He 'Scooped 'me !
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Being the editor of a comic hero website, its not too surprising that I would find this book absolutely absorbing. Concentrating on The Amazing Wilson, The Tough of the Track & Roy of the Rovers, it reproduces all of the marvellous drawings we've seen before & many more that have not appeared in print for many years.
An affectionate introduction takes us back to the late 60's when Mr Gallagher began to listen for the 'satisfying thud' of newspapers & comics dropping through his letterbox in leafy Surrey.
He also describes how he did not share his love of these characters with any friends as they were his 'private pleasure ' & 'non narcotic, highly addictive chill pill'. This resonates clearly with me, in fact only last weekend, over a very good lunch with my oldest school friend from my Hertfordshire childhood, he expressed surprise that I held the likes of Alf Tupper in such high regard. 'I don't remember you ever mentioning that' he said. So I guess that's what these heroes were. Private adoration not to be mentioned, maybe in case of ridicule from those not as keen to read as many of us.
Three fabulously detailed sections follow on the main characters. Personally I was never very keen on 'The Amazing Wilson'. Having heard my grandfather mention his exploits from time to time & having read some early 1960's regurgitated stories in the either Victor or Hornet he came along for me, some time after my initial introduction to Alf & to the marvellous Peter Sutherland's drawings. I recall that the stories I read, showed Wilson retreating to a cave on the moors, where a special crystal would bathe him in a strange life-giving light & restore him to his lithe, brilliant, but ancient, self. The book describes how Wilson drank a herbal potion to restore his powers after each amazing athletic feat ( such as bowling out Australia twice in one day single-handedly ). So my guess is that my memory is either defective ( nothing new there ! ) or, equally likely, that the picture stories I read of Wilson, were updated to be more interesting to modern 1960's youth.
I always thought Alf was a more 'real' character. With foibles , failures & imperfections like the rest of us, & though I did always read the Wilson stories, I certainly did not buy the comic specifically to follow his exploits. Of course in these days of sporting drug cheat expose's in the media, it seems strange that many people found it acceptable to give hero worship to a character who clearly had 'extra assistance' of one kind or another. But of course, I judge a character of yesteryear with today's more politically correct eyes & this might be regarded by some as unfair. I guess it is equally unfair of me to 'judge' characters at all, since I am clearly biased in favour of the Welder, plumber, millwright, mechanic who was Alf Tupper.
There are indeed some fantastic pieces in the 'Tough' section of the book, including a fascinating look at the journal of Gilbert Dalton, the original creator of Alf , who, as Gallagher quotes from GK Chesterton, was ' the actual centre of a million flaming imaginations'. I only wish I could have got hold of that journal for this website, to go alongside the Peter Sutherland & Buff Halley pieces. So well done to Mr Gallagher for a definite 'scoop' & for a fitting tribute to an undoubted genius.
Also in this section you can find more Rover illustrations of Alf, from the days before Peter Sutherland, than you could shake a stick at. Fantastic stuff. Now...if we could find out the identity of THAT artist, it would be some feat !
Moving on to the Roy of the Rovers section there is some fantastic 'Johnny Foreigner bashing' in earlier Roy Race stories. Cries from the crowd of 'Caramba' whenever Melchester played abroad in the European Cup took me back to that insular 1960's world, where anything non English was viewed with terrible suspicion. What nice people we all were back then !
We are reminded that the stories themselves echoed the events reported in the popular press of the times. In reality, Billy Wright, the England Captain met & married a singing star from the Beverly Sisters & in Roy of the Rovers, Suzanne Cerise, French sex-bomb movie star, married Ed Gerrard to the horror of besotted team mate Blackie Gray. What would HELLO magazine have made of that one !
As Roy moved into the eighties & his hair took on a bouffant look, we see how that famous cliff-hanger storyline, so beloved of American TV series, "Who shot..." was adapted into a Roy Race storyline. I seriously hope Roy never, ever, woke up in the shower, having been abducted by aliens, as a completely unsatisfactory explanation for all of the weird plot twists in his own stories.
The section ends with the 40 something's from Melchester Rovers, now grey & tubby in an exhibition charity match. Unlike characters such as Alf, who never really aged, Roy really did grow up with his readership who, I am sure, ended up being 40 themselves whilst reading the comics left in the magazine rack by their own sons & daughters.
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