Denis Gifford

Gifford had a distinctive, simple drawing style with a light-heartedness evident even in more action-orientated strips. Panels were often bustling and dynamic, with individual characters vying for attention. His humours strips were dense with conspicuously labelled puns and 'sight gags', the "visual conventions"[7] of comic art, informed by an intense awareness of the cultural heritage of the medium.

In the period Gifford drew for them, D.C. Thomson and most British comic publishers had a strict policy that artists could not sign their work[8] but exceptionally, he was allowed to clearly sign his art.[9]

Gifford created at least three of the earliest British Golden Age superheroes, Mr Muscle[10] for Dynamic Comics (1945), Streamline, whose #1 tagline proclaimed him "The speediest fighter in the world",[11] co-created with Monkhouse for Streamline Comics (1947) and Tiger-Man, debuting in Ray Regan #1[12] (1949). Gifford himself credits "the first British superhero in the American comic book style"[13] to Derickson Dene by Nat Brand in British anthology comic The Triumph in 1939, but both Mr Muscle and Streamline were early attempts to introduce British characters in a characteristically American genre, prompted by severely limited imports or reprints of US superhero titles due to wartime paper rationing and import restrictions. Gifford and Monkhouse set up their own publishing company, Streamline, in the early 1950s which published reprints of other Golden Age superheroes such as Captain Might[14] and Masterman.

Only Streamline Comics #1 had story and art by Gifford, although he contributed the one-page humour strip Inky the Imp of the Inkpot and the adventure strip Search for the Secret City in #4.

Mr Muscle should not to be confused with the later DC character Mister Muscle of Hero Hotline, created by Bob Rozakis, or the Charlton Comics character Mr. Muscles, created by Jerry Siegel. Tiger-Man should not be confused with Tiger Man, the Street & Smith Golden Age hero, Tigerman, the Fiction House Golden Age hero, or Tiger-Man, the Atlas/ Seaboard character.

Gifford created, wrote and edited several comics in the 1940s and 1950s. These included detective title Ray Regan (1949), with art by Ron Embleton,[15] the pantomime-themed Panto Pranks (1949), which Gifford wrote and drew, Fizz Comics (1949) and Star Comics (1954), which he drew and edited with Monkhouse, featuring strips of contemporary entertainers Morecambe and Wise, Bob Monkhouse himself, Jill Day and movie character Tobor The Great. These titles created by Gifford often ran for just a single issue, to take advantage of a loophole in postwar paper rationing, but the succession of short projects suited Gifford's diverse interests as it enabled him to flit from genre to genre.

Gifford drew and often wrote a number of Western comics strips in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, including 'Ace High' Rogers versus Redmask (1946),[16] Bill Elliott in Republic's Old Los Angeles in The Sheriff #3 (1948)[17] and strips for Annie Oakley (1957–58)[18] and Gunhawks Western (1960–61).[19]

Gifford provided art for movie adaptation strip Roy Rogers in Western comic The Sheriff Comics (no date, 1950s), signing himself 'Gus Denis Gifford' and offering a drawing style [in which] "[h]is likenesses could approach very close to the American ones produced by Harry Parks",[20] consistent with Gifford's busy, comical style in other genres.

Gifford and Monkhouse contributed cartoon strips to various magazines in the 1940s and 1950s, including Galaxy magazine (1946) (not to be confused with Galaxy Science Fiction).

Gifford drew the cover for Classics Illustrated #146 (British series), Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1962), a more comedic and cartoon-like rendering than was conventional for the title's covers, which tended to be classically heroic and often painted.[21]

Gifford went on to produce several strips for the highly popular humour comic Knockout, including Our Ernie (1950), Stoneage Kit the Ancient Brit and his own creation, the gags and puzzles strip Steadfact McStaunch. He later revived Steadfast McStaunch for a run in IPC's new title Whizzer and Chips[22] (1969), which itself merged with Knockout in 1973.

After working with Mick Anglo on the ABC science-fiction title Space Comics (1953–54), Gifford began work for Anglo Studios when it was set up in 1954, including a long stint writing and illustrating early Marvelman, the superhero reinvented in the 1980s with a darker vision by Alan Moore. Gifford worked on a number of strips in several titles in the Marvelman stable, and created the light-hearted backup features Flip and Flop and The Friendly Soul. He also wrote an editorial piece, Founding a Family, on the history of Marvelman Family for a 1988 reprint of the strip in Miracleman Family #2.

When Anglo took on US reprint series Annie Oakley, Gifford was one of the staff of British and Spanish artists used to create new strips (1957–58). Gifford went on to provide Western strips for Anglo Features title Gunhawks Western (1960–61) and humour strip Our Lad for Anglo's Captain Miracle (1961) contributed several humour strips for Anglo's anthology of Silver Age DC reprints, Super DC (1969–70),[23] as well as reprints of his humour strip The Friendly Soul from Marvelman in Superman Bumper Book (1970) and Super DC Bumper Book #1 (1971). Later in the 1960s, Gifford also produced the one-off News of the Universe Television Service and regular humour strips Dan Dan the TV Man and the collection of one or two-panel gags, Jester Moment for TV Tornado (1967–68) where Mick Anglo was editor.

Although Gifford did not have an academic background, he was an acknowledged authority on film history who is respected by academics in film studies, media studies and social and cultural history. Much of his reference work is recommended reading in these disciplines. Along with several other pioneering film archivists, Gifford's 'encyclopaedic work' was recognised by the Institute of Historical Research as having "provided thoroughgoing maps of British film personnel and production histories".[24]

Gifford compiled a comprehensive reference work of British-made films, The British Film Catalogue, 1895-1970: A Reference Guide, listing every traceable film made in the UK, including short films generally omitted by film catalogues, with detailed entries including running time, certificate, reissue date, distributor, production company, producer, director, main cast, genre and plot summary. It was a labour of many years, as Gifford tracked down retired industry professionals and researched back issues of trade publications, fanzines and directories. The Catalogue's third (1994) edition revised all entries and was published in two volumes, The Fiction Film, 1895–1994 and The Non-Fiction Film, 1888–1994. It became a seminal work for British film historians, acclaimed by The British Film Institute (BFI)'s curator of Moving Image in a Sight & Sound magazine shortlist of the best ever film books: "The nearest we have to a British national filmography was created not by any institute or university but by one man."[25] Gifford's popular work A Pictorial History of Horror also made the shortlist.

All editions of the Catalogue omitted animated films, but Gifford's British Animated Films, 1895–1985: A Filmography provided a similarly completist approach. Over 1200 films were detailed, attempting to include every British animated film of the period with a cinema release, whether full-length feature, short, public information film or advertisement. Gifford also provides an historical overview, giving particular attention to the pre-World War II era. As he was to attempt with the history of comics, Gifford sought to correct inaccuracies in cinema history that gave undue credit to the US industry, citing Dudley Buxton "who [in 1915] first animated the sinking of the Lusitania in all its terrifying drama, three years before Winsor McCay tackled the same subject in the United States. Yet according to film history, McCay's version was the world's first dramatic cartoon film!"

Gifford's writing also included biographies of cinematic figures, including Karloff: The Man, The Monster, The Movies and The Movie Makers: Chaplin, with his meticulous research and detailed knowledge well suited to the form.

Gifford was a judge at the Sitges 1977 International Festival of Fantasy and Horror.[26]

The BFI holds an extensive archive of interviews recorded by Gifford of various figures in the film, television and comics industries. The Denis Gifford Collection[27] is held as part of the BFI National Library. The BFI ran a Denis Gifford Tribute Evening at the National Film Theatre in January 2001 to mark his work on film history. [28]

As well as vintage comedy, Gifford had a particular interest in genre films, favouring the origins of those genres and the lower-budget B-movie output. He had written for science fiction fanzines since the 1950s, which he regarded as the period in which the genre gained maturity in the cinema: "it was the 1950s before sci-fi really got started, first with George Pal's astounding semi-documentary Destination Moon pipped at cinematic post by Robert L. Lipert's B-movie Rocketship X-M. Where the cinema led, comics followed."[29] He had attempted to spur early science fiction 'fandom' with his 1952 Space Patrol Official Handbook, an introduction to science fiction that included an index of 'films of future fantasy' from the 1902 French 'trick' film A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès and the 1918 Danish A Trip to Mars up to contemporary films such as the 1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still, screen shots from recent science fiction films The Man from Planet X, Rocketship X-M, The Day the Earth Stood Still and When Worlds Collide. Astronomical facts and diagrams of imagined spacecraft and spacesuit, drawn by Gifford, were also included.

Horror held a special fascination for Gifford: he was an active figure in horror fandom of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, including the Gothique Film Society,[30] and in the 1970s he had regular columns in Dez Skinn's House of Hammer magazine, first a serialised Golden History of Horror and later History of Hammer.[31] However, Gifford had been deeply critical of Hammer Studios, especially the productions of its later years, preferring the more understated examples of early British and Hollywood horror. He found Hammer's relatively explicit use of blood-letting and sexuality to be cynically exploitative, noting in his 1973 A Pictorial History of Horror that "The new age of horror was geared to a new taste. Where the old films had quickly cut away from the sight of blood, Hammer cut in for a closeup."[32] A Pictorial History of Horror was an influential work for a generation of film and horror enthusiasts,[33] described in The Paris Review by author and journalist Dave Tompkins as "the most important book of my childhood".[34]

Gifford was a lifelong fan of Laurel and Hardy, and founded 'Film Funsters', the first British branch of the Laurel & Hardy Appreciation Society,[35] as well as writing several articles on the duo. He was also a keen Sherlock Holmes enthusiast, and was a member of the Sherlock Holmes Society[36] and wrote various reviews and articles on films featuring the detective.

Gifford wrote numerous articles on film and popular entertainment, both professionally and for fanzines.

Gifford provided the first reliable, detailed account of early comics in works such as Victorian Comics (1976) and The British Comics Catalogue, 1874–1974 (1974), with a detailed overview in his International Book of Comics (1984). He also advanced debate on the origins of comics, including what the first comic and comic characters were,[42] arguing that "there is no point [in the history of comics] where we can pick up a paper and declare it Comic Number One."[43] He identified the first comedic narrative periodical, as an antecedent to the comic as The Comick Magazine (1796) which although all text included a single William Hogarth print per issue, which Gifford suggested when combined formed a "narrative sequence ... [so that] they could be described as an early form of comic strip."[13] Gifford identified the significant stage of "the first continuing cartoon hero"[44] as Rowlandson's Dr Syntax in the serial The Schoolmaster's Tour in The Poetical Magazine (1 May 1809). He argued that "in Europe, perhaps the world"[45] the first caricature magazine, an important prototypical form of the comic, was Hopkirk's The Glasgow Looking Glass (11 June 1825).

Gifford located the origin of the modern graphic narrative in the late nineteenth century, tracing development through various stages that included Judy - The London Serio-Comic Journal (1 May 1867) featuring Ally Sloper, the first recurring character in a text and picture serial. He observed in Victorian Comics that Sloper "was the first to appear in comic book format ... a paperback reprint collection ... the first to have his own comic paper ... and was the longest lived [character] in comic history." He suggested a key contender as the first comic as being the paper Funny Folks (12 December 1874), which had an unprecedented half-picture, half-text per page layout. Sloper's debut was certainly a series of panels, but it lacks "interdependence as a sequential narrative strategy"[46] with images each relaying a single joke without forming a narrative with other panels, and it lacked some key features of the form, such as the speech bubble, while it had accompanying text for each image. Debate continues, but Gifford's research and conclusions into the origins of comics as a medium have gained considerable academic acceptance.[47]

Ally Sloper was championed by Gifford as the world's first ever comic character,[48] and became a totemic figure for him, being revived and sometimes drawn by him in a number of comics[49] and other publications[50] that sought to ensure a modern readership had an awareness of early comic history. The Ally Sloper magazine was not a commercial success and lasted only four issues, but the innovation of Gifford's tone in the title was acknowledged by one cultural historian as "[w]ith his accurate spoof of the style of traditional British humour comics ... anticipat[ing] Viz by nearly three years."[51] He produced artwork for advertisements for an Ally Sloper T-shirt, which was published in several Alan Class Comics titles in 1976, to promote the Ally Sloper magazine.[52][53] Gifford also initiated the Ally Sloper Awards in 1976, an annual prize for veteran comic artists.

At a summit on comics history convened by the 1989 Lucca Comics Festival in Italy, Gifford was invited to be one of the eleven 'international specialists' to sign a declaration that The Yellow Kid was the first comic character having been first published in 1895. Gifford signed, but pointedly did so in the name of Ally Sloper, first published in 1867.[54]

Gifford sought to draw a distinct definition for British comics history, as the Golden Age and other historical eras of comics were first defined to describe US comics history. These eras relate to UK comics only as a result of American influence on the UK market and creators, and do not acknowledge key differences in British comics of the period, notably the preponderance in Britain of humorous anthologies rather than the genre titles, most especially superheroes, that predominated in the US. Gifford observed that the "Thirties were the Golden Age of British comics"[55] due to the profusion of successful, high quality and specifically British humour comics beginning in the 1930s, including D.C. Thomson's The Dandy (4 December 1937), The Beano (30 July 1938) and Magic (22 July 1939) and Amalgamated Press's Jingles (1934), Jolly (1935), Golden (23 October 1937), Radio Fun (15 October 1938), Happy Days (8 October 1938) and Knockout (4 March 1939). The start of the Second World War in 1939, and the resulting paper shortages, marked the end of many of the titles, a definable end to the era and the beginning of what Gifford termed the "Dark Age".[56]

Gifford's Ally Sloper #1, his 1976 attempt to find a modern audience for the character he argued was the world's first in comics

Gifford's The British Comics Catalogue, 1874–1974 (1974) was the first comprehensive index of British comics, and his later British Comics, Story Papers, Picture Libraries, Girls Papers, American Reprints, Facsmilies, Giveaways Price Guide (1982) the first attempt to offer a price guide for British comics (US comic books had been covered by The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide since 1970). It was the antecedent of works such as the Official Comic Book Price Guide for Great Britain (1989).

Gifford had a particular interest in children's comics. Although his collection included 1960s underground comics, the alternative comics of the 1970s as well as the more experimental mainstream of comics' Modern Age, he was not initially convinced by changing conceptions of comics as a medium suited to addressing adult themes such as sexuality, violence and storytelling techniques influenced by literary fiction, cinema and art. He recognised that the growth in adult readership of comics since the 1970s was due to nostalgia, but did not foresee the potential for a development of the medium. When children's comics began to reflect changes in cinema and mass culture, he was unafraid to speak out, even where this might involve constraints on the comics industry and creators.

After media outrage at the 1976 Look Out for Lefty strip about football hooliganism in the IPC comic Action, Gifford controversially drew parallels with the Wertham censorship of the US comics industry in the 1950s, remarking that "Perhaps its time we had another outcry against products like Action. Action is a new kind of comic geared to the lowest form of behaviour in children. Just as pornography caters for a mass market for adults, stuff like this provides violence for a mass market of children. As far as the people who produce Action are concerned, the children are simply a market and moral considerations do not apply."[57] Despite 2000 AD (#1 published in 1977) producing iconic characters and innovative and critically acclaimed storyelling and art, Gifford had similar reservations about its violent content: "Whether children would actually enjoy living in [the future] ... is another matter, for as depicted ... the future is a world of unrelieved violence."[58] Gifford was clear that his preferences in comics writing and art were informed by his nostalgia for UK comics of the 1930s, reflecting that "I look back to the days of my youth ... when comics were things of joy and pleasure, rather than blood and guts."[59]

However, Gifford's concerns were limited to comics intended for children and adolescents, and he was well aware of a development of the medium for an adult audience. He collected and was able to appreciate the content of underground and Modern Age comics, offering sophisticated and sometimes sympathetic analysis.[60] Gifford's own Ally Sloper comic (1976) offered a combination of vintage and alternative strips for an adult audience, although the nostalgic strips were his primary interest.[61]

Working for the Guinness Book of Records as a comics expert, Gifford had to qualify his recommendation that The Dandy be regarded as the world's oldest comic (first issue December 1937) after the entry was challenged in 1999. The first issue of Italian comics magazine Il Giornalino was cover dated 1 October 1924, US comic book Detective Comics (March 1937) began nine months earlier, and the Belgian comic magazine Spirou had more issues. Gifford admitted that "[i]t may be that we will have to insert the word British into the Guinness Book of Records to clarify the position."[62]

Gifford wrote the first television series of comedy stars Morecambe and Wise, Running Wild (1954), having been brought in with fellow cartoonist, comic enthusiast and film buff Tony Hawes to save a series which was initially panned by critics.[6] He also provided material for the opening night of ITV (1955) and co-wrote the first comedy show to be screened by BBC2, the TV movie Alberts' Channel Too (1964) for the launch of the channel, although the whole evening's broadcasting was lost due to a power blackout. He wrote for Junior Showtime (1973), devised the nostalgia panel show Looks Familiar (1970–87) for Thames TV, presented by Denis Norden, its radio counterpart Sounds Familiar and the Thames quiz show Quick on the Draw (1974–1979) featuring drawings by cartoonists and celebrities, with presenters including Bob Monkhouse, Rolf Harris and Bill Tidy. He also wrote scripts for the ITV children's puppet shows Witches' Brew (1973) and The Laughing Policeman (1974).[63] Gifford also designed stunts for the popular BBC1 game show The Generation Game.

The scriptwriting partnership with Hawes began in radio, for weekly BBC concert party The Light Optimists (1953) and continued with stunt devising for the US-bought game show People Are Funny for Radio Luxembourg.[64]

A broadcaster in his own right, Gifford featured in numerous television and radio programmes as an expert in the history of film, radio and comics, as well as appearances in a variety of documentary and news magazine programmes over several decades. Appearances included editions of BBC's On The Braden Beat (1964) commenting on comics, Granada's Clapperboard (1974) and a review of forthcoming horror films for BBC1's Film 1973 (1973), Goon but not Forgotten, a radio history of the Goon Show as part of the Laughter in the Air: The Story of Radio Comedy (1979) and twice as guest panellist for Radio 4 panel show Quote... Unquote (1985).[65]

Gifford and Monkhouse reprised their partnership with BBC radio programmes on the history of the comics, Sixpence for a Superman (1999) on British comics and the two-part A Hundred Laughs for a Ha'penny (1999), a history of comic papers.