Marcus Morris (publisher)

The Reverend John Marcus Harston Morris OBE (25 April 1915, Preston, Lancashire – 16 March 1989, London) was an English Anglican priest who founded the Eagle comic in 1950 and was deputy chairman of the National Magazine Company.

The son of a clergyman, Morris grew up in Southport, Lancashire, and read literature at Brasenose College, Oxford University, then theology at Wycliffe Hall, and was ordained priest in 1940. He married Jessica Dunning in 1941, and they had four children. After a chaplaincy in the RAF and postings in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk and Weeley, Essex, he became vicar of St James's, Birkdale in 1945, where he published a magazine, The Anvil, which contained illustrations and design by Frank Hampson, articles by C. S. Lewis, Harold MacMillan and Chad Varah, and short stories for children by Geoffrey Trease, and circulated far beyond his parish. He was Honorary Chaplain of St. Bride's, Fleet Street, in the City of London from 1952 to 1983.

Morris became concerned at the effects of imported American comics on British children. He wrote an article for the Sunday Dispatch entitled "Comics that bring Horror into the Nursery", and set out to produce a more wholesome, uplifting alternative. Together with Hampson, he devised a proposed strip for the Sunday Empire News called Lex Christian, about the adventures of a brave inner-city parson, but it fell through after the paper's editor died. He and Hampson then assembled a team of local artists and writers and produced a dummy issue of a new weekly, the Eagle, and presented it to various publishers, of whom Hulton Press agreed to publish it. The first issue proper went on sale on 14 April 1950. Morris and his family moved to Epsom, Surrey, in 1950, and Hampson set up a studio on their house. In November 1951 Morris launched Girl, a girls' counterpart to the Eagle, followed by Robin (1953), for younger children, and Swift (1954), for an audience younger than Eagle and Girl but older than Robin.

From 1954 to 1959 he was managing editor of Hultons' Housewife magazine, and he was also appointed a member of the Hulton Press management committee. He left Hultons in 1959 when they were taken over by Odhams Press, joining the National Magazine Company, a subsidiary of the Hearst Corporation, as editorial director. However, he continued to write serials for the Eagle in the early 1960s, mostly on historical or religious subjects and often in collaboration with Guy Daniel, including "The Golden Man", a biography of Sir Walter Raleigh drawn by Robert Ayton, and "The Road of Courage", a retelling of the life of Christ illustrated by Hampson and Joan Porter.

He became managing director and editor-in-chief of the National Magazine Company in 1964. He was responsible for launching the British edition of Cosmopolitan, created the distributor Comag in association with Condé Nast, and increased the circulation of his magazines at a time when the market was declining. He became deputy chairman in 1979, received the OBE in 1983, and retired in 1984. In his later years he lived in Midford, Somerset, and died on 16 March 1989 at the King Edward VII Hospital for Officers, London. A memorial service was held at St. Bride's, Fleet Street, where he had been honorary chaplain from 1952 to 1983.