Tiger Tim's Tales #25 (1920)

The 25th issue of Tiger Tim's Tales was, although undated, the first issue to be released in 1920, published on Friday 2nd January. For their 1 1/2D readers were presented with 24 pages, half of which were printed with red ink, the other half black and white. The comic is a bit of an odd size, nine inches by seven, and also had just one staple on the spine instead of two. The first issue of Tiger Tim's Tales had started life as a monthly on 1st June 1919, but with issue seven it became a weekly, being published every Friday. Three more issues were produced after this until it became Tiger Tim's Weekly. This new comic would continue in the same style for just short of one hundred issues (94, to be precise), until becoming the more familiar tabloid sized comic with bright full-colour covers that most of you have probably seen. 

This issue doesn't celebrate Christmas or the New Year (I assume the previous issue was the Christmas number), with the exception of one text story - Mrs Bruin's Present. This story mentions both Christmas puddings and New Year's Day, killing two birds with one stone. It's four pages long so I won't show all of it, but here's the first page.

The contents consists of three text stories, four comic strips (five if you count the two panel one on the 'Tiny Tales' page, a collection of very short stories no more than a paragraph each), Tiger Tim's letter page, and a couple of other features. One of those features is a cut out scene, where readers cut out Tiger Tim and his friends and stick him on the background. 

The centre pages had a one off story called The Baby In The Wood. I'm unsure who the artist here is.

And on the back cover is Pinkie and Pastie of Pat-A-Cake Palace. Artwork is by Herbert Foxwell, so I'm not sure why it's signed 'ABD' in the last panel. As with most comic strips of the time, the text underneath has entirely different dialogue to that in the panels.

This is the only issue of Tiger Tim's Tales I've seen for sale so am pleased to have snatched it up. It's a fun little comic but at a time when most comics were tabloid I'm not surprised they changed the size in 1921. Even so, sales couldn't have been too bad as it very quickly went from monthly to weekly in 1919, and 122 issues were produced at this size (if you include the ones after the name change to Tiger Tim's Weekly).

Comic Cuts in America

Issue #9, the last issue.

Comic Cuts is a well-known title here in the U.K, as it ran for over 60 years and produced over 3,000 issues, but it seems widely unknown amongst British comic fans that there was also an American version published, the first issue of which was dated for May 19th 1934. It was published by H.L. Baker and Co (made up of H. Baker and Hake Geller), and they gained the rights to a number of comic strips published in Amalgamated Press’ comics. The U.S. version had a full-colour front cover and so looked much more modern that its British counterpart. Each issue was 24 pages and cost five cents, but “The National Comic Weekly” (as it was subtitled) failed to catch on and just nine issues were released, the last one dated 28th July 1934. 

Sadly, no library is known to have any issues in any collections, and the only reference found on the comic in any book is on page 11 in 'Of Comics and Men', and it states:

"...a five-cent tabloid weekly reprinting the contents of an eponymous British publication that appeared in nine issues between May and July 1934".

It is also listed in 'The Library of Congress Copyright Office, Catalog of Copyright Entries, Part 2, Periodicals, January - December 1934'. It is mentioned three times in the list, here are all three:

As you may be able to see from the cover at the top of this post they didn't just reprint strips from Comic Cuts (in fact, I'm not sure if they reprinted anything from Comic Cuts), for the cover features The Bunty Boys, a strip illustrated by Herbert Foxwell in Bubbles from 1921 - 1941. The only other strip that I know appeared in the comic is Peter the Paleface Brave, also a reprint from Bubbles, this time illustrated by Anton Lock. It seems that this version of Comic Cuts was aimed at a much younger audience than the British version and therefore it reprints material from Amalgamated Press' younger comics.

Sadly information and issues on this comic are hard to come by but if you do know a little bit more about the contents of it, or even have an issue or two, please do get in touch.