THE COMIC THAT COULDN’T HACKETT!

By the late 1970s, younger teenage boys couldn’t get enough of tough-guy telly ‘tecs and a new comic called Target was aimed squarely at them. So why did the title prove a near miss? Alistair McGown has the answer…

Boys’ comic titles had undergone a modern tough-guys renaissance in the mid-70s, with IPC’s Battle Picture Weekly in 1975 and Action (see Infinity #21) in 1976, and their sci-fi ground-breaker 2000AD from 1977. A handful of issues of these grittier titles were even banned from sale along the way.

On the small screen meanwhile, action series had also toughened up lately, not just with imports like Starsky & Hutch but also homegrown police shows such as Special Branch and The Sweeney, and both harder-edged fantasy revival The New Avengers and its less fanciful follow-up, The Professionals. It was into this more hard-nosed era that TV Comic launched a spin-off weekly aimed at a young teenage male audience.

When Polystyle Publications’ weekly TV Action (see Infinity #39) wound up in August 1973, editor Dennis Hooper returned to the fold with their redoubtable flagship TV Comic, soon taking over as editor from Dick Millington when Millington returned to his freelance writing and art career.

Having faded since its early 60s heyday of selling 300,000 copies a week, by 1976 TV Comic’s sales had stabilised around the 120,000 mark, though ongoing budget issues were very apparent in the down-market revamp as Mighty TV Comic in September 1976. Nonetheless, Hooper was now put in charge of a new spin-off boys’ own TV paper for The Sweeney era.

Advertised (very badly!) in TV Comic issue 1374, Target (not to be confused with NEL’s similarly-titled 1972 teenage boys magazine) launched in spring 1978. Cover dated 14 April, this was presumably available the previous Friday, 7 April. Priced at 10 pence for 20 pages, this was in the same price bracket as several glossier rivals. If anyone doubted the new title’s legacy to Polystyle’s earlier TV Action, its copyright indicia small print gave the full title as Target and TV Action

The title echoed that of the BBC’s latest action series, starring Patrick Mower, also one of the comic’s chief picture strips, even if Target had been off air five months by the time of the comic’s launch (and indeed wouldn’t return to screens until September 1978). Although the drawing and reproduction was so poor it was hard to tell, Mower’s Target was curiously absent from the launch issue’s cover, which instead focused on a car-crash of a montage of its other strip stars; Hazell (we think!), Kojak, Charlie’s Angels and Frank Cannon. A free glossy colour Superbikes wall chart was an added enticement – 1970s comics just loved a wallchart – but it was a shame a fraction of those quality levels hadn’t been applied to the comic itself.