Mr Finbow's reaction and the school comic club

I ran, for a very short time a school comic club and the teacher responsible for over seeing all after school clubs was a man who looked like an RAF wing commander, complete with handle bar moustache.

A the clubs had the chance to advertise themselves in the school foyer and I promptly stuck up a copy of Red Sonja No.1. I met up with Mr Finbow a day or so later and he was grinning from ear to ear and stopped me to explain that comics had changed a lot since his day.

I didn't really take it in at the time, it was 1977, I was 15, what was this old man going on about? It's just a comic after all. I really did miss his point. Yes, I was that naive. But then I'd wandered into our local porn magazine shop, in my school uniform, happy as Larry, at finding Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction n0.6 on its shelves. The guy behind the counter really did do a double take at my sudden arrival (more of which in another post, soon I promise).

So, 31 years later, the penny finally drops. The artist, Frank Thorne would go on to produce a near copy of Red Sonja who was much, much more blatant.

But here, with Red Sonja under an American comics code and UK customs officers (who would impound comics and remove them from shelves), she took a certain 15 year old boy on adventures where sex was not the driving force, imagination was.

Alas, I would not remain 15 forever.