EXTRACTS: illustrators issue 3 © 2013 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

83 that more than one hopeful Fleetway employee, especially among the juniors, saw opportunity in the Wallington opening, a bare half-hour’s extra travel time down the tracks from the London Bridge terminus. I was one of those juniors. Straight from school sixteen months earlier, full of delight at the chance to work at the world-renowned Fleetway House, I was trapped on an editorial ladder negotiated by unions and management. In short, I had to be at Fleetway five years before getting a senior’s pay. At Micron I would be paid as a senior immediately. I put in my application, and backed it up by submitting a war script for the Combat Picture Library, written rapidly, and enthusiastically over a weekend, although this was not anything suggested, let alone asked for, in the job advertisement. The job was won, but boy, did it prove to be a sweatshop! Before my Micron time was out, I was responsible for editing each month four war titles, four westerns, two Paul Temple Picture Library issues reformatted laboriously from newspaper strips, and a one hundred and twenty-eight page text mystery magazine. I was given one junior art assistant. In those days, the War and Battle Picture Libraries under Ted Bensberg at Fleetway employed a whole room full of sub-editors and art assistants on the fifth floor of a modern office building, named New Fleetway House. Air Ace and Thriller Picture Libraries occupied yet more office space and more people. And Micron’s Wallington nest didn’t last long. Most of my time with them was spent in a draughty, unheated annex to the large shack that served as the TOP: Two page spread showing John S. Smith interior artwork for Those in Peril . ABOVE: Primo Macarini cover for Combat Picture Library 154, Son of Satan .