20,000 Leagues Under the Sea part 6

 

(* Artwork © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)

Comic Cuts - 16 March 2012

When people talk about the best laid plans of mice and men, they rarely think about what the mice were planning. I imagine it was to wander around a bit, find some food and to avoid predators. Thinking back to last weekend, I think my carefully thought out notions of how I was going to spend the weekend must have been somehow mixed up with some rodent's plans.

So, rather than spend Saturday catching up on a bit of scanning for the Gwyn Evans book, I actually spent more time wandering around town doing the weekly shopping. The plan for Sunday was to make sure the scanning was finished, sort out the strip for the blog, juggle some files around that needed to be sent off during the week.

Things had started to go wrong on Friday when an unexpected visitor turned up in the morning; then the Raymond Buxton piece (posted Sunday) took far longer to compile than I expected; I could have caught up on Sunday morning but we decided to take advantage of the nice weather to attack our overgrown garden. Then the Guardian asked for a piece, pronto, on Moebius. That was delivered 1 o'clock Monday afternoon and went live a couple of hours later on the website — a turnaround of less than 24 hours. Not bad.

I finally catch up on Friday's work on Tuesday and do the file juggling on Wednesday while writing up a couple of pieces for the Illustration Art Gallery blog and somewhere along the line I managed to get some pics cleaned up for today's random scans. I've caught up maybe a half-day of the day and a half I somehow lost.

I have plans for this weekend. I'll let you know if they worked out next week... if you don't hear anything, the predators got me.

On an entirely other matter...

I was delighted to hear recently from Jennie Paterson who mentioned that a short piece on Hank Janson was appearing in the magazine Slightly Foxed. Well, I have the article in front of me and I rather enjoyed Colin Dunne's memories of reading Hank as a schoolboy in the 1950s. The idea of rolling up coverless copies and tucking them behind the radiator may strike readers nowadays as a little farfetched, but I remember my Dad telling me that he, too, was a secret Hank Janson reader and that any copies that passed around the classrooms had the covers removed; getting caught with a smutty book was a caning offence.

I didn't read any of Hank's books until the early 1980s and the covers, good though they were, had little impact on someone who grew up with page 3 and paperbacks which regularly had nudes on the covers. I can appreciate their qualities and the superb artistry of Reg Heade but thirty years had certainly dulled, if not wholly crushed, any idea that they might be 'obscene'.

But that got me thinking about a statement I made in The Trials of Hank Janson, which Colin mentions: "Without Janson, we might still be reading expurgated versions of Lady Chatterley's Lover and Fanny Hill might be consigned to history." I doubt if that's true. Hank's legacy was the introduction a "literary merit" defence &mash; achieved by dint of trying to establish what was also available at the time (1954) and the judge giving a more than strong hint that those books that were being used as comparisons should also be prosecuted. Suddenly, respected publishers were in the dock and action was taken to prevent this kind of thing happening again. Hence the successful defence of Lady Chatterley.

In principal the statement is correct, but I'm sure that, somewhere along the line, had Hank not existed to spur the introduction of the Obscene Publications Act, some other book or author would have come along that would have had a similar effect. It may have taken a few years but I'm sure it would have happened eventually.

Further information about Slightly Foxed, including back issues and subscription prices, can be found at their website.

Tuesday (20 March) sees the release of a set of comics-related stamps from the Royal Mail in celebration of the Dandy's 75th anniversary; a little early, but what the heck... it's nice to see British comics being celebrated in any way possible. The Royal Mail will be releasing a presentation pack, first day covers, pin badges and a puzzle, too. More information from their website.

Random scannery: Kind of celebrating the release of John Carter (of Mars)... written by Edgar Rice Burroughs... who wrote Tarzan... who inspired a number of Tarzan copycats... here are a quartet of Ron Turner's Tarzanesque covers from the early 1950s.

 

 

 

In a desperate attempt to catch up on Bear Alley Books work, I'm running 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea over the weekend. Actually, this was planned last week as it means the strip ends quite neatly on Thursday. Someone was asking recently whether I intended putting out the strip in book form and the answer is... I'm not sure. I certainly have plans to put some of the strips that we've run here on Bear Alley between covers. and hopefully I'll have some news along those lines soon.

(* Our column header relates to the Raymond Buxton piece from last weekend... I didn't get the chance to scan this one at the time.)

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea part 5

 

(* Artwork © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea part 4

 

(* Artwork © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea part 3

 

(* Artwork © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)

Jean Giraud (Moebius) (1938-2012)

Jean Giraud, who adopted the pen-names Gir and Moebius for his comic strip work, died on Saturday, 10 March, aged 73. In Europe, his Blueberry series of westerns, originally penned by Jean-Michel Charlier but latterly by Giraud, were best-sellers, drawn by Giraud in a realistic style; in America he was best known for his more surreal explorations of science fiction and fantasy, first seen in the pages of Heavy Metal. Giraud was co-founder of the original French magazine Metal Hurlant, for whose pages he drew Arzach, The Airtight Garage and The Incal. These were reprinted in the US by Marvel/Epic and led to Giraud drawing a two-part Silver Surfer story written by Stan Lee.

Giraud was widely recognised within the comics field, winning awards at Lucca, Angouleme and elsewhere; outside the field, he was an acclaimed designer, working on films ranging from Alien to Space Jam. I've written a longer piece for The Guardian which you'll find linked below.

Here I'll just add that Giraud was an occasional contributor to British comics through reprints. His first Blueberry album, 'Fort Navajo', was reprinted in Valiant in 1965 and four albums were translated by Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge (better known as the translators of Asterix) for Egmont/Methuen in 1977-78. Some Mobius strips were reprinted in A1 (Atomeka) and various Marvel/Epic collections were distributed in the UK by Titan.

Obituaries: The Guardian (13 March 2012), The Independent (17 March).

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea part 2

 

(* Artwork © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea part 1

This is a classic story from the pen of Jules Verne that probably doesn't need any introduction. It marked the debut of Captain Nemo, one of Verne's most enduring characters. If you want to learn more about the history of the book, check out Wikipedia. Enjoy!

 

(* Artwork © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)

Raymond Buxton

This latest episode in our occasional "Mysteries that have me mystified" series concerns Raymond Buxton and some comments he made in a letter to a fellow writer back in February 1950. At the time Buxton was living in north London — and for many years it was the only address for him that I could locate — and was acting as secretary of the Writers' Guild and as an author's agent.

In his letter, Buxton claimed that he had "published with quite a crowd under one of my seven names". A handful of books had been published under his own name up to that point but (and here's the mystery) not one of his seven names are known... although I do have one suspect. So who were the "crowd" that Buxton published with and what pen-names did he adopt?

Here's what I know. When I became interested in old British gangster novels many years ago, I was fortunate to pick up a nice little collection of books from Modern Fiction, the London-based publisher of Ben Sarto and "Griff". Buxton was also one of the early writers and his style was fairly distinctive, especially his use of ellipses in dialogue. The same style was visible in a handful of other novels published under house names in the early 1950s from the same publisher, although all after the February 1950 letter. I'm certain that Buxton penned novels under the names Hava Gordon, Spike Gordon, Griff, Don Rogan, Ben Sarto and Hank Spencer.

In 1952, Stanley Baker published a novel under Buxton's own name — a collaboration with sports writer Ben Bennison — which contained a note that read "Raymond Buxton is the author of No Gentle Lady, Hangman's Hill, Terror at Junniper, Broken Liebestraum, etc." Both No Gentle Lady and Broken Liebestraum had appeared under his own name, but the other two books (Hangman's Hill and Terror at Junniper) have never been traced. There was a novel, Hangman's Hill published in the USA by Dodd under the byline Franklyn Pell, but this was the pen-name of Frank E. Pellegrin. So that's the second mystery.

Buxton's earliest known book was Broken Liebestraum, published in 1944, a romance set in the fictional town of Ouldswark and surrounding villages of the Yorkshire Wolds. The story covers the lives and romances of a number of characters, the title derived from the German "liebesträum"("love dream" or "dream of love"); Franz Liszt's piano pieces under that title get a specific mention.

His next known novel was from Modern Fiction in 1947, the first of a series of tough crime yarns that would appear over the next couple of years. A list of those known novels turns up an interesting pattern...

Broken Liebestraum. London, Gerald G. Swan, Mar 1944.
Midsummer Madness. London, Modern Fiction, Oct 1947; reprinted with additional short story 'Where There's Dames There's Trouble' by Vale Tempest, Modern Fiction, Jun 1950.
No Gentle Lady. London, Modern Fiction, Mar 1948.
A Rope for a Gal Called Lou (Lou). London, C.M. & Co., Jan 1950.
Unhappy Souls (as Don Rogan). London, Modern Fiction, Apr 1950.
Dames Take to Crime (as Don Rogan; Lou). London, C.M. & Co., Jun 1950.
Gale Gallyon Takes a Hand (as Spike Gordon). London, Modern Fiction, Oct 1950.
Gunmen Die Hard (as Don Rogan). London, Modern Fiction, May 1951.
The Black Wraith; or, See How They Run, with Ben Bennison. Richmond, Surrey, Stanley Baker, Jan 1952; reprinted, Brighton, Sussex, Stanley Baker (Thriller Library 5), May 1955.
Caribbean Cutie (as "Griff"). London, Modern Fiction, Jun 1953.
I Don't Get It (as Spike Gordon). London, Modern Fiction, Jul 1953.
Dead on Arrival (by Hava Gordon). London, Modern Fiction, Nov 1953.
Bad-Luck Cutie (by Hank Spencer). London, Modern Fiction, Dec 1953.
Dumb Babes Don't Die (by Hank Spencer). London, Modern Fiction, Feb 1954.
Necks of Sinners (by Hank Spencer). London, Modern Fiction, Feb 1954.
Corpse in the Cabin (by Ben Sarto). London, Modern Fiction, Nov 1954.

There's an interesting two-year gap between the May 1951 publication of Gunmen Die Hard and the June 1953 publication of Caribbean Cutie. The only novel to appear in that gap was The Black Wraith, a collaboration with sports journalist Ben Bennison about dog track racing. So what was he up to?

This was pretty much where I was stuck at for some years until I stumbled across a little book by someone calling themselves R. Boyd. The title was Murder by Arrow, published by Len Miller in about 1949. It's a typical English murder mystery, not especially well written but with some stylistic similarities to Buxton's writing. This led me to Raymond Boyd, who was credited with a paperback and a couple of hardbacks, namely...

Death Joins the Party. London, Mellifont Press, Jul 1944.
Fetch Me a Rope. London, Hammond, Hammond & Co., 1947.
Murder is a Furtive Thing. London, Hammond, Hammond & Co., 1950.

... which slot in nicely with Buxton's known works. I've never read any of the above books, so don't take this as confirmation that Boyd is Buxton. It does, however, give us a first chink in the armour of that curious "one of my seven names" comment.

I recently tried to nail down further information on Buxton, this time taking a different approach. I believe he was based in London after the war at two addresses: 38 Chalcot Square, Chalk Farm N1 [1946-48] and 387 North Circular Road, London NW10 [1949-50], although the latter is the only confirmed address.

At that time (February 1950) he was secretary of the Writers' Guild and here we can glean a few more clues. There were a number of publications related to the Writers' Guild, namely the poetry magazine Troubadour, which appears to have run irregularly between 1949 and 1956, and the anthology series Modern Story. At least one issue of the latter was published by Modern Fiction under Buxton's editorship in 1949. The Writers' Guild was also linked to the Society of New Authors, established around 1948, who published their own magazine, SONA.

The poet and politician Phyllis Shand Allfrey, best known for her novel The Orchid House (see her brief entry on Wikipedia) was a member of the Writers' Guild whilst living in London and I quote from Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert's Phyllis Shand Allfrey: A Caribbean Life:

Her membership in the Writers' Guild and Society of New Authors suggested way in which politics and literature could be integrated. The Writers' Guild brought together an assortment of professional and amateur writers of Leftist persuasions—reviewers, children's story writers, reporters, poets—all sharing an interest in meeting in a friendly spirit to discuss one another's work and offer support. The group would often meet at her Fulham flat and occasionally visit Penhurst. It had even formed a small press to publish members' work. Phyllis's "The Untanglers," the tale of Marion's marital woes, was published as a booklet under the auspices of the guild.

The Writers' Guild published only a handful of booklets over the years as far as I can tell.

London Renewed by Florence L. Wickelgren. Upton Bishop, Writers' Guild, 1953; reprinted, Ross-on-Wye, Raymond Buxton, n.d. [1959].
Contrasts: Poems by Phyllis Shand Allfrey. Barbados, Advocate Press for the Writers' Guild of Great Britain, 1955.
The Real Democracy by M. Enoch [pseud]. [Ross-on-Wye, Writers' Guild], 1956.
Some Gems of Early Lyrical Poetry by Florence L. Wickelgren. Ross-on-Wye, Writers' Guild, 1956.
Sunflakes and Stardust: Caribbean and other poems by Hilda Macdonald. [Ross-on-Wye, Writers' Guild], 1956.
The State Within the State by Usha Mahesvari Mahendran. Gloucester, Writers' Guild, 1956.
Prose and Poetry from the Painted Room by members of the Oxford Writers' Circle. Gloucester, Blackfriars Press, for Writers' Guild, 1957.
Healing Hands by Marjorie Phyllis Lane. Brockhampton, Herefordshire, Writers' Guild and Society of New Authors, 1959.

The place of publication gives us a clue as to what happened to Buxton after 1950. By 1954, he was living at Guild House, Upton Bishop [1954-59] before moving to Guild House, Brockhampton, How Caple [1960-61], both Herefordshire villages. The map below (a screen grab from Google Maps) shows the location of the two villages (A is Upton Bishop, B is Brockhampton) with nearby Ross-on-Wye to the south.

That Buxton named his home Guild House perhaps tells us that the Writers' Guild was a vital part of his life. Buxton is listed in the 1961 phone book as living in Brockhampton, near How Caple, but afterwards disappears off the radar again. He might have moved again, or maybe he died, although the only suspect I have is one Frank R. Buxton, whose death was registered in Bromyard, Herefordshire, in 2Q 1961, aged 77. (Bromyard is 10-15 miles north of Brockhampton.)

What happened to the Writers' Guild and the Society of New Authors? Florence Louise Wickelgren, born in 1875 and for much of her life a school teacher and headmistress, died in 1963; Phyllis Shand Allrey, born in 1916, died in 1986. But perhaps other references to the guild and to SONA might be found.

Update: 14 March 2012
Jamie Sturgeon has pointed me in the direction of another twist in the Buxton story. After briefly living in Brockhampton, it seems that Buxton moved to the Isle of Wight, as a number of writers' directories and adverts give his address as 63 St Mary's Road, Cowes, in circa 1962 and subsequently 9 Osborne Road, East Cowes, circa 1963-68. In the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook for 1965 Buxton is still described as the Hon. Sec. Genl. of the Writers' Guild. The Guild was said to have been founded in 1939 and, by the mid-1960s, was claiming: "WG has for 25 years championed the cause of new and unknown authors. This international writers' fellowship is keenly interested in new writers, and WG services are designed to advance beginners. Advice on novels and plays, "ghosting", revisions, MSS edited and marketed."

The President of the Guild was Kennedy Williamson, M.A., F.R.S.L., who wrote a number of books on the subject of writing stories and articles in the 1930s. His full name was William Kennedy Williamson (1892-1979).

I have the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook for 1966 and can find no trace of Buxton or the Writers' Guild, so it is possible that it folded around 1964/65 and later mentions elsewhere are simply a hang-over from earlier listings.

Whacko!

Whacko!

by Richard Sheaf & Dez Skinn

with help from the good folks over at the Comics UK forum

One of the things I like about collecting comics is not knowing what’s out there to collect, it’s not like stamp collecting where it’s very clear what you’ll spend the next x years collecting. Why? Only one publisher (the Royal Mails of this world) of course. Luckily, comics isn’t like that and recently (as I’ve nearly finished collecting the titles that form my core comics collection) I’ve diversified into collecting titles that were published by companies other than Fleetway/IPC or DC Thomson – the nearest British comics have to the ‘Royal Mail’ in my earlier example. One such area of my collecting is examples of comics that never were – comics that got as far as being shown to potential readers and advertisers but never quite made it any further. These are pretty obscure and hard to collect, so imagine my surprise about a year ago when I came across a copy of a ‘comic’ whose potential readers, I guess, never got to see it because it never got much further than the drawing board.

Welcome to Whacko!, the comic that never was.

Let’s have a look at it and see what we’ve got here.

What it is is a dummy copy of a title, not a dummy that would have been printed by the publisher and shown to kids to gauge their reaction, no this this from a stage before that when, whoever it was was trying to get their boss to pay for thousands of copies to be given to kids. Sixteen ‘pages’ long, except they’re not pages, they’re thick card with photocopied art stuck down on top of it, stitched together in the middle and the front and back cover given a plastic coating to protect it.

Question is, who made it? As we’ll see as we go along there are good artists involved so that got me wondering whether or not it was a failed IPC project. Over to comics legend Dez Skinn for an investigation as to whether or not it was… this is what he had to say based on just a scan of the front cover:

i) The main title box: Nobody at IPC would be daft enough to miss the chance of making the logo stand out better with a full colour background. 

ii) The "1p" price. IPC would never have used a small cap for the P, which it is with the bottom of the 1 level with the bottom of the P. Neither would they have missed the chance to shout about the low price. 

iii) The topline as a title box tagline. Nah, not our/their style! 

iv) Jolly new comic? Jolly? No chance! 

v) The pencil and shadow lines would have been removed at proof stage (obviously Walls didn't bother with proofs so they didn't realise until it was printed that all the shadows and pencil would show!) 

vi) The title box for the cover story would be the same height as the first story pic (!). 

vii) The title logo's outline is very shaky. IPC's Central Art Department on the 6th floor of New Fleetway House used precision tools (now long gone) and would never have produced such a messy logo. 

viii) And that awful colouring. While the art and lettering's Fleetway standard, the colouring's appalling in both the strip and the title logo (black, green, yellow and red? Never!)

So that rules them out of the equation. As we’ll see from the strips and the proposed advertising this is a comic produced by or for Lyons. The content listing is as follows:

Where the art is unsigned the most likely artists name has been noted (in brackets). None of the artwork in the dummy is original – but the strips weren’t used by the artists anywhere else so they are unique to Whacko!, enjoy reading them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, what else can we deduce from our look at Whacko!? Well it must have been produced around 1971 as there is a decimal price on the cover but adverts in shillings & pence (decimalisation happened on 15th February 1971). Terry Bave’s serialised autobiography appeared across 3 issues of the classic British comics fanzine, Golden Fun (issues 15-17) but no mention is made of Whacko! there.

The stories are all unusual in that in none of them is the product they are promoting vital to the success of the story or a reward for the efforts of the character. Early ‘Tommy Walls’ stories in Eagle magazine had Tommy given almost superhuman powers once he had consumed a bit of his favourite ice cream. As the stories progressed it became more about the reward at the end of the story being some Walls ice cream rather than the ice cream enabling you to leap onto the wing of a flying aeroplane (see the very first issue of Eagle for that story).

To end our story, and for a bit of fun, Dez Skinn kindly got out his photoshop paintbrush and re-imagined Whacko! with a ‘proper’ IPC layout…