The Ultimate Book Of British Comics review

THE ULTIMATE BOOK OF BRITISH COMICS
by Graham Kibble-White
Allison & Busby
£14.99

ISBN - 7490 8211 9


This isn’t the best confession for someone who writes for a geek site, but comics didn’t mean Spider-man, Batman, Marvel and DC when I was growing up. Truth be told, it was only by my late teens that I’d even begun to appreciate that lot as comics at all.

No, for me – as I’ve written on this site before – comics were the classic British publications that I grew up with. The Beano, The Dandy, Topper, Nutty, Champ, Victor, Roy of the Rovers, Oink!, Whizzer and Chips: these were the comics of my youth, and given my, ahem, recent eBay purchases, they’re still not leaving my side. Although I like Batman now, too.

Graham Kibble-White is thus a man after my own heart. In his book, The Ultimate Book Of British Comics, he takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the comics of years past, the likes of which are long gone from the shelves of British newsagents today. Only The Beano and The Dandy have seemed to survive and, well, have you seen the shape of those recently? The Dandy with Bart Simpson on the sodding cover? It just isn’t right.

The book’s quite good though, and it’s very much powered by Kibble-Wright’s clear passion for its subject. While some lesser known, more obscure names are omitted, there’s still dozens upon dozens of comics discussed one by one here, usually through a page or so description, that touches on some of the key stories and a bit about the publication itself.

In many ways, this is both the strength and weakness of the book itself. On one hand, it’s great at resurrecting memories, or of bringing to your attention a publication you simply didn’t know existed. On the other, many of the comics are discussed too quickly, whetting your taste buds without serving them up a meal. There are exceptions – The Dandy, for instance, gets a good half dozen pages (and the likes of The Beano and Buster fare well, too) – and these, I suspect, are among the author’s favourites. And what's there, to be fair, is invariably fascinating.

The best way to treat The Ultimate Book Of British Comics is as a very well written introduction, or a fast trip down memory lane, depending on your age. What’d be interesting now would be if Graham Kibble-White could flesh two or three of the comics here, or perhaps even the publishing companies, and serve up a more substantive tome on some of those. If he did that, my order would be in right now.

You can buy the book here.