Ally Sloper on Stage

The essay explores the relationship between a comic and another artform – namely Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday and music hall theatre. It concerns how a new template was set for the entertainment business, anticipating the corporate capitalist leisure culture of the 20th and 21st centuries. A subsidiary theme concerns how a fictional character, Ally Sloper, could transcend his origins in print to become a cultural resource for performers – and the general public - to draw upon.

Paper was originally presented at the ‘Instruction, Amusement and Spectacle’ Conference, University of Exeter, April 2009

Roger Sabin

Research Interests

Cultural history, cultural studies, subcultural studies, film and television studies. Specialisms: comics, graphic novels, manga; punk and counterculture; 19th century entertainment; television crime drama. Cultural theory, especially postmodernism in history.
Current Research

Currently completing one book and co-authoring two others. The sole-authored book is about 19th century ‘funny papers’/comics, and in particular the character 'Ally Sloper', the first comics superstar. The other two concern TV crime drama: one is about The Wire, and one about the history of the genre. Also, various smaller-scale projects involving comics, graphic novels, manga and other areas listed above.

Previous books include: As Author: Comics, Comics and Graphic Novels (Phaidon); Adult Comics: An Introduction (Routledge); The Lasting of the Mohicans (University Press of Mississippi – co-authored with Martin Barker). As Editor: Punk Rock: So What? (Routledge); Below Critical Radar: Fanzines and Alternative Comics 1976-Now (Codex - with Teal Triggs); The Movie Book (Phaidon – with Michael Newton).