TV Century 21
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TV Century 21 (also known as "TV 21") was an important comic in the 1960s and a vehicle to promote the many television space-age adventure puppet series created by Gerry Anderson and his wife Sylvia Anderson. TV 21 was published appearing as a newspaper from the future, with stories on Thunderbirds, Fireball XL5, Stingray, Captain Scarlet and others.
Frank Bellamy was a well known artist who contributed to the comic with his innovative 2-page spread comic adventures of Thunderbirds. Other artists included Don Harley, Mike Noble, Ron Embleton, Gerry Embleton, Keith Watson (artist), Ron Turner (artist), Rab Hamilton, James Watson (artist), John Cooper (comics).
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[edit] History
In 1965, the television series 'Stingray', which told the popular underwater adventures of Troy Tempest and his friends, was rewarded with its own comic. TV Century 21 hit the bookstalls to the delight of a million children on 23rd January 1965. The magazine, later to drop the 'Century' from its title, and now known widely as TV 21, was a clever piece of marketing by A.P. films, which capitalised on the immense popularity of the latest Gerry Anderson television shows. The editorial team knew they were onto a winner as the ground had already been broken by Anderson's shows Four Feather Falls, Supercar and Fireball XL5 appearing in TV Comic in the early 1960s.
Despite the fact that 'Supercar' and 'Fireball XL5' were made long before the start of 'TV 21', they were still being shown sporadically on ITV, and they were also featured in the magazine. 'Thunderbirds' was not featured in TV 21 until issue 52 , but one of the key characters from it, the aristocratic Lady Penelope, was featured from the start.
'Fireball XL5', 'Stingray' and 'Lady Penelope' were the three colour strips which started with the launch of the magazine. The front covers were in colour too, with photographs either from one or more of the Anderson television series, or occasionally of the stars of the back page feature - 'The Daleks'. Although the long running 'Dalek' strip in TV 21 did not feature Doctor Who (whose copyright was with the BBC while the Dalek copyright belonged to Terry Nation), it is still very popular with Doctor Who collectors and pushes prices up for TV 21 comics. Some of the TV 21 strips were later reprinted in the Marvel Doctor Who comic.
In contrast to TV Comic which was a traditional strip comic, TV 21 was presented as a newspaper for children with a front page of 'Stop Press' items and 'news' style photographs of their puppet heroes. The fresh approach captured the imagination of a whole generation of children, and at its peak TV 21 was selling over one million copies every week.
Early copies of TV 21 are very hard to find, and fetch very high prices compared to almost all other Gerry Anderson printed material. It is easy to see why. The artwork was of an excellent standard, with artists like Eric Eden and Frank Bellamy (who had worked on 'The Eagle') contributing strips for the magazine. It was also a very new style of comic, and had no competitors in its own particular field of science-fiction and secret agent adventure strips.
As well as the weekly TV Century 21, there were also a number of 'Specials' published by the magazine which have become very prized collectors items. An example is the 'Thunderbirds' extra from 1966, which contained 48 pages devoted almost exclusively to 'Thunderbirds'. Due to its size, this issue was stapled unlike most of the other Century 21 productions which were not.
The 'Thunderbirds' special contains the usual array of excellent strips, as well as an unlikely invitation to 'Build your own Thunderbird 1', the components of which were featured on pages 20 and 29.
In 1967 the indestructible 'Captain Scarlet' appeared on television and in the pages of TV Century 21. Meanwhile, Captain Scarlet's enemies 'The Mysterons' were having their history explained in another City Magazines publication TV Tornado which also featured the popular series The Man from U.N.C.L.E.' and The Saint. TV Tornado merged with TV 21 in September 1968.
TV Century 21 comic officially dropped the 'Century' from the title at the start of 1968 after 154 issues.
[edit] TV21 & Joe 90
On 18th January 1969, the latest Gerry Anderson success, 'Joe 90', was given his own paper. This was not a very long lasting publication however, merging with TV 21 in September 1969 after just 34 issues. From this point onwards, the TV 21 and Joe 90 comic as it was then called restarted their numbering from number 1, with 'New Series No.' given on the front cover. The new comic kept to a similar format, but the Anderson strips of 'Joe 90' and 'Thunderbirds' were relegated to black and white in favour of the new favourites Star Trek and Land of the Giants.
[edit] Editors
TV Century 21 was edited by Alan Fennell from 1965 to 1968, then by Chris Spencer and later by Howard Elson.
[edit] Overseas version
Due to the success of Thunderbirds, the TV21 magazine was copied and localised for the Dutch market and became TV2000.
[edit] Sister publications
In the UK, TV Century 21 got a girl's sidekick in the form of the Lady Penelope magazine. This featured Frank Langford's "Lady Penelope" comic strip. This lasted a total of 204 issues, but after 123 issues, the comic changed its name to "Penelope". It also included an "Angels" strip as a prelude to the launch of Captain Scarlet.
Other sister comics included "TV Tornado" and "Solo" both of which included Mysterons strips as further preludes to Captain Scarlet. Solo was merged with TV Tornado and some time later TV Tornado was merged with TV21.
