Friday 21 August 2015

The Topper: A pictorial history



One of the comics that used to come my way back in the mid sixties was The Topper, an A3 over-sized comic that had fewer pages but larger illustrations and was a companion paper to The Beezer. Published by DC Thompson this title ran from 1953 until 1990, absorbing Sparky in 1977.

 
The Topper number one 7th February 1953     Now with added Sparky.

The cover feature that will be remembered by those of my generation was Micky the Monkey who would later be relegated to the inside pages as Tricky Dicky seems to have taken the lead for the title when it shrank to the "normal" A4 size comic in 1980.

 
Tricky Dicky                                            Nancy

As a child I have to admit The Beezer appealed to me more and I wasn't too keen on Nancy one of the main colour strips that I recall. However The Topper was quite a survivor, but despite the publishers best efforts (the titles features in the eighties were much better fare!), it faced the inevitable merger with it's stronger sister title.

 

However can you imagine the furore that would be caused today by a strip called Danny's Tranny? For that alone, The Topper deserves a place in anyones collection.

For those of the younger generation a "Tranny" was our generations word for a radio. 

OK PC keepers!

1 comment:

  1. Wonderful. I was a regular Topper reader up until, so far as I can tell, about 1977 (coincided with our moving house, and my being so keen to assist the move as to forego the cost of my weekly comic). I seem to recall Mickey the Monkey becoming unusually surreal around the mid-1970s.

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