SHORT-LIVED COMIC CAPERS
IT’S A KNOCKOUT!
The ‘All Colour’ Knockout comic only ran for 2 years from the summer of 1971 to the summer of 1973. Stephen Matthews tells its story...
If you were a comic lover born between the late 50s and mid 60s there’s a good chance you’ll associate that statement with the banner that ran across the top of the very first issue of Knockout dated 12th June, 1971. One has to remember that ‘colour’ was still a novelty back in June 1971 since the UK had only been transmitting television programmes in colour for 4 years and not everyone owned a colour TV set at that point. Similar banners referencing the ‘all colour’ strips ran along the top of subsequent issues for three quarters of the comic’s 2-year run until editor Bob Paynter felt the penny had finally dropped with its readers and instead used the banners to announce exciting competitions, wish readers a Merry Xmas or promote stories within Knockout’s pages.
This was the second incarnation of Knockout but it had no connection with the original Knockout, published by Amalgamated Press from the 4th March, 1939 to the 16th February, 1963. In 1971 kids were playing with Barbie dolls, Hot Wheels and Etch-A-Sketches. Benny Hill was at the top of the charts belting out a song about a milkman called Ernie and Michael Caine was Getting Carter. It was also the year that saw the first outing of Dirty Harry and in the real world Edward Heath was quaffing brandy in No 10. That world was just as crazy as it is today with the U.S in the middle of a 10 year campaign in Vietnam and John Lennon releasing ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’.
Knockout’s gimmick was a claim to being ‘all colour’ but this wasn’t strictly true. Only 4 pages of each issue were in full colour - the front, back and centre spread, while ‘spot colour’ was used for the rest of the pages. ‘Spot colour’ is the technical term used by printers referring to pages that only contain one layer of colour and Knockout executed this technique to produce strips in red, yellow, green and blue resulting in a more attractive looking comic compared to Buster, Cor!! and Whizzer & Chips. This however came at a cost.
In order to compete with DC. Thomson, Bob Paynter priced Knockout at 2p (over a penny cheaper than its counterparts) and matched its cover price with that of The Dandy and The Beano. Paynter absorbed the cost of the extra colour by reducing the standard amount of pages from 32 to just 20, which may sound drastic, but to Paynter’s merit, Knockout didn’t contain any ads whereas its sister comics contained approximately 3 pages of ads each week.
Impressively, Paynter maintained this format for 10 weeks until Tony Tiger finally popped up on the 18th page of Knockout dated 28/8/71 to promote a packet of Frosties but Paynter restricted the ads to one page and only increased the cover price by a ha’penny one year after Knockout’s launch. Paynter’s budget plan paid off. Knockout had a modestly successful run of 2 years and fared better than my 3 favourite comics -Krazy, Monster Fun and Shiver & Shake by 6 months.
FREE GIFTS GALORE!
What was the secret of its success? Simple. Practically every strip was brilliant and l’ll examine each one individually. But let’s get our priorities straight and take a look at those allimportant free gifts! The free gifts in issues 1 and 3 of Knockout would have certainly appealed to Whizzer & Chips’s ‘Sweet Tooth’. Two toffee bars of different flavours were given away in issue #1 and a voucher for a bar of ‘Super Mousse’ (similar to a Milky Way) worth two and a half pence was printed inside issue #3.