THAT'S A LOAD OF OLD BULL, JOHN...

 And you can put it in print...

Before we look at the third and final part of John Byrne's Alpha Flight Cover & Splash Page Gallery, let's take a slight detour and cop a gander at something I acquired recently to replace the original one I had back in the '60s.  Namely, the John Bull Printing Outfit.  I say 'I' had, but 'twas actually my father who brought it home one day, possibly bought from Glasgow's famous Barras market.

To be honest, though I said the '60s, there's a chance it wasn't obtained until the start of the '70s, which is when I remember using it to name-stamp my comics, though it could have lain dormant for a year or two before I pressed it into service.  Into a single-tier red plastic holder, I carefully set my name - G. ROBSON (it only had upper case) - and stamped the top right-hand corner (from my pov) with my awesome (in my mind anyway) appellation.

One of my pals at the time was in hospital with a broken leg, and I remember taking up a pile of my old comics for him one day during visiting hour.  Imagine my surprise when, weeks or months later, I saw some of them in a cardboard box in my local newsagent's, marked at half price.  One of the comics was the first combined issue of Valiant & Smash!, and there was my printed name on the cover.  I'm still not quite sure how they ever got there.

When we moved house in 1972, my stamp was again utilised to mark my Mighty World Of Marvels, but eventually I gave up on the practice.  For years afterwards, little rubber letter blocks and red holders could be found at the back of the drawer of my father's writing bureau, reminding me of earlier times.  The bureau moved into my bedroom in the early '80s, but whether any rubber letters still inhabited its confines prior to that point, or whether they had been cleared out long before, is lost to the mists of history.

As you can see from the photos, I now have two sets - No. 8 and No. 12, the smaller of them being (I think) the one we owned originally.  The two were sold on ebay as one item, which is the only reason I bought the pair.  Interestingly (to me anyway), the writing bureau yet resides in my bedroom, and I may well decide, space allowing, to store them in its single drawer, which my original set called home for many years.

Time has been reset to an earlier period once more, and things are yet again as they used to be - well, at least in regard to John Bull and my father's writing bureau.  (Incidentally, I remember the day the bureau was delivered to our first house in the town, around 60 years ago.  That's some amount of correspondence it's seen written in that time, I'd imagine.)

Anyway, do you remember having a John Bull Printing Outfit when you were a kid, and if so, what did you think of it?  Share your personal reminiscences in the Crivvies comments section.  That's what it's there for.

Posted in: Cartoons