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Knockout 001

Knock-Out issue 182, 1942

Not to be confused with Knockout, a 1970s IPC humour comic

The Knock-Out, which later lost the article and hyphen to become simply Knockout, was a weekly comic published by the Amalgamated Press (later Fleetway Publications), launched by editor Percy Clarke and sub-editor Leonard Matthews in 1939 to compete with The Dandy and The Beano, launched by DC Thomson in 1937 and 1938 respectively. Like its rivals, it featured a mixture of humour and adventure strips and illustrated prose stories. Matthews recruited Hugh McNeill,[1] a former Beano artist, as the title's main humour artist, and his strips "Our Ernie" and "Deed-a-Day Danny" were very popular.[2] Two characters were imported from the prose story papers - Billy Bunter, formerly of The Magnet, initially drawn by C. H. Chapman,[3] later by Frank Minnitt, and Sexton Blake, initially drawn by Jos Walker, later by Alfred Taylor,[4] Roland Davies and definitive Blake illustrator Eric Parker.[5] After the Second World War the title featured more adventure strips, and Matthews, who was promoted to editor in 1948, recruited artists including Sep E. Scott, H. M. Brock, D. C. Eyles and Geoff Campion to draw them.[1] The title lasted 1251 issues, from (cover dates) 4 March 1939 to 16 February 1963, absorbing The Magnet in 1940 and Comic Cuts in 1953, before being merged into Valiant.[6]

Other strips included:[4]

References[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 Alan Clark, Dictionary of British Comic Artists, Writers and Editors, The British Library, 1998, p. 106-107
  2. Alan Clark, Dictionary of British Comic Artists, Writers and Editors, The British Library, 1998, p. 103-104
  3. C. H. Chapman on Lambiek Comiclopedia
  4. 4.0 4.1 Denis Gifford, Encyclopedia of Comic Characters, Longman, 1987
  5. Norman Wright and David Ashford, Masters of Fun and Thrills: The British Comic Artists Vol 1, Norman Wright (pub.), 2008
  6. Complete AP/Fleetway Comic Index

External links[]

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