TV Century 21, also known as TV 21,[1] was a weekly British children's comic of the 1960s and early 1970s. It promoted the many television science-fiction puppet series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Century 21 Productions. The comic was published in the style of a newspaper from the future, with the front page usually given over to fictional news stories set in the worlds of Thunderbirds, Fireball XL5, Stingray, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, and other stories.[2]
Many of the leading British comic book artists worked for the magazine, including Frank Bellamy, who drew two-page-spread adventures of Thunderbirds, Don Harley, Mike Noble, Ron Embleton, Gerry Embleton, Keith Watson, Richard Jennings, Ron Turner, Rab Hamilton, James Watson, John Cooper, and the team of Carlos Pino and Vicente Alcazar under the pseudonym "Cervic".
Contents |
In 1965, the television series Stingray, which portrayed the popular underwater adventures of Troy Tempest and his friends, was rewarded with its own comic. TV Century 21 hit the bookstalls on 23 January 1965. The magazine capitalised on the immense popularity of the latest Gerry Anderson television shows. It dropped the word "Century" from its title in 1968, and became known as TV 21.
Although Supercar and Fireball XL5 were made before the start of TV 21, they were still being shown sporadically on ITV, and thus 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 first three colour strips which started with the launch of the magazine. The front covers were also in colour, with photographs from one or more of the Anderson television series or occasionally of the stars of the back page feature.
The magazine also extended its licensing beyond Anderson's projects, and for its first two years published strip adventures based on The Daleks, the early scripts for which had the approval of Terry Nation.
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.
Early copies of TV 21 are difficult to find, and fetch very high prices compared to almost all other Gerry Anderson printed material. The artists involved with the magazine included Eric Eden and Frank Bellamy.
In 1967, the indestructible Captain Scarlet appeared on television and in the pages of TV Century 21. Meanwhile, The Mysterons, Captain Scarlet's enemies, were having their history explained in TV Tornado, another City Magazines publication 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.
Most of the strips in TV21 were deliberately set in the same shared future history; even strips without a related TV show tied into it, with Special Agent 21 being set in the 'past' and showing the formation of Fireball XL5's World Space Patrol. [3] The main setting was the 2060s, with each newspaper covering the 'top stories' from there. Earth had a World Government based in fictional Unity City, Bermuda, with a President and a Senate, which ruled most of the planet. In addition to the World Space Patrol, World Navy, WASP, and SPECTRUM from the TV shows, there was a World Army/Air Force and Universal Secret Service. Elements of these would turn up in multiple strips, including ones based on other shows; Fireball XL5 turned up several times in Captain Scarlet. Various text features established backstory for the characters that also linked the series, for example some of the Spectrum captains in Captain Scarlet were established as having worked with the Fireball XL-5, for example. This did not necessarily contradict any of the TV series themselves as they were all established as taking place in the mid-21st century anyway (at least up until Captain Scarlet; Anderson's later Supermarionation series Joe 90 and The Secret Service were set in a more contemporary era.
A recurring element was the fictional nation of Bereznik in East Europe, a nation not part of and hostile to the World Government; it would primarily appear in Lady Penelope and Thunderbirds stories, usually as an antagonist nation.[4]
On 18 January 1969, the latest Gerry Anderson success, 'Joe 90', was given its 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.
TV Century 21 was edited by Alan Fennell from 1965 to 1968, then by Chris Spencer and later by Howard Elson.
Due to the success of Thunderbirds, TV21 was adapted for the Dutch market as TV2000.
In the UK, TV Century 21 launched a sister publication 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 Mysteron strips as further preludes to Captain Scarlet. TV Tornado also included strips of Lone Ranger, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Tarzan, and The Saint as well as The Man From UNCLE. Solo was merged with TV Tornado, which later merged with TV21, which itself merged in the 1970s with Valiant.
A new wave group named TV21 (with permission from then owners of the comic, IPC magazines) formed in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1979. The band released a string of seven singles and one album, "A Thin Red Line," before splitting up in 1982, immediately after opening for the Rolling Stones on the Scottish dates of their 1982 European Tour. The band reformed in October 2005 after a 23 year gap to perform at a tribute night for DJ John Peel, who had died the previous year. Presently, they are still playing and recording new material.
TV21 released their second album, "Forever 22", in June 2009 on their own Powbeat label. It is available on vinyl and cd via MySpace[5] or from cdbaby.com It is also available as a download from iTunes or Amazon and can be streamed on Spotify. The band released all the songs from "A Thin Red Line" for the first time on cd in the spring of 2010. Titled "Snakes And Ladders", it also included all the singles and b-sides.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||