Saturday, July 26, 2014

The Last Autograph Albert


When I recently bought a small bundle of Tiger comics I was pleasantly surprised to see that Norman Mansbridge had a strip in there. It's called Autograph Albert, and follows the adventures of a young boy donned in a traditional school uniform and cap who is trying to fill up his autograph book. I'm not sure when he first appeared but I know he had been running for roughly a year at least by the time his final strip was printed. Here is that final strip, as it appeared on page 18 of Tiger dated 9th February 1985.


The strip was cancelled to make way for new stories that were to begin in the revamped issue the following week. You may have noticed that this revamp was very close to the final issue of Tiger and that is because the revamp was simply to prepare the comic for the merger with Eagle, by making it a bit more similar. I suspect that Eagle's readership had been falling for quite some time by this point however, as it had downgraded its paper quality to standard newsprint in April 1984.

5 comments:

Kid said...

I notice that it's been extended on the right-hand side of the page, George, so unless it was re-sized to fit the revamp dimensions, there's a possibility it might be a reprint. It does look a little dated, although the lettering seems right for the year.

Kid said...

Of course, it's always possible it was re-lettered, I suppose. Perhaps someone has got some old Tigers they could check through?

George Shiers said...

I suppose it could be a reprint - I don't know, I've only seen one run of Albert and don't even know when he started!

Raven said...

Autograph Albert is a reprint from early 1970s Tiger and Jag, George.

George Shiers said...

Thanks for clearing that up Raven. :)