The Dragon and Chips series
Comics - amazing things


Before home computers, Gameboys and personal MP3 players, British comics were the high point of the week. It's no coincidence that they all but died out in the early 80's, when the Sinclair Spectrum and Commodore 64 began to exert their hold on the weekly pocket money. Even if you couldn't afford original games, blank tapes were about the price of a weekly comic and you'd get a lot more entertainment out of a single game than a few pages of coloured pictures.

That might explain the demise of the British comic, but it doesn't do justice to them. Very few people are still playing 8-bit games from that era, but quite a few people are collecting comics. (I know that for sure, because they keep outbidding me on eBay.)

Tiger & Scorcher


When I lived in Spain we used to trundle back to the UK once or twice a year, and a great friend of mine used to give me a bundle of comics from his stash during each visit. Many were aimed at younger kids, like the Beano, Dandy, Beezer and so on. Some, like Tiger, were pitched just right. (I wasn't fussy - I'd take whatever I was offered and sort them out later.)

Tiger & Scorcher


So, Tiger has a special nostalgic place in my heart. I ended up with 40 or 50 copies from 1974 through 1978. Now, Tiger had seven or eight stories in each issue, all of them serials. It wasn't easy to work out what was going on when I had to skip weeks or months at a time, but the artwork was excellent and the characters were great.

Tiger & Scorcher


When we left Spain in the 80's to return to the UK I had to leave all my comics behind, although I did manage to bring those Tigers. When we emigrated to Australia six months later I had barely enough room for a couple of books, so I had to leave my precious Tigers behind.

Tiger & Scorcher


Roll forwards twenty years - eBay to the rescue. Over the past few years I've managed to collect a complete run of Tigers from January 1968 to the very last issue in 1986 - over 900 of the things. And after I'd completed that little collection I started on Roy of the Rovers, a comic which I didn't even like as a kid. So, now I have every one of those from the first in 1976 to the last in 1993. And these days I can read the stories without annoying gaps...

My collection also includes every issue of Scorcher, from 1970 to 1974, and I also have a set of Tiger annuals from the first (1954) to the very last in 1987.

Tiger Comic



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