TV Century 21
Encyclopedia
TV Century 21, also known as TV 21, was a weekly British
children's comic of the 1960s and early 1970s. It promoted the many television
science-fiction puppet
series created by Gerry
and Sylvia Anderson
's Century 21 Productions
. The comic was published in the style of a newspaper from the future, with the front page usually given over to fictional news stories set in the worlds of Thunderbirds
, Fireball XL5
, Stingray
, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons
, and other stories.
Many of the leading British comic book
artists worked for the magazine, including Frank Bellamy
, who drew two-page-spread adventures of Thunderbirds, Don Harley, Mike Noble
, Ron Embleton
, Gerry Embleton
, Keith Watson
, Richard Jennings
, Ron Turner
, Rab Hamilton, James Watson, John Cooper, and the team of Carlos Pino and Vicente Alcazar
under the pseudonym
"Cervic".
. The magazine capitalised on the immense popularity of the latest Gerry Anderson television shows. It dropped the word "Century" from its title in 1968, and became known as TV 21.
Although Supercar and Fireball XL5 were made before the start of TV 21, they were still being shown sporadically on ITV, and thus also featured in the magazine. Thunderbirds was not featured in TV 21 until issue 52, but one of the key characters from it, the aristocratic Lady Penelope, was featured from the start.
"Fireball XL5", "Stingray", and "Lady Penelope" were the first three colour strips which started with the launch of the magazine. The front covers were also in colour, with photographs from one or more of the Anderson television series or occasionally of the stars of the back page feature.
The magazine also extended its licensing beyond Anderson's projects, and for its first two years published strip adventures based on The Daleks, the early scripts for which had the approval of Terry Nation
.
In contrast to TV Comic
, which was a traditional strip comic, TV 21 was presented as a newspaper for children with a front page of "Stop Press" items and "news" style photographs of their puppet heroes.
Early copies of TV 21 are difficult to find, and fetch very high prices compared to almost all other Gerry Anderson printed material. The artists involved with the magazine included Eric Eden and Frank Bellamy
.
In 1967, the indestructible Captain Scarlet
appeared on television and in the pages of TV Century 21. Meanwhile, The Mysterons, Captain Scarlet's enemies, were having their history explained in TV Tornado, another City Magazines publication which also featured the popular series The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
and The Saint
. TV Tornado merged with TV 21 in September 1968.
; even strips without a related TV show tied into it, with Special Agent 21 being set in the 'past' and showing the formation of Fireball XL5s World Space Patrol. The main setting was the 2060s, with each newspaper covering the 'top stories' from there. Earth had a World Government based in fictional Unity City, Bermuda
, with a President and a Senate, which ruled most of the planet. In addition to the World Space Patrol, World Navy, WASP, and SPECTRUM from the TV shows, there was a World Army/Air Force and Universal Secret Service. Elements of these would turn up in multiple strips, including ones based on other shows; Fireball XL5 turned up several times in Captain Scarlet.
A recurring element was the fictional nation of Bereznik in East Europe, a nation not part of and hostile to the World Government; it would primarily appear in Lady Penelope and Thunderbirds stories, usually as an antagonist nation.
', was given its own paper. This was not a very long lasting publication however, merging with TV 21 in September 1969 after just 34 issues. From this point onwards, the TV 21 and Joe 90 comic, as it was then called, restarted their numbering from number 1, with 'New Series No.' given on the front cover. The new comic kept to a similar format, but the Anderson strips of 'Joe 90' and 'Thunderbirds' were relegated to black and white in favour of the new favourites Star Trek
and Land of the Giants
.
from 1965 to 1968, then by Chris Spencer and later by Howard Elson.
magazine. This featured Frank Langford's "Lady Penelope" comic strip. This lasted a total of 204 issues, but after 123 issues, the comic changed its name to Penelope. It also included an "Angels" strip as a prelude to the launch of Captain Scarlet.
Other sister comics included TV Tornado and Solo, both of which included Mysteron
strips as further preludes to Captain Scarlet. TV Tornado also included strips of Lone Ranger, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
, Tarzan
, and The Saint as well as The Man From UNCLE. Solo was merged with TV Tornado, which later merged with TV21, which itself merged in the 1970s with Valiant.
TV21 released their second album, "Forever 22", in June 2009 on their own Powbeat label. It is available on vinyl and cd via MySpace or from cdbaby.com It is also available as a download from iTunes or Amazon and can be streamed on Spotify. The band released all the songs from "A Thin Red Line" for the first time on cd in the spring of 2010. Titled "Snakes And Ladders", it also included all the singles and b-sides.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
children's comic of the 1960s and early 1970s. It promoted the many television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
science-fiction puppet
Puppet
A puppet is an inanimate object or representational figure animated or manipulated by an entertainer, who is called a puppeteer. It is used in puppetry, a play or a presentation that is a very ancient form of theatre....
series created by Gerry
Gerry Anderson
Gerry Anderson MBE is a British publisher, producer, director and writer, famous for his futuristic television programmes, particularly those involving specially modified marionettes, a process called "Supermarionation"....
and Sylvia Anderson
Sylvia Anderson
Sylvia Anderson , born 25 March 1937, is a British voice artist and film producer, most notable for collaborations with Gerry Anderson, to whom she was married from 1962 to 1975....
's Century 21 Productions
AP Films
AP Films or APF, later becoming Century 21 Productions, was a British independent film production company of the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s...
. The comic was published in the style of a newspaper from the future, with the front page usually given over to fictional news stories set in the worlds of Thunderbirds
Thunderbirds (TV series)
Thunderbirds is a British mid-1960s science fiction television show devised by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and made by AP Films using a form of marionette puppetry dubbed "Supermarionation"...
, Fireball XL5
Fireball XL5
Fireball XL5 is a science fiction-themed children's television show following the missions of spaceship Fireball XL5, commanded by Colonel Steve Zodiac of the World Space Patrol...
, Stingray
Stingray (TV series)
Stingray is a children's marionette television show, created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and produced by AP Films for ATV and ITC Entertainment from 1964–65. Its 39 half-hour episodes were originally screened on ITV in the UK and in syndication in the USA. The scriptwriters included Gerry and...
, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons
Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons
Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, often referred to as Captain Scarlet, is a 1960s British science-fiction television series produced by the Century 21 Productions company of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, John Read and Reg Hill...
, and other stories.
Many of the leading British comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
artists worked for the magazine, including Frank Bellamy
Frank Bellamy
Frank Bellamy was a British comics artist, best known for his work on the Eagle comic, for which he illustrated Heros the Spartan and Fraser of Africa. He reworked its flagship Dan Dare strip....
, who drew two-page-spread adventures of Thunderbirds, Don Harley, Mike Noble
Mike Noble
Mike Noble was born in Woodford, 17 September 1930, his father being a stockbroker's clerk who had artistic talent himself. During the war he was evacuated, like many children, but returned to London and endured much of the blitz. After school Noble attended South West Essex Technical College art...
, Ron Embleton
Ron Embleton
Ronald Sydney Embleton was a British comics artist and illustrator whose work was much admired by fans and editors alike...
, Gerry Embleton
Gerry Embleton
Gerry Embleton is an Anglo-Swiss artist, born in London. He is the brother of Ron Embleton.-Career:Embleton began as a comic strip artist, and worked on TV Century 21 in the 1960s. He later began working in children's educational illustrations and then advertising. He also paints landscapes and was...
, Keith Watson
Keith Watson (artist)
Keith Watson was a British comics artist most famous for his work on Dan Dare and TV Century 21.-Career:Watson joined the studio team of Frank Hampson working on the Dan Dare strip in Eagle in 1958. After Hampson left the strip the following year, Watson worked on Captain Condor for the rival Lion...
, Richard Jennings
Richard Jennings (comics)
-Biography:Richard E. Jennings was born in Hampstead, England on 20 May 1921. In 1937 he won a free place to the Central School of Arts, London. After 2 years his studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War, during which he served in the Air/Sea Rescue service of the Royal Air...
, Ron Turner
Ron Turner (artist)
Ron Turner was a British illustrator and comic book artist.- Early life and career :Ron Turner became interested in science fiction at an early age, with numerous works across several media: the novels of H.G...
, Rab Hamilton, James Watson, John Cooper, and the team of Carlos Pino and Vicente Alcazar
Vicente Alcazar
Vicente Alcazar a.k.a. Vicente Alcazar-Serrano is a Spanish comics artist best known for his work for the American comic-book publishers DC Comics and Marvel Comics, including a 1970s run on the DC Western character Jonah Hex....
under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
"Cervic".
History
In 1965, the television series Stingray, which portrayed the popular underwater adventures of Troy Tempest and his friends, was rewarded with its own comic. TV Century 21 hit the bookstalls on 23 January 19651965 in comics
See also:1964 in comics,other events of 1965,1966 in comics,1960s in comics and thelist of years in comicsPublications: January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December-January:...
. The magazine capitalised on the immense popularity of the latest Gerry Anderson television shows. It dropped the word "Century" from its title in 1968, and became known as TV 21.
Although Supercar and Fireball XL5 were made before the start of TV 21, they were still being shown sporadically on ITV, and thus also featured in the magazine. Thunderbirds was not featured in TV 21 until issue 52, but one of the key characters from it, the aristocratic Lady Penelope, was featured from the start.
"Fireball XL5", "Stingray", and "Lady Penelope" were the first three colour strips which started with the launch of the magazine. The front covers were also in colour, with photographs from one or more of the Anderson television series or occasionally of the stars of the back page feature.
The magazine also extended its licensing beyond Anderson's projects, and for its first two years published strip adventures based on The Daleks, the early scripts for which had the approval of Terry Nation
Terry Nation
Terry Nation was a Welsh screenwriter and novelist.He is probably best known for creating the villainous Daleks in the long-running science fiction television series Doctor Who...
.
In contrast to TV Comic
TV Comic
TV Comic was a British comic book published weekly between November 9, 1951 and June 29, 1984 for 1,697 issues. With its bright, eye-catching covers, it featured stories based on television shows running at the time of publication. The first issue had 8 pages and had Muffin the Mule on the cover....
, which was a traditional strip comic, TV 21 was presented as a newspaper for children with a front page of "Stop Press" items and "news" style photographs of their puppet heroes.
Early copies of TV 21 are difficult to find, and fetch very high prices compared to almost all other Gerry Anderson printed material. The artists involved with the magazine included Eric Eden and Frank Bellamy
Frank Bellamy
Frank Bellamy was a British comics artist, best known for his work on the Eagle comic, for which he illustrated Heros the Spartan and Fraser of Africa. He reworked its flagship Dan Dare strip....
.
In 1967, the indestructible Captain Scarlet
Captain Scarlet (character)
Captain Scarlet is the fictional main character in Gerry Anderson's British Supermarionation science fiction television series Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and its CGI remake Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet....
appeared on television and in the pages of TV Century 21. Meanwhile, The Mysterons, Captain Scarlet's enemies, were having their history explained in TV Tornado, another City Magazines publication which also featured the popular series The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is an American television series that was broadcast on NBC from September 22, 1964, to January 15, 1968. It follows the exploits of two secret agents, played by Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, who work for a fictitious secret international espionage and law-enforcement...
and The Saint
The Saint (TV series)
The Saint was an ITC mystery spy thriller television series that aired in the UK on ITV between 1962 and 1969. It centred on the Leslie Charteris literary character, Simon Templar, a Robin Hood-like adventurer with a penchant for disguise. The character may be nicknamed The Saint because the...
. TV Tornado merged with TV 21 in September 1968.
Shared setting
Most of the strips in TV21 were deliberately set in the same shared future historyFuture history
A future history is a postulated history of the future and is used by authors in the subgenre of speculative fiction to construct a common background for fiction...
; even strips without a related TV show tied into it, with Special Agent 21 being set in the 'past' and showing the formation of Fireball XL5s World Space Patrol. The main setting was the 2060s, with each newspaper covering the 'top stories' from there. Earth had a World Government based in fictional Unity City, Bermuda
Bermuda
Bermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida...
, with a President and a Senate, which ruled most of the planet. In addition to the World Space Patrol, World Navy, WASP, and SPECTRUM from the TV shows, there was a World Army/Air Force and Universal Secret Service. Elements of these would turn up in multiple strips, including ones based on other shows; Fireball XL5 turned up several times in Captain Scarlet.
A recurring element was the fictional nation of Bereznik in East Europe, a nation not part of and hostile to the World Government; it would primarily appear in Lady Penelope and Thunderbirds stories, usually as an antagonist nation.
TV21 and Joe 90
On 18 January 1969, the latest Gerry Anderson success, 'Joe 90Joe 90
Joe 90 is a late-1960s British science-fiction television series documenting the exploits of a nine-year-old boy, Joe McClaine, who embarks on a double life as a schoolboy turned spy when his scientist father invents a pioneering machine capable of duplicating and transferring expert knowledge and...
', was given its own paper. This was not a very long lasting publication however, merging with TV 21 in September 1969 after just 34 issues. From this point onwards, the TV 21 and Joe 90 comic, as it was then called, restarted their numbering from number 1, with 'New Series No.' given on the front cover. The new comic kept to a similar format, but the Anderson strips of 'Joe 90' and 'Thunderbirds' were relegated to black and white in favour of the new favourites Star Trek
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...
and Land of the Giants
Land of the Giants
Land of the Giants was an hour-long American science fiction television program lasting two seasons beginning on September 22, 1968 and ending on March 22, 1970. The show was created and produced by Irwin Allen. Land of the Giants was the fourth of Allen's science fiction TV series. The show was...
.
Editors
TV Century 21 was edited by Alan FennellAlan Fennell
Alan Fennell was a British writer and editor best known for work on series produced by Gerry Anderson, and for having created the magazines TV Century 21 and Look-in....
from 1965 to 1968, then by Chris Spencer and later by Howard Elson.
Overseas version
Due to the success of Thunderbirds, TV21 was adapted for the Dutch market as TV2000.Sister publications
In the UK, TV Century 21 launched a sister publication in the form of the Lady PenelopeLady Penelope (comic)
Lady Penelope was a British weekly comic for girls which ran from 1966 to 1969.-Publishing History:Marketed as the comic for girls who love television, it was the sister publication to TV Century 21. It ran for 204 issues with the first dated 22 January 1966...
magazine. This featured Frank Langford's "Lady Penelope" comic strip. This lasted a total of 204 issues, but after 123 issues, the comic changed its name to Penelope. It also included an "Angels" strip as a prelude to the launch of Captain Scarlet.
Other sister comics included TV Tornado and Solo, both of which included Mysteron
Mysteron
The Mysterons are a fictional race of extraterrestrials, native to the planet Mars, which appear in the British science fiction Supermarionation television series Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet, symbolised by ubiquitous projected green rings and the deep...
strips as further preludes to Captain Scarlet. TV Tornado also included strips of Lone Ranger, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is an American science fiction film, produced and directed by Irwin Allen, released by 20th Century Fox in 1961. The story was written by Irwin Allen and Charles Bennett. Walter Pidgeon starred as Admiral Harriman Nelson, with Robert Sterling as Captain Lee Crane...
, Tarzan
Tarzan
Tarzan is a fictional character, an archetypal feral child raised in the African jungles by the Mangani "great apes"; he later experiences civilization only to largely reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer...
, and The Saint as well as The Man From UNCLE. Solo was merged with TV Tornado, which later merged with TV21, which itself merged in the 1970s with Valiant.
TV21 - the band
A new wave group named TV21 (with permission from then owners of the comic, IPC magazines) formed in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1979. The band released a string of seven singles and one album, "A Thin Red Line," before splitting up in 1982, immediately after opening for the Rolling Stones on the Scottish dates of their 1982 European Tour. The band reformed in October 2005 after a 23 year gap to perform at a tribute night for DJ John Peel, who had died the previous year. Presently, they are still playing and recording new material.TV21 released their second album, "Forever 22", in June 2009 on their own Powbeat label. It is available on vinyl and cd via MySpace or from cdbaby.com It is also available as a download from iTunes or Amazon and can be streamed on Spotify. The band released all the songs from "A Thin Red Line" for the first time on cd in the spring of 2010. Titled "Snakes And Ladders", it also included all the singles and b-sides.