CC013 Knockout Peter Hopkins Letter

I was born in 1935 & spent my childhood, including the War years, on Merseyside. In the 1940s I used to take the DANDY and BEANO, which were published alternate weeks, & each week used to swap them for the KNOCKOUT, taken by a friend three doors away. I greatly preferred the KNOCKOUT. On reflection, I now believe its humour was more subtle than in the comics I took, and some of it was quite sophisticated for its target readership.

For example, there was "Our Ernie", who was a northern lad with a pet caterpillar (I don't think the latter was involved much in the stories, but it used to make cynical comments 'aside' on the action, rather li

ke the Chorus in some drama). Ernie's dad was the classic, stolid, old-fashioned Northern Working Man - tho I don't think I appreciated this at the time - with flat cap, braces & pipe, sitting in an armchair & reading the paper. His favourite remark was "Daft, I call it!" Mum was a Norah Batty type of figure with apron & headscarf, I believe, who was usually asked "What's for tea, Ma?" at the end of each episode. A vanished world, part of social history.

The Billy Bunter strip was very popular with readers. Later I read some of Frank Richards' books & was surprised to find that Jones Minor (a regular in the KNOCKOUT, perhaps as Bunter's room-mate) did not feature at all in them. On the other hand, Mr Quelch, the form-master, was very prominent in both, but some of the important figures in the books, such as Harry Wharton & Bob Cherry, appeared rarely (if at all) in the KNOCKOUT. However, the strip was still very good.

I seem to recall also "Stonehenge Kit, the Ancient Brit". I believe some of this was drawn by the recently-deceased Bob Monkhouse. It was rather like the Flintstones on US TV, who came much later. Particularly entertaining was Kit's wicked enemy Ozzy the Wiz (a kind of druid, perhaps?) He, as the Baddie, was forever trying to outwit & cheat Kit, & in order to do this would adopt hilariously anachronistic disguises. These were minimal, usually consisting just of headgear (such as a bus conductor's hat) - & even tho he made no other change than hat-switching, he was never recognised by the trusting Kit. There was a touch of Monty Python about this kind of humour - and that's why the KNOCKOUT seems to me to have been rather more sophisticated than the usual juvenile comic fare.

Deed-a-Day Danny, mentioned on your website, featured (I think) on the front page. He was from a much earlier era of scouting, with his bush hat, shorts & staff, & I doubt if he would be recognised by the trendy Scouts of today! I also suspect that even the idea of doing one good deed every day has long vanished from the scouting code!

"The Gremlins" were an unusual wartime feature, based on the mythical creatures on which RAF men blamed things like mechanical mishaps. They were unusual in that these little cartoon figures did not appear in "strip" form, but consisted of one giant full-page frame, with lots of ridiculous things going on all over the huge picture: the page was a hive of entertaining activity, & you worked your way round it, 'reading' it visually like looking at one of Hogarth's satirical paintings where there is far more going on than just the central theme. I wish I could remember how the cartoonist depicted the gremlins physically.

One of the serious features was Sexton Blake & his junior sidekick Tinker (with whom we young readers could identify, as the psychologists say). He had a Chinese scientist friend, Hoo Sung, who had invented the "Rolling Sphere" - an incredible vehicle which moved around like a giant football with a single caterpillar track around its circumference. This device featured in many of the adventures in which SB defeated the Baddies. Hoo Sung, with goatee beard & glasses, was an oriental stereotype - always very self-deprecating, referring to himself as "this wretched person", "this humble person", etc.

In addition to regular printed stories (as opposed to the strip cartoons above) I seem to remember that the KNOCKOUT occasionally presented quite 'serious' books in strip cartoon form. I'm sure this is how I was introduced to R.L.Stevenson's "Kidnapped" & I believe even Dickens featured (perhaps "A Christmas Carol").