Lion Comics

If Lion did have a genuine famous character, it had to be Robot Archie who appeared in the first issue in a story entitled, The Jungle Robot. He was later known as Archie The Robot, before finally becoming, what everybody was calling him, Robot Archie. Written by E. George Cowan and drawn by Ted Kearnon, Archie was a 'super-human' robot built by Professor C. R. Ritchie. His adventures were always with the professors nephew, Ted Richie and Ted's best friend Ken Dale.

Because Lion was Amalgamated Press' first comic for boys, it still contained its 'safety net' of three text stories. These were in the shape of Rod Of The Trading Post by R. G. Thomas - A cowboy story about the owner of Moose Bend Trading Post, Rod Fleming. Rod seemed to get caught up helping falsely accused friends get out of trouble and rescuing the innocent. Then there was Big Hank - The Soft-Hearted Heavyweight by Duncan Matheson. Hank was a negro heavyweight from Honduras. Hank used to work in the side-show business along with young Tich, his manager, doing strong arm acts and acrobatic turns with little success. So Tich Wilson had decided to turn Big Hank into a boxing champion. The only problem was, Hank wasn't very keen on fighting, but he pocessed immense strength and power, and usually used to take a bit of a pounding before he said enough was enough, and proceeded to pummel his opponent into submission. Jingo Jones And His Invisibiliser , written by Tom Stirling, was a pleasant little two-page yarn about a young lad, Jingo Jones, whose Uncle Septimus had invented a gadget which made things invisible when they were zapped by it. Ably assisted by his best friend Bob Day, they would use the invisibliser to even the score a bit when they were set upon by bigger kids or nasty old shopkeepers.

In the summer of 1965 we were introduced to The Spider . Created and written by Superman creator Jerry Siegel and superbly drawn by Reg Bunn. The Spider was a brilliant criminal mastermind who desired to become the uncrowned king of crime. He pocessed some amazing gadgetry including his famous steely-web, the helicar and helium gas bubble.

Lion was a great little comic which had an excellent run of more than 22 years. During that time it created and inherited some wonderful comic characters like Captain Condor, The Spider, Robot Archie, Wiz And Lofty, Paddy Payne, Rory MacDuff, Karl The Viking, Zip Nolan, Mowser, The Spider, Texas Jack, Trelawny Of The Guards, Lofty Lightyear, Carson's Cubs, Code Name - Barracuda, The Waxer, Dan Dare, Gargan, Oddball Oates, The Spellbinder and Adam Eterno.