Garth, a very English Superman

My Dad was the biggest Garth fan. Me, I wasn't, despite the fact that it had the odd bare breast in it, the strip pretty much went over my teenage head. Until the 1970s that is, you see, that was when Frank Bellamy took over as the Garth artist. I was a fan of his work from The Eagle and TV21.

Garth had been running for a long time by then, in fact it had been running since before the Second World War ended. It was created for The Daily Mirror, by comic strip artist Steve Dowling and Gordon Boshell who, with prompting from the Editor, came up with the concept of a strongman strip that would be modelled on the popular US comic character, Superman.



Like Superman, Garth was suddenly there one day, washed up on a shipwreck rather than a spaceship wreck, but his appearance was just as sudden. He didn't exactly have super powers, but you kind of sensed that Garth was indestructible, and whilst he couldn't leap tall buildings and fly through the air, he did, after a new writer was introduced, begin to fly backwards and forwards through time.


Here are a few scans from Garth's adventure, The Wolfman of Ausensee, which you'll see from Titan's chart above, ran from May to September 1972. These scans are from Titan's Garth, Book One, The Cloud of Balthus, which I'd urge you to get if you can and I'd also urge you to ask Titan to get a move on with that reprint. Garth Rocks: