''Ally Sloper's Half Holiday'' was a
British comic
A British comic is a periodical published in the United Kingdom that contains comic strips. It is generally referred to as a comic or a comic magazine, and historically as a comic paper.
British comics are usually Comics anthology, comics antho ...
s magazine, first published on 3 May 1884. It is regarded to be the first
comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...
magazine to feature a recurring character.
Star
Ally Sloper
Alexander "Ally" Sloper is the eponymous fictional character of the British comic strip ''Ally Sloper''. First appearing in 1867, he is considered one of the earliest comic strip characters and he is regarded as the first recurring character in c ...
, a blustery, lazy schemer often found "sloping" through alleys to avoid his landlord and other creditors, had debuted in 1867 in the satirical magazine ''
Judy'' — created by writer and fledgling artist
Charles Henry Ross
Charles Henry Ross (1835 – 12 October 1897) was an English writer and cartoonist.
Biography
Ross created the fictional character Ally Sloper for the British magazine '' Judy'' in 1867, the popular character was spun off into his own comic, ''Al ...
and inked and later fully illustrated by his French wife
Emilie de Tessier
Isabelle Émilie de Tessier (1847 – 1890) who worked under the pseudonym Marie Duval, was a French cartoonist, known as co-creator of the seminal cartoon character ''Ally Sloper''.
Biography
As co-creator of ''Ally Sloper'' with her husband C ...
under the
pseudonym
A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individua ...
"Marie Duval" (or "Marie DuVal"; sources differ).
The "half holiday" referred to in the title was the practice in
Victorian Britain
Britain most often refers to:
* The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands
* Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...
of allowing the workers home at lunchtime on a Saturday, a practice that also established the kick-off times of
football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
matches.
Publication history
The black-and-white weekly
comic paper ''Ally Sloper's Half Holiday'', typically of eight tabloid pages and priced one
penny
A penny is a coin ( pennies) or a unit of currency (pl. pence) in various countries. Borrowed from the Carolingian denarius (hence its former abbreviation d.), it is usually the smallest denomination within a currency system. Presently, it is t ...
, was first published on 3 May 1884, a short time after Ross, had sold the rights to the character to Gilbert Dalziel, an engraver and the publisher of ''Judy''. Initially launching the paper with proprietor W. J. Sinkins, Dalziel was soon in full control, publishing it from "The Sloperies", 99 Shoe Lane, EC. Alongside the strips featuring Sloper, the magazine also featured prose stories and cartoons and strips of other characters.
Sales of the magazine have been estimated as being as high as 350,000, the magazine describing itself as "the largest selling paper in the world". The paper found a mixed audience: aimed at adults it captured both a loyal
working class
The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colou ...
, male base, as well as attracting a cult following amongst the
middle class
The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status. The term has historically been associated with modernity, capitalism and political debate. Commo ...
of the time.
Although the weekly initially ceased publication on 9 September 1916, after 1,679 issues, it was later revived between 5 November 1922 and 14 April 1923, again from 1948 to 1949, and finally from 1976 to 1977, each attempt failing to capture the imagination of the British public as the original once had.
In 2001, a copy of the first issue fetched £3,600 at an English auction house.
Contributors
William Giles Baxter took over art duties for the Sloper character with issue 13.
William Fletcher Thomas became the artist on the Ally Sloper strips following Baxter's death in 1888.
James Gibbins contributed his expertise in the field of
handwriting
Handwriting is the writing done with a writing instrument, such as a pen or pencil, in the hand. Handwriting includes both printing and cursive styles and is separate from formal calligraphy or typeface
A typeface (or font family) is ...
, a skill he put forward to the police at the time of the
Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer active in and around the impoverished Whitechapel district of London, England, in the autumn of 1888. In both criminal case files and the contemporaneous journalistic accounts, the killer wa ...
murders, offering to analyse items thought to be authored by the Ripper.
Thomas Burke contributed stories.
Influence
The weekly comic paper is widely cited as being the first
comic book
A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...
or magazine to feature a regular character, and is also often cited as the first comic as well. ''Half Holiday'' helped established the financial viability of the medium and codified the British form to an extent visible many years later in publications such as ''
Viz''.
During 1908
C. H. Chapman
Charles Henry Chapman (1879–1972), who signed his work as C. H. Chapman, was a British Illustration, illustrator and cartoonist best known for his work in boys' story papers such as ''The Magnet'' where the character Billy Bunter appeared. He l ...
illustrated the Ally Sloper character. Chapman was better known as the artist that drew
Billy Bunter
William George Bunter is a fictional schoolboy created by Charles Hamilton using the pen name Frank Richards. He features in stories set at Greyfriars School, a fictional English public school in Kent, originally published in the boys' weekly ...
from 1911 until ''
The Magnet
''The Magnet'' was a British weekly boys' story paper published by Amalgamated Press. It ran from 1908 to 1940, publishing a total of 1,683 issues.
Each issue cost a halfpenny and contained a long school story about the boys of Greyfriars Sch ...
'' folded in 1940. He continued to illustrate Billy Bunter in books through the 1950s.
Footnotes
*
Comics, Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2005.
* (fan page)
* ''p. 19''
*
*
*
*
* Ibid., British Museum
* Ibid., Markstein
*
*
References
{{Reflist
External links
''Ally Sloper'' A collection of 108 cartoons digitized by the University of Alberta Libraries
1880s comics
1977 comics endings
Comics magazines published in the United Kingdom
British humour comics
Defunct British comics
Defunct magazines published in the United Kingdom
Magazines about comics
Magazines established in 1884
Magazines disestablished in 1916
Magazines established in 1922
Magazines disestablished in 1923
Magazines established in 1948
Magazines disestablished in 1949
Magazines established in 1976
Magazines disestablished in 1977
Weekly magazines published in the United Kingdom