Syndication and Sanitisation

Bartholomew’s revolution at the Daily Mirror had made the paper pre-eminent in the field of newspaper strips and led to a huge boost in readership, with the paper overtaking the Daily Express in 1949 to become the country’s best-selling title, with a readership of over 4,000,000. As wartime paper rationing eased, other popular newspapers sought to replicate key aspects of the Bartholomew style, leading to a boom in newspaper strips and a particular increase in the prevalence of continuity adventure series. Simultaneously, the Mirror sought to exploit its market-leading position by leveraging its comic strips into secondary markets through international syndication. Within the domestic market, the Daily Mirror’s strips had established the acceptability of nudity and violence in a way that was not replicated in overseas markets, however. Compounding this stylistic incompatibility, the postwar period saw concern over the possible harmful effects of comics transform into sustained anti-comics campaigns that erupted in a transnational context. This chapter will examine the impact of these factors on the newspaper strip market, exploring how the boundaries of acceptability for strips became progressively narrower, leading to a swift sanitisation of their style and content.