Romeo #21 December 1963
Romeo #21 (December 1963) sits at a genuinely charged moment in British pop history: D.C. Thomson's long-running teenage girls' weekly was already embedding John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr into its pages as Beatlemania reached fever pitch across the UK. As one of the earliest periodical comics to treat the four individually — profiling their tastes, personalities, and personal details in dedicated features — Romeo helped establish the template of fan-journalism-as-comic-content that would soon define a generation of British teen weeklies. The issue arrives just weeks after Romeo absorbed its sister title Cherie (26 October 1963), meaning its readership had suddenly expanded, giving the Beatles content a wider audience than any single prior issue could claim.
In "The Day the Beatles Came to Town," Juliette finds herself swept into an unexpected adventure upon arriving in Tangier, where a seemingly innocent encounter at the Casbah leads her into a situation far more perilous than she imagined. With Jaume Rumeu Perera handling both art and inks, this 1963 D.C. Thomson classic captures a moment of playful intrigue and quiet tension, all set against the vibrant backdrop of a city on the edge of the unknown.
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Romeo was launched by D.C. Thomson of Dundee on 31 August 1957 as a weekly romance comic aimed at older teenage girls, initially drawing heavily on reprinted American romance material before pivoting toward original British strips and, crucially, British pop coverage. The comic also reprinted American material including Marvel's Millie the Model strips, and its editorial staff included a young John Wagner — later the co-creator of Judge Dredd — who contributed horoscope copy to the title. By late 1963, the editorial line had fully embraced Beatlemania, running a serialised 'Beatleopaedia' pull-out feature across multiple issues that readers were encouraged to collect and complete; surviving copies of fully assembled Beatleopaedias from this period are exceedingly rare.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Romeo was a weekly girls' comic published by D.C. Thomson from 31 August 1957 to 14 September 1974, aimed at an older teen readership than most of Thomson's other girls' titles.
- Issue #21 (December 1963) falls in the immediate aftermath of Romeo absorbing its DC Thomson sister title Cherie on 26 October 1963, expanding its readership at the height of UK Beatlemania.
- The comic ran a serialised 'Beatleopaedia' feature across its late-1963 issues — a pull-out collector's section profiling all four Beatles individually — which readers assembled over multiple weeks.
- All four Beatles — John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr — appear as indexed characters in this issue, reflecting Romeo's role as its readers' primary guide to the band's personalities and tastes.
- Romeo mixed original British romance strips with reprinted American material, including Marvel Comics' humour strip Millie the Model, making it unusual among British girls' weeklies of the era.
- Future comics titan John Wagner (co-creator of Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog) was on the Romeo editorial staff during this period, contributing horoscopes to the title.
- Romeo's sustained Beatles coverage directly influenced and helped seed the launch of DC Thomson's Jackie magazine in January 1964, which went on to become the dominant British teen girls' pop weekly of its generation.
- Physical copies of Romeo from this period are extremely scarce, as the tabloid-format newsprint issues were not preserved by libraries and were typically read, cut up for scrapbooks, and discarded.
Cast · 4 characters
Full credits
Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
▸ Reveal full plot — may contain spoilers
When Hector and Juliette arrive in Tangier, Juliette slips away to visit the Casbah. She sees a group of women and thinks they are part of a sort of beauty competition. She joins them, but discovers too late that she has been chosen to be the next bride of Sheik El Abdul.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).