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Comic Cuts
Comic Cuts was a British comic magazine. It was published from 1890 to 1953, and was created by Alfred Harmsworth. In its early days, it inspired other publishers to produce rival comic magazines. Comic Cuts held the record for the most issues of a British weekly comic for 46 years, until The Dandy overtook it in 1999.
Brothers Alfred and Harold Harmsworth first came to prominence with 1888's Answers, a cut-and-paste Tit-Bits rip-off of letter responses, witticisms and tips often swiped from American magazines. Alfred's gifted promotional ideas pushed the circulation up and the brothers felt a similar approach would work with cartoons. The new title was hoped to boost Answers' circulation of 180,000 by using a comic as a cut-price appetiser to attract readers to the more expensive magazine. Alfred's belief was that thousands more were willing to gamble on a new title at such a low price, and the cheap production costs provided a way to advertise the more expensive Answers to readers. The halfpenny price saw Comic Cuts printed entirely on low-grade white newsprint, using only black ink.
Comic Cuts thus initially has a very literal title ("cuts" being an industry term for line blocks and a reference to its compiled nature) as the first few editions were simply compilations of gag cartoons often consisting of just a single frame and jokes from the likes of Life and Harper's gathered together. The first issue was dated 17 May 1890 (published on the preceding Monday), and was reputedly pulled together by editor Houghton Townley in four days. The 8-page first issue impressively sold 118,864 of its 120,000 print run, and circulation soon reached 300,000, some 120,000 more than Answers. An early editorial in the eleventh issue claimed prime minister William Gladstone was among the readership; something to be taken with a considerable pinch of salt given the claims that often made in Harmsworth titles. The sales were despite protests from newsagents, some of whom disliked the small profit margin the halfpenny price gave them. At this stage the comic was aimed firmly at adults, particularly the growing number of literate working class who couldn't afford a penny newspaper. Small sections were included for children, but the overall tone was aimed at the growing number of newly-literate adults.
The title's instant success saw Harmsworth's rivals scramble to produce their own comics, with Henderson producing Scraps and Snap-Shots. However, Alfred Harmsworth had anticipated this and initiated another commercial masterstrokes, establishing an ethos that would last in the British comics for nearly a century. Reasoning that competition was inevitable, he initiated a sister title as a rival so the Harmsworths would profit further from the newly discovered public appetite for comics while crowding out rivals. The result was Illustrated Chips, which - after an abortive run as a text heavy tabloid revealed the public simply wanted more of the same as Cuts - went on to be a huge success in its own right. The pair soon reached combined sales of half a million a week. Harmsworth identified this self-competition as part of his 'Schemo Magnifico', a secretive guide to publishing success he had written himself.
Within a few issues, demand for contents saw Comic Cuts carry an announcement requesting that "clever artists" submit their work for inclusion. While a sign of the title's rapid growth in popularity and profitability, there have also been suggestions that the reused American material clashed with the reprint rights of rival publisher James Henderson & Sons. As it was the stagnant economy meant Victorian London was full of struggling writers and artists, and the gradual switch to original material only ate into a small portion of Comic Cuts' profit margin. Early respondents included Roland Hill (who contributed the first in-house strip to the fourth issue, a cartoon titled "Those Cheap Excursions"), Oliver Veal and the 20-year old Tom Browne. The latter initially signed his work under the pseudonym 'Vandyke Browne', and his salary was initially a shilling a week.
On 14 February 1891 Comic Cuts had carried its first full-page cartoon strip, and in the same edition the text story "The Legend of Ivy Towers" by James Woods, became the title's first serial feature. Browne early meanwhile contributed "Popular Songs Illustrated", beginning on 5 August 1891, and within a year nearly all of the comic was original material - albeit that some material was more original than others; British-drawn rip-offs of American material was a common occurrence, particularly for one-frame cartoons. Private correspondence between Alfred and his brother Harold revealed that by the end of 1892 the comic had a circulation of 430,000 and another two years later saw it steady at 425,000 despite a growing amount of competition. Figures given to the Advertiser's Protection Society suggested it reached half a million in the 1900s. As the issues were frequently passed between friends, colleagues and family members, and the comic's fictional editor Clarence C. Cutts would proclaim the title had a million readers. The early Comic Cuts was no stranger to boastful editorials, with the title proclaiming itself the original comic (despite being nothing of the sort); however, a wry claim to be "the poor man's Punch" drew legal notices from the esteemed satirical magazine's publisher. Nevertheless, the comic regularly took sideswipes at failed imitators. In addition to Cutts, the title also had a feature reputedly written by office boy Sebastian Ginger, which was crammed with spelling 'errors'.
From 3 March 1894 Comic Cuts began a series of proto-pinups under the heading "Our Sweethearts", featuring realistically drawn beautiful women - albeit in line with Victorian wiles by being fashionably but very fully dressed. It was succeeded by a similar series called "Dancing Girls of All Nations", featuring exotic beauties in national costume. While chaste and artistic, the images were clearly intended more for titillation than education. Less salaciously, the 20 June 1896 edition depicted a smiling Queen Victoria reading Comic Cuts as part of a series of famous personalities doing so, titled "Famous Comics Posters"; under the grandmother of Europe the text read 'What would the nation do without the Queen? Worse - what would the Queen do without COMIC CUTS?'. Comic Cuts also instigated a regular tradition of the double-size "Christmas number", typically featuring snow on the masthead, holiday-related content and seasonal greetings from the editor.
Meanwhile, the features in Comic Cuts and its ilk were becoming more sophisticated as the medium grew, moving away from single panel cartoons and towards more ambitious sequential strips - referred to in contemporary industrial vernacular as 'sets' - and recurring characters. One example of this was Chubblock Homes, drawn by Jack B. Yeats. Initially debuting as a three-frame set in Comic Cuts #184 (18 November 1893), the Sherlock Holmes pastiche soon grew to an early ongoing serial. The following year the popular character was transferred to give a boost to the Harmsworths' latest venture, The Funny Wonder. Less forward-looking was 1894's "Comic Cuts Colony", a single-frame work by Frank Wilkinson; Britain was casually racist for all of the 19th and much of the 20th century, and Comic Cuts was to dip into such crass picaninny tropes for cheap laughs on several occasions.
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Comic Cuts
Comic Cuts was a British comic magazine. It was published from 1890 to 1953, and was created by Alfred Harmsworth. In its early days, it inspired other publishers to produce rival comic magazines. Comic Cuts held the record for the most issues of a British weekly comic for 46 years, until The Dandy overtook it in 1999.
Brothers Alfred and Harold Harmsworth first came to prominence with 1888's Answers, a cut-and-paste Tit-Bits rip-off of letter responses, witticisms and tips often swiped from American magazines. Alfred's gifted promotional ideas pushed the circulation up and the brothers felt a similar approach would work with cartoons. The new title was hoped to boost Answers' circulation of 180,000 by using a comic as a cut-price appetiser to attract readers to the more expensive magazine. Alfred's belief was that thousands more were willing to gamble on a new title at such a low price, and the cheap production costs provided a way to advertise the more expensive Answers to readers. The halfpenny price saw Comic Cuts printed entirely on low-grade white newsprint, using only black ink.
Comic Cuts thus initially has a very literal title ("cuts" being an industry term for line blocks and a reference to its compiled nature) as the first few editions were simply compilations of gag cartoons often consisting of just a single frame and jokes from the likes of Life and Harper's gathered together. The first issue was dated 17 May 1890 (published on the preceding Monday), and was reputedly pulled together by editor Houghton Townley in four days. The 8-page first issue impressively sold 118,864 of its 120,000 print run, and circulation soon reached 300,000, some 120,000 more than Answers. An early editorial in the eleventh issue claimed prime minister William Gladstone was among the readership; something to be taken with a considerable pinch of salt given the claims that often made in Harmsworth titles. The sales were despite protests from newsagents, some of whom disliked the small profit margin the halfpenny price gave them. At this stage the comic was aimed firmly at adults, particularly the growing number of literate working class who couldn't afford a penny newspaper. Small sections were included for children, but the overall tone was aimed at the growing number of newly-literate adults.
The title's instant success saw Harmsworth's rivals scramble to produce their own comics, with Henderson producing Scraps and Snap-Shots. However, Alfred Harmsworth had anticipated this and initiated another commercial masterstrokes, establishing an ethos that would last in the British comics for nearly a century. Reasoning that competition was inevitable, he initiated a sister title as a rival so the Harmsworths would profit further from the newly discovered public appetite for comics while crowding out rivals. The result was Illustrated Chips, which - after an abortive run as a text heavy tabloid revealed the public simply wanted more of the same as Cuts - went on to be a huge success in its own right. The pair soon reached combined sales of half a million a week. Harmsworth identified this self-competition as part of his 'Schemo Magnifico', a secretive guide to publishing success he had written himself.
Within a few issues, demand for contents saw Comic Cuts carry an announcement requesting that "clever artists" submit their work for inclusion. While a sign of the title's rapid growth in popularity and profitability, there have also been suggestions that the reused American material clashed with the reprint rights of rival publisher James Henderson & Sons. As it was the stagnant economy meant Victorian London was full of struggling writers and artists, and the gradual switch to original material only ate into a small portion of Comic Cuts' profit margin. Early respondents included Roland Hill (who contributed the first in-house strip to the fourth issue, a cartoon titled "Those Cheap Excursions"), Oliver Veal and the 20-year old Tom Browne. The latter initially signed his work under the pseudonym 'Vandyke Browne', and his salary was initially a shilling a week.
On 14 February 1891 Comic Cuts had carried its first full-page cartoon strip, and in the same edition the text story "The Legend of Ivy Towers" by James Woods, became the title's first serial feature. Browne early meanwhile contributed "Popular Songs Illustrated", beginning on 5 August 1891, and within a year nearly all of the comic was original material - albeit that some material was more original than others; British-drawn rip-offs of American material was a common occurrence, particularly for one-frame cartoons. Private correspondence between Alfred and his brother Harold revealed that by the end of 1892 the comic had a circulation of 430,000 and another two years later saw it steady at 425,000 despite a growing amount of competition. Figures given to the Advertiser's Protection Society suggested it reached half a million in the 1900s. As the issues were frequently passed between friends, colleagues and family members, and the comic's fictional editor Clarence C. Cutts would proclaim the title had a million readers. The early Comic Cuts was no stranger to boastful editorials, with the title proclaiming itself the original comic (despite being nothing of the sort); however, a wry claim to be "the poor man's Punch" drew legal notices from the esteemed satirical magazine's publisher. Nevertheless, the comic regularly took sideswipes at failed imitators. In addition to Cutts, the title also had a feature reputedly written by office boy Sebastian Ginger, which was crammed with spelling 'errors'.
From 3 March 1894 Comic Cuts began a series of proto-pinups under the heading "Our Sweethearts", featuring realistically drawn beautiful women - albeit in line with Victorian wiles by being fashionably but very fully dressed. It was succeeded by a similar series called "Dancing Girls of All Nations", featuring exotic beauties in national costume. While chaste and artistic, the images were clearly intended more for titillation than education. Less salaciously, the 20 June 1896 edition depicted a smiling Queen Victoria reading Comic Cuts as part of a series of famous personalities doing so, titled "Famous Comics Posters"; under the grandmother of Europe the text read 'What would the nation do without the Queen? Worse - what would the Queen do without COMIC CUTS?'. Comic Cuts also instigated a regular tradition of the double-size "Christmas number", typically featuring snow on the masthead, holiday-related content and seasonal greetings from the editor.
Meanwhile, the features in Comic Cuts and its ilk were becoming more sophisticated as the medium grew, moving away from single panel cartoons and towards more ambitious sequential strips - referred to in contemporary industrial vernacular as 'sets' - and recurring characters. One example of this was Chubblock Homes, drawn by Jack B. Yeats. Initially debuting as a three-frame set in Comic Cuts #184 (18 November 1893), the Sherlock Holmes pastiche soon grew to an early ongoing serial. The following year the popular character was transferred to give a boost to the Harmsworths' latest venture, The Funny Wonder. Less forward-looking was 1894's "Comic Cuts Colony", a single-frame work by Frank Wilkinson; Britain was casually racist for all of the 19th and much of the 20th century, and Comic Cuts was to dip into such crass picaninny tropes for cheap laughs on several occasions.