From: ntaib@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Iskandar Taib)
Subject: Re: Austers, Biggles & Brit War Comics
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 14:50:45 GMT


From ntaib@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Iskandar Taib)

In article <BxM68G.5LF@law7.DaytonOH.NCR.COM> MR KR COMAN <bakc@giraffe.ru.ac.za> writes:
>In article <BxGrH2.6K9@law7.DaytonOH.NCR.COM> ntaib@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Iskandar Taib) writes:

>>I remember the Auster as being Biggles' favorite airplane (anyone read 
>>Biggles anymore?

>Also Percival Proctors, plus the odd Mosquito, Sunderland, Lancaster, etc.  
>If you go back to the really early stuff that came out in the inter-war 
>years, Bigglesworth and his stalwart comrades 'danced the skies' and did 
>right in Sopwith Camels.   

Oh.. and I forgot to mention the Otter (not the twin, I think..)

I've found some of his WWI books. I particularly remember the one 
where Algy turned up and his goldfish got flattened by a pair of 
German boots dropped out of an airplane. Interesting indeed.. don't
know how much of it is true-to-life but you did find out that Flak
was called Archie and Sopwith Camels turned tighter one way than the
other and spewed castor oil everywhere.

For those not in the know..Bigglesworth (what the HECK was his first 
name? Everyone just called him "Biggles") was born in  Imperial India 
in the waning years of the 19th Century. I suppose he was sent to 
England to attend Public School, and in the First World War he flew 
a Sopwith Camel in the RFC. Between the wars he and his companions 
had adventures in various exotic locations such as a Radium-bearing 
mountain in China (thwarting a death-ray plot) and Brazil (finding 
an ancient Inca city in the Andes), Central Europe (organizing a 
small country's air force) and the Sahara (some ancient Tuareg chief-
tain's tomb). During the Second World War he flew Spitfires (or course). 
I haven't found any Battle of Britain accounts but I remember various 
adventures in the Western Desert, the South China Sea and in Burma. 
After the war he joined the "Special Air Police" and flew Austers and
Otters around the world thwarting the bad guys, including drug smug-
glers, gun runners and Soviet spies, including his nemesis, Erich 
von Stalhein, who he eventually rescues from a Soviet prison camp on 
Sakhalin. 

His comrades were his cousin Algernon Lacey (Algy), who joined his 
squadron during WWI, "Ginger" Hepplewaite, who he met between the wars,
and "Bertie" (whose real name I can't remember). These three were with
him in the Special Air Police.

I think the American equivalent were the pulp book heroes of the '30s,
Phineas Pinkham and G8. I haven't been able to find any of these.

>Oh what memories!  I grew up with this valiant gentleman of the air.  A 
>couple of months back I found a 2nd hand bookshop with a whole shelf of 1950'
>s-era Biggles adventures -- bought a whole armful for my little guy.
>Happy news is that I heard that many of the Biggles stories have recently 
>been re-released -- presumably suitably "sanitised" to suit the 
>sensibilities of 1990's moral guardians. 

Hmmm hopefully they weren't too zealous at 80's-fying the books. The 
Hardy Boys series was 80's-fied and I cringe at the thought. Apparently
they have them driving Corvettes and taking greater liberties with the
opposite sex (just kidding... 9-) ).

Makes me wonder what planes they'd have him flying if he was still 
having adventures in the 80s (despite being close to 90 years old!).. 

>>I'd heard he'd been banned in Australian school libraries 

>I wonder why??  (Rhetorical question!)

Heh.. I came across this in a newspaper article ca. 1978 or so.. appa-
rently he was accused of being bigoted and unrealistic (i.e. not interes-
ted in women). 

A letter to the editor that came out a week or so later protested that
he was "so busy battling Huns, Japs and Chinks that he didn't have any
time to be bigoted". At least to me he didn't come across as being ra-
cist.. he was fair with his adversaries and treated them as people.


>> Similarly, are 
>>those British war comics still being printed much these days?)

>Are they ever!  "Battle Comics" are still very much around. Plus I notice
>that many of the famous UK comic "annuals" continue to feature WW1 and WW2
>comic strip-features.   When I was a kid this was great stuff and motivated
>a life-long interest by prompting me to ask questions of relatives who were
>there.  Back in circa 1960 you could still meet up with chaps who fought in 
>WW1, and WW2 vets and storytellers were just about everyone over age 30.  

>This sets me to wondering just what sense this folklore now makes to the 
>average 10 year old living in Bradford whose parents weren't even alive 
>within a decade of 1945....it's probably right up there with extra-
>terrestrial science fiction: fun but unreal.  (Even the comic strip artists
>themselves are probably post-war baby boomers!!)

What I'd noticed (in the early to late 70s, when I was the right age) was
that they had a number of comics that got re-released every few years. I 
suppose many of these might have been written back in the 50s.

These days I read them and notice quote a few things - the stereotyping 
of Americans, for instance, or even better, Scots, who are mostly named
"Jock" 9-). The artwork is pretty good, but I like to read them mostly
for the stories. They aren't simple, shoot-em-up kill-em-off episodes,
but can be rather moving. The one that sticks in my mind was called "Check-
point" - an American newsreel cameraman caught in Belgium in 1939 causes
a massacre when he meddles too much in the war and gives false orders 
for a battalion of Highlanders (still wearing kilts from a parade they 
were having earlier) to attack just so that he could get some footage.
He feels really disgusted with himself and gives up the camera trade to 
go to war flying B-17s.

>BTW, on the basis of a *limited* periodic content analysis of said comics 
>they do seem to have moved with the times -- the "traditional" phraseology 
>of the heros when referring to (esp) Japanese oppos has been toned down; and 
>now and again they feature a "good" German/Italian (i.e. a dude with 
>moral principles).  There was even one I saw that featured some good Germans
>who resented the presence of a thoroughgoing Nazi in their unit: the latter 
>got his comeuppance ultimately and in the interim hosts of Russians were 
>dispatched!

Actually, I do remember seeing several  comics with such material in them - 
the noble German usually. One I remember was about a certain Major Kruger 
who was ordered to blow up a bridge in Russia during the German retreat. 
Problem was, by doing so he was trapping his division with all his friends 
and comrades with whom he had spent the war on the other side. He chose to 
remain on the far side with his division rather than on the side which would 
have meant a continued existence and return to his wife and children.


>Gotta run, the latest war comics have just arrived!!!!!
>Cheers,
>Keith Coman

Ah! Hmmm - thats what I ought to do..

Get someone in England to buy $20-30 worth of used comics and ship them 
to me! Any volunteers? Send me mail, I'll send you money. Perhaps I can 
start a lending library of the things  9-)







-- 
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Iskandar Taib                          | The only thing worse than Peach ala
Internet: NTAIB@SILVER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU |    Frog is Frog ala Peach
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