Specifically, I was looking at copies of City Limits magazine. This was a weekly listings magazine for London that started as a result of the long-running industrial dispute at Time Out. The latter had originally been run on far more egalitarian lines, and had had a definitely left-leaning, possibly socialist stance.
However, when the then-owner decided to change this, a lot of the journalists and commentators withdrew their labour - including Bell, who moved his Maggie's Farm strip across to the new magazine.
A few weeks later, City Limits was born. It lasted some time (around 12 years, finally closing in 1993) but of course it is clearly no longer with us. You can read about all this on various Web sites and there is a short Wikipedia stub.
City Limits included information about demos and marches, protests and similar events as well as films, plays and exhibitions. There was a section on 'Agitprop'. This was during the time of Thatcher, after all. And the reviews were nothing if not provocative. A far cry from today's Time Out, which is basically a throwaway collection of adverts with little critical content.
I miss it.
So just for fun, here are a few snippets.
Images courtesy of research in the British Cartoon Archive, at the University of Canterbury. Highly Recommended.
There are many more, and for sale as prints on Bell's own Belltoons site. Go see now!
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