''Ally Sloper's Half Holiday'' was a
British comics magazine, first published on 3 May 1884. It is regarded to be the first
comic strip
A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics terminology#Captio ...
magazine to feature a recurring character. Star
Ally Sloper, 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 and inked and later fully illustrated by his French wife
Émilie de Tessier under the
pseudonym
A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true meaning ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individual's o ...
"Marie Duval"
(or "Marie Du Val";
[Ally Sloper Web Exhibit: "Ally Sloper’s Rise in Early Comic Culture"]
University of Alberta
The University of Alberta (also known as U of A or UAlberta, ) is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta, and Henry Marshall Tory, t ...
. Retrieved 5 July 2014. sources differ).
The "half holiday" referred to in the title was the practice in
Victorian Britain
Britain most often refers to:
* Great Britain, a large island comprising the countries of England, Scotland and Wales
* The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a sovereign state in Europe comprising Great Britain and the north-eas ...
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, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...
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 (: pence) in various countries. Borrowed from the Carolingian denarius (hence its former abbreviation d.), it is usually the smallest denomination within a currency system. At present, it is ...
,
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 is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...
, 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. C ...
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, and again from 1948 to 1949, each attempt failing to capture the imagination of the British public as the original once had.
In 2001, a copy of the first issue of ''Ally Sloper's Half Holiday'' 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 in Italian schools (XXth - XXIst century)
Handwriting is the personal and unique style of writing with a writing instrument, such as a pen or pencil in the hand. Handwriting includes both block and cursive styles and is separa ...
, a skill he put forward to the police at the time of the
Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer who was active in and around the impoverished Whitechapel district of London, England, in 1888. In both criminal case files and the contemporaneous journalistic accounts, the killer was also ...
murders, offering to analyse items thought to be authored by the Ripper.
Thomas Burke contributed stories.
During 1908
C. H. Chapman illustrated the Ally Sloper character. Chapman was better known as the artist that drew
Billy Bunter 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 contained a long school story about the boys of Greyfriars School, a fictional publ ...
'' folded in 1940. He continued to illustrate Billy Bunter in books through the 1950s.
Influence
''Ally Sloper's Half Holiday'' is widely cited as being the first
comic book
A comic book, comic-magazine, or simply comic is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panel (comics), panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are often accompanied by descriptive prose and wri ...
or magazine to feature a regular character, and is also often cited as the first comic as well. It helped establish the financial viability of the medium and codified the British form to an extent visible many years later in publications such as ''
Viz''.
Alan Class' ''Ally Sloper'' magazine
Alan Class Comics published four issues of ''Ally Sloper'' magazine in 1976–1977. Edited by comics historian
Denis Gifford, ''Ally Sloper'' demonstrated great affection for old British comics, comic strips, and artists. With the cover
tagline
In entertainment, a tagline (alternatively spelled tag line) is a short text which serves to clarify a thought for, or is designed with a form of, dramatic effect. Many tagline slogans are reiterated phrases associated with an individual, so ...
, "First British comic hero 1867, First British comic magazine 1976," ''Ally Sloper'' contained an eclectic mix of strips and articles. Some were in the style of British comic strips from the early 20th century, while others were created by classic artists such as
Frank Hampson
Frank Hampson (21 December 1918 – 8 July 1985) was a British illustrator. He is best known as the creator and artist of Dan Dare and other characters in the boys' comic, the ''Eagle'', to which he contributed from 1950 to 1961.
Biograp ...
's "
Dawn O'Dare" and
Frank Bellamy, who provided ''Swade'', a three-page black-and-white wordless western story, for issue #1 (his last work, as he died before completing the second strip). Also featured were newer British artists such as
Kevin O'Neill (issue #2) and
Hunt Emerson
Hunt Emerson (born 1952) is an English cartoonist. He was closely involved with the Birmingham Arts Lab of the mid-to-late 1970s, and with the British underground comics scene of the 1970s and 1980s. His many comic strips and graphic novels have ...
(issue #4).
Although the ''Alley Sloper'' comic magazine was critically acclaimed by the fan press,
it suffered from poor distribution and insufficient public interest, and the title disappeared from the market after only four issues.
References
{{Reflist
External links
Cover image held by the British Library''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