TV Century 21 (AKA TV21) was a weekly adventure comic book produced under the merchandising control of Keith Shackleton and featured strips based on many of the shows Gerry Anderson produced.
Background[]
With the increased financial success brought about by Gerry Anderson's partnership with Lew Grade, A.P films began to expand it's branch of merchandising and promotional material, starting with the creation of a new comic book to further capitalise on their already blossoming young audience. One of Gerry Anderson's longest running writers by that point, Alan Fennell, even took up a position of story editor on the comic ontop of his already existing commitments to Thunderbirds. The decision was made to style the comic after a newspaper, with fictional articles and interviews describing the various happenings in the TV21 world. The covers in particular would feature shocking and outrageous headlines, often with a character being declared dead or being incarcerated for treason.
Comic History Part 1[]
The first issue was published on the 23rd of January 1965 and featured strips of Stingray, Fireball XL5 and Supercar, as well as strips of other popular TV shows of the time such as 'My Favourite Martian' and even a page devoted to Terry Nation's Daleks from Doctor Who, alongside several original strips like Secret Agent 21 whose strip would become the catalyst for the shared universe of TV21 these strips would eventually form. Lady Penelope was also given her own comic strip as part of TV21, 8 months before Thunderbirds would debut on British Television screens, as a way of building up hype for the programme. Supercar's inclusion seems to have been merely an afterthought since it didn't exactly fit in with the futuristic timeline TV21 was establishing. In addition to only being printed in black and white, The tone of the comic was much more humorous than the show it had been based upon, with action and storylines of a wacky nature such as Masterspy swapping Supercar's engine with that of a bulldozer and the bulldozer subsequently become super powered. This might have been down to a mistaken conception that Supercar's storytelling was antiquated in comparison to Fireball XL5's.
Throughout the comic's early years, Fireball XL5 was particularly well exposed to a greater degree than the original show would have been and thanks to the nature of the medium was allowed to tackle storylines that would have been impossible to accomplish on the original show. Although Zoonie the Lazoon was excised from the main strip and delegated to his own mini strip, presumably because his comedic antics didn't suit the darker tone of stories the Fireball strip tackled. Nonetheless Fireball XL5 proved a very popular feature of TV21 with Mike Noble's artwork on the series in particular leaving a big mark on readers.
Stingray, despite being the headline comic strip of the time, was not remembered as well amongst it's peers. The stories often diverted from the main canon of the show in baffling ways and the characters themselves didn't have as many chances to shine in comic form. The Stingray strip would see early debuts of various Thunderbirds vehicles such as the Fireflash and Sidewinder (renamed Jungle Cat), with production on Thunderbirds having to devote some time for specially shot TV21 Stingray material such as the well known image of Stingray floating alongside Tracy Island.