With the death on 4 September 2021 of Greta Tomlinson, we have lost one of the links with a comic that in its day reigned supreme – the Eagle.
Eagle grew out of a remarkable parish magazine edited by the Vicar of St James’s, Birkdale. Marcus Morris secured C.S. Lewis, Harold Macmillan and Dorothy L Sayers as contributors. Here was a genius who felt that something had to be done about presenting the Gospel to people via an out-of-touch Church. The scene was set for the launch of a comic like no other.
Eagle came cock-a-hoop into the world with a fleet of papier-mâché angels making people aware that a new bird had come to roost. Overnight it became a hit with an initial run of something like 900,000 copies. The meticulous artwork of Greta Tomlinson and others and the cutaway drawings of submarines, etc became immensely popular. And then of course there was Dan Dare, a dutiful James Bond.
Like all such ventures, Eagle had its ups and downs. Marcus Morris’s hand on the tiller became fragile as circulation declined. The comic hung on by the skin of its teeth and had a final outing in the years up to 1994 when it eventually collapsed.
Gloria Tomlinson described the Spartan routine that led to the paper’s success. She might find herself drawing into the small hours in the cold. Other illustrators accepted a similar punishing routine. Morris moved into Hulton’s hierarchy and was awarded an OBE. He had become Vicar of St James’s in 1945 and saw the first issue of Eagle take to the skies in 1950.
I never met him but another from that era who got in touch with a potential readership in just as remarkable a way was Wilbert Awdry. Everybody loved Thomas, James and Gordon and the Church of England Newspaper was never complete without one of Awdry’s articles on the City of Truro or the Decapod or some other railway high-light.
There were giants about in those days. But we still have their giant shadows.
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