The Victor ran for 1657 issues and you could expect to pay £50 for issue 1 with the free gift of a Super Squirt Ring although it is very scarce.

I bought Victor weekly for several years between about 1961 and 1964.

A definite attraction was its free gifts which were usually football related: my favourite was a yellow plastic wallet with football statistics printed on it, in which weekly free cards (?) were then deposited. The best stories were also sport related. "The Tough of the Track" is unequivocally the finest athletics cartoon story ever told. Alf Tupper had all the qualities any top athlete could wish for: working class background, firm grasp of non-standard English (as in "I run the toff"), steady proletarian job (welding beneath the railway arches), economical and unvaried diet (fish and chips), deep rooted hatred of the upper classes, strong reservations about any foreigner especially eastern Europeans, and complete disrespect for authority whether British or eastern European. His long running career spanned at least the 1950s (the earliest race I know of was in prose in the 1957 "Adventure" annual), 60s and 70s. Not only did he continue running successfully into his late fifties but showed no signs of hair loss or modernisation of hair style, favouring a low friction quiff at all times.

"Gorgeous Gus", though far less revered, also deserves a high ranking despite being the complete antithesis to Alf. If Alf had ever met Gus, there would have been trouble. Gus was grotesquely rich but nevertheless favoured a career in first division football. Not for him the usual ninety minute drudgery: sporting a hand-made silk kit, Gus would only deign to come on the pitch to take free kicks or penalties. As possessor of a literally net-breaking shot, these brief appearances guaranteed victory after victory. He was assisted at all times by a personal valet who cleaned his boots on the touchlines and provided refreshments from a silver tray.

The name of one of the most eccentric cricketers ever to grace the English game completely escapes me. However, I believe his background may have been circus related. His unique skill lay in his slow, unusually high trajectory, looping bowling delivery which enabled him to drop the ball directly on to the bails from above with 100% accuracy. For a long time batsmen were powerless to defend against this..... until a circus related Australian batsman was drafted in. His technique was also unusual. Toes facing the bowler, he arched his body back over the stumps and walloped the vertically descending ball for six. Mercifully, this technique was soon out manoeuvred by the occasional conventional delivery or outstanding fielding on the ropes.

There were plenty of other good yarns, usually with a sporty or warrior twist, but these are the ones I remember vividly nearly forty years on. The gripping cover story was always, of course, a true tale of a valiant Brit winning a VC, victor always over the dreaded Hun. Was Rupert Murdock influenced by this boys' weekly?

I've made a further Alf-related discovery. I bought a Rover annual, late 1940s (not dated) with an eagle on the front, and who was there? Alf! So he was obviously shared around annuals, at least "Adventure" and "Rover" before he changed format. Actually, the Rover annual prose story is a classic, perfectly combining all the ingredients later included in the cartoon version: working class background (a large amount of authentic welding info), cockney speech though he clearly lives in the North/Midlands, foreigners, fish and chips, slipper bath (!!), the lot. Also, there is a remarkably illustration of Alf PRE-quiff, with curly hair! It's almost worth including on your site as an archetype! Given its prose, this wouldn't be impossible. - Chris Marshall, Brighton

The Miracle Bowler - Name was Joe Doone, who learnt how to bowl while knocking out (not killing, he tagged them) Seagulls. Charlie Snout was his Australian nemesis, but he somehow got the better of Snout by bowling something different. - Keith Hallam

If you have any other information on The Victor please drop us a line.