Pulp Librarian Profile picture
Dec 2, 2021 23 tweets 13 min read Read on X
Today in pulp... I look back at that perennial Xmas stocking filler and all-round cheap and easy present from your Auntie the #Christmas Annual!

They're in the shops now...
If you're not from the UK you might be slightly baffled by the term 'Christmas Annual.' Basically it's a hardback A4 sized book themed around a comic, tv show or movie. It's full of stories, comic strips and various filler items for kids to read.
Christmas annuals have been around since the Victorian age, but it was in the 1920s that children's comic publishers began to monopolize the market. After all, they had a loyal readership, so sales were probably guarantee.
Over time the number of Christmas annuals began to rapidly increase, as more and more comics began to issue them to cash in on the Xmas market...
Even Britain's newspapers jumped on the Xmas bandwagon with their own annuals full of festive fun - though 'fun' might be pushing it a bit: long articles on 'how a newspaper is made' etc...
Up until the 1950s the children's Christmas annual was a somewhat middle class present: full colour printing was expensive, and not every child would be thrilled to receive a book from Santa instead of a cap gun or a tin of toffees.
But by the 1960s the market for Christmas annuals went through the roof, all thanks to one thing - television!
TV shows began to enter the Christmas annual market in a big way in the 1960s: whether they were shows aimed at children...
...or not! Basically if it was on the telly then there would be an annual at Christmas about it.

But were they any good?
Well by the 1970s the format of the Christmas tv show annual was pretty much standardised. First, you got an exciting cover, with either some slightly wonky artwort or some ropey stock photography...
There would be lots of big photos to pad out the page count (you could doodle on these when you were bored on Boxing Day)...
There would be some very dull stories featuring some truly terrible artwork, normally by an illustrator who hadn't seen the show...
There would be a fact file...
A board game...
Some rubbish puzzles...
A jokes page...
An extremely badly drawn comic strip...
Another bloody board game...
Another fact file, another quiz, more photos, a colouring page ... on and on until they'd filled 100 pages as cheaply as they could.

That was the problem with TV annuals: they were licenced by companies that had nothing to do with the show and didn't seem to care!
For example: the Doctor Who Christmas annual artwork has long been a source of puzzlement to children. "Who's that weirdo on the cover?" kids would cry every 25th December. "Has he regenerated into the Child Catcher?" They'd then proceed to draw a nob on all the Daleks.
By a country mile the biggest annual publisher of all was Fleetway! You name it, they'd stick together a 100 page hardback on it and sell it for £2.99 at all good newsagents.
So if you wanted a good Christmas annual you were better off sticking to one based on a comic: the art would be decent and the stories would be interesting.
Despite a dip in the 1990s I'm pleased to say the Christmas annual market is still alive and well. Whether modern annuals are as collectable as those of yesteryear only time will tell!

More pulp stories another time...

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Pulp Librarian

Pulp Librarian Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @PulpLibrarian

May 11
He was the terror of London; a demonic figure with glowing eyes and fiery breath who could leap ten feet high. The penny dreadfuls of the time wrote up his exploits in lurid terms. But who was he really?

Today I look at one of the earliest pulp legends: Spring-Heeled Jack! Image
London has always attracted ghosts, and in the 19th Century they increasingly left their haunted houses and graveyards and began to wader the capital's streets.

But one apparition caught the Victorian public attention more than most... Image
In October 1837 a 'leaping character' with a look of the Devil began to prey on Londoners. Often he would leap high into the air and land in front of a carriage, causing it to crash. It would then flee with a high-pitched laugh.

The public soon named him "Spring-Heeled Jack." Image
Read 14 tweets
May 5
Today in pulp I look back at New Zealand's home-grow microcomputer, the 1981 Poly-1!

Press any key to continue... Image
The Poly-1 was developed in 1980 by two electronics engineering teachers at Wellington Polytechnic, Neil Scott and Paul Bryant, who wanted to create a computer for use in New Zealand schools. Education Minister Merv Wellington liked the idea and gave it the green light. Image
Backed by government finances, and in partnership with Progeni Computers, Polycorp was formed in 1980 to began work on the prototype for the official Kiwi school computer.

It was an interesting approach... Image
Read 8 tweets
Apr 26
It was the biggest manhunt in Britain: police, the press, aeroplanes, psychics all tried to solve the disappearance. In the end nobody really knew what happened. It was a mystery without a solution.

This is the story of Agatha Christie's 11 lost days... Image
By 1926 Agatha Christie's reputation as a writer was starting to grow. Her sixth novel - The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - had been well-received and she and her husband Archie had recently concluded a world tour. But all was not well with the marriage. Image
In April 1926 Agatha Christie’s mother died. Christie was very close to her: she had been home-schooled and believed her mother was clairvoyant. The shock of her sudden death hit the author hard. Image
Read 18 tweets
Apr 23
Many readers have asked me over the years what my definition of pulp is. I've thought about it a lot, and the definition I keep coming back to... well it may surprise you.

Let me try and set it out. Image
There are lots of definitions of pulp out there: in books, in academic papers and on the web. And most circle back to the same three points: the medium, the story type and the method of writing. Image
Pulp is of course a type of cheap, coarse paper stock. Its use in magazine production from the 1890s onwards led to it becoming a shorthand term for the kind of fiction found in low cost story magazines. Image
Read 29 tweets
Apr 18
let's take a look at the extraordinary work of Victorian illustrator and cat lover Louis Wain! Image
Louis Wain was born in London in 1860. Although he is best known for his drawings of cats he started out as a Victorian press illustrator. His work is highly collectable. Image
Wain had a very difficult life; born with a cleft lip he was not allowed to attend school. His freelance drawing work supported his mother and sisters after his father died. Aged 23 he married his sisters' governess, Emily Richardson, 10 years his senior. Image
Read 13 tweets
Apr 15
Over the years a number of people have asked me if I have a favourite pulp film. Well I do. It's this one.

This is the story of Alphaville...
Alphaville: une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965) was Jean-Luc Godard’s ninth feature film. A heady mix of spy noir, science fiction and the Nouvelle Vague at its heart is a poetic conflict between a hard-boiled secret agent and a supercomputer’s brave new world. Image
British writer Peter Cheyney had created the fictitious American investigator Lemmy Caution in 1936. As well as appearing in 10 novels Caution featured in over a dozen post-war French films, mostly played by singer Eddie Constantine whom Godard was keen to work with. Image
Read 21 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(