How About A Museum For British Comics?

  Last Saturday I popped up to London, just for the hell of it, and I'm happy to report that I had a fun day out.  I had a poke about the delightful gardens along the embankment, ate Okonomiyaki for the first time in about 15 years and bought an enormous pile of comics before finishing  the evening in a dingy Rock Pub chatting to random strangers about music and comics, while drunk people sang along to Metallica.

  I found out later that the Trooping Of the Colour was on. 

Well that explains all the people hanging about Whitehall. 

 As it happens, the main reason I went up to London was to see this exhibition:

  

Featuring such iconic names as Neil Gaiman (Sandman), Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta), Grant Morrison (Batman: Arkham Asylum) and Posy Simmonds (Tamara Drewe), this exhibition traces the British comics tradition back through classic 1970s titles including 2000AD, Action and Misty to 19th-century illustrated reports of Jack the Ripper and even medieval manuscripts.

Truth be told, it was OK  but since it was mostly concerned with comics as "Art" and Art that challenges social conventions at that, not really what I was hoping for. I think I just wanted a good, old-fashioned nostalgia trip and a bit of history..

  If you are interested in how British comic creators dealt with the subjects of gender, sexuality, class and so forth, then I think you might enjoy yourself. I'm not, so I didn't (much)

 But "Comics Unmasked" did get me thinking.  Comics were a huge part of British culture for decades.  By my reckoning, at least four generations grew up reading The Beano and The Dandy. Most then moved on to other titles. 

   A lot of them had folded by the late 70s/early 80s but here's a few of the comics I remember reading as a kid:

 All covers sourced from the Grand Comics Database

 Notice a bit of a theme there?  No wonder the first German I ever learned was "Achtung! Spitfire!"

Technically Misty was a Girls comic but then as now, I'd read whatever was lying about and truth be told, that comic got away with some real Nightmare Fuel shit that would have had a boys comic shut down inside two issues.  

  Sadly 2000AD is the only one left these days. 

 At their height IPC and DC Thomson  were selling 10s of thousands of their comics per week. That's a big footprint on the national consciousness. 

So how come there isn't somewhere permanent devoted to remembering them. 

OK,  London does have the Cartoon Museum and it's worth a visit. However, said museum also covers caricatures, satire and newspaper strips so the space devoted to comics is obviously limited.  

I also found out today that the National Art Library has a massive collection of comics - but since entry to this is restricted, again, not really what I had in mind. 

  What I'd like to see is something like this: The Belgian Comic Strip Center or maybe the Kyoto International Manga Museum

 A museum devoted to comics. British comics. 

  Surely the scene that spawned Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Garth Ennis, Judge Dredd, Tank Girl, Dan Dare and Buster Gonad deserves a little more recognition?

 Not just the "Cool" stuff either. Not just "V For Vendetta" and "Watchmen" and small-press stuff about alienated youth. Basically, not what the Guardian thinks comics should be about. 

  Most of us didn't grow up reading about revolutionaries in a facist Britain. We trotted to the newsagents every Saturday to pick up our weekly dose of escapism - a little bit of adventure, a little bit of spot, a little bit of comedy and plenty of bad guys going "Aaiieeee" 

 Ignoring that is like writing a history of popular music and utterly failing to mention Elvis. 

 So if somebody can set up a proper comics museum, I can guarantee I'll be there on the opening night. 

 And if you can leave a few early back issues of 2000ad lying about the reading room that would be awesome. 

 That's all folks.