Playhour Artists/Authors

What follows is a list of artists and writers known to have contributed to Playhour. The comic ran to approximately 1,700 issues between 1954 and 1987 and with very few official records remaining, there's a very good chance that a few artists and a few more writers are missing from the list. Any further information about any of the creators listed below would be very welcome.

Artists
Arthur Baker
Walter Bell
Giorgio Bellavitis
Jesus Blasco [Jesús Blasco] (Wikipedia)
Walter Booth
Eric Bradbury
Leslie Branton
Rosemary Brown
Geoff Campion
Stephen Chapman
Rene Cloke
E. T. Coelho
Pam Cooper
Mrs. S. de Basily
Ferguson Dewar
John Donnelly
C. E. Drury
Ron Embleton (Wikipedia)
Bert Felstead
Barbara C. Freeman
Mick Hall
Fred Holmes
Arthur Horowicz
Gordon Hutchings
Roger Hutchings (see under Gordon Hutchings)
Tony Hutchings (see under Gordon Hutchings)
R. Jordan
Tom Kerr
Hans G. Kresse (Wikipedia [Holland])
Bill Lacey
Langhammer
Virginio Livraghi
Harold McCready
V. Mackenzie
Hugh McNeill
Marion Main
H. Maxwell
Philip Mendoza
H. C. Milburn
A. S. A. Newark
Will Nickless
Ron Nielsen
Cecil Orr
Eric R. Parker
Harry Pettit
Cyril Price
Nadir Quinto
Basil Reynolds
Fred Robinson
Sep E. Scott
Henry Seabright
Edgar Spenceley
Geoff Squire
Eric Stephens
H. M. Talintyre
Douglas Turnbull
Bill Ward
Reginald Webb
Fred White
V. Whiteley
Woodall
Mrs. M. E. Woodward
Peter Woolcock
Colin Wyatt
various unidentified artists working for Bryan Colmer Ltd., Creazioni D'Ami, B. L. Kearley Ltd., Sheldon Studios, Temple Art Agency

Writers
George Allen
Sydney J. Bounds
Mike Butterworth
Frank Capern
Betty Clowes
Denise Cork
Ron Garner
John Gill
Barbara Hayes (later Matthews)
J. H. Hopkins
Eric Leyland
Miss P. Mills
Frances Pitt
David Roberts
Colin F. Thomas
Joan Whitford
Brian Woodford

Gordon Hutchings

Gordon Hutchings is another of my favourite artists from the nursery comics. Like Bert Felstead, I only learned about him less than a year ago and now rank him as one of the best discoveries I've made in the pages of Jack and Jill, Playhour and Harold Hare's Own. It's astonishing to think that he was drawing comics for at least a quarter of a century and almost nothing is known about him or his work.

Hutchings' father was, apparently, a very talented painter who instilled his love of painting in his three sons, Gordon, Anthony and Roger. Their mother was also well versed in the arts and crafts.

Gordon is said to have begun his comics career contributing to Mickey Mouse Weekly in the early 1950s. He also drew 'Nick the TV Star' (1953) and 'Pancho and Pepe' (1954) in TV Comic. The earliest contribution to the A.P. nursery comics was 'The Little Mermaid' in Playhour Annual 1957 (1956) and a filler episode of 'Peter Puppet in Puzzle Land' (1956). He then produced the strips 'The Merry Adventures of Pixie Pip' (1958-61) and 'Tiny Tales of Gregory Grasshopper' (1958-60) for Jack and Jill.

Hutchings was also the regular artist on 'Dagwood Duck' in Harold Hare's Own Paper (1959-?) before taking over the cover spot in Playhour drawing 'Sooty' which, with occasional fill-ins by others, he stayed on for a full year (January 1960 to January 1961). During this period he also did a few fill-ins elsewhere, drawing 'The Funny Tales of Freddie Frog' and colouring Hugh McNeill's 'The Fun and Frolics of Harold Hare', both for Jack and Jill (1960).

He then moved on to one of my favourite strips, 'Gulliver Guinea-Pig', taking over from Philip Mendoza and producing some superbly detailed, humorous stories featuring the world-wandering guinea-pig for nearly five years. Gulliver's adventures increasingly took him into fantasy lands where he met the Rainbow Folk, the Forest Folk and Blue Magicians, as well as saving summer, rescuing King Neptune's golden horn and travelling to Nursery Rhyme Land.

Hutchings' next strip was an ensemble cast featuring 'Num Num and his Funny Family' for TV Toyland (later for Playhour), most fondly remembered because of a character named Drag-a-Chair Cat who... well, he dragged a chair around to stand on, being curious and not the tallest cat in the world.

Hutchings' returned to the cover of Playhour with 'The Magic Roundabout' in 1967 but the nursery comics were slowly losing sales and, by the early 1970s, many of the strips began to be recycled. Hutchings drew 'Pinkie Puff', about a little elephant with an enormously long trunk, for Bobo Bunny (1969) and, later, 'Jenny the Gingerbread Boy' for Bonnie (1974). However, he disappears from view in the mid-1970s, perhaps escaping north to D. C. Thomson.

The younger Hutchings brothers were equally talented: Tony Hutchings was probably still only a (late) teenager when he began drawing 'Buster the Little Cowboy' and 'Dicky and Hoppy' for Harold Hare's Own Paper (1959-61). He subsequently took over drawing 'Sooty', 'Num Num' and 'Pinkie Puff' for Playhour. Meanwhile, Roger Hutchings was colouring Bert Felstead's 'Leo the Friendly Lion' before moving to his own strip, 'Flora, Fauna and Merryweather, the Fairy Godmothers' in Harold Hare's Own (1961-62). Around 1963, the Hutchings brothers set up a studio in Soho where they worked on design, animation and book illustrations as well as continuing their comics work.

Roger later worked as an Art Director for a company in Yorkshire before relocating to Bath where, as 'Hutch', he painted some very distinctive works (such as that below), some of which are still available as prints. As for the other Hutchings brothers... at the moment they seem lost from sight.

(Incidentally, Tony Hutchings is not to be confused with the other Anthony Hutchings who worked for School Fun, Whizzer & Chips and Buster who occasionally signed his work 'Anthony')

(* Artwork © Look and Learn Magazine Ltd. except the print 'Rabble Rouser' by Roger Hutchings which I presume is © Roger Hutchings or his estate.)

Geoff Squire

Geoffrey Squire (1896-1989) is another artist about whom I've discovered very little. Educated at Regent Street Polytechnic, his work dates back to before the Second World War when he was a publicity illustrator and member of the Society of Artists in Commerce. I believe he was living at 28 Newman Street, London W.1 in 1935/37 but then moved to 16 Lion Terrace, Portsmouth (he is listed at this address in The Advertising Art Annual and Buyers' Guide for 1939).

After the war, he seems to have moved to 46 The Ridings, Surbiton, at which address he remained until around 1950. After that I'm not sure.

Squire was an illustrator and comic strip artist in the 1950s, contributing covers to Thriller Picture Library between 1954-58 as well as various strips to the nursery comics. He was one of the main artists on 'Wink and Blink the Playful Puppies' in 1956-58 but my favourites of his strips are the three stories he drew featuring Norman Gnome. The first, 'The Story of Father Christmas', appeared in 1957, followed by 'Norman Gnome Gets Rich' in 1959 and 'When Norman Gnome Became a King' in 1960. These were fully painted, funny and filled with little details that make them worth going back to a second and third time. Fortunately, the original artwork for most of the latter two stories has survived, albeit broken up into individual panels, many of which can be seen in the Look and Learn Picture Gallery. There are also a few stray examples of strips he produced for Annuals.

Below are a couple of the covers he produced for Thriller Picture Library.

Update: Paul Strickland has now launched a site dedicated to his grandfather.

(* Norman Gnome © Look and Learn Magazine Ltd.; Thriller Picture Library covers © IPC Media.)

Comic Clippings - 16 July

The Dandy is going fortnightly. In the year that will see the comic celebrate its 70th birthday, The Dandy is now struggling to find readers, despite a relaunch in 2004. With a cover price of £1.30, the comic is considerably more expensive than its younger sibling, The Beano, which is still priced 85p.

A couple of months ago, I produced some estimates for the circulation of both The Beano and The Dandy based on the combined circulation published by D. C. Thomson. For the July to December 2006 period, the combined circulation was 112,980. Based on figures from previous years, Beano accounts for 66% of the combined sales, putting the actual circulations at 74,567 for Beano and 37,283 for Dandy, a fall of around 2.3% from the figures for the first half of the year.

The announcement -- actually not so much an announcement as a simple revision to their subscription details -- comes before the release of circulation figures for January through June, but we can be reasonably sure that the circulation is now below 35,000 for this move to have been made.

One tidbit I did pick up... according to D. C. Thomson figures, the combined circulations of Beano, Dandy and BeanoMax were 157,980... meaning that BeanoMax was selling 45,000 copies a month. There are rumours that the Dandy will be revamping its contents at the same time and maybe we can expect more of a DandyMax to emerge when the paper goes fortnightly in early August.

* Jeremy Briggs, a regular contributor to Bear Alley, has a fascinating article on D. C. Thomson's Red Dagger on John Freeman's Down the Tubes. 'Graphic Novels by any other name' is accompanied by a handy guide to changes between the original appearances of stories and how they were reprinted plus a checklist of titles.

* Tintin in the Congo has had the CRE in a flap. The Sunday Times' India Knight reports that, since the book was moved by Borders (from the children's section to the adult section), sales have soared (the source of that information is probably this AFP report).

Jack Hayes

Jack Hayes was one of the finest artists of Bible illustrations to work for Bible Story. He's also one of the most mysterious. His work has recently been mentioned in the comments for Paul Rainer where I mentioned that he had also painted a number of paperback covers in the early 1970s. But beyond that there doesn't seem to be much known.

Hayes contributed a number of illustrations to The New Oxford Illustrated Bible (Oxford University Press, n.d.) and to Flags of the World by I. O. Evans (Hamlyn, 1970).

In the early 1970s he illustrated paperback covers for Corgi and Fontana on titles as wide-ranging as The Long Wait and Kiss Me, Deadly by Mickey Spillane (both 1970), Too Few For Drums by R. F. Delderfield, Only the Valiant and Great Legends of the West, both by Charles Marquis Warren (all 1972), The Gallows Herd by Maureen Peters and Steamboat Gothic by Frances Parkinson Keyes (both 1973).

If anyone can add anything to this rather sketchy C.V., please drop me a line. You can see more examples of Jack Hayes' contributions to Bible Story in the Look and Learn Picture Gallery.

The Forth Rail Bridge

(* We bid a welcome return to Jeremy Briggs with a piece about the Forth Bridge as seen through the lens of British comics and childrens' magazines. Coincidentally, the recent release of Hellblazer: The Red Right Hand, with its Glasgow setting, prompted Joe at the Forbidden Planet International to run some photos. Anyway, without further ado, here's Jeremy...)

The Bridge

As a memorial is unveiled to the men who gave their lives to build it in the 19th century, let us take a look at the comics history of the Forth Bridge. Locals simply call it The Bridge, but it is better known to the general public as the Forth Rail Bridge to differentiate it from its upstream neighbour the Forth Road Bridge. If you are not sure what it looks like delve into your pocket and take a look at the back of a 2004 pound coin.

Opened in 1890 to take the main east coat railway line over the Firth of Forth, the Bridge is one of the icons of Scotland carrying up to 200 trains per day. Located between North Queensferry in Fife (where Gordon Brown has his family home) and South Queensferry outside Edinburgh, the bridge is 2.5 km (1.5 miles) long and ,while the railway track is 46m (150 ft) above sea level, the top actually rises to 104m (340 ft). It is said that, technologically speaking, the building of the bridge was the 1880's equivalent of putting men on the Moon in the 1960's. The construction of the bridge lasted for six years when, officially, 57 men died to complete it. Today the Queensferry History Group puts the real loss of life much higher at around 98.

As an immediately recognisable Scottish landmark the bridge has featured in many comics over the years, but let us begin with its prehistory and the unusual name of its location. In the late 11th century, Queen Margaret of Scotland regularly used a ferry to cross the Firth at its narrowest point when travelling between the priory in Dunfermline and the castle in Edinburgh. Margaret died in 1093 in Edinburgh Castle and her body was carried on the ferry to be buried in what is now Dunfermline Abbey. The two ends of the ferry route took the names of Queensferry and North Queensferry, with the southern Royal Burgh of Queensferry eventually becoming today’s South Queensferry. Devoutly religious, Queen Margaret was canonised in 1290, the only Saint of Scots royalty. Her story was told in 'Royal Margaret' on the back page of Girl comic from Volume 1 Number 33, dated 11 July 1952 to Volume 2 Number 26, dated 22 April 1953. Alfred Sindall provided the colour artwork and it was, unsurprisingly, written by Chad Varah, just before he set up the Samaritans.

The village of South Queensferry was the setting for part of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Kidnapped, with the hero David Balfour being taken from the Hawes Inn and rowed out to the sailing ship Covenant moored just off shore where the bridge would now stand. The Hawe's Inn is a real place which now nestles in the shadow of the south end of the bridge and remains an inn to this day. Kidnapped has been adapted several times in British comic strips, including by Dudley D Watkins in the D C Thomson Told In Pictures series in 1948, but the latest version was the Alan Grant scripted and Cam Kennedy illustrated version for Edinburgh's One Book One Edinburgh literary event in February 2007.

The day to day running of the bridge is hardly the stuff of adventure stories but to the general public perhaps what the bridge is best known for is the folklore of its continual painting - a seemingly unending task being described as "like painting the Forth Bridge". Ian Kennedy did a factual strip on the men who work on high structures around the world entitled 'The Spidermen', and included the bridge painters in it. This was published in the Eagle Annual for 1987, although considering the amount of reprints in those late 1980’s Eagle annuals it could well have been a reprint from a much earlier IPC publication.

Ranger also covered the bridge and its painters in the 27 November 1965 issue in its 'Railway Days and Ways' back page article "edited by TV star and model railway enthusiast David Nixon" which, unusually, depicted it looking south. Most illustrations of the Bridge are from the South Queensferry waterfront looking north, however it is worth pointing out that the deep water shipping channel is under the north span and not the south as depicted in Ranger.

Yet adventure stories are the stuff of boy's comics and in 1971 D C Thomson's Hotspur rehabilitated their normally villainous Black Sapper character into a member of the British resistance army fighting against the occupation of Britain by the oriental Khansus. Set in the near future this story, with art by Terry Patrick, has the Sapper using his underground travelling machine, called the Worm, to attack installations vital to the Khansu occupation. This includes undermining the Forth Rail Bridge thereby causing its partial collapse and trapping the Khansu navy upstream in Rosyth Naval Base.

Slightly further into the future, although Gerry Anderson fans continue to debate if it should be 2026 or 2065, and this illustration of Thunderbirds 1, 2 and 4 taking part in the rescue of a typically Thunderbirds-like monorail train having plunged off the bridge. Painted as a commission by Anderson comic artist Graham Bleathman, the image is used by Graham on his website. (With thanks to Graham and the owner for permission to use the image here.)

Finally, and not withstanding underground machines or hovering Thunderbirds, we have the far future of the bridge. Starblazer was D C Thomson's science-fiction companion to the war digest Commando and issue 101, published in June 1983, told the story of the 'Forgotten World'. Written by R H Bonsall, this story was set on Earth in 3183AD after the Earth had been devastated in the Thermal Wars and was now a bioplanet for farmers. Artist Jamie Ortiz only portrayed the bridge in a single frame of the story without it even being mentioned in the printed text bar a vague reference to the "rivers of Old Caledonia", but that was enough for Scottish artist Ian Kennedy to once again revisit the bridge. This time he portrayed it as the dilapidated backdrop to what could easily be mistaken for a Dan Dare cover from the 1980's version of Eagle comic.

Today the Bridge stands proud as it receives its first new coat of paint in far too long, a coating which this time is expected to last twenty years. Over seventy years older than its Road Bridge neighbour, which is a mere youngster in its forties, the red Rail Bridge will undoubtedly still be standing after its grey neighbour has passed into history.

George Melly (1926-2007)

Jazz-singer, journalist, radio presenter, TV chat show regular and pop culture icon (Alan) George (Heywood) Melly died on 5 July, aged 80. He was also the scriptwriter of 'Flook', the Daily Mail strip drawn by Wally ("Trog") Fawkes, which he took over from Humphrey Lyttelton in 1956 and continued to write until 1970. Melly ghosted I, Flook. An autobiography (Macmillan & Co., 1962) and a retrospective collection of his strips, A Flook's Eye-View of the Sixties, was published by Sidgwick & Jackson (1970). In the 1970s he would often provide ideas for political pocket cartoonist Mark ("Marc") Boxer for The Times.

Obituaries: The Times (6 July), Daily Telegraph (6 July), The Independent (6 July), The Guardian (6 July).

Paul Rainer

Graham Kennedy, a Manchester-based artist who tells me he has been drawing the Bible for the past five years, dropped a line to the Bear Alley blog to say that he was looking for information on Paul Rainer. Well, I've drawn a blank. I know he was an active illustrator in the 1960s and did quite a bit of artwork for Look and Learn and Bible Story but as far as personal information goes I've found nothing.

He illustrated a couple of series in Look and Learn including 'People and Plants' in 1966, the excellent 'Who Said...?' in 1967 and various others in 1968-69. Before that, he was one of the regular illustrators for Bible Story, illustrating 'The Story of the Life of Jesus' (1964). You can find quite a few examples of his artwork on the Look and Learn Picture Gallery.

If anyone knows anything about Rainer or knows where else his artwork appeared, drop me a line.

(* Artwork © Look and Learn Magazine Ltd.)

W. Marshall Watts and the Tamblyn-Watts family

I was digging around looking for information on Harold Tamblyn-Watts and I've been trying to piece together a little of his family history.

The earliest I can trace (as official records only began in 1837) is the marriage of Isaac Watts and Dorothy Scott in Rothwell, Northampton, on 17 June 1836. Isaac had been born in Market Bosworth in c.1811 and Dorothy in Rothwell, Northampton, in c.1817. Isaac was an Independant Minister of the New Congregational Church and a schoolmaster in Boston, Lincolnshire.

The Watts' had at least three children, Walter Angus Watts (b. Skirbeck, Lincs., 1837), Isaac (b. Skirbeck, Lincs., 1840) and William Marshall Watts (b. Boston, Lincs., 1844).

William Marshall Watts was educated at Owens College, Manchester, and at the University of Heidelberg. Watts returned to Owens College in 1864 to work as an assistant to Professor Roscoe, later becoming an assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow in 1866. In 1868 he became First Science Master at Manchester Grammar School before moving to take the same position at Giggleswick School in Settle, Yorkshire, where he worked until 1904.

Watts was married to Ida Hartley Tamblyn in 1877. Now, Ida was born c.1850 in Newcastle, Northumberland & Durham in upper Canada, the daughter of Daniel Massey, the founder of Massey-Harris Co., of Toronto, and, on 16 August 1871, had married John Tamblyn, a bank clerk working in Newcastle.

The Tamblyns had at least one child, Thomas Massey Fisher Tamblyn, born in Toronto on  5 August 1872. John Tamblyn died of consumption on 13 July 1875 at the age of 28. Ida Tamblyn then came to England where she married William Marshall Watts in Chorlton, Lancashire.

The newlyweds had at least two further children, Dora Mannock Watts (b. Giggleswick, Yorkshire, 1879) and William Francis M. ("Frank") Watts (b. Settle, Yorkshire, 20 January 1881, who fought with the 29th Battalion of the Canadian Infantry and died at the Somme on 26 September 1916).

Meanwhile, Thomas Massey Fisher Tamblyn married Marion (b. Glasgow, Scotland, c.1873) in around 1894 and their son John Marshall Tamblyn was born in Settle, Yorkshire, in 1895. The Tamblyn family then added Watt to their surname so that, in 1900, their second son was born Harold William Watts in Settle.

Tidying up their surname, the 1901 census lists Thomas T. Watts as a scientific apparatus maker, electrician and engineer living at Goldielands, Settle, Yorkshire, with his wife and two sons all listed under the name Watts.

It would seem that there was no rancor between father and stepson as their can sometimes be. Thomas Watts wrote additional material for one of his step-father's books and seems to have shared an interest in both the spectral properties of chemical elements and botany.

William Marshall Watts had published scientific papers on spectra in Philosophical Magazine and the Journal of the Chemical Society at least as early as 1864 and his 'An Essay on Lighthouses' appeared in Boys' Own Magazine that same year. He was also the author of a number of books:

Index to Spectra. London, Gillman, 1872; (revised & greatly enlarged) Manchester, A. Heywood & Son, 1889.
Organic Chemistry. London, Collins, 1873.
A School Flora for the use of elementary botonists. London, F. Warne, 1878; (revised) London, 1879; (revised & enlarged) London, Rivingtons, 1887; (new edition) London, Longmans & Co., 1905.
A Practical Introduction to the Elements of Chemistry. London, Nisbet, 1891.
An Introduction to the Study of Spectrum Analysis. London, Longmans & Co., 1904.

Thomas Tamblyn-Watts (as he was by then styling himself) added a number of appendices to Index to Spectra in around 1931 as well as writing a number of titles himself:

The Home Electrician. A Handbook for the Student and Householder. Westcliff-one-Sea, self published, 1927.
The Home Electrician. Part 1: Electric light accessories. Westcliff-on-Sea, 1928.
The Home Electrician. Part 2: Fuses and wires. Westcliff-on-Sea, 1928.
Some notes on the Natural Features of Southend-on-Sea and District. Westcliff-on-Sea, self published, 1930.
The "Uniter" Index Strips. Westcliff-on-Sea, self published, 1931.
Wonderful Plants. A botanical book for students. Westcliff-on-Sea, self published, 2 vols., 1933-34.

William Marshall Watts later moved to Venner Road, Sydenham, in south east London where died on 13 January 1919. Thomas Tamblyn-Watts was living in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, in the 1930s but died in Battle, Sussex, in 1940, aged 68.

John Marshall Tamblyn, Thomas Tamblyn's elder son, later became an electrical engineer.

His son, Thomas Murray Tamblyn-Watts, was born in Leigh-on-Sea on 22 June 1923. Educated at Littlejohn’s Private School, Essex, and Page’s Private School, Southend-on-Sea, T. M. Tamblyn-Watts (as he usually signed his work) studied art at Bath Art School under Clifford Ellis. He married Doris May Jones in 1949.

As an artist in oil and watercolour he exhibited work in Holborn, but worked mainly as a book jacket artist for various companies, producing westerns for W.H. Allen, travel books for T.V. Boardman, science for Phoenix House, and work for Harrap, Guild Books and The Bodley Head. He also produced advertising for Kerry Engineering Co., H. Broadbent Ltd., Churchill Redman, Vickers-Armstrongs, Freeman, Hardy & Willis, International Combustion Ltd. and others. He wrote the book Oliver Trist for Collins. He was living in Sydenham, London S.E.26, in the mid- and late-1950s.

Like his uncle, Thomas also contributed to comics, namely two brief features in the first issue of Lone Star Magazine (1952) which were signed Thos. Tamblyn Watts. To my knowledge this was his only contribution. Uncle Harold Tamblyn-Watts, on the other hand, had quite an extensive career in comics which is worth exploring. But that's another entry for another day.

Nino Caroselli - Air Ace covers

Benedetto (Nino) Caroselli was an Italian painter and illustrator. I know very little about him, although he would appear to have been active in Italy as a cover artist and painter. The image below is the only one I've been able to find after a quick scour of the internet. He also produced at least one book cover (Angelique and the King by Sergeanne Golon, J. B. Lippincott).

For the UK Nino Caroselli produced hundred of covers for the pocket libraries published by Fleetway. He first appeared in 1959 as an illustrator for Top Spot but very quickly established himself as a cover artist on Super Detective Library, Thriller Picture Library and Cowboy Picture Library. However, it was his work for the war libraries that would keep him busy for many years during the 1960s. Here's a small selection of some of his covers for the early issues of Air Ace, all from original artwork. Some of these will, no doubt, be making an appearance in David Roach's Aarrgghh! book, coming out from Carlton in October.

(All images for Air Ace are © IPC Media.)

Roy McAdorey - Air Ace covers

I promised to mention the War Libraries book at regular intervals and I've rather let it slide for a while.

When we were compiling the book, we were fortunate to have access to a lot of the original cover art (some of which will be appearing in the book) and I thought it might be interesting to add something about one or two of the covers not covered in the introduction.

For some years before he died I had the good fortune to correspond with Roy McAdorey, a one-time art-bodger on the war libraries. He'd previously worked for Eagle before transferring to Air Ace Picture Library in 1960 when it was under the editorship of Arthur Bouchier.

One of Roy's jobs was to make minor (and occasionally major) changes to artwork and, to quote one of his letters, "Arthur Bouchier got me to alter a lot of covers, e.g. U-Boat position, redrawn aircraft ... Got complimented on all this by Alf Wallace [the managing editor of the group] who decided to move me on to War Library." This move came in 1961, but Roy was involved in dozens of the early titles and some of his handiwork can be seen on many of the covers.

With the eighth issue, Air Ace adopted a slightly different style of cover from its companion War Picture Library by adding a white border along two edges, usually with part of the artwork breaking into this white space, a formula that was used on quite a few covers over the next few months.

For Air Ace no.10, 'Objective Destroyed', Roy was asked to add a small map with a pencil pointing at a target to the original Graham Coton artwork. For Air Ace no. 44, 'Coastal Command' (see top), Arthur Bouchier was unhappy with the original artwork by Nino Caroselli, considering the submarine to be too small and distant and Roy had to completely redraw it.

Above is the printed version of Air Ace no. 43, 'Killer Instinct', almost certainly the work of Allessandro Biffignandi. However, the pilot in the corner was painted by Roy in poster colours to replace the original head which Arthur Bouchier disliked. The change is rather more obvious on the original artboard, below, where you can see part of the artwork has also been extended.

All the lettering for the Air Ace covers was produced on acetate by Fleetway's Central Art Department.

You'll find many more examples of original artwork in the book which can now be ordered from The Book Palace here. We're expecting the first (advance) copies to arrive in a couple of weeks and the book will be on sale in August.

(All images for Air Ace are © IPC Media.)

Comic Clippings - 10 July

Not a lot happening at the moment. Our Look and Learn Picture Gallery should hit 18,000 images this week once I get the next DVD of images into the post. The weekend was taken up with shopping, a party and the 4th Season of Scrubs. Seems I was one of the few people who also watched Live Earth here in the UK, an event I grew more and more frustrated with as it continued thanks to the awful BBC coverage. Started off fine, peaked around Snow Patrol / Kasabian then lurched downhill. Would have picked up again with Keane / Metallica / Spinal Tap if the stupid BBC hadn't kept cutting away from the bands before they'd finished playing. Stupid, stupid, stupid BBC. Stupid. Same could be said for their desperate attempts at "balance" in the face of global catastrophe which seemed to consist of everyone on stage saying "Please save the planet" and everyone in the cosy BBC box saying "I'm keeping my plasma TV" or "Recycling doesn't make much difference."

Sorry, but this kind of "I'm alright, Jack" attitude from some BBC presenters and the people they interviewed really annoyed me. The evidence is overwhelming that humankind, if not causing global warming directly is contributing to it hugely. And of course it affects everyone. People you love and will love will suffer.

You know I like playing with numbers occasionally, so look upon this as a bit of entertaining fun. I met Jonathan Ross a couple of times many years ago when I was doing the Comic Book Price Guide and he seemed like a nice guy. But as he was the public face of the BBC's coverage, let's use Jonathan as our example.

Jonathan was born in 1960 and married Jane Goldman (b. 1970) in 1988. According to the Office of National Statistics report (Mortality Statistics 2001), the average age of death for a male in 2001 was 73.2 years for men and 79.4 for women. So on average we can expect Jonathan to die around 2033 and Jane to die around 2049. Another important set of statistics to take into account I found on the BBC's audience information site which tells me that most men marry on average at the age of 30-years-old and 28-years-old for women. The mean age for women bearing their first child is 27.

Jonathan and Jane have three children: Betty Kitten Ross (b. 1991), Harvey Kirby Ross (b. 1994) and Honey Kinny Ross (b. 1997). What, on average, can we expect for the three Ross children.

Well, Betty might be expected to have her first child in 2018; Honey may have hers in 2024. If they have boys they can expect to live until 2091 and 2097 respectively; girls can be expected to live until 2097 and 2103. These are the firstborn Ross grandchildren. The average birthrate of 2 children per marriage (Central Survey Unit figure for 2005-06) may have fallen by 2025 or so, so maybe we can call the figure 1.8 children for all families with dependent children (thats married couples, lone mothers and lone fathers). Jonathan might reasonably expect almost five and half grandchildren, most of whom will live beyond 2100, all of whom will have their own children. The Ross' can reasonably expect 10 great-grandchildren. So that's 15 or so grandchildren and great-grandchildren alive in around 2100.

So what have they got to look forward to? I'm going to cheat and if you follow this link to Wikipedia you'll find a summary of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. You can find the full report here. Look around the internet and learn more because if you (or I) don't start the ball rolling now because your alright, Jack, your children will be affected and their children are going to reap the whirlwind you're sowing.

You can all play this game at home... I'm destined to die around 2035 if I give up the cigarettes. I'll miss the worst of the mess but, personally, I'd rather like to leave the planet in a better state than I'm finding it in now. If you find all this rather bleak reading, my apologies. I'm annoyed and I have this one forum to express my annoyance on.

A couple of bits of random news...

* Part 2 of the Paul Gravett interview by David Hine at Broken Frontier, 'Settle Down for Gravett'. Part 1 can be found here.

* Kevin Woodcock, cartoonist for Private Eye, The Spectator and elsewhere, died in Leicester on 2 July. A full obituary appears in The Independant (7 July).

Albion Origins

The Before Albion volume I've mentioned as upcoming from Titan Books has a new title, Albion Origins. It should be out on 16 October. Here's the blurb from amazon.co.uk...

"Now starring in Albion, the critically acclaimed graphic novel plotted by the legendary Alan Moore, come four of British comics' most loved - and most bizarre - characters! There's Tim Kelly, a boy who finds the Eye of Zoltec, a jewel which grants him fantastic power; Dolmann, a genius inventor with a legion of crime-fighting toys; occult troubleshooter Cursitor Doom; and victorian escapologist Janus Stark! Never-before-collected, boasting a stunning new cover by comics legend Brian Bolland ("Batman: The Killing Joke"), and featuring exclusive new articles exploring the history of these characters' comics, this is another amazing trip into the past!"

The latest Worlds of Don Lawrence newsletter notes that the next volume of Trigan Empire: The Collection will be released in November under the title The Puppet Emperor (where I've been referring to it as The Five Labours of Trigo, which is what we had on our little schedule). The book has been delayed to allow everyone more time to work on the Karl the Viking volumes which have been taking a little longer than anticipated; the idea was to replicate the original pages as best we could and that meant using the original lettering. But the years haven't been kind to the lettering on the original boards so balloons are being individually scanned and dropped onto the digital scans of the artwork. It's a time consuming job, as I'm sure you'll appreciate.

I'm going to be finishing off the introductory material for the Karl books over the next few weeks so if there's a sudden silence on the blog you'll know why. I've also got to start thinking about the next Trigan volume, our tenth, although chronologically it's number five in the series. The title is The Red Death and it contains some of my favourite Trigan stories so I'm looking forward to it immensely.

I'm also looking forward to the next Storm: The Collection volume which will contain the next two Dutch albums, The Living Planet and Vandaahl the Destroyer. The Storm books just got better and better as the 'Pandarve' series progressed and these two look fantastic. As a tease I'm posting the covers to the Dutch albums. The Living Planet, above, caused me some problems many years ago when I used it on the magazine Comic Collector to accompany an interview with Don Lawrence. The colour proof came back and I was asked by Matt (the managing editor at the publisher) whether I thought it was suitable -- I think it was more a case of "suitable for W. H. Smith's" rather than suitable for the readership. The thing that swung the argument was the blue nipples... blue nipples are fantasy nipples, not real nipples. We weren't too sure what W. H. Smith's policy on nudity was (as it seemed to depend solely on circulation) but as the cover was no worse than dozens of paperback covers that they'd stocked we got the cover approved and into the shops. Without any complaints.

The above cover is from the latest (2005) printing of Vandaahl the Destroyer.

A couple of bits of news from elsewhere...

* The horror of Kevin O'Neill at the Forbidden Planet International blog will point you to some early examples of Kev O'Neill's work for the Legend Horror Classics magazine way back in 1975.

* Warren Ellis has a new column called 'The Sunday Hangover'. First episode available now.

Mystery Signatures

Every now and then I stumble across a signature on a piece of artwork that defies recognition. Mervyn Suart was one that I did manage to decipher but some remain a mystery. The picture above is one example. I've no idea whose signature that is in the bottom right corner.

Similarly, this front cover for the Jack and Jill Annual 1958...

... which is signed along the side of the book. I've scanned and rotated the signature below.

Wadazo? Let me know if your guess is better than mine.