Denis Gifford - Collection of Comics and Other Popular Media

Collection of Comics and Other Popular Media

Gifford's most valuable research resource was his own collection, as in over sixty years he had accumulated what is generally recognised as the largest comic collection in the UK and the largest collection of British comics in the world, including the only known complete runs of all comics published in the UK in the 1940s. He collected the first and last issues of all comics published in the UK, as well as Christmas issues and other special editions, and also collected first issues of US comics. To a lesser extent, first issues of comics from other countries were also collected. Gifford was also a collector of other ephemera, including pulp books, popular magazines, theatrical programmes, film and comic fanzines, original film scripts and sheet music, as well as pop culture memorabilia, describing himself as "the keeper of the nation's nostalgia". and with a collection that included periodicals not to be found in the British Library.

It was an obsession which dominated both his life and his South London home, once described in a colour supplement interview as the den of “a boy who had run away from home” and never returned. A reliable figure was never established for the size of his collection, but its scale constrained movement throughout the house and extended into every room, even the kitchen: "There are comics on the stove, on the fridge, on the floor. Denis Gifford can still use his grill, but roasts are a memory for he can no longer open his oven. The fridge filled up years ago, for Denis is fascinated by the free gifts that come with some comics... There are lollipops in the fridge now, and Desperate Dan nougat."

Unusually for a collector, Gifford's interests were defined by their eclecticism, including comics, radio recordings and film from throughout the world and spanning from the origins of the media up to new releases. He had certain specific interests, notably British horror films of the 1930s to the 1960s, early cinema and radio, Laurel and Hardy movies and memorabilia, British comic papers of the late nineteenth century and British and US comics of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, especially those which featured personalities from contemporary radio. However, the parameters of his interests and collection broadened substantially throughout his life.

Gifford's collection had suffered an early setback, an anecdote related by Bob Monkhouse: "You cannot begin to imagine his grief when he completed his National Service to return home to find that his mother had thrown away his huge collection of Film Fun, The Joker, Merry and Bright and a dozen other titles...Denis was to spend the rest of his life trying to replace those lost copies." Gifford's mother was later to express deep regret at their destruction.

Despite his hopes that his vast collection might form the basis of a national museum of comics, through an archive such as the Victoria and Albert Museum National Art Library Comics and Comic Art Collection, it was broken up and auctioned off after his death, "leaving 12 tons of paper at his home to be cleared and sorted."

Gifford's collection was the product of his lifelong passion for comics and popular culture, and his highly prolific research work was an attempt to provide a comprehensive history of the ephemeral. Particularly in the early decades of his writing on the subject, pop culture drew little attention from academic research and Gifford was particularly passionate about the most obscure examples of vintage comics, film, television and radio, and determined that they should be recognised, chronicled and remembered before extant copies were lost.