POP Children’s Own Paper occupies a fascinating place in the history of Nigerian popular print culture. Published for Nigerian children during the 1970s, the comic presented itself confidently as “Nigeria’s Own Picture Paper for Children.” Its stories included material designed around Nigerian settings and readers, among them Sister Mercy, a strip centred on a nurse working at a hospital in Lagos.
The history behind POP also reveals the international networks that helped produce comics for Nigerian audiences during this period.
The publication belonged to the wider activities of Pikin Press, also referred to as Pican Publications. The company operated within Nigeria’s publishing and advertising environment while working with British comics professionals. Through its relationship with the British agency Bardon Press Features, the same publishing network produced Powerman, a superhero comic developed specifically for Nigerian readers.
POP therefore represents an important phase in Nigerian publishing when children in the country were increasingly recognised as a distinct audience for comics created around African characters, places and experiences.
POP Children’s Own Paper and Nigeria’s 1970s Comics Market
During the 1970s, imported British comics formed an important part of the illustrated reading material available to Nigerian children. Many naturally reflected British settings and featured predominantly white characters.
Pikin Press pursued a different approach.
Its publications were directed towards African, particularly Nigerian, readers. The best known example was Powerman, published in Nigeria during the 1970s and developed through collaboration between Pikin Press and Bardon Press Features in Britain.
Rather than simply importing an existing British comic, the publishers commissioned stories intended for the Nigerian market. Writers and artists connected with the project included Donne Avenell, Norman Worker, Brian Bolland and Dave Gibbons.
This represented an important development. Nigerian readers were no longer being treated solely as overseas consumers of comics originally created for European audiences. Characters and stories were increasingly being developed specifically with African readers in mind.
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POP Children’s Own Paper formed part of this broader publishing environment.
Its memorable claim to be “Nigeria’s Own Picture Paper for Children” reflected an effort to give young Nigerian readers a publication that appeared to speak directly to their own cultural surroundings.
Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons and the Powerman Connection
The history of Powerman provides valuable context for understanding the publishing world in which POP Children’s Own Paper appeared.
British artist Brian Bolland began drawing Powerman in January 1975 and continued his involvement into 1977. Bolland would later become internationally recognised through his work on 2000 AD, Judge Dredd and other major comics.
The Powerman project was associated partly with an ambition to encourage literacy among Nigerian readers. This influenced the way its stories were constructed.
Page layouts were kept straightforward. Complicated visual arrangements were discouraged, and the action was presented in easily followed sequences.
Dave Gibbons, another British artist who later achieved international fame through works including Watchmen, also contributed to the project.
Pages were generally limited to a small number of panels, while individual panels could be numbered to indicate the reading order. Gibbons later expressed reservations about the assumptions behind some of these requirements.
The production arrangements reveal how comics specifically intended for Nigeria were being shaped through a mixture of commercial publishing, educational ambitions and international creative collaboration.
Sister Mercy and the World of POP
One of the most important surviving strips associated with POP is Sister Mercy, drawn by British comics artist Ron Smith.
Smith was born in Bournemouth, England, in 1924. His long career eventually included extensive contributions to 2000 AD, where he became particularly associated with Judge Dredd.
Before that later period of his career, Smith worked on material intended for Nigerian readers.
Sister Mercy centres on a nurse working at a hospital in Lagos. Its Nigerian setting demonstrates the effort to create stories connected more directly with the society in which the publication was being distributed.
The strip appeared in POP No. 37, showing that the publication progressed through at least several dozen numbered issues.
The appearance of Smith’s work in POP also connects the title more firmly with the broader Pikin Press publishing network, where British artists contributed to stories created specifically for Nigerian audiences.
Smith’s Nigerian work became an interesting early chapter in a career later associated with some of Britain’s best known comics.
POP Children’s Own Paper and a Transnational Publishing Story
The slogan “Nigeria’s Own Picture Paper for Children” remains central to the identity of POP Children’s Own Paper.
The phrase distinguished the publication from ordinary imported comics. Instead of offering stories originally written for British children, POP addressed Nigerian readers directly.
Its publishing history was international.
Pikin Press maintained connections between Nigeria and Britain, while its collaboration with Bardon Press Features gave it access to established comics writers and illustrators.
This placed POP within a transnational publishing system in which a publication could be Nigerian in audience, subject matter and commercial purpose while drawing on creative professionals based overseas.
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The model reflected the increasingly international nature of publishing during the period.
More importantly, it demonstrated that Nigerian children were becoming recognised as a market worthy of specialised publications.
African characters and environments could now occupy the centre of stories rather than appearing only occasionally in entertainment imported from abroad.
Localisation, Literacy and the Nigerian Reader
The literacy ambitions associated with Pikin Press formed another important part of the project.
Comics combine visual storytelling with written language, allowing pictures to help readers follow narratives and understand the accompanying text. This made the format attractive to publishers interested in encouraging reading.
The stories commissioned for Nigerian readers were therefore designed to be visually clear.
Simple page structures, limited numbers of panels and numbered sequences were among the methods used to make the narratives easier to follow.
Some of the British creators involved later questioned the assumptions behind this approach. Dave Gibbons, in particular, regarded elements of the system as patronising towards Nigerian readers.
The episode reflects broader attitudes frequently encountered in publishing and educational projects involving Africa during the period. Initiatives designed to reach African audiences could combine genuine efforts to expand readership with assumptions formed outside the societies they were trying to serve.
Despite these tensions, publications such as POP and Powerman helped demonstrate that African readers constituted an important comics audience.
Nigerian Cartooning Beyond POP
The development of Nigerian comics did not depend solely on international publishing arrangements.
Nigeria already possessed traditions of newspaper cartooning, political illustration and visual satire. Nigerian artists and publishers were also creating their own forms of popular entertainment.
One of the most important figures to emerge during the 1970s was Wale Adenuga.
Adenuga entered the University of Lagos in 1971 and became chief cartoonist for a campus magazine. He had been drawing from childhood and continued developing his cartooning skills during his university years.
In 1976, he launched Ikebe Super, which became one of Nigeria’s best known cartoon magazines.
Adenuga created its original cartoon characters and personally drew the magazine’s cartoons during its formative years. His characters drew heavily on Nigerian humour, social behaviour and everyday experiences.
Among the figures emerging from Adenuga’s publishing world was Papa Ajasco, who later crossed from print into film and television and became one of the most recognisable characters in Nigerian popular entertainment.
The development of Ikebe Super illustrates a different but contemporary strand of Nigerian comics history.
Where publications associated with Pikin Press used international production networks to create material for Nigerian audiences, Adenuga’s work represented popular illustrated entertainment developed directly through Nigerian authorship.
Both developments formed part of the rapidly changing print culture of the 1970s.
Why POP Children’s Own Paper Still Matters
The significance of POP Children’s Own Paper extends beyond the individual stories printed in its pages.
Its existence shows that publishers had identified Nigerian children as a substantial audience for specialised entertainment. Rather than relying entirely on imported comics, they were developing material intended to feature places, characters and circumstances that African readers could recognise more easily.
That shift mattered.
Children who had grown accustomed to comics dominated by foreign settings could encounter stories situated closer to their own surroundings.
At the same time, POP demonstrates how cultural localisation could develop through international collaboration. Nigerian readership and settings existed alongside British writing and illustration.
The publication therefore captures a distinctive moment in Nigerian media history.
It emerged at a time when the country’s print culture was expanding and locally oriented popular entertainment was gaining greater prominence. Nigerian creators were simultaneously building magazines and characters that would become major parts of the country’s cultural landscape.
Seen from this perspective, POP was neither isolated nor insignificant.
It belonged to a broader movement towards recognising Nigerian readers as an audience deserving publications conceived specifically for them.
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Conclusion
POP Children’s Own Paper deserves a place in the history of Nigerian comics and popular publishing.
The publication was associated with Pikin Press, also known as Pican Publications, the publishing operation connected with Powerman. It carried stories such as Ron Smith’s Sister Mercy, centred on a nurse working at a hospital in Lagos, and the surviving record of POP No. 37 demonstrates that the title reached at least that issue number.
The wider Pikin Press publishing programme brought prominent British comics professionals into projects directed towards Nigerian readers. Brian Bolland and Dave Gibbons worked on Powerman, while Bardon Press Features provided an important connection between the Nigerian publishing operation and British comics production.
At the same time, Nigerian creators were developing their own forms of illustrated popular culture. Wale Adenuga’s launch of Ikebe Super in 1976 became an important example of commercially successful comics rooted directly in Nigerian authorship, humour and social experience.
POP therefore captures a transitional period in which different models of comics publishing existed side by side.
Its proud description as “Nigeria’s Own Picture Paper for Children” expressed a significant cultural ambition: Nigerian children were being recognised as readers worthy of publications created specifically with them in mind.
That alone gives POP an enduring place in Nigeria’s publishing history.
Author’s Note
The story of POP Children’s Own Paper shows how Nigerian popular culture developed through a mixture of local ambition and international collaboration. By the mid 1970s, Nigerian children were increasingly being recognised as a distinct audience deserving stories, characters and settings created with their experiences in mind. At the same time, Nigerian cartoonists and publishers were establishing increasingly independent creative traditions of their own. POP belongs to that important period of transition, when the foundations of a more locally rooted Nigerian comics culture were becoming increasingly visible.
References
Bishop, David. “28 Days of 2000 AD #24: Brian Bolland Pt. 1.” Vicious Imagery, 24 February 2007. Interview transcript prepared for Thrill Power Overload.
Pijnaker, Tessa. “African Superheroes in the 1970s and 1980s: A Historical Perspective.” Africa in Words, 11 June 2018.
Molcher, Michael. 2000 AD: The Creator Interviews 03: Dave Gibbons, Simon Fraser, Kevin O’Neill, Jesus Redondo, David Roach, John Hicklenton, John Cooper and Dave Taylor. Oxford: Rebellion, 2006.
Freeman, John. “A Nigerian Comics Mystery: Ron Smith’s ‘Sister Mercy’ (and more).” downthetubes, 18 September 2019.
2000 AD. “Ron Smith 1924–2019.” 10 January 2019.
Njoku, Benjamin. “Comedy is my DNA: Wale Adenuga.” Vanguard, 18 November 2023.
