Frank Richards (1) (1876–1961)

So as i mentioned just read the second half usually referred to as Polpelly Christmas, The Magnet issues #1452-1455.
Its good, i was tempted to give it 4 stars at some points. Adventure, humour, secret passages, mystery, danger, racism the gangs all here :P . For some reason the main badguys keep getting called dagoes, even though they're italian, don't you just hate it when people use the wrong racial epitaph ;) .
Bunter does his best Scooby impression blundering in and spoiling enemy plans show more by accident, but they also manage to get him out of the story for a while which is good as too much Bunter can get pretty annoying.
Some decent characterization of the other characters too. In fact one of them goes dark, like Nolan's batman dark... but luckily avoids Snyder's batman dark.. nobody needs that ;) .
Its a bit episodic which would make sense, issue to issue but here it happens chapter to chapter even though the chapters are published together. Not much point in a cliffhanger when the continuation is literally right next to it.

Glad i read the original magazines as one of them included the delightful (this is sarcasm) section, the 'Greyfriars Nigger Review' (it gets worse) which is a set of instructions on how kids can perform their own Black and White Minstrel show for christmas, fun for the whole family (not) :lol . show less

Various funny goings on at a boarding school. Its unusual in that the main character is so awful. He's lazy, stupid, greedy and sneaky (at least tries to be). Its quite difficult to make a story compelling with a main character like that but this makes it work.

Collecting the stories from the first 10 issues of the British story paper for boys The Magnet (1908), written by Frank Richards (the most famous pseudonym used by Charles Hamilton for his school stories). These ten novellas introduce the reader to Greyfriars School and many of the characters.

The most famous of Frank Richards' characters, of course, is Billy Bunter, the fat, short-sighted, lazy, dishonest, cowardly Owl of the Remove. Along with Tom Brown, Bunter was the most famous show more fictional schoolboy in the world until the arrival of Harry Potter. He is here, from the first story, but he's mostly a secondary, comic-relief character. The main character is the hot-headed but noble Harry Wharton and his 'chums', the cheerful and brave Bob Cherry, the steady and loyal Frank Nugent and, after a few stories, the Indian boy Hurree Jamset Ram Singh, nicknamed Inky, who speaks very idiosyncratic English but is well liked and respected by the other boys. Other characters include the bully Bulstrode, the level-headed captain of the school Wingate, the sneaky Hazeldene, the stern but fair master of the Remove Mr. Quelch, the headmaster Dr. Locke...

These are pulp stories written very quickly (this author wrote a mind-numbing number of words per week) and with the only aspiration to entertain. They were quite successful and were widely read. The tone is light, with adventurous and funny schoolboy antics and the occasional dramatic moment.

In the first story we are introduced to Harry Wharton, an orphan who is sent to school against his will by his uncle, because he is getting out of hand. On the train he meets another boy going to the same school, Frank Nugent. Wharton, very sulky about being sent to boarding school, speaks disparagingly of Greyfriars and the two boys have a fight. Wharton is very plucky but has no fighting technique, so he is licked. He is not gracious in defeat, and refuses Nugent's offer of reconciliation, making the other boy get a bad opinion of him. However, after leaving the train, the carriage Nugent was using to get to school has an accident and falls in a river. Wharton bravely saves his life, but afterwards still refuses his friendship. He keeps making a fool of himself, earns all his schoolmate's dislike, gets into more fights and finally decides to run away.

Of course, by the end of the book he is happy at Greyfriars, has made friends and is even chosen captain of the cricket team of the Remove. In the meantime there have been groups of German and French students coming to Greyfriars for a time, the rescue of the sister of one of the boys who was kidnapped when coming to visit him, and other unlikely hi-jinks.

I rather enjoyed the first part, with Wharton sulking about being sent to school and fighting against everybody. The other stories were pleasant to read, but some of them a bit too far-fetched for my taste. I preferred the more down-to-earth ones, like the fight against the Upper Fourth Form (the boys of the Remove are the Lower Fourth Form), when they nail the door of a study, imprisoning the leaders of the Upper Fourth Form, who were meeting to decide what to do about the cheeky and disrespectful Remove boys.

Overall, a very light, entertaining read.

Since a total of 1683 issues of The Magnet were published, each with a Greyfriars novella, I really don't know how many different plots one can come up without too much repetition. You can think of it as a comic book, with nerverending adventures of the same characters. show less

My dad loved Billy Bunter as a kid, and I guess my interest in him developed when I discovered that the Billy Bunter books on his shelf were actually worth a bit. I sort of wondered initially whether Bunter was one of those fat kids that was actually quite intelligent, but my dad pretty much said that he was completely the opposite. In fact he is a thick as a brick.
Billy Bunter is the classic anti-hero, and while this is the only book that I have read so far, it has given me a taste of what show more the character is like. Basically Billy Bunter is a fat, lazy, stupid, greedy boy who seems to always get into trouble, hangs around like a bad smell, and is pretty much disliked by all of his peers. Despite this he is too stupid to realise that nobody likes him, though it is interesting to note that despite his peer's dislike of him, they will actually get him out of trouble.
Billy goes to a boarding school called Greyfriars, and is always trying to get out of class, and always looking for ways to steal food to fill his voracious appetite. In fact it has become clear that even while he is in danger, his lust for food seems to always take first base. I also suspect that most of the adventures that he goes on is not because he is looking for adventure, but because he simply stumbles onto them and is simply looking for a way out.
Take this story of instance. There is a young (and quite lazy) lord that attends Greyfriars (and the only reason he is a peer at his age is because his dad died and he inherited his seat, which does not happen any more). Anyway, his father had brought a number of antiquities back from Egypt, and when a rather sinister Greek learns of it, he comes to Greyfriars to attempt to kidnap him. However Bunter, who is looking for a way to get out of detention, pretends to be the young lord, and then the lure of a luxury yacht, with food on board, encourages him to continue to play the ruse, and to also ignore his peers. This in turn lands him up in a lot of hot water, but his desire not to become a prisoner overrides the fact that he can't swim (in fact I don't think he can actually do anything).
Anyway, I would have to say that Billy Bunter is a unique character, and while we see imitations of him, and of the books, appearing here there and everywhere, I have a feeling that nobody has ever managed to create a character as painfully annoying, and as equally pathetic at Billy Bunter. In fact the American version always seems to be some sort of unshaven slob that seems to carry copious amounts of drugs around with him. From what I gather at least Billy Bunter is neat and does not smell. show less