'The Young Have No Time' - a fumetti (1960)

Fumetti is an Italian word (literally 'little puffs of smoke' in reference to speech balloons) which refers to all comics. In English, the term often signifies photonovels or photographic comics, a genre of comics illustrated with photographs rather than drawings. These were often taken from movies or television. Photonovels were  popular on the continent, especially in Italy and further afield in Mexico. They had a life in England, especially in romantic stories for young girls. This photo novel which appears to be from 1960 was in a series designated 'Continental Film Photo Stories.' It is taken from the Danish movie Ung Leg a tale of wealthy/ elite youth in post war Copenhagen. While promising (from the cover) a sort of Leopold and Loeb plot of senseless/ existential murder it does not get more daring than a game of 'chicken'

Bill Lofts - the journey of a collector and researcher

More material from the Haining archive, this by his friend and colleague W.O.G. ('Bill') Lofts. Some of it is covered by Bill's piece on market places. As a researcher pre-internet he haunted the British Museum and saw himself as a kind of knowledge sleuth (hence the title).

INVESTIGATIONS UNLIMITED

by W.O.G. LOFTS

Like most normal children I started reading the coloured nursery comics at an early age:    'Chicks Own' and 'Tiny Tots', for example. With their hyphenated script underneath they helped us a great deal in learning to read. W. Howard Baker recently - and without any prompting from me related how it taught him to read in his home in Cork, Ireland. Later I went on to the older, 'Rainbow', 'Tiger Tim's Weekly' category, and later still to the black and white comics such as 'Chips’, 'Comic Cuts', 'Larks', 'Jester' and 'Funny Wonder'. I think my favourite was 'Larks'. That had Dad Walker on the front page, and was drawn by Bert Brown whom I was to meet many decades later, and whose originals I greatly treasure.