Perishin’ Kids: The lost jewel in the crown of British comics? Part I

Perishin’ Kids: The lost jewel in the crown of British comics?

Part I

While many American newspaper strips have enjoyed a renaissance in recent years, elevated in status and in the estimations of the industry by high-profile reprint collections placing on the bookshop shelves for a new generation and helping to secure their rightful place in comic's history, strips of similar substance and quality from this side of the pond have been left languishing in relative obscurity, some in danger of being forgotten, lost to the annals of publishing's past.

It was with that potentially heart-breaking and unjust possibility in mind that I embarked on a re-read of one of the strips that most influenced me as a youngster, when dreams of putting pen to paper to create my own panels at some point were just starting to form.

The Perishers, by Dennis Collins and Maurice Dodd, might well be the jewel in the crown of British newspaper comics, lying in a criminally forgotten corner of the UK’s comic's history, an unsung hero of the art form that for 47 years graced the pages of one of the nation's most widely read newspapers entertaining millions in the process.

It certainly influenced and entertained me as a child and the idea that it might never get the recognition it deserves is one that I find deeply sad.

The idea of looking back at The Perishers, is one that has been on my mind for some time, a fire stoked relatively recently during a couple of thoroughly enjoyable conversations with comic blogger Colin Smith (@Colin_TBTAMC) on Twitter and by reading his own, really interesting blog about the strip.

I loved The Perishers as a kid and collected it obsessively for a while, scouring the shelves of dusty bookshops for paperback collections I hadn’t seen before, and devouring every panel I could, greedily lapping up the adventures of Wellington, Boot, Maisie, Marlon and Baby Grumpling – as well as the rest of the eclectic extended cast.

We didn’t get the Daily Mirror in my house, much to my regret, but my uncle did and somehow I talked him into clipping the strip every day and sending packages to me every time he had a stack worthy of the postage.

I loved receiving those comic strip care packages and possibly haven’t ever thanked my uncle properly for the effort he went to to produce them for me.

Every time a new envelope arrived I would open it excitedly, taking care not to tear the strips inside, then arrange them numerically and glue them into a sketchbook of a similar size and shape to the collections I already owned.

Only when they were all stuck in did I actually go back and read them.

Colin’s blog was particularly interesting to read, because I realised reading it that I had never thought in any kind of analytical way about the strip and he had picked up on so many things I had never noticed, at the same time, not touching on so many of the things about The Perishers that had resonated so powerfully for me.

That might just be testament to the vast amount of material that comes from a comic strip which ran every day from the 19th October 1959 to the 10th June 2006.

It might It might reflect the broad appeal of the strip and the way in which some things register better with one section of the audience than they do with another.

Either way, it made me think it was well past time to take another look in at the kids from the town of Crunge.

To start with, I thought it might be worth reading some of what had already been written about the strip and I was genuinely surprised to find my efforts to locate any articles online relatively fruitless.

Part of me felt like I had an obligation to write something and add to that somehow.

I genuinely believe The Perishers deserves its chapter in the history of British comics.

It’s original, charming, funny and warm in that uniquely British way that makes things like Wind in the Willows and the works of PG Wodehouse so very endearing.

The artwork is accessible and accomplished yet at the same time bold, challenging and at times very beautiful.

I don’t know how influential it was, but I bet there aren’t a lot of Brits over a certain age that would have no idea what you were talking about if you mentioned it.

So, when I woke up for work on Monday morning this week in something of a fog, the excesses of a particularly successful weekend still silently punishing me, I reached for old friends to share my commute, and hopefully bring a nostalgic smile to a tired and grumpy face.

I was delighted to find the magic still there and on that morning train journey (and several since) I fell in love with Wellington, Boot, Maisie, Marlon and Baby Grumpling all over again.

I have a stack of books, both homemade and bought, and I’m going to select them at random and write as I read, picking out sequences and strips worth a mention or that I think deserve a second look, trying to bring together some of the strip’s themes with an examination of what I remember from my childhood in comparison with what I find reading The Perishers today, some 30 years on.

Part II – The Perishers Omnibus (© 1982)

The first book I could find (and thus my thoroughly considered starting point) was The Perishers Omnibus, a collection bearing a 1982 copyright, so quite far into the strip's run.

I remember the artwork deteriorating slightly with the later strips and this collection comes a year before regular artist Dennis Collins retirement (at which point Maurice Dodd picked up the pencils before briefly handing over to Bill Mevin in the strip’s twilight years).

The art is still pretty good here, with the trademark polyptychs – single co ntinuous background images through which the characters walk panel by panel – still in place and the characters of both the cast, and the town of Crunge, animated and lively as ever.

As with most Perishers' collections, we're introduced to the cast over a few pages, containing charming witty descriptions of the main characters in a few funny paragraphs that capture their essential features.

After that, we're dropped straight in to what appears to be the end of a sequence, which potentially has been going on for a few weeks at this point and makes little sense, perhaps indicative of the lack of care that was going into publication of the collections at this point.

I didn't mind as a child, and I don’t mind now. Everything feels warm and familiar, and the creative team's ability to punctuate each strip with a decent gag, visual or otherwise, is enough to draw me back into things quickly enough.

Some prominent story arcs from this volume: 

- Maisie strongarms Baby Grumpling into being her slave to pay off his debt for half the price of a packet of cigarette papers they bought their dad for Father's Day.

- Fred Beetle and The Caterpillar team up with Adolph Killroy, a tortoise shaped like a German World War II helmet with an accent written in a Germanic font and a distinctly familiar tache to match.

- Baby Grumpling tells people he has learned to read only to reveal his conviction that everything written reads 'The Cat Sat on The Mat'.

- The annual summer camping trip to the hilariously titled 'St Moribund's', complete with Maisie trying to impress the boys with her new holiday outfit, Boot trying to conquer his fear of the water, and a regular sequence remembered by many as the zenith of the strip,  Boot’s yearly observation of a colony of crabs populating the local rock pools, a visitation they refer to as the return of the ‘eyeballs in the sky’.

- Wellington's birthday, usually the source of a long sequence of strips, here only gets a short, albeit funny, mention.

- Poor Girl - her mother's poor, her father's poor, her maid's poor, her butler's poor - harassing Wellington to 'redistribute' his birthday presents returning just after Christmas with the same plan in mind. 

- Dirty McSquirty, a one-trick gag the creators get A LOT of mileage out of, his design hugely reminiscent of Pig Pen from Peanuts. 

- A short sequence, another favourite of mine from childhood, on Marlon's favourite (lethal) lunchtime treat, the 'dreaded inch-thick (ugh) ketchup san'wich' ... A delicacy I developed a craving and love for myself as a child, almost certainly in homage to the strip. 

- Maisie's efforts to convince Marlon to buy her a Christmas present and his efforts to avoid that by making her something, a brooch with a dead mouse on it being one highlight mentioned here. 

- Fiscal Yere, he of the 'choc'late cigars' and 'incredibly rich dad' appears for the briefest of exchanges.

- Marlon pursues his long-standing ambition of being a 'Brane Surgeon' or alternatively, 'a bloke wot goes down sewers in big rubber boots', and here hits an inspired note when he combines the two, suggesting he might become a 'brane-surgeon wot goes down sewers in big rubber boots for emergency operations on blokes wot go down ... '

- Tatty Oldbit (The Sailors Friend), tries her luck with Boot only to leave (as always) with the Indian Bloodhound reporter, BH Calcutta (failed) ... Whose name I STILL don't get ... 

- Baby Grumpling's enterprising efforts to sell wormburgers almost proved fatal when Marlon nearly eats Tiger, the worm Grumpling has been training to compete at the Olympics.

- Wellington gets short of cash and tried to sell Marlon a new buggy and Maisie fights to talk him out of it in a classic sequence that is played over and over throughout the years of the strip.

- Short of news BH Calcutta (Failed) attempts to generate his own headlines with a spate of rubbish dropped from great heights onto an unsuspecting man in the street (or in this case, -an unfortunate Boot) 

- Marlon tries his hand at inventing, amongst other things, the 'expendibl ladder MK I - to expend this ladder - put a match to it. 

- Adolph Killroy returns replete with turban and renamed 'Eye O' Tolly' to raise the insects up against Boot again.

- And finally summer rolls round again, with another new holiday outfit for Maisie, Baby Grumpling digging a hole on the beach to Australia and a very weird, very sweet sequence where Wellington confesses undying love for Hollywood icon and star of King Kong Fay Wray. 

Finishing my first book I'm reminded of a few things:

I didn't enjoy the strips focusing on Fred Beetle, The Caterpillar and Adolph Killroy as a child, in fact I think I skipped them. In retrospect the politically charged humour probably went over my head and confused me. 

Similarly, I don't think I liked 'the eyeballs in the sky', which I think I found busy and confusing, and potentially the scattered referential satire - which here shows a capacity for meta which many modern comic writers would be proud of - was a little out of my reach. 

I was upset by the idea of Wellington, an orphan, left to fend for himself in the world. While the strip rarely refers to his missing parents, or hit any kind of sad tone short of the humour it derived from his attempts to make money and fill the larder, I struggled with the idea of a child on their own.

In one beautiful, poignant strip in this collection, Wellington attempts to clear the towering grass from his backyard, becomes lost and calls for his mum only to realise 'wait a minute - what am I talkin' about? I haven't got a mum ... WELFARE LADY!' I have a feeling that would have made me cry as a child, and it touched me even now and reminded me of the depth of the characters here above and beyond their simple comic portrayal. 

Part III - The Perishers Pop Up Again (© 1969)

Diving into this collection from only a few years into The Perishers existence and the strip is a different beast entirely. 

First and foremost, the artwork is gorgeous. The strips are all a little taller I think, which gives Collins space to give some real life to his characters and they are certainly brimming over with personality here. 

His composition is brave and diverse and he seems like an artist having the time of his life, but it is into one character particularly that he pours his heart and soul; the town of Crunge itself. 

.

Wading through this collection almost feels like a walk through the fictional home of Maisie, Marlon, Wellington et al and in some of the trademark polytychs, he really flexes his artistic muscle offering vistas and views that give the setting a very realistic feeling

The writing is perhaps less strong at this point, and while the characters voices are recognisable, the strips often feel over-reliant on forced puns and cheesy jokes. 

That's exacerbated somewhat with what appears to be a rather random order to the strips, where sequences appear to be significantly cut short and some reordered completely, giving much less of a cohesive feel of story. Perhaps that's appropriate in a daily strip, and perhaps the collections, at this time at least, weren't intended to be binge read as I'm doing. 

Nevertheless, a lot of very familiar story arcs and themes show up here, including:

- Maisie's never ending quest to convince Marlon to 'Give us a kiss', to which his response, as ever, is 'YEUK!'

- Wellington worries that the larder is getting low and Boot greedily eats the last of the sausages (another food stuff that I believe I developed a childhood obsession with through a love of the strip!).

- Wellington  tries to sell buggies, here to big Maisie and Marlon, to try to make money to fill his larder. 

- In this book, he is also found going door to door (usually to Maisie's door) to try to sell 'Socko, the new powerful washin' powder from the shores of far Cathay', a wonder product which he claims capable of a huge range of applications.

- The 'dreaded inch-thick ketchup san'wiches' make the briefest of appearances.

- BH (Calcutta) Failed makes, what appears to be, his first ever appearance, explaining that it was at blood-hounding itself that he failed and finally drawing a line under that lifelong confusion for me.

- Strips commemorating a number of saints days make appearances here (St George, St David, St Swithin, St Andrew etc). One wonders whether Maurice Dodd had them in his calendar in advance when planning out a year of the strip, later giving way to sequences that ran over those dates.

- Maisie's annual, often violent, obsession with being May Queen makes a brief appearance, her ragged crown and bent wand a particular moment of visual genius from Collins. 

- Wellington's failed efforts to make a boomerang return to him make a fun series that I imagine tied into a national craze for the toy. 

- The kids stand in silhouette at night staring at the moon. Lovely strips, often punctuated with some philosophical musing or other and probably drawn to save a little time ;-)

- The crabs in the rockpool appear briefly in a sequence that based on the numbering alone was potentially longer when it was first published.

- We learn The Caterpillar could have been a butterfly if he hadn't stunted his growth by starting smoking too soon ... A good job perhaps given his apparent fear of flying.

- A very strange recurring strip where Maisie and Wellington discuss going to the 'rhubarb thrash in' championships' and a confused Marlon mugs to the audience, makes an appearance.

- Wellington's garden gets overgrown. 

- The kids make a guy to raise money for fireworks on Guy Fawkes Night, the history of which they discuss to some confusion. 

- Wellington worries about the state of the planet after having heard 'a lot of rumblin' sounds in the earth lately'. Maisie postulates it could be 'big strong worms'.

- Boot puts on his St Bernard barrel and reveals his taste for a drop of alcohol. 

- Over the course of a series of strips, Wellington and Maisie discuss the existence of Father Christmas and consequently the existence of 'that nice Mr Wilson' (British Prime Minister of the time Harold Wilson, to whom Maisie's undying devotion and admiration are pledged). This sequence ends with another poignant strip where Wellington hangs stockings for himself and Boot on Christmas Eve, explaining at the same time 'There's no Father Christmas Boot, we know that. I mean, we're not babies, we know there's no Father Christmas ... On the other hand, let's be practical ... Just in case.'

This book bought a few new things to mind:

The changing fashions and outfits of the main characters. Maisie is in her schoolgirl hat throughout, mostly accompanied by her school uniform, a pinny with a striped tie, black tights and a white shirt underneath. Wellington wears his classic Scorpio T Shirt, Black shorts, trademark wellington boots and deerstalker hat. Marlon however, appears to be the most stylish of the group, varying his outfits from grey trousers a turtleneck and a pair of winkle pickers, to a donkey jacket, to an odd summer ensemble including a striped T shirt and a rather nifty hat.

Another thing I noticed here was the changing design of the buggies Wellington is endlessly trying to sell Marlon (and here Maisie too).

Boot's tail is still present in this book too. Legend dictates that he was first drawn with a full length tail before an eagle-eyed reader pointed out that English sheepdogs had their tails docked early on in life, causing Collins to reduce it bit by bit until he could finally erase if from the design altogether. 

Wellington has more of an intellectual edge here, albeit a precocious, slightly misguided intellectual edge. He wonders at big questions, is pensive and thoughtful and regularly dissatisfied with the world.  More often than not, his pondering is cut short by a diversion from one of the other characters, who regularly utterly fail to understand the point he's trying to make.