Shropshire Star

Going into battle for a golden age of reading

Where are you now Lord Peter Flint? How hot is your shot these days Hamish? And Billy, have you finally hung up your boots?

Published

Each Thursday, my brilliant Nan used to have our comics lined up for us on her little round table in the front window, along with 2oz paper bags of wine gums.

(A quarter? Luxury!)

Beano for my little bro, Shoot! (the football mag) for the eldest and Warlord for yours truly in the middle.

The escapades of Lord Flint, a sort-of WW2 James Bond – Codename Warlord ¬– delighted my long-suffering folks by keeping me enthralled (ie quiet).

In the meantime, I learned all sorts of interesting historical facts that they didn't teach me in school: D-Day was a walkover if you had the right Wellingtons, Spitfires could turn tighter than Messerschmitt 109s and the traditional greeting for all Germans in 1945 was 'Achtung! Hande Hoch, schweinhunde!'

Or something like that.

True, they glorified war beyond recognition more often than not. And they rarely – if ever – mentioned millions of Jews killed in Nazi genocide, which would have been useful to know.

But, at an age where I had never got to the end of a book . . . I was reading. It didn't matter what. It didn't matter if they were only captions and speech bubbles. They helped me learn to read and become the brilliant writer that I am today. (Yes, yes, I know I should be more self deprecating, but I'm no good at it.)

One by one, however, the comics disappeared.

Normally, this was signalled as 'Great news! Two great comics join forces!' as Battle merged with Tiger merged with Eagle merged with Hotspur merged with Warlord.

Codename Costcutting, in short.

And that was that, an era passed leaving a gap in the market and my reading age at a standstill until Smash Hits came along.

Today, comics have been rebranded 'graphic novels' and have to battle 24-hour baddies from the wicked Xbox regime for attention.

But everyone should have a comic hero and if you haven't, then you've missed out.

These days, my 12-year-old lad stares at my old Commando storybooks like they're cave drawings, gathering dust next to the unopened Airfix Tornado kit I bought him years ago now.

He likes Iron Man, but it's just another disposable piece of modern culture that flits across his screen; entertaining for an hour or two, then gone with nothing to linger in the memory. No deep-seated message or handy foreign phrase to learn.

In short, he doesn't take it too seriously and that's the best approach with these things.

It's easy – too easy – for some to sneer at hardcore comic book fans as geeks and weirdos. And they often don't help themselves, playing up to their stereotypical image with each 2000AD T-shirt slogan.

And they do sometimes take themselves too seriously.

I was recently asked which superhero I'd like to be.

Stumped for a second, I finally came up with Buzz Lightyear. The two lads looked aghast.

"But he's a toy," said one incredulously.

"And he has no superpowers," said the other.

I laughed – until I saw they both had straight faces. Then I left. Heading to infinity and beyond, as quick as my legs would carry me.

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