ABSTRACT

Kids and comics were inseparable from the very beginning. Comics, intended for the working-class clerk and artisan, appealed to children because of their visual nature. Now and then editors slipped in ‘Something for the Children’: Tom Browne’s ‘Billy Buster the Steam Engine’ in Comic Cuts for 14 March 1896, was described as ‘a tale of a toy engine to be read aloud to the youngsters while they look at the pictures’. When children first appeared in comics, naturally it was as mischief-makers (p. 56). The first child heroes were, of course, as delinquent as their adult equivalents. Gordon Fraser’s ‘Ball’s Pond Banditti’ (p. 57) are the great grandfathers of ‘Lord Snooty and His Pals’, as their names testify: Ticko Scubbins, Gorger Pain, Piggy Waffles, Lurcher Geeson, and Sweppy Titmarsh!