Comic that sent a generation to university (via space and the Roman Empire)
Forty years on, an affectionate tribute to Look and Learn...
IT ran for 20 years over a time of bewildering social change, gobbled up a giddying array of rivals, and was celebrated not just for its fantastic artwork and vivid colour but the pace and authority of its writing.
The likes of Patrick Moore and John Prebble were not ashamed to pen for its pages, the late Duke of Edinburgh was an admirer – it was read avidly by his younger sons – and, 40 years after its lamented demise, nothing like Look and Learn has ever enchanted British children again.
Look and Learn was the last surge of a high-minded British tradition of journalism especially for youngsters, born in the likes of The Children’s Newspaper and Arthur Mee’s Junior Encyclopaedia. Indeed, an early entrepreneur in the genre was Alfred Harmsworth – who later founded the Daily Mail.
Look and Learn – the first edition hit newsagents on January 20, 1962 – was in a niche of the magazine industry dubbed ‘parent purchase’. It cost a whole shilling, for one thing; and, left to himself, Junior would assuredly spend half that price on some droll comic and keep the other sixpence of his weekly pocket money for daily sweets.
So Look and Learn could only win such young readers – the target market was ten to 17-year-olds – by convincing Mum and Dad, in that aspirational grammar school age, that it was value for money.
It was accordingly tall and broad, felt heavy in the hand, and always had a striking, original illustration on the front. And was always shot with colour, lending it vivid appeal at a time, remember, when newspapers were monochrome and television was black and white.
That first edition sold, astonishingly, more than 700,000 copies, and settled down to weekly sales of about 300,000 for the rest of the Sixties. The magazine was educational, yes, but with the lightest touch – features on history, literature, science, technology, war, adventure, spaceflight and so on.
FROM the start, Look and Learn always ran adaptations of classic novels and, to the end and despite the best endeavours of IPC Magazines, its letters page and advertisements – stamps on approval, replica pistols, Airfix kits – suggest it was largely read by boys.
But if it had ever been in danger of disappearing up its own worthiness – in the early years, there was even a ‘Thought for the Week’ from the vicar of St Mary’s, Ware – Look and Learn was charged anew in 1966 when it absorbed the short-lived Ranger magazine.
Look and Learn thereafter carried two weekly comic strips, most famously The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire, written by Mike Butterworth and drawn by Don Lawrence.
It was an epic, sci-fi mashup of a futuristic society and Ancient Rome, set on the remote planet of Elekton (which orbited twin suns), and an endearing order of gilt breastplates and jet packs, togas and hover-autos.
A glance at one of my surviving copies of Look and Learn – No 691, April 12, 1975 – confirms the settled and winning formula.
The title page gives the latest names and addresses from Pen Friends Around The World – attesting to the magazine’s global reach, for pals are sought by youngsters in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Malaysia, Thailand, Ghana and Mauritius – and We Want To Know, the week’s star letter from someone wanting to show off.
In this instance, it’s the sage David Mzari from Kenya. The latest instalment of Men and Machines is a thrilling account of the achievements of racing driver Graham Hill – complete with a chilling illustration of a 1969 crash he had been lucky to survive.
In Meet The Family we learn about Atlantic Grey seals – next week, it will be The Callous Cuckoo. From Then To Now illustrates classic coaches and carriages. Warriors of the World is the story of Zulu catastrophe at
Rorke’s Drift; Oliver Goldsmith is the subject of this week’s The Story Tellers. But I almost certainly leafed through to read The Trigan Empire first – ‘Imperial Majesty! A terrible accident! The Trigan Hero has sunk!’ – and then onto No 13 Marvel Street, where Ernest Entwhistle is happy to help La Surete solve their latest baffling mystery – zut alors – with the help of EDIE, the computer he has personally built and about the size of a cathedral organ. Look and Learn had a short-lived companion mag for a still younger demographic, Treasure – best remembered for begetting Tufty, the safety-minded squirrel – and, over the years, absorbed in turn Tell Me Why, World of Wonder, and Speed and Power.
Its quality was further improved, in the early Seventies, in the shift from photogravure to offset-litho printing. It was nevertheless hard work, for a team of just 12 people, every week to produce a 40-page magazine from scratch.
But there were perks. One Look and Learn editor, Andy Vincent, seized the opportunity to send himself on assignment to America, South America and Europe.
‘He went everywhere,’ his wife, June, darkly recalled. ‘He went to America to write about zoos and I’ve a photograph of him tickling a white rhino’s stomach. He visited Japan, Hawaii… He spent his 61st birthday up the Amazon and I’ve still got a necklace made from porcupine spines that he bartered from one of the tribesmen.’
Despite the pressure, it was a happy office. ‘Look and Learn was a family,’ said John Melhuish. ‘All the Look and Learn staff went out socially. We all put away a pound a week and we’d go out to a nice restaurant once every three months.’
In 1979 Jack Parker – the only member of the team to serve Look
‘Gilt breastplates and jet packs, togas and hover-autos’
and Learn throughout, and from 1977 its final editor – took six lucky competition winners on a trip to a particularly outof-the-way corner of Kenya.
‘The houses were mostly concrete blocks,’ he remembered, ‘and the villagers must have had a pretty poor standard of living. There was a little general store which I went into to buy some sweets for the kids and there, on the magazine rack in this tiny African village in the middle of nowhere, was a copy of Look and Learn.’
But from 1970 the tide was fast ebbing for children’s comics and publications. Pop culture sucked in younger and younger fans every year. Paper grew ever more expensive. Dozens of titles folded.
Not least due to the infamous industrial strife of the time. Look and Learn might well have survived had Parker been granted more freedom in recruitment, more innovative printing, more say-so with his budget. The unions opposed every last change and, terrified lest they move on to strike at the company’s real cash-cow – women’s magazines – IPC let them throttle its Youth Group, and Look and Learn, to death.
But Look and Learn was still selling 45,000 copies a week when the axe finally fell with issue 1,049, on April 17, 1982.
Francis King, by then IPC boss and who had ignored Jack Parker’s pleas to the end, instead squandered resources on a dreadful new venture, Look Alive. It was pitched to boys and would feature BMX, video games and even – fatuously – tips on clothes and grooming. The Times was just one newspaper that buried Look Alive in its derision, once the first issue appeared in September 1982.
‘If you are unlucky enough to wear a vest, if you don’t streak your hair or black your eyebrows, Look Alive has some stern advice for you,’ noted Susan Marling incredulously. ‘“Dear oh dear, you certainly are a loser in the fashion stakes. You should get rid of that Wally image and start working on a new you…’ ”
The target market – boys of ten to 13 – took a look or two, and recoiled. Look Alive, on which IPC had squandered several million pounds, did not survive its fifth issue.
Jack Parker remembers a day when he took Look and Learn prize-winners to a show at Olympia and, spotting his name tag, the taxi driver asked if he was involved with Look and Learn. Yes, said Parker: he was its editor.
‘I’d like to thank you very much and shake you by the hand,’ said the cabbie, ‘because my son was an absolute no-no. He didn’t want to read, he didn’t want to do anything.
‘We decided we had to do something so we took Look and Learn. And he was hooked on it and his whole attitude changed – he used to love reading and looking at the pictures and eventually he went to university and got a degree.’
Jack Parker smiled at the recollection. ‘And I was always quite pleased about that.’