Old-fashioned Comics: Valiant

Showing posts with label Valiant. Show all posts

Friday, 9 January 2026

Sexton Blake from the pages of Valiant (1968-1970) - Compiled and edited by H. C.

Sexton Blake comic strip (initiated to tie in with the 1967–1971 television show)

featured in IPC's weekly boys' anthology Valiant,

from 13th January 1968 to 16th May 1970.

Script, Pencils, Inks & Letters: ?

Sexton Blake and his young assistant Tinker

It contains the following stories :

Sexton Blake and the House of a Thousand Perils

Sexton Blake and the Ghost of the Highwayman

Sexton Blake and the Phantom of Peril Rock

Sexton Blake and the Museum of Fear

Sexton Blake and the The Curse of Graveways Abbey

Sexton Blake and the Haunted Inn

Sexton Blake and the Waxworks Mystery

Sexton Blake and the Black Vulture

Sexton Blake and the Lake of Doom

Sexton Blake and the Ghost of Loxton Grange

Sexton Blake and the Castle of Fear

Sexton Blake and the Mistery of Smuggrels' Cove

248 Pages

Compiled and edited by H. C.

We thank H. C. for his courtesy in offering our reader

this magnificent compilation.

Billy Bunter - Valiant 1963-1976 + Special & Various. UK Comics Archive Compilations

William George “Billy” Bunter is a fictional schoolboy created by Charles Hamilton using the pen name Frank Richards. He features in stories set at Greyfriars School, originally published in the boys’ weekly story paper The Magnet from 1908 to 1940. Subsequently, Bunter has appeared in novels, on television, in stage plays, and in comic strips.

He is in the Lower Fourth form of Greyfriars School, known as the Remove, whose members are 14–15 years of age. Originally a minor character, his role was expanded over the years with his antics being heavily used in the stories to provide comic relief and to drive forward the plots.

After The Magnet closed in 1940, Bunter appeared in children’s comics, as a strip cartoon character: initially, from 15 June 1940, he appeared in Knockout (which, like The Magnet, was published by The Amalgamated Press). Although Knockout had begun only in 1939, it already had a circulation several times that of The Magnet. C H Chapman, the last illustrator for The Magnet, drew the first nine Knockout strips in 1939, after which several artists were tried, before Frank Minnitt established himself with a beaming and bouncy Bunter, which at first followed Chapman’s style, then later branched into a style of his own, concentrating on slapstick humour. Soon the Famous Five vanished from the strip, replaced by Jones minor, who had all the good qualities Bunter lacked, but who was prone to being led astray by Bunter. The form-master, Mr Quelch, stayed (at least in name), but he lost his dignity and aloofness.

Minnitt continued producing the strip until his death in 1958. Reg Parlett then took over until Knockout ceased publication in 1961, when the strip transferred to Valiant comic, and then to TV Comic, where it ran until 1984. Bunter also appeared in many Knockout annuals, even on some covers.

C. H. Chapman drew a strip for The Comet comic in 1956, which featured the classical old Bunter of The Magnet and the Famous Five, consisting of twelve weeks of 2-page strips (24 pages in all). Altogether, Bunter’s appearances in Comet lasted from March 1950 until June 1958, with picture stories from February 1952.

From 1955, Billy Bunter comic strips were published in the Netherlands, in the Dutch-language comic Sjors, with the character renamed “Billie Turf”. Bunter thus became one of the house characters of that comic and its successors, and so continued appearing in anthology-style collections in Dutch until the end of the 20th century. “Billie Turf” comic strip albums were published from 1963 onwards, and have continued into the 21st century. Three Billie Turf movies were made between 1978 and 1983, mostly spelling the name of the main character as “Billy Turf”.