''Big Budget'' was a British

comic a Media (communication), medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically the form of a sequence of Panel (comics), panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons, Glo ...

and

story paper A story paper is a periodical publication similar to a literary magazine, but featuring illustrations and text stories, and aimed towards children and teenagers. Also known in Britain as "boys' weeklies", story papers were phenomenally popular ...

which ran weekly from 1897 until 1909.

History

Published by C. Arthur Pearson, ''Big Budget'' was first published on 19 June 1897. Initially comprising three eight page sections; ''The Big Budget'' (a comic), ''The Comrade's Budget'', and ''The Story Budget'', the latter two being text fiction sections. By 1898 the page count was reduced to 20 with all the sections merged into one comic. In 1905 it incorporated a

entitled, ''The Boys' Leader'' with the comic strips started gradually disappearing until it became a fully fledged story paper. Its title changed to ''The Comet'' in 1909 and lasted for just 14 further issues. Notable contributors include

Jack Butler Yeats Jack Butler Yeats RHA (29 August 1871 – 28 March 1957) was an Irish art The history of Irish art starts around 3200 BC with Neolithic stone carvings at the Newgrange megalithic tomb, part of the Brú na Bóinne complex which still stands ...

(''Signor McCoy the Circus'', ''John Duff-Pie'', ''Little Boy Pink'', and ''Kiroskewero the Detective''), and

Ernest Wilkinson Ernest Leroy Wilkinson (May 4, 1899 – April 6, 1978) was an American academic administrator, lawyer, and prominent figure in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). He was president of Brigham Young University (BYU) from ...

(''Doings of Von Puff, Von Eye, Iko Italiano and Von Sausage the Dog''), C. H. Chapman, and

Ralph Hodgson Ralph Hodgson (9 September 1871 – 3 November 1962), Order of the Rising Sun (Japanese 旭日章), was an English poet, very popular in his lifetime on the strength of a small number of anthology pieces, such as ''The Bull''. He was one of th ...

under the pseudonym "Yorick." It is also notable as the first publication to publish the work of cartoonist David Low, a three-strip cartoon in 1902, when he was aged only 11. ''The Big Budget'' was also the home of Kenyon Ford, 'the Up-to-Date Detective' created by Maxwell Scott. There were about forty Kenyon Ford tales in all, running from 1897 to 1902. Scott's other landmark contribution to the series was ''Hard Pressed'' one of the first football stories to run in a story paper. Scott drew from his cricketer and footballer days to inform theserial which ran in ''Big Budget'' #121-163 in 1899.

References

External links

Issues #119 of ''The Big Budget'' at ComicBooksPlus

Sources

* * 1897 establishments in the United Kingdom 1909 disestablishments in the United Kingdom British comics Defunct British comics Magazines established in 1897 Magazines disestablished in 1909 Weekly magazines published in the United Kingdom Magazines about comics {{comics-mag-stub