Comic Cuts - Comics Britannia

Just watched Comics Britannia, as I'm sure many of you have. I thought the whole thing was superbly handled and my initial worries from reading a couple of reviews were quickly forgotten.

In truth, this is not a series about the history of comics but three snapshots of certain aspects, the first show concentrating on The Beano and The Dandy when they were at their best. To show them at their bests, the producers concentrated on four artists -- Dudley D. Watkins, David Law, Leo Baxendale and Ken Reid -- and it would have been a real shocker if they'd screwed up with that line-up of talent. It was a joy to see the camera swooping in on pages of original artwork, complete with pencil lines on the word balloons and marked up in blue pen; the camera roved around the pages, as the eye would when reading a comic, blowing up the pages to ten times how we would normally see it. Sometimes that meant lots of colour dots (due to how the colour was printed back in the days of classic Beano and Dandy) but it bodes well for later episodes where we may see fully-painted originals of Dan Dare artwork. (Fingers crossed.)

There were a few quibbles, such as the implication that the Dandy created speech balloons and the statement that Dudley Watkins was the only artist at DCT allowed to sign his work*, but that's minor. Perhaps the biggest quibble is that humour comics beyond these four artists were rather dismissed out of hand: the stagnation at Thomsons was less to do with the implied lack of talent of the replacements, rather that the strips became formulaic, which seems to me the obvious result of artists being asked to work on other people's creations in a pre-set style (as happened with most of Leo Baxendale's creations) or trying to create new strips for a character thirty years out of date (Lord Snooty being perhaps the most guilty of this). Today we have Hunt Emerson drawing Little Plum and it's recognisably Hunt Emerson, not some third generation photocopy of Leo Baxendale, so the strip can be judged on whether it's funny or not on its own merits.

This aside, I thought the show was spot on: serious without being snobbish, accessible without being dumbed down. The interviewees tackled the racism of those early comics and the not-always-true "fact" popularised by journalists that all strips ended with a feast or a whacking (something Leo Baxendale denied, with evidence, in his book On Comedy). Overall the tone was of celebration. It walked a fine line between keeping fans happy and making it interesting and nostalgic mainstream viewing and as far as I'm concerned the series took its first strides confidently.

More information:
* Comics Britannia website at the BBC.
* Interview with Alastair Laurence at the Forbidden Planet International blog.
* Review by Charlie Brooker from The Guardian (8 September)
* Review by Kim Newman from The Times (8 September)
* Review by Lew Stringer at Blimey! (9 September)
* Review by James Walton from the Daily Telegraph (11 September)
* Review at TV Schoop (11 September)
* Review by Andrew Billen from The Times (11 September)

Related:
* Bryan Talbot's History of British Comics from The Guide (The Guardian, 8 September) is scanned at Rich Johnson's Lying in the Gutters.

(* I think I'm right in saying that Allan Morley also signed some of his work.)

Audrey Fawley [Charlotte Fawley]

Back on 30 November 2006, I wrote a brief piece about Audrey Fawley who was credited with work in Swift Annual 5 (1958). I noted at the time that another artist called Audrey Fawkes was credited in Swift Annual two years later. There was an Audrey May Fawkes (1925-1990) but I managed to contact a relative who told me that "We do not believe 'our' Audrey is the one you are looking for." So, no luck there, but thanks to Linda all the same for such a prompt reply.

I'm pleased to say that I've recently been corresponding with Charlotte Fawley. Charlotte, who used the name Audrey for her illustrations but later reverted to using her real first name, also cleared up the Audrey Fawkes mystery: "That was me but the publishers spelt my name wrongly -- mystery solved!"

Charlotte has her own website which includes a great deal of information and many examples of her work, much of which has been inspired by her love of the performing arts, particularly ballet, opera and the theatre. To quote Charlotte: "For me, dance expressed in art is about energy and emotion. One line can sometimes express just that. A splash of colour will enhance the drama, be it passion, joy, anger or despair ... I am fortunate to have opportunities to draw some of the greatest dancers and singers in the world today."

Charlotte was the subject of a BBC2 film entitled Making Their Mark (1990) drawing dancers and, at the other end of the scale, soldiers on manoeuvres in the Falklands, reconstructing graphics she had drawn for Newsnight. "I experienced something of what it was like to endure the cold and bleakness of the Norfolk landscape, where those young recruits were going through their arduous training for a not far distant war. I followed them with my sketchbook -- through the woods, gunfire ringing in my ears -- keeping up as fast as I could."

Before concentrating on her later art, Charlotte worked extensively for British comics. After graduating from Blackpool School of Art, Charlotte moved to London and worked as an art director in advertising and television, all the time illustrating books, magazines and national newspapers including The Manchester Guardian. She also worked for major agencies such as Young & Rubican and J. Walter Thompson.

As well as her illustrations for Swift Annual, Charlotte contributed to the weekly title, illustrating the serials 'Journey Into Danger' and 'Aztec Gold'. She also drew several serials for Robin and, in the 1960s and 1970s, worked for Teddy Bear, Bunty, Tammy and Jinty.

"Like most illustrators I knew, we seemed to be quite prolific and all those deadlines kept you on your toes," Charlotte told me recently. "I was working as an art director in advertising at the same time doing a lot of storyboards for TV -- my comic strip experience was very useful."

"There were some wonderful artists working at Young & Rubicam in the '60s -- former top illustrators like Ken Petts and Harold Forster who later drew for Look and Learn. I rarely got ot meet other comic illustrators, though I met artists like John Whittam and Fritz Wegner whom I admired much for their Radio Times work.

"I did regular covers for Princess Tina as well as Tammy, including black & white illustrations for stories. Also a regular strip serial 'Make-Believe Mandy' for Jinty. I was asked to write a story around some full page illustrations for Teddy Bear. They were very nice people to work with. By contrast, D. C. Thomson frightened me rather! No news was good news according to the agent I had at the time. I occasionally got a message from them to say children had written comments such as why was one of the character's glasses missing that week, etc. It didn't often happen as I lined up all the faces in front of my drawing board to keep the continuity. But I couldn't escape those eagle eyes all the time!"

Books for Children
How-Do-You-Do Party Games. London, Nelson, 1967.
How-To-Do Baking. London, Nelson, 1968.
How-To-Do Paper Toys. London, Nelson, 1968.
The Spring Fairy. London, Snowball Books, 1975?

Illustrated Books
Argle's Oracle by Margot Mary Pardoe. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959.
The Pennor Mine Mystery by Wallace Bertram Nichols. London, Dennis Dobson, 1959.
Island in the Ice by Kenneth Rudge. London, Hamish Hamilton, 1960.
Bunkle Brings It Off by Margot Mary Pardoe. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961.
The Double Dealer by Peter Burgoyne. London & Glasgow, Blackie, 1961.
Holiday in Holland by Jill Stevens. London, Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1963.
The Thing That Swallowed Our House. A story for today and tomorrow by Jack Eyre Miles. London, Ginn & Co., 1963.
Veronica in Venice by Jill Stevens. London, Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1964.
Akua, the Ebony Doll by Patricia Gray. London, Dent, 1973.
The Policeman Comes to School by Dorothy M. Glynn. London, Oliver & Boyd (Dominoes ser.), 1973.
Hot and Cold by Albert James. London, Macdonald & Jane's, 1974.
I Make a Noise by Margett. London, Dent, 1974
Light and Shadow by Albert James. London, Macdonald & Co., 1974.
Springy Things by Albert James. London, Macdonald Educational, 1975.
Words by J. D. Bevington. London, Hamlyn, 1975.

(* My thanks to Charlotte for both her time and for providing the photographs that appear in this column. 'Boss of Beadle Street' is from June, 1973.)

Comic Cuts - 9 September

I've been working on the Fleetway Picture Library Index volume 2 which covers Cowboy Comics, Thriller Comics and Super Detective Library. The new volume updates some of the earliest lists David Ashford and I produced back in the early 1990s. The listings for the three titles have grown extensively over the years and I think we must have at least 90% of the artists identified now. David and I are working on the introductions now and, talking to Geoff the other day, we should have every single cover illustrated. Like the first book, we're talking about lots of colour for the covers and a lot of examples of internal art.

I'm very pleased to see that The War Libraries has received a very good review on Amazon and five stars. It's always nice to have your work appreciated.

While I was taking a break I took the opportunity to check out the very good overview of D. C. Thomson's Spike that has recently appeared on Down the Tubes. Written by Jeremy Briggs, the article covers all the various characters that appeared, illustrated with panels from the paper. It's well worth a look and I hear that more of these "comic companions" are being planned.

And so to the news...

* To coincide with the upcoming Comics Britannia season on BBC4, the BBC online Magazine is appealing to readers to nominate their favourite comic. You can use the on-line form to post a comment and even submit a picture. Similarly, the Comics Britannia site has a form for readers to vote for their favourite character.

* 'Raff Royal' (above) was one of a number of attempts that Frank Hampson made to launch a new strip following his departure from Eagle in the wake of 'The Road of Courage'. Although Hampson's original samples disappeared many years ago, one enterprising sub-editor at Fleetway took a set of photocopies which, although poor, meant that the strips have survived. Now, Alastair Crompton and Wakefield Carter have posted a version of the strip redrawn by former Hampson assistant Don Harley at their Lost Characters of Frank Hampson website (follow the link and scroll down the page). Harley, they reveal, is doing a similar job of redrawing and clarifying the second page of 'Raff Royal' that survived.

* Richard Sheaf reviews The Bumper Book of Look and Learn for Down the Tubes. Just noticed that the book has jumped to 440 in Amazon's best-sellers list.

* Alan Grant will be one of the speakers at this year's Edinburgh Lectures on 29 January 2008. His lecture is entitled 'Writing Tomorrow Yesterday: How Fiction Became Reality' and described thus: "In the 1980s Alan Grant co-wrote a series featuring Judge Dredd set in the USA around the year 2100. Reality has swiftly overtaken fiction and many of his made-up problems have already become part of everyday life: the ever-increasing fascism of state police forces; society's inane fascination with celebrity; the empowerment of the rich and famous at the expense of ordinary people -- in short, the crushing of the ordinary person as an agent in the world. Can things only get worse?" (link via Forbidden Planet International Blog)

* Steve Flanagan's Gad, Sir! Comics! has pics of statues of Andy Capp and Desperate Dan following the news that Wallace & Gromit are to be honoured with a statue (BBC News 24, 6 September) in Preston, Lancashire -- home town of Nick Park.

Comic Cuts - 6 September

If you're wondering why there hasn't been a mention of the two books I did for Carlton, the explanation is that there has been a slight delay at the printers for both Unleash Hell and Death or Glory. As far as I'm aware, the books are shipping to Carlton within the next few days and should be distributed immediately. I believe part of the problem was the time it took to get the artwork cleaned up.

No such problems with The Bumper Book of Look and Learn. It's out and copies are selling well at Amazon. Tonight we're at 894 but we almost hit the top 100 at one point.

And now, the news...

* The Forbidden Planet International Blog has some excellent coverage of the upcoming Comics Britannia season on BBC4, starting with a review of the show and an interview with producer Alastair Laurence (4 September) and following up with some comments on his experiences with the production by Leo Baxendale (5 September). Steve Flanagan at Gad, Sir! Comics! also has some comments about the series.

* Nick Abadzis is interviewed by Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter (2 September).

* Steve Bell is interviewed by Steven Vass in 'Marching to his own toon' (Sunday Herald, 2 September).

* Douglas Wolk offers a reading of Grant Morrison in the latest chapter of 'Reading Comics'. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5. (Link via Journalista)

G. Corrie Thompson

Another quickie from the Gramol files: G. Corrie Thompson was credited with three romance novels published by cheap-jack papperback publisher Gramol in the 1930s then seems to disappear.

Gladys Corrie Thompson was born in Fylde, Blackpool, in 1893, the daughter of actor James Edward (or possibly Edwin) Thompson (born in Mernt, East Indies, c. 1866) and his actress wife Mary Matilda (nee Holland), who married in Caister in 1891. Gladys would appear to have been raised in Blackpool by her mother and grandmother, Matilda Holland (no relation as far as I know).

Beyond the titles of her novels I've not been able to find out much more on Ms. Thompson, although Fylde had a long-standing and successful writers' circle whose members contributed to many women's magazines. Could be her work is lurking anonymously in the likes of Red Letter and other romance mags.

In the 1930s she was living in London. sharing an abode with Meaday Florence McWilliam (nee Supple), although they parted company at the end of the war. She is thought to be the Gladys C. Thompson who died in Bromley, Kent, in 2Q 1959, her age given as 65.

Novels
The Girl Who Dared. London, Gramol Publications (Mystery Novels 19), 1934.
Coloured Threads. London, Gramol Publications (Girls' Popular Novels 26), 1935.
Her Love Rewarded. London, Gramol Publications (Girls' Popular Novels 27), 1935.

Cora Linda

Steve Lewis at Mystery*File recently wrote a piece on British crime writer T. Arthur Plummer (29 August). There isn't a great deal known about him -- he was an actor-turned-writer who was pretty popular in the 1930s and 1940s.

Jamie Sturgeon (who deals in crime novels and is a fellow digger-at-the-coal-face when it comes to obscure British writers) dropped me a line this evening with the news that he'd discovered that Plummer's wife was also a writer -- she being Cora Linda, who penned dozens (the list below is far from complete) of romance libraries.

Jamie had been searching through the Electoral Role for information and turned up the fact that the Plummers (who separated and divorced at some point) had a daughter, Clare Emsley Plummer, who was also a prolific writer of romances under the names Clare Plummer and Clare Emsley.

I did some digging and located some dates for the two writers: Coralie Marie Plummer (possibly born Linder) was born on 12 August 1885 and died in Worthing in 1981. Her daughter, Clare Emsley Plummer, was born on 23 September 1912 and died in Worthing in 1980.

Novels by Cora Linda [Coralie Marie Plummer]
The Woman Hater. London, Aldine (4½d Novels 9), 1925.
A Man's Past. London, Aldine (4½d Novels 10), 1929.
His Marriage Trap. London, Newnes (Pocket Novels NS/104), 1930.
A Woman Cheated. London, Newnes (Pocket Novels NS/110), 1930.
Her Broken Plaything. London, Newnes (Pocket Novels NS/138), 1931.
The First Mrs. Ross. London, Gramol (Adelphi Novels 5), 1932.
Romantic Mary. London & Dundee, J. Leng & Co. (People's Friend Library 318), 1932.
A Woman's Problem. London, Newnes (Pocket Novels 26), 1933.
The Man With Two Brides. London, Pearsons (Star Library 8), 1933.
A Wife in Exile. London, Newnes (2d Novels), 1934.
Her Secret Shame. London, Newnes (2d Novels 11), 1934.
The Road She Chose. London & Dundee, J. Leng & Co. (People's Friend Library 532), 1940.
No Child of Their Own. Liverpool, C. Tinling (Women's 4½d Novels 3), 1941.
Born to Love. Liverpool, C. Tinling (Women's 4½d Novels 12), 1941.
Not the Wife He Wanted. London, Amalgamated Press (Woman's World Library 151), c.1947.
Why She Wouldn't Marry. London, Amalgamated Press (Woman's World Library 170), 1948.
Dangerous Marriage. London, Amalgamated Press (Woman's World Library 172), 1948.
Child In the Shadows. London, Fleetway Publications (Woman's World Library 588), 1966.

NOVELS BY CLARE EMSLEY PLUMMER

Novels
Unknown Heritage. London, Robert Hale, 1963.
Doctor Adam's Past. London, Robert Hale, 1965.
The Awakening of Nurse Grant. London, Hale, 1967.
An Island for Doctor Phillipa. London, Robert Hale, 1969.
Chris Baynton, S.R.N.. London, Hale, 1971.

Novels as Clare Emsley
Painted Clay. London, Stanley Paul & Co., 1947.
Keep Thy Heart. London, Stanley Paul & Co., 1949.
The Broken Arcs. London, Stanley Paul, 1951.
The Fatal Gift. London, Stanley Paul, 1951.
Lonely Pinnacle. London, Stanley Paul, 1952.
Unjust Recompense. London, Stanley Paul & Co., 1953.
The True Physician. London, Stanley Paul, 1954.
Flame of Youth. London, Stanley Paul, 1957.
Call Back Yesterday. London, Hurst & Blackett, 1958.
The Long Journey. London, Hurst & Blackett, 1959.
A Nurse's Sacrifice. London, Hurst & Blackett, 1962.
Doctor Michael's Bondage. London, Hurst & Blackett, 1962.
A Surgeon's Folly. London, Hurst & Blackett, 1963.
Doctor at the Crossroads. London, Hurst & Blackett, 1966.
Nurse Catherine's Marriage. London, Hurst & Blackett, 1967.
Sister Rachel's Vigil. London, Hurst & Blackett, 1968.
Doctor Rowland's Daughters. London, Hurst & Blackett, 1970.
A Time To Heal. London, Arrow Books, 1972 [1971]; Hurst & Blackett, 1972.
Highway to Fate. London, Hurst & Blackett, 1973.
A Heart's Captivity. London, Hurst & Blackett, 1976.

(* My thanks to Jamie for the cover scan.)

Poussin

I originally posted the following on 16 July 2007:

I stumbled across the above strip in a 1936 issue of The Children's Newspaper. I've no idea who Poussin is, only that he also produced a strip for the children's supplement of the Scottish Daily Express in 1933 entitled 'Professor Chewso'. I'm guessing that Poussin worked for an agency that supplied various strips, puzzles and filler material to some of the many newspaper supplements published in the 1930s.

Update: I've recently had a chance to dig through many more issues of the Children's Newspaper and can report that 'A Few Words From Theophilus' appeared irregularly between issues 888 and 934 (28 March 1936 to 13 February 1937). It was preceded by another strip from the same artist, 'Sim and Sam, the Tantalising Twins' which ran (again missing a few issues) between issue 871 and 887 (30 November 1935 to 21 March 1936).

I'm still unable to find anything on the artist: Poussin is a genuine surname, French, as far as I can gather (there is a famous French Baroque painter by the name of Nicholas Poussin), but it's a very uncommon surname in the UK.

I wonder if the name may have been used in its other meaning? A 'poussin' is a young chicken or 'spring chicken' and is used colloquially in the phrase "(s)he's no spring chicken" (meaning old). Could it have been used by a young newcomer to comic strips, signing his work to hint that he is a spring chicken? The 'Sim and Sam' cartoons are quite crude, almost stick-figureish; they make the 'Theophilus' strips from only a year later seem quite sophisticated in comparison.

If I'm right, we might even be able to presume a few things: 'Poussin' could be a contemporary of other young artists like Reg Perrott and Basil Reynolds who started out with agencies supplying work for the newspaper supplements of the early 1930s and possibly born around the beginning of the First World War (c. 1914-16). Maybe he disappeared into the world of advertising or illustration after these few strips.

Of course, the name could have been used with a hint of sarcasm: maybe the artist wasn't a spring chicken! Which puts us back at square one.

Paul Urquhart [Ladbroke Black & Thomas Meech]

Paul Urquhart was a pen-name commonly credited to author Ladbroke Black, although it was initially a pen-name jointly used by Black in collaboration with another author, Thomas Cox Meech.

Black, born in Burley-in-Wharfdale, Yorkshire, on 21 June 1877, was educated in Ireland and at Cambridge where he earned a B.A. He became assistant editor of The Phoenix in 1897 before moving to London in 1899 where he joined The Morning Herald as assistant editor in 1900. He later became assistant editor of the Echo in 1901, joint editor of Today, 1904-05, and special writer on the Weekly Dispatch, 1905-11.

After a forgettable first novel, A Muddied Oaf (1902), co-written with Francis Rutter, Black collaborated on the collection The Mantle of the Emperor (1906) with Robert Lynd, later literary editor of the News Chronicle. He then produced a series of novels in collaboration with Meech under the name Paul Urquhart, beginning with The Eagles (1906). Black also wrote for various magazines and newspapers, sometimes using the pen-name Lionel Day. His books ranged from romances to Sexton Blake detective yarns. His recreations included sports (boxing and rugby), reading and long walks. He lived in Wendover, Bucks, for many years and was Chairman of the Mid-Bucks Liberal Party in 1922-24. He died on 27 July 1940, aged 63, survived by his wife (Margaret, nee Ambrose), two sons and two daughters.

Thomas Cox Meech, born in Beaminster, Dorset, in 1868, was educated at Ardingly College, and entered a lawyer's office on leaving school. However, he soon switched professions and became a journalist. At the age of 21 he was the editor of the Ayrshire Post, subsequently moving to the editorial chair on the Lancashire Daily Post and the Northern Echo. Like Black, he was a long-time supporter of the Liberal party and was a member of the Press lobby from 1899 until he retired from journalism in 1933. In 1922 he stood as an Independent Liberal for Blackburn.

Meech remained in touch with the law and was called to the Bar by the Middle Temple. He was a Clerk of Inductment on the Western Circuit and in the Temple, retaining chambers in Temple Garden.

Meech's first novel, Only a Collier appeared (as by Tom Meech) in 1890 and he wrote a number of notable books, including biographies of Thomas Burt, M.P., and US President William M'Kinley; he also wrote a 2-volume history of Great Britain and Ireland entitled This Generation (1927-28).

Meech, who died on 20 October 1940, was twice married, first to Martha Agnes Kilgour and, secondly, to Jessie Mildred McAlpine; he had one daughter.

Novels as Paul Urquhart
Note: later novels published by Amalgamated Press from 1922 onwards (not listed here) were by Ladbroke Black alone.
The Eagles. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1906.
The Web. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1907.
The Shadow. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1908.
The Turmoil. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1915.
One Clear Call. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1916.
The Awakening. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1918.
Cross Currents. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1918.

Look-In: Best of the Seventies

(* I'm pleased to welcome Alistair McGown to Bear Alley. Alistair was heavily involved in the compilation of Carlton's newly released Look-In compilation of the best of the seventies and, as I'm not backward in stepping forward, I asked him if he'd be willing to contribute something about how the book was put together. He said, "OK," and here it is. Take it away, Alistair...)

LOOK-IN

I'd long been trying to track down someone at IPC to see if they might be interested in reprinting classic Look-in material and eventually made contact with some helpful bods who told me that IPC wouldn't publish such material themselves but were always looking for interested third parties to license material to - in fact one such licensee had recently agreed a deal.

It soon transpired the licensee was Carlton Books, looking to follow up the success of their Jackie reprint titles with further comic nostalgia. Their project editor had previously worked with my old mate Graham Kibble-White and now approached him for suggestions of any classic comics Carlton could perhaps republish. He had only one answer!

Having made a few casually furtive enquiries about my Look-in collection, Graham and I finally emerged as the team behind this title and so it was that Graham travelled up from London to my flat in Glasgow (in this case, Mohammed could come to the mountain!) for a weekend's fevered perusing of my archive. In terms of the 1970s this ran to about 300 issues at the time, including a full run of 1978-79 (I begin to wonder if I will ever acquire the eight I need to complete 1977 without paying a fortune?). If you think this odd, no, IPC did not hold a published archive themselves.

Prior to this meet up we'd done a logistics exercise, me listing all the strips that had run, noting in each case which were serials and which standalones and how many were colour and black and white. Early on I'd realised just how long some of the serials were (presumably to keep readers buying the comic to reach the end of a storyline) with the vast majority being over six parts long and several as long as 13! Clearly Carlton wanted a book to reflect the rich variety of Look-in's first glorious decade, not a collected comics volume, so finding short run serials was an initial problem (hence why we chose a 1980 Sapphire & Steel three-part serial rather than strictly sticking to a 1979 one).

Even after finding suitable candidate strips there were the inevitable gap issues of the kind that strike fear into all comic collectors. eBay was the only answer and with Carlton thankfully footing the bill we soon managed to fill them, although one issue bought for a 1974 Black Beauty strip cost £11!

Using a spreadsheet program written by his brother Jack, Graham sifted our shortlisted content into (generally) chronological order and then worked out countless permutations to produce an even spread of colour and monochrome, strip and feature and so on. If it had been up to me to do this, being such an old skool git, I probably would have written each page's content onto a blank postcard and shuffled the cards around a table. I wonder if I'd still be there doing it?

It was then down to me to scan and clean up the pages. Browned pages were readjusted to clean white as much as possible, creases and tears airbrushed out using Photoshop's clone tools, and page bleeds recreated so that the pages all bled to the edge if they had in the original magazine, rather than use horrible clunky page borders. If you didn't notice any of this, then I've done my job (a horrendous print fault on a Tomorrow People strip episode almost wiped out a vast band on each page, by far the worst flaw to be corrected). Look-in's binding, which for most of its life used a crimp-style rather than staples, caused me a few problems as I struggled to get good enough scans without sacrificing my precious issues. Again, I had to reconstruct a few of those pages into the binding edge as best I could. I'm not sure how Carlton have scanned other comic collections and whether or not they leave a pile of tattered, cut-up back copies behind.

Although I designed the interior pages (including the endpaper cover galleries, which were my idea - very time-consuming but hopefully worth it) the cover was put together in-house at Carlton. The montage was made using hi-resolution scans taken from IPC's artwork archive, the feeling being that this would provide the necessary quality. Graham had discovered just in time that IPC was about to sell off the remnants of its artwork archive to a collector/dealer and with it the last few chunks of Look-in art. Graham and Lorna, the project editor, viewed IPC's less than orderly archive just weeks before it was sold and managed to acquire high quality scans of a dozen classic cover paintings (four of these are reprinted in the book for the first time next to their published counterparts).

Although I was understandably a little disappointed not to have provided the cover design, close to publication there was an urgent phone call one Thursday afternoon asking if I could put together an entirely different cover for the following Tuesday morning for a second distribution imprint (under the SevenOaks name). Much high-speed trawling through my back copies ensued, seeking iconic cover art to hopefully blend into a nice montage composition. So thirty years after I'd drawn my own at home, I'd finally put together a Look-in cover.

Carlton had initially suggested a general compilation book, with possibly a follow up collection of material from the annuals. Carlton had done this for Jackie where it made sense, with the two publications being physically very different formats. But as I pointed out, Look-in's annuals were generally inferior to the weekly comics, with rehashed features and fill-in strip artists. Instead I suggested that a 1970s collection would make sound demographic sense, with a 1980s-focused collection as a strong potential sequel.

As the first volume sees release, I can only hope it sells well and lets us pay tribute to Look-in's second decade as the chronicler of ephemeral pop culture. Here's to Look-in: the Best of the Eighties and perhaps a chance to revisit the adventures of Robin of Sherwood, The A-Team, Dangermouse and, just maybe, Mollie Sugden in That's My Boy!

(* Look-In: The Best of the Seventies is available from your local book shop now. Or, as you're already cruising the internet, you can take a look at Amazon for more info. Alistair has put up a tribute page about Look-In where you can also find interviews with editor Colin Shelbourn and writer Angus P. Allan.)

Kathleen Clarice Cornwell...Klein...Dealtry...Groom

I'm filling in a bit as it has been a long day and I don't really want to start something new. So I thought I'd share this -- the story of a woman with six names.

There was a lot of too-ing and fro-ing between people so I'm not claiming the resolution was down to me: John Herrington, Al Hubin and Victor Berch deserve equal credit.

The whole thing started with a book called Sylvia Shale, Detective (London, Hurst & Blackett, 1924) by Mrs Sydney Groom. Who, someone wondered, was Mrs Groom?

Well, she was the wife of Sydney H. Groom and her name was Kathleen Clarice, formerly Dealtry. Such a simple solution. But wait... there's more.

Kathleen Clarice Dealtry was her married name. She had married Herbert Arthur Berkeley Dealtry in 1902 and for a while wrote stories under the name Kit Dealtry. Prior to her marriage she was called Klein because she'd previously married Hermann Klein on 19 February 1890 and for some years she was known as Clarice Naomi Klein. "Clarice Naomi" (or some variation) was probably the name under which she was writing at the time because she was born Kathleen Clarice Louise Cornwell in Melbourne, Australia, on 11 March 1872, the daughter of George Cornwell and his wife Emma (nee Redpath) who had married in 1851. George was a railway guard who became a gold prospector in Australia, running several mines. His daughter, Alice Cornwell, born in 1852, did a great deal to assist him and, by the 1890s had become spectacularly wealthy, returning to England where she bought the Sunday Times newspaper.

In 1891, the 19-year-old 'Clarice' was living with her husband Herman (whose name sometimes drops the second 'n') and Herman's daughter from a previous marriage, Sylvia. The couple had three children, Adrian (b. 1892), Daryl (b. c.1894/5) and Denise (b. 1897). Unfortunately, for Herman, a journalist and Professor of music, his wife began an affair with an officer attached to the Worcestershire Regiment called Berkeley Dealtry. Dealtry was considerably younger than her husband (Herman, of Russian ancestry, had been born in Norwich, Norfolk, in 1856; Dealtry was born in Clevedon, Somerset, in 1878) and Herman, on discovering their affair, petitioned for a divorce, granted in December 1901.

The lovers married but became involved in a long, drawn-out court case in 1905 over a number of prize dog shows held a couple of years earlier. I'll be brief (because I'm sure you're all already dozing off): The Ladies' Kennel Association had, for some years, been running unsuccessful shows, setting up new shows and using the subscriptions to pay off the prize money for the previous show. All shows had to be approved by the Kennel Club and, after two particularly poor shows in 1902, the KC refused to grant them a license for another show. Mrs Stennard Robinson -- Kathleen Dealtry's sister, Alice -- was a leading light in both the Ladies' Kennel Association (which celebrated its 100th anniverary in 2004) and the National Cat Club and was determined to keep things moving. She persuaded her sister and brother-in-law to apply to the Kennel Club as a front to hold a prize dog show. This they did, and rather successful it was, too. But the money never found its way to the Dealtrys, who were then persuaded to hold a second show to pay off prize money owed on the first. After the second show, a number of prize winners took out actions against the Dealtrys which resulted by Herbert Dealtry being declared bankrupt.

The Dealtrys tried to sue the Ladies' Kennel Association but were unsuccessful and, immediately after the failed court case, left for America with Kathleen's daughter, Denise.

Some of Kit Dealtry's stories began appearing in The All-Story Magazine, including a couple of novel-length stories, 'The Voice in the Dark' (May 1907), 'The Cipher Skull' (Aug 1907) and the serial 'Shadowed' (Feb-May 1908).

They appear to have lived in America for a couple of years but, by 1908, Kit Dealtry can be found living in London and, in 1909-10, in Norwood, at the time writing Christian novels for a publisher named Carruthers.

Under the Mistletoe Bough. Carruthers, 1908.
Ill-Gotten Gain. Carruthers, 1909.

In 1918 she married again and, as Mrs Sydney Groom, wrote at least three books:

Love In The Darkness. London, Skeffington & Son, 1918.
Shadows Of Desires. London, 1919.
Detective Sylvia Shale. London, Hurst & Blackett, 1924.

The latter was derived from the earlier Kit Dealtry serial 'Shadowed', dating back to 1908.

As K. C. Groom she also wrote:

The Folly of Fear. London, Hurst & Blackett, 1947.
Phantom Fortune. London, 1948.
The Recoil. London, Hutchinson, 1952.

Kathleen Groom died in the Brighton/Hove area in 1954, aged 82. It's possible, even probable, that she wrote a great deal more over the years than the above gives her credit for. After all, someone who was variously known as...

Kathleen Clarice Cornwell
Clarice Naomi Klein
Kathleen Clarice Dealtry
Kit Dealtry
Kathleen Clarice Groom
Mrs. Sydney Groom
K. C. Groom

... may well have used one or two pseudonyms along the way.

Update: 15 September

John Herrington has managed to track down an obituary for the mysterious Mrs. Groom which mentions that she "went to an English boarding school at the age of 15. Soon afterwards she took to short story writing, and later wrote several serial thrillers for a leading Scottish newspaper. She then became household-page editor of a Sunday newspaper."

"The obituary also says she did not live to see her last book, a thriller, published though it had been accepted by a publisher before she died," says John. "Was this ever actually published? Her last known book, The Recoil, was published in 1952 -- two years before she died."

If it was published it was presumably under a pen-name or part of a pocket library series that has yet to be indexed (and there are many!).

One very interesting discovery made by John through the obituary is that Kathleen Clarice Groom handed down her writing talents to at least two of her children. Adrian Bernard Klein, who changed his name to Adrian Cornwell-Clyne and became a Major (in 1921), MBE and FRPS, was an artist and wrote books on photography and 3-D cinematography. He died on 18 April 1969. In 1932, Klein (as he was still known as then) gave a demonstration of a new instrument called a "colour organ" which "was able to project at the will of the player every possible coloured tone in any succession, order or speed." And here's me listening to Pink Floyd while I write this!

Meanwhile, Denise Naomi Klein married Arthur Robins and began writing under the name Denise Robins and at least six pen-names. She wrote at least 164 books and was dubbed by the Daily Graphic "the queen of romantic fiction".

Spot the photo

More from Jeremy Briggs...

Spot the Photo

Steve's 'Spot the Artists' pieces [here and here - Steve], where he shows Look and Learn cover artists inserting the names of their contemporaries in the covers, reminded me of this cover...

Look and Learn issue 851, dated 6 May 1978, had an article on Sir Francis Drake. This was featured on the cover with art by Roger Payne. While I am sure that many of the Look and Learn artists used photo reference, I wonder how many used publicity stills from films unrelated to the subject matter of the article.

The photo that he used is of actor Patrick Wayne, son of John, portraying Sinbad in the Charles H. Schneer/Ray Harryhausen feature film Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger which was released in 1977. The film also featured Taryn Power, the daughter of Tyrone Power, with Doctor Who's Patrick Troughton and Jane Seymour, then best known as the Bond Girl Solitaire in Live and Let Die.

Don't think too badly of Payne for using the photo. After all, the poster artist Victor Gadino used another photo from the same shoot for the film poster used in the UK and, as shown here, Yugoslavia amongst other places, so Payne was in good company.

Comic Clippings - 2 September

It's official: The War Libraries is now on sale. The book cleared customs last week and arrived with the publisher, The Book Palace, on Thursday; advance orders were sent out at the tail end of the week so everyone who ordered a copy can expect it to thump onto their welcome mat shortly.

The book has been so close to publication for so long I'm more relieved than excited. It was started way back in 1984 when I put an advert in Denis Gifford's Association of Comics Enthusiasts Newsletter, Comic Cuts, and the first ever list, covering only a few hundred issues of War Picture Library, appeared in Comic Cuts in September 1990. So the lists have been around in one form or another for decades. The introduction, which runs to over 10,000 words, was originally drafted in 1999, although extensively rewritten into its current form in 2007.

OK, so lists of these things won't be for everyone and we know it's unlikely to give Waterstones or Borders any worries about where to stock it... they don't! But if you get a chance, come along to the next ABC show on Sunday, 7 October, and take a look at the book. David and I will both be there. We're hoping to also be at the London International Comics Festival (Comica) at the ICA on, I think, 3 November. You can get the book directly from the publisher or you can order it through Amazon.

From the 'My Friends Are Geeks' file: the kids'-of-friends party yesterday had a Spiderman theme (and cake) and here's L'il Spider-Man, who has never seen a Spider-Man comic or a Spider-Man movie as he's way too young. But he has seen the posters for the movies and just fell in love with the costume. Chalk up another (4-year-old) fan for Spidey.

A few interviews spotted recently...

* Broken Frontier's Bart Croonenborgh is 'Talking to Warren Ellis' (30 August)... the clue is in the title. (Link via Journalista)

* John Higgins, artist of the upcoming adaptation of The Hills Have Eyes (based on the movie), is interviewed at The Pulse by Jennifer M. Contino (22 August).

* Another Jennifer M. Contino interview, this time with Andi Watson, also at The Pulse (21 August).

Spot the artists... (2)

A while back I put up an illustration by Peter Jackson in which a number of the finest Look and Learn artists were given a name-check amongst the advertising boards and shop fronts. Well, here's another, this time by Richard Hook. I've spotted Peter Jackson, Ron Embleton and, tucked away on a sack, J (for Jack) Parker, art editor (later editor) of L&L as well as Hook's monogram on the horse at the bottom. There's a hint of a 'McBride' on a hat box but it's unclear, although, given the friendship between the two artists, it's very likely to have been intended. Kelleher would be Dan Kelleher of the Temple Artists' Agency... but who N. Mardell might be I've no idea.

(* The illustration comes from a feature on Christmas shopping in Look and Learn no. 519 (25 December 1971) and is © Look and Learn Magazine Ltd.)

Sabre Library

A query comes my way via the comments from Crow who asks "Any chance of an article about Commandos poorer cousin, Sabre Library?"

Well... um... yes, but I don't know a lot. I don't have any copies of the various Sabre libraries and, as far as I'm aware, there's no checklist of titles. Over the years I've jotted down any information I've stumbled across but that isn't much and some of the info. is a bit confusing.

There were four Sabre Library titles, each with a Sabre Library sabre logo. The original publisher was Sabre Publishing who were an offshoot of Brown Watson Ltd., a paperback publisher which had been running since the 1940s. Brown Watson published a lot of books under the imprint Digit Books between 1956 and 1967. Their big moneyspinner was a Western author called J. T. Edson whose books were recycled constantly. When Digit came to an end as an imprint, Brown Watson launched Sabre Western and reprinted many of Edson's titles again. Edson's contract was then bought by Corgi Books and, in 1968, Sabre Western became Sabre Books, although still an imprint of Brown Watson Ltd.

I suspect that the Sabre Library titles were also produced by Brown Watson in 1971 (they were shortly to relaunch as paperback publishers under the Flamingo Books imprint), although it may be that the line was sold to New English Library who, I believe, distributed the books.

The four titles were Sabre Library: Romantic Stories in Pictures, Sabre Library: Thriller Stories in Pictures, Sabre Library: War Stories in Pictures and Sabre Library: Western Stories in Pictures. All four titles were launched in 1971 at 6p but I've no idea how many titles appeared each month. All the stories were reprints of Spanish strips.

I don't think this series lasted very long, perhaps only a matter of months if more than one title was published in each series per month. If not, I'm guessing they lasted perhaps eighteen months.

However, they then seem to have been picked up by another company (or maybe the same company under a different name), Librus Ltd. Now, I'm not sure when this occurred, but there seems to be a gap in the numbering that I know of and the libraries may have started numbering again from 50 rather than going back to number 1 or even picking up where the previous series had ended. I say this cautiously as the lists I have are only a smattering of titles and not all them dated.

I'm not even sure if the Romance series was continued. I've not heard of any later titles.

The Thriller, War and Western series definitely continued, relaunched in either 1973 or 1974. Both War and Western continued until at least 1977: the last issue numbers I know of are: Thriller - 98 (1975); War 151 (1977) and Western 185 (1977).

The other interesting thing with these later issues as I've not seen a number duplicated and there's a chance that the books were intermingled as part of a single line of titles. However, it could be a simple case of lack of information that makes it appear that they're all one line.

And that, I'm afraid, is all I know. If anyone has a stack of these rather obscure libraries to hand, perhaps they would like to jot down a list of titles and publications dates and drop me a line.

Update: 2 September

More info rolls in care of Jeremy Briggs who sent along a scan of the above issue. It's later than the last issue I had listed -- no. 157. This was published by Euredit of Barcelona, printed in Spain and distributed by Independent Magazines Ltd., 181 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4V 4DD. Copyright is 1978 and the war issues were being published at the rate of three a month. Could be that by this time they were only publishing the war title.

(* The pic at the top comes from this New Zealand trading site.)