able to discern, at a glance, the order in which various titles appeared is a major factor in whether any such list is useful. All manner of small inaccuracies in future indexes might be introduced if these are exacting details are absent. Original prices are part of a title's inherent information, and no matter if they actually ever sold at that price or not - Net Book Agreement notwithstanding - it is important that this be documented also.
One of these days I'm going to get around to finally documenting the Net Book Agreement, alongside other changes in the eighties and nineties, which led us to where we are. There are half a dozen independent changes in publishing from that time when, looked at as a whole, explain much of what happened after. I don't think this has ever been covered properly, or if it has I've not seen histories which address each of the incidents in wider consideration: Fleetway's shift to reprints, the breaking of the television listings duopoly, the undermining of newspaper comic strips which led to their declining readership later… All of that was formative in setting up a post-millennial publishing landscape
Add it to the list of pending matters.
It's only been very slowly that a realization of how little of D.C. Thomson's output has been indexed has occurred to me, but now that it is clear that a great deal of material requires better (and more detailed) indexing, it's hard not to make this a priority. My previous attempt at indexes of The Beano and The Dandy were, at best, rough outlines, and lacked a great many details. My attempts at filling in gaps using print reference proved extremely frustrating - especially as my runs of issues goes no further back than 1974, issues before this accounting only for a few issues here and there. There are forty years worth of comics which I largely know about solely thanks to writings of others.
Back in 2012 I was buying those "year" collections on eBay, one giant package after another being delivered, but never managed to arrive at my goal of a decade's unbroken run for either title.
Learning that Beano Comic Library, Beano Comic Library Special, and Beano Fun Size, digest spin-off titles, hadn't been indexed was a particularly awful moment. These ought to have been extraordinarily easy to figure out for anyone with enough issues. I've done my best to cover as much as possible of Beano Comic Library - all issues are accounted for, the general dates known, but missing (for a great majority of issues) the day of publication, and most credits.
There's probably enough issues present to arrive at a similar list for Beano Fun Size, and while they have yet to materialize, I'm certain that there's enough Dandy Comic Library issues to present a worthwhile index of that title also. It is outwith the immediate needs of any comprehensive list of all titles, expending so much energy and time to capture a single title's history, but given how little has been done to index D.C. Thomson titles, in general, it is a job worth doing. I would be remiss in not acknowledging the efforts of The Victor Index in maintaining at least a little of the company's vast output, so give Adrian Banfield's site a visit if you are interested in comic history, or have an interest in military personnel who have been immortalized in print.
Beano Books / Annuals shouldn't pose too much of a problem, most of them already being present, although for earlier books I'm going to need to rely on whatever has already been written of them. The Summer Specials... I'll think about some more. I don't know if I have any at all, and I'm not aware of anyone who has a substantial collection. I'll have a ponder on what I can call indexes for DCT titles, as a group, and if I can do something interesting with the notion of extensive coverage - perhaps with an eye to tackling several problems at the same time.
My original plan was to largely document major points, moving swiftly on to titles of more familiarity, and maintaining a healthy "I'll deal with this later" attitude. It seems of late I'm devoting more and more time to minutia rather than getting swathes of work done, and it's beginning to feel like things are slowing down, which isn't ideal. Having noted this, it has become apparent that a great deal of information on titles I possess can be put together without great struggle, and (as there are many important things warranting extended attention) it's likely for the best that these get as much completed as soon as possible. They not going to be the most elegant indexes ever, but at least will provide some useful information in whatever form they take.
I'm going to ease back a little on charting the history of books, and focus more tightly on comics and annuals, once I am done with Blue Peter and the like.
Of other titles which people have been awaiting details on, most of my Billy the Kid Western Annual coverage is going to require additional research to fill in what I didn't capture at the time of their writing, along with returning to Bonanza, Buffalo Bill, and possibly The Bobbsey Twins, as there are some elements which clash with my notes. I've a fair understanding of the general information, but specifics, here, are very essential to get right.
Throughout all of this I have very deliberately not collated everything into immensely long files, nor checked my overall word count. I dread to think just how much of my time has been spent covering books rather than comics…