Thursday, January 02, 2014

Caroline Baker, Barrister at Law part 1

"Caroline Baker, Barrister at Law" is an almost-forgotten romance/adventure strip that appeared in the Daily Express in 1962, drawn by Jose Ortiz, who was one of the finest Spanish artists to work for British comics.
As the strip originally appeared in the Daily Express I tried asking them about it some years ago, but they appeared to have no record of it whatsoever. It was said to have been written by a "famous barrister" but the real author was Willie Patterson, a favourite scriptwriter of mine who also wrote Jeff Hawke for the Express. Ortiz is said to have come over to the UK especially to draw sketches at a magistrates' court.

This particular adventure was reprinted in the Action Book for Girls (1967) and I'll run the whole thing over the next few days.

(* © Express Newspapers Ltd.)

2 comments:

  1. Hi Steve it was good to find your blog post. My Dad was Willie Patterson, here's a post about him on my blog, for interest:
    http://chrysmuirheadwrites.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/remembering-my-father-willie-patterson.html

    I was just reading through his obituary written by Sydney Jordan, Nov86, and was remembering my Father leaving various comics, including the war ones, lying around our Pomarium, Perth, flat where we lived through the 1960's. My Dad travelled up and down to London, also wrote his scripts at an electric typewriter in our living room. I was born 1952, the oldest of 3 girls, so I have the most memories of my Father, the only photos which he took with an instamatic camera c1963/4 in Perth, on tripod, with timer, did selfies.

    I'm now a writer, blogger, social networker, and hope to write some short sci-fi stories at some point, continuing some of the themes my Dad wrote about. My work at present is in mental health, promoting alternatives to psychiatric inpatient treatment.

    Regards, Chrys

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  2. Thanks for your comment, Chrys -- and apologies for not responding sooner. Your Dad's work in comics is still greatly appreciated by fans, although, thanks to the anonymity of comics, he will never receive the full credit that he is due. I'm pleased that some of the research I've done into old comics has unearthed contributions to the war libraries, Swift, Boys World, Tiger... but I'm sure there's an awful lot more still to discover.

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