A Life in Comics 1

A Life in Comics 1

1969.  Greenock.  My aunt comes to me with a clipping she’s cut from the Glasgow evening newspaper.  “Here, John, you’ve always been good at your writing.  Why don’t you give this a try?”

It’s an advert for ‘Editorial Assistants’ at DC Thomson in Dundee.  I often characterise this thoughtful gesture as proof of my aunt’s desire to be rid of me.  That would be quite understandable.  I’m a smelly, feckless teenager working at a dead-end job at a small printers in nearby Gourock, going nowhere, no real ambition to change things, no thought for the future at all.  I’m living in an overcrowded top floor tenement flat from which, if you stand on your tiptoes, you can just make out the River Clyde.  My aunt and uncle had kindly taken us in seven years earlier when my mother had escaped from an unhappy marriage in the United States, bringing children and her own mother with her.  The wonder is they put up with us for so long.

“Here, John,” I often describe her saying for comedy effect, “why don’t you bugger off to Dundee?”

And why not?  It sounds interesting.  My current occupation is clearly leading nowhere.  I am classed as a ‘young executive’, which means writing out the occasional work docket while trying to get a basic knowledge of the printing process.  I and my fellow young executive – George, a reject from Sandhurst (I never discover why) – are hardly overworked and as the business is not thriving probably soon to be looking for alternative employment anyway. 

Chief memory of my year there is sticking long, thin paper offcuts to flies’ arses to amaze at the sight of them buzzing around the office like bizarre birds of paradise – a prime example of the twisted sense of humour that has informed much of my subsequent work.  (Let me assure you though that I am much more considerate to most animals except those that bite me or shit in my food, and even do my best to rub along genially with the occasional wasp.)

So, anyway, sincere apologies to dear Aunt Alice, who did me the biggest favour of my life. 

*      *     *

My uncle walks me to the station, carrying my heavy suitcase.  He needn’t, but I’m glad he’s there to see me off.  We’ve spent a lot of time together, one way or another.  He is an excellent piper, a former pipe major with the Argylls, and I’ve passed many an evening with him at the local pipers’ club, reading a book and letting the sound of the bagpipes wash over me. 

Often you’d find us up at the little lochs above Greenock where he taught me how to fly fish, or walking ‘The Cut’, the four-mile aqueduct carved into the hills that runs all the way to Inverkip.  From there you can look down on the grim outlines of Ravenscraig, the sinister hospital Alan Grant and I are later to use as the model for Spinbinnie in the Bogie Man sagas.

I am too callow to dwell on any deeper meaning to this moment, but no doubt my uncle is well aware of it.  It is an ending.  My new life has begun.  After today I will return only as an occasional visitor. 

And then, gradually, hardly at all. 

And so to Dundee, famed for ‘jute, jam and journalism’.  By 1969 the jute industry is in serious decline.  The claim that marmalade was invented locally is disputed, but indeed that and other conserves have been made here for many years.  But of the three, journalism is clearly king, and DC Thomson & Co sits upon the throne, overseeing a vast publishing empire from its headquarters in Albert Square.  They produce a wide range of newspapers and periodicals, but apart from Scotland’s favourite Sunday newspaper The Sunday Post, with its excellent short comic strips Oor Wullie and The Broons, it’s the comics I mainly know them for.

DC Thomson HQ in Albert Square, photo by Phillip Vaughan.

Their output at present includes juvenile titles like The Beano and The Dandy, as well as boys’ adventure titles like Hornet, Hotspur and Victor, and the miniature and highly-enjoyable Commando war stories.

On the girls’ side are Mandy, Judy, Bunty and Diana, augmented by popular teen magazine Jackie and its poor sister Romeo. 

Nearly all are printed on ‘bog paper’ – newsprint – as the company has the machinery in place and sensible Scottish thriftiness will not allow them to invest in a more expensive process when letterpress will do.

I know the comics well, and have a great fondness for them, having sampled them all during my months as a paperboy, reading some in the newsagents shop and others while walking my round, often shoving slightly dog-eared copies through unsuspecting letterboxes.  When I retired from paper delivery my young sister had begun to get the girls’ titles, so I devoured them too and found I enjoyed them even more.

*      *     *

I’m mildly surprised to be accepted at DC Thomson, having spectacularly wasted my time at school and come out with few qualifications apart from a good English ‘higher’, as they are called, and a more modest one in French.  But the company makes a practice of taking on under-achievers and turning them into good journalists.  In fact, I will discover, that is the prime benefit of going there, as the pay is hardly enough to allow one to eat past Tuesday without rifling in bins or begging on street corners.

The city finally grants comic icons long-overdue recognition, photo by Phillip Vaughan.

If I hope to find myself an exciting placement on one of the comics, however, I am disappointed.  Details of new staff arrivals are passed out to the various editors, presumably with some assessment of their attributes, to enable them to choose new recruits.  I must seem unappetising fare because no plum appointment comes my way.  Instead I am seconded to what is called Fiction Department, where the unchosen are left to languish until some short-staffed editor in desperation plucks them from this dumping ground or they eventually take the hint and look for more suitable employment.

But they underestimate me.  I am either impervious to reason or just too stupid to realise when I’m not wanted.  Or both.

Fiction Department performs many tasks for the various publications, including preparing detective stories and romantic serials for the newspapers – the latter generally from edited versions of books by publishers like Mills & Boon – as well as dealing with unsolicited submissions from the general public. 

Little training is given for this task, but with some common sense and a basic appreciation of story fundamentals it’s no great stretch to recognise bad writing.  The worst of the submissions are sent a stock form telling the author thanks but no thanks, with the suggestion – not in so many words – to stop wasting our time (few take the hint).  Those with some miniscule promise are invited to try again. 

In my time reading submissions only once do I feel a story is worth passing up the chain of command (and indeed its author goes on to bigger and better things), and therein lies some proof that the art of fiction writing is no easy one.

Then there are horoscopes.  One of my first tasks in Fiction Department is to write the daily horoscopes for the Dundee Courier.  “A chance encounter with a crazed axeman may have unexpected consequences for future plans.  Lucky colour red.” 

I never go quite that far, of course, and no doubt anything too extreme will be caught by the newspaper’s sub-editors.  I have for many years considered this my introduction to the dishonesty of journalism, but on reflection I’m not so sure.  There is something refreshingly honest about a nineteen-year-old Cassandra plotting out a phony future for the readers.  Does anyone really take these things seriously?  A few, I suppose, but most see them for what they are – an entertainment, no more. 

Oor Wullie, photo by Phillip Vaughan.

1969 turns into 1970, and my able chief sub-editor John Hodgman departs for a position on one of the Glasgow newspapers where his talents will be put to better use.  His position in Fiction Department goes seemingly by default to his longest serving underling – me.

I am hardly the finished article, but am able to make a passable stab at the job, mentoring each new recruit in our various tasks.

After all, sub-editing really demands little more than a decent grounding in English grammar and a modicum of native wit.  Some have it, some don’t.  (I am often quite surprised when those who clearly don’t have it still find themselves plucked from well-deserved obscurity, but there you go.  It’s a funny old world.)

So here we are over a year into my time in Dundee.  I am now a chief sub-editor, but this feature is called “A Life In Comics” and I still have not handled a single picture strip. 

All that is about to change. The latest recruit to arrive under my dubious supervision is a tall, red-haired Englishman with an incredible amount of nervous energy and a burning ambition to become a writer.  His name is Patrick Mills.

Part 2