Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Sporty Shorty by Roland Davies

Long-time readers will know I'm a big fan of Roland Davies, whose "Come On, Steve!" has been mentioned here quite a few times over the years, so you can imagine how pleased I am to have stumbled across a previously unrecorded strip by Davies in the pages of Everybody's: "Sporty Shorty"—or "Sporting Shorty" as the title seemed to change each week. Davies was a master of the pantomime gag strip... and here's a small selection (sadly all I have) so you can judge for yourself. All date from 1939, the first appearing on 15 April.

(* Everybody's © IPC Media.)

4 comments:

  1. Sporty Shorty appears quite similar to Sportin' Sam (?) who used to appear on the back of the Sunday Express and was by Reg Wootton. I remember about 20/30 years ago there was a comment by the weekly cartoon saying that it was the last one due to the poor health of Reg Wootton & that was that.

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  2. Wootton eventually died in 1995. I've just noticed that a handful of original art boards for his "Sporting Sam" strip are being sold on eBay.

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  3. Funny enough I spotted those Sporting Sam Original Art boards on ebay whilst searching for something completely different!!

    Whilst on the Express newspaper, I just posted a Carl Giles post over on my blog. Someone has commented asking if Giles ever contributed to a cover for the guinness book of world records back in the 70's. I have no idea!! Do you have any recollection of this Steve??

    Piley

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  4. Piley,

    It doesn't ring any bells but that's not to say that it didn't happen. Nice post on Giles, by the way.

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