Colourful, fantastic, brilliant

For anyone who was a fan of Gerry Anderson, this comic was just indespensible. For anyone who admired good artwork, well reproduced on the printed page, this was the natural successor to the "Eagle" (which I was born just too late for!). The list of artists who worked on this is just a who's who of 60's greats. Frank Bellamy I suspect is probably the best known, but my favourite TV21 artist was Mike Noble.

I was just a wee boy in short pants. I remember missing out on the first issue : it just sold out!

As a huge fan of Gerry Anderson's work, I had seen TV spots announcing it's imminent arrival. I just gobbled it up, week after week, until it's inevetible demise. Sad, really. But while it lasted, it was really something special. Probably the greatest TV tie-in of all time. They even tried to come up with a coherent universe for the stories. They had crossover stories between XL5, Stingray and Lady Penelope. At the beginning, they ran "The Dalek Chronicles" with some remarkable artwork by Ron Turner, among others. Even later on, as the Anderson series started to fade, Mike Noble produced fantastic artwork for a "Star Trek" strip. Oh man, I'd love to see that collected.

TV Comic

This was where you could find Doctor Who; and before TV21, this was where Supercar and Fireball XL5 hid out.

Valient

The Valient had, if I remember correctly, any number of super-heroic figures and SF content. (I might be getting mixed up with it's fellows, Lion, Tiger etc.)

Read everything by jamxl5

Show all entries about TV Century 21

Click if you see something on this page that breaks the house rules.