A strip from The Hotspur

See The Hotspur issues 36 - 42.

Writer:- The Hotspur editorial team. Artist:- Not known.

Main cast:- Jim Jannock, nicknamed Broadaxe.

Time period:- 1960's Canada.

Jim Jannock is a lumberjack felling trees in the Canadian wilds. Unusually for a D.C. Thomson story set in Canada, there is no snow in sight! The default setting usually for Thomson stories set in this country, is for them to have a snow setting. Think of any other Thomson story set in Canada and more often than not, snow will feature in it. Young readers may have subconsciously thought that the country was snowbound all year round. (Possibly much to the annoyance of Canadians). But this series proves otherwise.

As far as I am aware, only five stories made up this series. Twelve stories is on average, the length of a Thomson series. Possibly stories about lumberjacking wasn't considered exciting enough or possibly story ideas were hard to come by. You do though have to take your hat off to Thomson for taking 'boring subjects' and producing lively stories about a character(s) set in that job. For example, Alf Tupper a runner in the world of athletics. On the surface it doesn't sound as exciting to young children as a war or adventure story, yet Alf was / is by a mile, one of Thomson's best loved characters.

On the other hand though, with Thomson publishing several picture / text comics a week, editors would have been using a lot of ideas and trying to find new worlds and characters to set series in. Overall I think readers will have benefitted from the vast and diverse range of stories told. To be fair, not all of the boring series clicked, being let down by the script or artwork or just churned out without much thought. But a large number of these stories did hit the bullseye frequently.

But it would have been interesting to have expanded this series, maybe with Jannock's back story or moving the character to another tree-felling country, Australia for example. Or even bringing other elements into the series such as railways or folklore and stories from the lumberjack heyday. I would have been interested in further stories about this short-lived character. Possibly an idea to puruse in my own comic series, The Guard.

The following adventures of Broadaxe are from issues 36; 37; 38; 40 & 42.

***Please note that I am using a standard thumbnail image for all the full size pictures on this page. This is purely being done to save myself some time.***