Scrapbook: Hugh Cudlipp, Tom Clarke

I'm still sorting through some old reference books, which will be heading onto eBay next week hopefully. Sometimes I find little scraps tucked into the pages, bookmarks, or even newspaper clippings. Here are a couple I found over the weekend.

First up, an obituary from the Daily Mirror, 18 May 1998. Hugh Cudlipp was editor of that paper for decades. My dad read the Mirror and I did, too, although a lot of that was down to habit and a desire to keep reading Garth, The Perishers, and Jane.

Then there's a smaller obit for Tom Clarke, who edited various papers in the 1920s and 1930s. This I found in his book on Lord Northcliffe, which I'll be selling. Lastly, a rate card from the Sunday Dispatch, dated July 1959. Now you know how much a page of advertising would have cost you.

Rock 'n' Roll Zoo (Sounds)

Occasionally, the boxes of paperwork I've accumulated over the years provide me something that sparks a memory. Here are two episodes of Rock 'n' Roll Zoo by Savage Pencil (Edwin Pouncey) from my days of reading Sounds, where the strip appeared alongside early work by Steve Moore and Alan Moore.

Pouncey also contributed to small press comics, early issues of Escape and to AARGH! in 1988. The Rock 'n' Roll Zoo strip started in 1977 and the 1981 episode below was one of the last as it ended that year. It was later revived in the magazine Top. You can find out more about Pouncey's eclectic career as an artist and musician (alongside other comics' luminaries like Ed Pinsent and Nick Neocleous) by visiting his Wikipedia entry.

Dave Gibbons, interview from 1999

Here's a twenty-year-old interview with Dave Gibbons from the pages of the April 1996 issue of science magazine Frontiers. Lots of Moebius and Dan Dare on the shelves, and, tucked away on the top shelf, a copy of the Comic Book Price Guide that I was one of the compilers of. Clearly not only a genius but a man of good taste...

A Clockwork Orange (re-release, March 2000)

Few would argue that A Clockwork Orange is a cinematic masterpiece. Well, when it was re-released in the UK in March 2000 – after spending many years in limbo after its director, Stanley Kubrik, pulled it out of cinemas following a backlash against its original release – the papers managed to find a couple of people who hated it, more for the loss of innocence it represented because, 28 years after its initial outing, it had lost its ability to shock so deeply.

There have always been people who will take up a contrary position just to sell a column, but even as recently as 2000, I always thought that the people held those opinions and were able to express them reasonably, even if I disagreed with them. Nowadays, vile opinions have been weaponised through social media and newspapers demand outrage from their writers to attract clicks and comments. Re-reading these clippings, even 19 years ago feels like a more innocent time.

(And, yes, I'm aware of the irony.)

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Blaise, Batman, Blondie & Co.

From the pages of ABC Film Review, an article about comic strip characters in movies dating from 1966.

As a bonus, I've included a piece on Michael Caine's superb Alfie which was in the same issue.

Kerrang! Komics

Back in 1981, a new rock magazine concentrating on the heavier and thrashier end of the spectrum made its debut. From the makers of Sounds, which had championed the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, it rode the metal boom of the early eighties, back in the days before Mick Jagger got his bus pass and Ozzy could still string a sentence together, as long as that sentence was "I need more drugs and booze, Sharon!"

I was there from issue one. I sold a huge stack of them many years ago but, somehow, forty issues (41-80) missed the earlier cull, so I sold them off recently on Ebay. But before they disappeared, I scanned a few covers which had comic connections. The first was the cover for issue #63 which I think is by Jim McCarthy. The second is a Japanese-inspired piece by Steve "Krusher" Joule, Kerrang!'s art director from 1982 on. Joule had previously been a freelancer designing sleeves for Motorhead, Iron Maiden, Ozzy, Gary Moore and Hawkwind, amongst others and would remain with Kerrang! for a decade.

The covers for #68 and #75 were drawn by Jim McCarthy and Ian Gibson, and shortly after the comic strip, 'Pandora Peroxide', started. Drawn by Ray Zell, the first strip appeared in Extra Kerrang! #2 in 1984 and the second episode in Kerrang! #76. The strip was dropped in 1995 but returned in 1996 and, for all I know, is still going today. The strip's creator has written about Pandora's origins on his website.

As a bonus, issue 72 featured a drawing by Jon Howard, later to draw Dan Dare, Thunderbirds and Judge Dredd.

William Gibson interview (Sci-Fi Universe, July 1995)

From my scrapbook, a William Gibson interview from 1995.

Stan Lee (Sunday Telegraph Magazine, 14 July 1996)

 

Scrapbook: Barry Windsor-Smith (1998 interview)

More pages from my scrapbook: an interview with Barry Windsor-Smith from 21 years ago.

Scrapbook: John Richardson's Pussy Muldoon

More pages from my scrapbook. This is the first episode of 'Pussy Muldoon', a sexy private eye, who starred in the weekly Celebrity magazine drawn by John Richardson in 1986. Some original art boards are up for sale at the Illustration Art Gallery, so you can see there how the strip progressed.

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Scrapbook: Garbage Scow

A frighteningly prescient comic strip by Bob Aull from the pages of Epic, June 1983.

Scrapbook: David Roach's Star Wars Tales of the Jedi

Digging through my old Comic World folders, I found photocopies of these unlettered pages from an issue (#4, I think) of Dark Horse's Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi, drawn by David Roach.

 

 

 

 

(* Star Wars © Lucasfilm Ltd.)

Scrapbook: Allen Drury

Allen Drury, author of Advise and Consent.

Scrapbook: Johnny Speight

A scan from my scrapbook: Johnny Speight was a screenwriter best known for Till Death Us Do Part. Here's the news report and obituary from The Times, 6 July 1998.

Scrapbook: a random collection of strips

In chronological order. The Jimbo set dates from the 14 May 1988 issue of Radio Times, the Daily Star set from 11 March 1991 and The Metro from 16 February 2004.

Scrapbook: Barb Wire

Who remembers Barb Wire? Probably the only reason anybody does is because she was played in the movie of the comic book of the same name by Pamela Anderson. It wasn't a huge hit, and was perhaps unsurprisingly nominated heavily for the Golden Raspberry Awards of 1996, with Pammy winning Worst New Star, although she lost the Worst Actress award to Demi Moore, star of the Worst Picture award, Striptease.

The film had little going for it, although the plot mirrored that of Casablanca. Anderson was no Bogart. Sometimes these kind of films can earn a cult following, but I suspect that won't be the case here.

The clipping is also interesting for the news that Quentin Tarantino is going to be directing a movie version of The Man From UNCLE as a follow-up to Pulp Fiction. This was 1995 and it has taken 20 years to bring the old team of Solo and Kuriakin to the big screen to the general consensus that it's OK without being brilliant.

Ray Bradbury interview (1971)

From my scrapbook, here's an ancient interview with Ray Bradbury from issue 28 of Rex, the British men's magazine, undated but published around December 1971.