In 2012 the
competition
was for a three page strip and a cover image based on
The Dandy's 1940s
superhero The Amazing Mr X. Entrants were allowed to update the
character in any form they wanted
and the competition was won by Steve Marchant with a tongue-in-cheek take on an
elderly Mr X still attempting his heroics. Rather than running the
winner and runners up as part of
Anthology Two, the University imprint
UniVerse have put out a separate title entitled
The Amazing Mr X and labelled it as a Special Edition.
Yet despite that
description, this is more than just a publication of the competition
winners as it reprints original pages from The Dandy as well as
including a feature on the background and
history of the character.
Dundee
Comics Day organiser, and director of the Scottish Centre For Comics
Studies, Dr Chris Murray writes about the background to Mr X
in The Dandy where he first appeared in
issue 272 in 1944 as what Chris describes as "Britain's first home-grown superhero". While the superhero grew to dominate the American comics
scene, Britain never really succumbed to the idea with most superhero
characters that appeared in British comics over the
years being reprints of American stories or British stories using US
characters. Indeed The Amazing Mr X only lasted 14 issues (plus a single appearance in the 1962 Dandy annual courtesy of Dudley D Watkins) and Chris postulates why the character failed to gain a following with The Dandy's readership. The book reprints 3 of those 14 stories which were in the 'picture
and paragraph' format that we now tend to associate with Rupert Bear.
These are certainly interesting as an historical document but seventy
years after they were originally published they are now more of a
curiosity piece than actually being entertaining.
The book then goes on to
publish the strip by the Dundee Comics Prize winner, Steve Marchant, which Chris says "undercuts the tome of the usual superhero story with a playful satire on the mythology of the superhero". Personally I prefer the Darren O'Toole written and A Kaviraj illustrated runner-up strip (above) which sets the scene for a potential ongoing series that the actual winner did not, while the other runner-up, Gavin Boyle, presents an amusing Scottish themed tongue-in-cheek version of the character. A further 11 stories from the competition cover a multitude of
styles and ideas, some rather more interesting than
others, giving a total of 14 new strips with the character, echoing the original number of 1940s episodes.
The Amazing Mr X:
Special Edition is not at all what I was expecting to see from UniVerse
given their previous two
Anthology titles. A very well produced, 76 page
US comic sized
book, it will be of interest
to devoted
Dandy fans as well as no doubt proving to be something of a curiosity to
students of old British comics.
The Amazing Mr X:
Special Edition has a cover price of £8 and is available, as the
other UniVerse titles are, by sending an e-mail requesting details to - universecomic@gmail.com
Thanks for the review... I lettered the O'Toole/Kaviraj story, lettered another, and wrote and lettered yet another story in the book. It's a great pleasure to be part of it.
ReplyDeleteThis is the first review of the book i think - cheers for that. My own contribution to it, with Carl Thompson, is 'A History of Mr X'. Its one of my favourite strips of my own so far, playfully managing to mix in Borges, Moore influences with references to Hitler, the atomic bomb and Rene Descartes. I enjoyed it more than my last visit to the dentist.
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