Space Captain Jim Stalwart: Foreign Reprints

SPACE CAPTAIN JIM STALWART: 

FOREIGN REPRINTS

by Jeremy Briggs

Surprisingly, for a little known British comic strip in a short run children’s newspaper, Space Captain Jim Stalwart was sold abroad and was printed in at least three other countries - Portugal, France and Spain.

Jim Stalwart was published in Portugal in the weekly comic Titã which ran for 42 issues between 12 October 1954 and 10 August 1955. Edited by José da Costa Pessoa and published by P&B, Titã translated and reprinted many well known comic strips including Eagle's Dan Dare and Jeff Arnold, Tintin comic's Blake and Mortimer and the American newspaper strip Terry and the Pirates.

The comic only published the first Jim Stalwart story, The Fantastic Adventures Of The Missing S.200, which ran for 25 weeks from issue 7, 23 November 1954, to issue 31, 25 May 1955, under the title "O Satélite S 200". The British publication of the first story was still ongoing when Titã began publishing it at the same rate as the UK, one page per week, almost three months after their British publication. For Titã the landscape layout of the newspaper strip was changed to a portrait layout to better fit the more traditional shape of the comic.

France began publication of the strip after the Junior Mirror had been cancelled in the UK. Jim Stalwart, Captain De L’Espace was published in the French monthly magazine Pierrot. Both Stalwart adventures that had been completed in the United Kingdom, The Fantastic Adventures Of The Missing S.200 and The Green Star, were published over six issues – numbers 5 to 10, December 1956 to May 1957, and the two stories were printed under close translations of their British titles, “La Disparition Du Satellite S-200” and “L’Etoile Verte”. This second run of Pierrot magazine, “Nouvelle Serie”, itself lasted only 17 issues from August 1956 to December 1957. 

Meanwhile, also in 1957, Stalwart was also published in the Spanish science fiction bi-monthly comic Futuro. The first two issues of Futuro in 1957 ran colour covers featuring Stalwart with the first issue featuring the Beta 1 spaceship approaching the S-200 space station for their version of the story “La Desaparicion Del Satellite S-200”.

(At the time that this article was first published, in Eagle Times v23 #2 in Summer 2010, there was next to nothing on the internet about the Space Captain Jim Stalwart strip. Since that time the National Library of Australia has digitised a selection of newspapers on its Trove website and these include the Melbourne Argus which reprinted Jim Stalwart in its children’s section The Junior Argus. The Argus began publishing the first Stalwart story, The Fantastic Adventures Of The Missing S.200, on 15 October 1954 some six weeks after it began in the UK but does not appear to have completed it.)

Jim Stalwart Stripography

SPACE CAPTAIN JIM STALWART STRIPGRAPHY

by Jeremy Briggs

The tabloid sized Junior Mirror was published by Pictorial Publications beginning with the issue dated 1 September 1954. Edited by Donald Zec, it sold for an initial cover price of 2d, rising later to 3d, and was based on the long running weekly Children's Newspaper which had begun in 1929.  It used the newspaper format of its adult namesake, the Daily Mirror, and featured a few cartoon strips amongst its text articles. For the publication’s young readers the humorous Pip, Squeak and Wilfred strip would have been familiar as it had been running in the Daily Mirror since 1919 while the science fiction Space Captain Jim Stalwart, the canine Flash The Wonder Dog and the western Fighting Tomahawks were new.

The paper was an initial success with sales in the region of 500,000 despite industrial action which halted publication for four weeks for the issues that would have been dated 30 March and 6, 13 and 20 April 1955. However the publication came to an end with issue 75 dated 29 February 1956. With a strike expected in March of that year, which did affect the publication of such comics as Knockout, Lion and Tiger, the decision was made to close the title rather than attempt to ride out what would have been the second strike in the Junior Mirror's relatively short life and its anticipated detrimental effect on the title's sales figures. Jim Stalwart artist Bruce Cornwell received “a curt letter from the editor that a printers strike was going to kill the project stone dead. I can’t say that I was upset. I had plenty of other work at hand and I must say cartooning was somewhat limiting for a trained illustrator like myself.”

The Junior Mirror published three Space Captain Jim Stalwart stories, The Fantastic Adventures Of The Missing S.200, The Green Star, and the incomplete Pirates Of The Spaceways!


The Fantastic Adventures Of The Missing S.200

26 episodes
1 September 1954 (A1) to 23 Feb 1955 (B26)

Space Captain Jim Stalwart is ordered to return to the E.24 base from London by the Space Marshall to investigate why the Genamica fuel powering the new C.12 space freighters is solidifying as they return from the Moon to the S.200 space station in Earth orbit. To make matters worse E.24’s observatory reports that the S.200 has disappeared although the radio room is still receiving the S.200’s signal. Jim and his co-pilot Flight Sergeant Archie Harbottle take the Beta 1 spaceship to investigate not knowing that Jim’s younger brother Space Cadet Tony Stalwart has stowed away. In orbit they find that the S.200 has gone but a small radio transmitting satellite has been left in its place.

An asteroid storm damages the Beta 1 but also pushes it to the same location that the S.200 has ended up. Finding their stowaway, the two men and the boy board the S.200 and talk to its commanding officer Major Borman who tells them of his problems with storm damage and an ill crew however as Tony explores the station he discovers an alien Satik from Saturn. Jim and Archie don’t believe Tony but on discovering that they have been locked in their cabin, the men escape and while Archie repairs the Beta 1 Jim disappears into a ballast tank. When they realise Jim is missing, Archie and Tony search the station and discover Jim being held as a Satik prisoner.

On telling Borman of their discovery, Borman pulls a hand gun on them and reveals the truth as the Satiks bring Jim to the room. On an inspection trip to the Moon, Borman had discovered a new metal with amazing properties which he smuggled on board the S.200 where crewmen were bribed into refining it. He was selling the new metal to the Satiks for a vast profit however the refining process gave off radiation which caused the fuel to solidify and Borman decided to move the station to Saturn’s orbit before he was found out. Unfortunately the asteroid storm had damaged the station. Now, obsessed by power and referring to himself as The Great Borman, he gives them 10 hours to decide between death or joining him.

Escaping from their cell, Jim, Archie and Tony send a mayday from the radio room before neutralising the radiation so that they can escape in the unarmed Beta 1. As they launch, they see armed Satik ships approaching but are saved by E.24’s G Squadron who drive off the Satik vessels and then take control of the S.200. A search of the station shows that Borman has escaped justice but his new metal, called Balite, will revolutionise spaceship construction. Safely back on Earth Jim Archie and Tony are all awarded the Space Legion Medal Of Merit and Tony is promoted to Chief Cadet First Class.



The Green Star

34 episodes
2 March 1955 (B27) to 16 November 1955 (B60)

Note: this story was advertised in B26 as “Next Week – The Mystery Of The Green Star” however the title panel of B27 refers to it simply as The Green Star.

Jim Stalwart is ordered to take command of Moon Base 1 with Archie Harbottle assigned with him and Tony Stalwart is included as part of his cadet training. With Beta 1 under repair they take an X.71 to the moon. The moon base is sealed under a transparent dome and after landing they are walking to the headquarters building when Tony saves the elderly Professor Erkintoss from being knocked down by a vehicle. To show his appreciation the Professor offers Tony a place on his expedition to the dark side of the Moon using Super Land Trucks, half tracked lunar rovers. Jim agrees and assigns Archie to the expedition as well. Setting out from Moon Base 1 the expedition sights the Green Star, a moving celestial phenomenon that has recently appeared in the solar system.

While driving over the flat Cara Plateau, one of the vehicles breaks the surface crust and partially sinks. While the other expedition trucks pull it free, Tony ventures away from the site and discovers a piece of alien equipment. As he attempts to free it he falls through the crust into a chamber. Discovering that he has disappeared, Archie informs Jim at Moon Base 1 and launches a search. Jim flies to the site in a Scooter Jet, and discovers Tony by falling into the same chamber which they realise contains an alien space craft. Once they are rescued from the chamber, alien craft appear in the sky and, with two circling, one lands. As the rest watch from a distance, Jim investigates the craft alone and is suddenly surrounded by the craft’s alien crew. Attempting to rescue him, Archie and Tony are also captured and when they are taken inside the craft, the Professor orders the Super Land Trucks to be parked around the spacecraft to prevent it taking off.

Inside the craft the aliens force Jim into a machine which allows them to learn English. The friendly Tukanan leader Socha warns Jim that the Moon is in great danger from the Green Star which destroyed their home world, Tuka. With time running short and the Green Star causing radio interference, the Tukanas agree to transport the expedition crew back to Moon Base 1. There Jim orders the entire base to be evacuated into space on ships and he decides to use the X.71 packed with the high explosive Tritureum to destroy the Green Star. Jim and Archie pilot the X.71 onto a collision course with the Green Star and escape in life pod as the explosion destroys the Green Star. With everyone safely back on Moon Base 1, the Tukanas are allowed to settle on the Moon by way of thanking them for their help.


Pirates Of The Spaceways!

15 episodes
23 November 1955 (B61) to 29 February 1956 (C75)

Note: this story was advertised in B60 as “Next Week – Pirates Of The Spaceways!” however none of the actual episodes include a story name in their title panels

After their near death encounter with the Green Star, Jim Stalwart and Archie Harbottle have been assigned to rest duties in the control tower of Moon Base 1 where they are growing bored. Tony Stalwart is on his way to Mars on the Martian 1 freighter commanded by Space Captain Jock MacKenzie when the Space Marshal orders the two men to fly Police Commissioner Higgins to Mars to investigate a security leak. They lift off the next day in the Martian 2 freighter along with the Commissioner, his bumbling secretary Augustus Potts and six large canisters of Eukalium fuel.

While in space they come across seven men floating in their spacesuits and on bringing the barely conscious men on board, discover that they are Jock MacKenzie and the crew of the Martian 1 but Tony is not with them. Jock warns them of the Black Raider, a spaceship that suddenly appeared from behind a radiation cloaking shield and attacked them. Now a prisoner on board the Black Raider, Tony is taken to see its commander Major Borman who now styles himself as an Admiral. Borman uses the Black Raider to attack Jim’s Martian 2 with a freezing ray but Tony is able to switch off the ray before the crew of the Martian 2 are overcome and Jim prevents Archie from firing on the Raider as Tony remains on board. With Tony restrained, the Black Raider attacks the Martian 2 a second time and successfully freezes the crew. Borman’s deputy, Leffman, boards the Martian 2 with alien Satiks to get the cargo of Eukalium but Jim is able to move enough to fire at the Raider and destroys its freezing weapon. As the Satiks escape, Leffman is left trapped on the ship.

Borman now offers his hostage, Tony, for the Eukalium cargo but Jim refuses and Borman makes his escape with the captive Tony in the now invisible Raider. Interrogating Leffman, Jim discovers that Borman’s base is in the Asteroid Belt and the Space Marshal assigns him a squadron of fast Gamma spaceships to hunt Borman down. Jim follows a trail of wreckage from the Raider towards the Asteroid Belt.

Note: This is where the strip concluded in the final issue of Junior Mirror. However the conclusion of the story was printed in text form below that week’s Stalwart strip under the heading “Now Read How Jim Stalwart’s Adventure Ended”, and included two panels from what would have been the next issue’s comic strip which would have been C76.

Tony refuses to give Borman any information on the Moon’s supply of Eukalium and Borman puts him in the captured Martian 1 on course for the Satiks on Saturn. Jim rendezvous’ with the Gamma squadron and leads them through the Asteroid Belt to recover Tony from the Martian 1. Tony has planted a tracking device on the Black Raider which means that Jim and the squadron are able to find and attack the ship. Borman uses a spacesuit to get to the Martian 2 before his ship explodes and he is arrested to stand trial for his crimes.


(* This article was first published in Eagle Times v23 #2 in Summer 2010.)

Bruce Cornwell's Forgotten Space Captain: Jim Stalwart

BRUCE CORNWELL'S FORGOTTEN SPACE CAPTAIN :

JIM STALWART

by Jeremy Briggs

Artist Bruce Cornwell joined the Hampson Studio in 1950 and so worked on Dan Dare from the very first issue of Eagle as well as working on the Tommy Walls advertising strip. His forte was the drawing of technology so while other team members concentrated on figure work, colours or backgrounds, Cornwell often produced panels that included spaceships and other vehicles. Leaving the Dan Dare fold several years later he would return twice to Dan Dare, first in the 1950s when the Hampson team had moved from Southport to Espom where his model making skills were used to create reference models of spaceships and again in the 1960s when he teamed up with Don Harley to illustrate the strip after Frank Bellamy moved from Dan Dare in Eagle to Thunderbirds in TV Century 21.

In those intervening years Cornwell worked on a number of different projects including illustrating the Kemlo and Tas science fiction children’s novels of EC Eliott, where he was credited as A Bruce Cornwell, as well as the Journey Into Space comic strip in Express Weekly based on the BBC radio series. However one of the first strips that he worked on after leaving Dan Dare was a black and white science-fiction comic strip in the short lived weekly newspaper aimed at children, the Junior Mirror. That strip was Space Captain Jim Stalwart.  

The Space Captain Jim Stalwart strip began in issue 1 of the Junior Mirror dated 1 September 1954 and continued in all 75 issues of the publication with Bruce Cornwell illustrating the strip throughout its run. He recalled, “My agent came up with the project. I wasn’t too keen but I must admit that the money had an influence”. The strip told three sequential stories, The Fantastic Adventures Of The Missing S.200, The Green Star, and Pirates Of The Spaceways! This third story was still running when the paper was cancelled and rather than leave it hanging the a brief text conclusion was printed in its final issue.

Set on Earth and in the inner solar system at an undefined point in the future, Jim Stalwart was a captain in the Space Legion and the officer in charge of Space Station E.24 which was actually a ground base near London. He was a commanding officer who flew his own spaceships and lead from the front. With him for the three stories were his co-pilot Flight Sergeant Archie Harbottle (above), “a handy chap to have in a tight squeeze” and his rather over enthusiastic younger brother Space Cadet Tony Stalwart (below) who was enrolled at the base school. The stories made use of spaceships, space stations, moon bases as well as aliens from both inside and outside the solar system with Tony Stalwart invariably being on hand to give a character for the strip’s young readers to identify with.

The art chores were split between Bruce Cornwell and C Bannerman with CE Webber providing the lettering. Cornwall remembered, “I did all the layout and all the finished artwork. I would do the artwork in pencil and then pass it to Bannerman who would put in the figures that I had drawn in rough form; on its return I would then finish the frame in ink.” While he never met Bannerman, Cornwell worked to his strengths on the strip with spaceships, cars and lunar rovers and the artwork is at its best when he gets to provide large panels featuring technical detail of his vehicles. “The fundamental reason for splitting the strip up this way was because of the time element. I had other work on board and couldn’t cope with the technical demands of the script and the figure work,” said Cornwell. He also never met Webber, “His job was to put the lettering in the balloons. The system worked logically in drawing the frame I would draw the balloon and dialogue and when finished would rub it out, knowing that he had room to do his bit.”

The format of the strip was black and white line art in three rows which would take up around half of page eleven of the sixteen page paper, the same page that the three rows of Pip, Squeak and Wilfred were printed on. Early episodes were fairly consistent in their layout and tended to be made up of a title panel with three small panels in the first row while the next two rows consisted of either three larger panels or four smaller panels. The original artwork was produced half size up – 50% bigger than the publication size.

The format remained fairly consistent until the 2 February 1955 issue when The Fighting Tomahawks, illustrated by Richard Jennings, was moved into the Pip, Squeak and Wilfred slot. It stayed there for seven weeks until it was moved away and with the May 4 1955 issue Jim Stalwart was increased in size to fill the full width of the page rather than the outside three quarters as before. This was done simply by increasing the size of the artwork reproduction as the lettering accompanying the art correspondingly increased in size. The beginning of the third story, Pirates of the Spaceways!, was heralded with a full length figure of Stalwart taking up the left hand side of the strip and four rows of panels before the art settled back the next week to three rows with the figure of Stalwart in the title panel becoming two rows tall. It remained this way with Stalwart in various poses until the title’s final issue.

Each episode was identified with a letter and number code, the letter indicating the calendar year beginning with A in 1954 and the number indicating the issue number of the paper that the art was appearing in. Therefore the numbering system ran from A1 in the first issue in 1954 to C75 in the final issue in 1956, with A18 on 29 December 1954 being followed by B19 on 5 January 1955 and B66 on 28 December 1955 being followed by C67 on 4 January 1956.

To eyes used to craft from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars, the designs of the spaceships and space stations now look as old fashioned as their better known Dan Dare equivalents, however Cornwell’s designs for both the earth based and the lunar vehicles remain remarkably fresh and the detail of the interiors still stand up to adult scrutiny over fifty years after they were drawn. Why have a simple doorbell when you could insert your hand into a “Foto Electric Bell Unit Mk 5” to announce your presence?

The figure work is generally good with the alien Tukanas (above) in the second story having a classy ancient Egyptian look to them. That said the Saturnian Satiks (below) who appear in the first and third stories look suspiciously like they could have come from an early episode of Doctor Who, created by actors in a radiation suits with metal claws for hands. Despite this the stories are surprisingly complex with plot points from earlier episodes only falling into place as the story progresses although the scripts do often rely heavily on meaningless technical terms to fill out the word balloons. “I don’t know who wrote the scripts and I must admit I never asked,” said Cornwell.

Yet it is hard to get away from the fact that the strip is a Dan Dare clone used by the Junior Mirror so that they would have a character similar to Eagle’s well known space pilot. While the fictional date of the Stalwart stories is never given, this is a world that has the same level of technology and a similar knowledge of alien cultures as the early Dare stories, with spaceships launching from ramps and space stations in orbit. Although at ten black and white panels per week it was never going to stand up to the two pages of full colour Dan Dare, in comparison to the early stories of that better known Dan Dare clone, Lion’s Captain Condor, the plotlines are more interesting and the artwork is considerably better.

The character was considered popular enough in 1955 for an actor dressed as him to open a space ship attraction in Hove near Brighton. The Junior Mirror dated 8 June of that year features a photo of the actor at the seaside resort surrounded by children and standing in the back of a three wheeled Bond Mark C Minicar (a predecessor of the better know Bond Bug) with prominent Junior Mirror advertising panels on it. “Free Taxi Rides For Readers” announced the photo’s blurb. “Junior Mirror taxi runabouts have made their debut for the summer season. Look out for them throughout the holidays. Use your Junior Mirror to flag them for free taxi rides.”

Indeed on the front page of issue 49 in August of that year the same Minicar from the photograph, registration 783 CML, was used for an advertising cartoon illustrated by Reg Smythe before he went on to create Andy Capp for the adult version of the Mirror.

Yet today the Junior Mirror is all but forgotten, along with its spaceman character, and even a search for “Space Captain Jim Stalwart” in google.com returns just one solitary hit, a passing mention in Steve Holland’s history of Look and Learn magazine. Perhaps because the strip was in a publication that was to all effective purposes a newspaper, there was no desire on the part of its original young readers to retain it as part of a collection that they would reread in the future.

This is a pity because it has deprived that future of an interesting period piece containing some lovely black and white artwork.

With thanks to Ray Carnes and Richard Sheaf, and especially Bruce Cornwell for his time and recollections.

(* At the time that this article was first published, in Eagle Times v23 #1 in Spring 2010, as the penultimate paragraph suggests there was next to nothing on the internet about the Space Captain Jim Stalwart strip. When I broke the news of Bruce Cornwell’s passing on downthetubes in March 2012 , I mentioned the strip amongst the others that he had worked on, while Steve Holland here on Bear Alley and Will Grenham on the Eagle Times blog also mentioned the strip in their obituaries for him. The details of those obituaries have since been included in various on-line bios of Bruce meaning that at least the title of the strip is now much more widely spread that it was when this article first appeared. Indeed you can now read some episodes of the strip from its publication in the Melbourne Argus newspaper on the National Library Of Australia’s Trove website. However rather than update the original article I have decided to leave that part of the text in its original form as it displays how little was available at that time.)