*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: Football has always been a popular theme of British comics, but Scorcher, launching in 1970, was one of the earliest weeklies to make it an all-consuming theme. Given its respectable five-year run, the creators did a decent job of it, even if there was a lot of imagination-stretching to introduce variations: ‘Lags Eleven’ (footballing convicts), ‘Lord Rumsey’s Rovers’ (footballing aristocrats), the superbly bonkers ‘Kangaroo Kid’ (footballing feral child raised by marsupials) and ‘Billy’s Boots’, in which a klutzy young lad finds a magically-endowed pair of boots belonging to a legendary player, and gains his skills from them – so, cheating, basically. We have 80+ new issues of Scorcher from 4th April 1970 to 27th July 1974, including 3rd July 1971, in which Scorcher absorbed its slightly younger, similarly-monothematic brother, Score N’ Roar, to become Scorcher & Score.