Thunderbolt Jaxon & the Kidnappers

It's Thunderbolt Jaxon weekend... there'll be another of Hugh McNeill's classic strips tomorrow plus a look at the origins of TJ on Monday. Have fun!

(* Thunderbolt Jaxon © IPC Media.)

Comic Cuts

This has been something of a fractured week: I had lots planned but only managed about half of it. The piece I had planned for today I'm having to hold over because I didn't finish cleaning up all the scans. It'll wait. So... here are a couple of odds 'n' sods that I have managed to sort out.

About 18 months ago I wrote a little piece on Reg Wootton and I'm still thrilled whenever I stumble across any of his work. The two pics below are both from the Knockout Annual 1958 and were the front and rear endpapers respectively. Just superb. I don't think Wootton often got the chance to work in colour or this expansively as he spent most of his life on newspaper strips and the single page Sporty, which rarely featured anything but a red overlay when it wasn't in black & white. If there's ever a collection of Sporty strips, at least there's something that could be used as a cover.

Inspired by the passing of Pepe González, I dug out these three Vampirella novels, written by Ron Goulart for Warner in 1975-76. The Warner (US) series ran to six titles, only three of which made it to the UK where they were published by Sphere in 1976-77. I've no idea if the US editions used the same covers but the three here were beautifully painted by Gino D'Achille. The original artwork (which I've used for our column header) for the third book's cover is currently being auctioned (lot 187). The fourth pic. below is the portrait of Vampirella used on the back covers.

I hear from Classic Comics that their latest book, Great Expectations, based on the novel by Charles Dickens, is now available in the usual formats: Original Text (abridged) and Quick Text. Adapted by Jen Green, the 160-or-so pages of artwork are by John Stokes with colour finishes by Jason Cardy. You can find a preview of the artwork at the Classic Comics website. I've read three of the earlier books and they've all been excellent adaptations.

Coming very soon are adaptations of Shakespeare's The Tempest and Romeo and Juliet, each in three formats (original, plain and quick texts).

Also very close to release are the two volumes of Century 21 reprints: Century 21: Classic Comic Strips from the Worlds of Gerry Anderson Volume 1: Adventure in the 21st Century and Century 21: Classic Comic Strips from the Worlds of Gerry Anderson Volume 2: Invasion in the 21st Century. I think I'm safe in saying that these are generating quite a bit of excitement... I had people asking me about them on Sunday at the comics fair and ought to point out that they're edited by a guy called Chris Bentley. I don't have a monopoly on editing British reprints. Not yet, anyway. Bwa... bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha.

That's enough evil laughter...

Talking of reprints, in May Panini will be publishing a collection of Hugo Pratt's comics from the pages of the British war libraries. Sadly, this is Panini in Spain and if you don't read Spanish, Diario de Guerra probably isn't for you. But it's a reprint of British comics and I feel compelled to mention it. A number of other British strips are going to be appearing in Spain in the near future although I have no details as yet.

There are also some British reprints coming to Britain this summer but I'm still waiting for the OK to talk about them (again, not edited by me... I'm definitely slipping!).

Whilst Carlton seem to have cut back and Titan are on what feels like a go-slow, there are still plenty of things planned, some even due soon. You can't say we don't live in interesting times.

John Worsley

John Worsley was a versatile artist who turned his talent to an extraordinary range of work. Even in his late seventies, he could be found busy in his studio working on a marine painting, a sculpture or glass engraving. He was a gracious guest of honour at dinners organised by fans of his famous comic strip, "The Adventures of PC 49", and impressed a new generation with his collection of wartime sketches, John Worsley’s War. Although his paintings and portraits (including those of Montgomery and Admiral Sir John Cunningham) can be seen in the Imperial War Museum and National Maritime Museum, not all of his work was so public, as he worked tirelessly as a police sketch artist, his facility for capturing a likeness responsible for many arrests.

His ability to accurately report through his work was recognised early by the Admiralty who ordered Midshipman Worsley into the thick of things as the youngest official War Artist in the Mediterranean. Worsley had already survived the sinking of H.M.S. Laurentic by a German U-Boat in November 1940, and now found himself taking part in the landings at Sicily, Reggio and Salermo. In 1943 he was amongst the rescue party sent to establish a base on Lussin Piccola in the North Adriatic, only to find it overrun by Germans.

Worsley was taken to Germany where he was interrogated, spending much of the next two months in solitary confinement before being sent to the POW camp Marlag ‘O’, near Bremen. Amongst the other prisoners was journalist Guy Morgan who had been badly wounded and was to be repatriated, smuggling out a number of Worsley’s drawings in the plaster cast on his arm.
A more daring escapade was the escape plans of Lieutenant Mewes which required the assistance of a stand-in. Out of wire and papier mache, Worsley created a dummy, dubbed ‘Albert, R.N.’, who was held between two soldiers during roll call, fooling the guards into thinking they had a full compliment of prisoners whilst Mewes made his way to the coast. For four days, Albert, with his ping-pong ball eyes and no hands (his sleeves were stuffed into his jacket pockets), fooled the guards. Unfortunately, Mewes was refused passage on the northern coast of Germany, and was recaptured. ‘Albert’ was finally rumbled when a second escape attempt two months later was foiled quickly and the escapee caught just after roll call, the guards realising they now had one too many prisoners.

Back in England, Guy Morgan immortalised 'Albert R.N.' in a play which was filmed in 1953. The movie starred Jack Warner and Anthony Steel, the latter portraying Geoffrey Ainsworth, a fictional version of Worsley. Worsley recreated Albert for the film, the dummy now at the Naval Museum in Portsmouth.

Born in Liverpool on 16 February 1919, Worsley was the son of a Naval officer who, demobbed six months later, moved his family back to the family coffee farm in Kabuka, 40 miles north of Nairobi in Kenya. It was here amidst the spectacular scenery and at an altitude of 6000 feet that John Worsley grew up, shooting and messing around in the family Model T Ford when he wasn’t attending school.

This idyllic life came to a crashing end in 1928 when the recession caused the price of coffee beans to collapse, and John was sent to St. Winifred’s boarding school, his fees subsidised by a grant from the Royal Navy Trust. He won a scholarship to Brighton College, and entered Goldsmiths’ College School of Art where he studied for three years, subsisting on a £300 legacy which he eked out at £2 a week, still finding the money—£4—to purchase a second hand Fiat in his third year. This he used, after leaving College, to travel along the South Coast, making sketches which he would sell to magazines.

Worsley’s experiences in the Royal Navy, which began with a three week crash course in seamanship in 1939 did not end with his repatriation. As allied troops advanced in early 1945, Worsley and other POWs were forced to march the 80 miles to Lubeck, arriving a few days before the war ended. When Worsley returned to the UK it was to a small studio in Baron’s Court where he was asked by the Admiralty to paint portraits of many high ranking officers.

Worsley found work in illustration through an agency and found himself working on the Eagle comic soon after its launch painting a full-page advertising strip for Walls Ice Cream starring Tommy Walls, a young lad whose heroics were always accomplished by making the Lucky Walls Sign, and whose reward was, inevitably, lashings of ice cream.

It was as the artist for "The Adventures of PC 49" that Worsley really reached an audience; from his first episode in August 1951, he would eventually draw the tales of Archibald Berkeley-Willoughby until his final appearance in March 1957. 290 episodes appeared in Eagle comic alone, with further tales appearing in Eagle Annual and various spin-off books. Worsley’s was, to most fans, the definitive portrait, and Worsley himself commented "You cannot portray a character three thousand times without getting to know him pretty well." Three quarters of a million schoolboys relished every brushstroke each week. Worsley also worked for the Eagle’s companion paper, Girl, drawing "The Story of Miriam" (1951-52) and "Belle of the Ballet" (1952-54), and for many years was an illustrator for the educational nursery paper, Treasure, notably drawing the adventures of "Wee Willie Winkie" (1963-67).

In later years, Worsley was commissioned by Esso to produce a series of paintings of life on oilfields in Iraq and America. Never standing still, Worsley also embraced the new medium of independent television, and produced hundreds of colour illustrations for readings of famous children’s stories; many of them were later used as illustrations for large format hardcover books published by Purnell and Deans. An article about his work by one of his enthusiasts was entitled “The Complete Artist” and nobody earned that title more than John Worsley.

Worsley died on 3 October 2000, aged 81.

(* PC 49 © Estate of Alan Stranks/BBC; PC 49 artwork © IPC Media; war artwork © Estate of John Worsley; Wee Willie Winkie © Look and Learn Magazine Ltd.)

Jose "Pepe" Gonzalez (1939-2009)

Artist José González Navarro, better known as "Pepe" Gonzalez, died on Friday, 13 March, having fallen into a coma following a long illness.

González began working as an artist for British comics as a teenager. Born in Barcelona, his was introduced to the world of comics by Javier Puerto, who had spotted two portraits drawn by González which were hanging in the window of a tailor's shop where his mother worked. Puerto presented him to Josep Toutain, the manager of the Selecciones Ilustrades agency, who tested the young artist by having him copy some "Cisco Kid" artwork by Jose Luis Salinas. The result was an exact reproduction (down to the stains on the paper) and González was immediately hired to draw Westerns such as Yuki el Temerario for Editorial Valenciana.

Selecciones Ilustrades had then recently broken into the British market, supplying work to Len Miller and Westworld Publications. González found himself working on "Doc Holliday" which appeared in Miller's TV Heroes and Young Marvelman Annual in 1959.

González also showed a talent for drawing girls in the pages of Rosas Blancas, Susana and Serenata for Editorial Toray. Toutain introduced his new recruit to Reginald Taylor, editor of Boyfriend, and Mike Butterworth, editor of Valentine, and González found himself drawing romance strips for the British market for the next decade, contributing to the aforementioned papers as well as Serenade, Marilyn, Love Story Picture Library, Trend & Boyfriend, Jackie, Mirabelle, Romeo, Judy and Mandy.

In 1963-64, he also drew a strip adapting the TV show The Avengers, syndicated to various TV listings magazines and newspapers in the UK and abroad.

His talent for drawing sensual, curvaceous women found a natural home in the pages of James Warren's Vampirella magazine. In 1970, Toutain travelled to New York at the request of his artists who hoped to break into the American market (or rather, perhaps, break out of the British market) and, over the next few months, a trickle of S.I. artists, including González, began contributing pin-ups to Martin Goodman's cartoon humour magazines. James Warren also began offering many of the best of the S.I. artists regular work on his horror magazines.

González made his debut with "Death's Dark Angel" in Vampirella #12 (Jul 1971). González and other S.I. artists had an incredible impact on Warren's various titles; González's debut strip was voted the Best Art in a Story for 1971 and he received the same award in 1974 for his story "The Sultana's Revenge" in Vampirella #33. During this early period, he also produced, as a cover for issue 19, the definitive full-figure painting of Vampirella which found its way onto posters, book covers and merchandise.

Having drawn the strip continuously from issue 12 to 34, González began to slacken his pace in the mid-1970s but continued to drawn for Warren (primarily for Vampirella but also for 1984) until 1979. David Roach, in The Warren Companion, has opined that González's early strips showed the artist illustrating scenes rather than telling the stories through his artwork. The problem was partly resolved when episodes became shorter and other artists began to fill in. "The episodes' shorter length allowed [González] to bring a more realistic, illustrative approach to the strip. Many of his mid-'70s strips contained beautiful pencil, wash, or intricately cross-hatched penand ink drawings of almost photographic realism, garnished with his usual cartoon flavorings. The mix was occasionally jarring but it was among the most appealing material material Warren ever published."

González all but departed Warren's publications in 1979 when work on portfolios and pin-ups took up most of his time. He returned in 1982-83 for a final six appearances, after which he concentrated on work in Europe. In the 1980s he drew Chantal and Mamba for Editions Norma but drifted away from comics in favour of fine art and illustration, primarily in pencil and charcoal. His works were widely exhibited in Spain but González himself lived reclusively in Barcelona, his address known only to a select few.

González had a photographic memory and could draw portraits without reference; Marilyn Monroe was a particular favourite. He also drew that other famous blonde celebrity, Barbie, for Egmont. Although his work was always popular, he was somewhat Bohemian in his outlook. Robin Whale has commented: "he never worked to achieve artistic fame or fortune, merely for the love of the work. This has led him to times of extreme poverty and times of comfort, but never to wealth."

(* column header based on photos from a 1982 interview found here; photographs probably © Toutain, Vempirella © Harris Publications Inc; an excellent gallery of Vampirella art can be found here; Avengers strip © unknown; artwork from Valentine © IPC Media; Marilyn artwork probably © Estate of José González )

Alan Moore on record

Alan Moore's connections with music and the music industry date back to the mid-1970s, before his first illustrations and comic strips began appearing in fanzines and small press magazines. His connections with the national music press began in 1979 with his first professional commissions from Sounds magazine (illustrations of Elvis Costello and Malcolm McLaren) which led to the appearance of the "Roscoe Moscow" comic strip in 1979-80.

Moore, however, had already begun writing lyrics by the age of 17: music became part of his poetry readings at the local Arts Lab: "There are a lot of musicians in the Arts Lab, so I'd sit down and work out what music would go best behind a certain poem and sometimes we'd do it the other way round—they'd have the music and I'd work out words to put in front of it." (The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore, p.41)

An early collaborator, Alex Green, recalls:

I first met Alan in '76 when Stanton Walgrave were invited to do the music for the play 'Another Suburban Romance'. This great surrealist drama, a cross between Beckett and Peyton Place, had been written by Alan and Jamie Delano and was then in rehearsal. Glyn Bush and Pickle wrote an incredibly complex score which was exhaustingly perfected and mostly recorded only for the project to founder when a couple of actors dropped out. After this I kept in close touch with Alan—amongst other things we worked on the material that would subsequently become the set for the Emperors of Ice Cream, when we had a dozen songs ready I placed an advert in the [Northampton] Chronicle & Echo seeking fellow conspirators—this would have been October or November 1978. Dave [J.] was one of the respondants—we met in the Angel Hotel. Although he was really into the idea of the Emperors he couldn't stop talking about this other band, Bauhaus 1919. Subsequently he did not have any spare time for several years and so had no involvement with the Emperors—and did not in fact, meet Alan until years later.

The original Emperors of Ice Cream was formed in 1978 and split a year later. Alex Green calls them "The dream band that never got beyond rehearsals. All music and lyrics by myself and Alan Moore."

A second incarnation of the Emperors of Ice Cream was formed in 1992 featuring Moore, Tim Perkins, Chris Barber, Curtis E. Johnson and Pete Brownjohn and, although the band remained active until 1994, they released on one song, which appeared on the cassette-fanzine, Frank.

"A few years ago, I was in a local rock band called The Emperors of Ice Cream, and one of our numbers that always went down very well live, was a thing called, "Mr. A", says Moore. "The beat and the tune of it were completely stolen from "Sister Ray" by the Velvet Underground, but the lyrics were all about Steve Ditko ... One of the verses was, "He takes a card and shades one-half of it in dark, so he can demonstrate to you just what he means/He says, 'There's wrong and there's right, there's black and there's white, and there is nothing, nothing in-between.' That's what Mr. A says." [laughter] And then we'd go into the chorus. Yeah, it was a Velvet Underground thrash, but with lyrics about Steve Ditko."

The Alan Moore Songbook from Calibur was a collection of lyrics written for The Emperors of Ice Cream and various other bands.

"Yeah, well, most of those songs actually emerged from when I was with a band, about six or seven years ago, eight years ago, called the Emperors of Ice Cream," says Moore. "[That's when] I'd written most of those songs, then a couple of them I'd written back when I was seventeen. The band was good, we had some good fun, we did some good songs but it probably would have just been just a pop band at the end of it and there's plenty of good pop bands. But the band all broke up, with the usual "musical differences", i.e. we couldn't stand each other."

Moore also penned lyrics for various other artists: "Wurlitzer Junction"/"The Merry Shark You Are" (Boy's Own Label BO1) was a 1980 single by The Mystery Guests, with both songs written by Moore (who interviewed the band for Sounds in 1981); having met David J. in around 1978, Moore wrote a poem that appeared on the inner sleeve of Bauhaus's 1981 LP Mask and did a spoken introduction to side 1 of their Satori in Paris EP (1982).

In 1983, Moore, in the guise of Translucia Baboon, teamed up with David J. (Captain Jose Da Silva) and Alex Green (Max Akropolis) to form The Sinister Ducks and released the single "March of the Sinister Ducks"/"Old Gangsters Never Die" (Situation Two SIT25) in a sleeve designed by Kevin O'Neill which folded out to reveal an 8-page comic strip drawn by Lloyd Thatcher. "March of the Sinister Ducks" was also given away as a flexidisc with Critters #23 (1988).

The single was recorded at Beck Studios in Northampton. According to Green "'March Of The Sinister Ducks' was built up in layers on top of a basic structure of Dave's guitar and piano. The cabaret saxophones on the choruses were augmented with kazoos played by Alan and myself. Vocals and duck effect came later. 'Old Gangsters Never Die' was recorded live with us all together in the same room, I seem to recall that the version released was the third take." 'Old Gangsters Never Die' was originally a soliloquy in Moore's play Another Suburban Romance.

The song has been widely available on the web for some years, including a few animated versions on YouTube.

The band performed only two times, although Moore's collaborations with David J. continued: in 1984, J. released V For Vendetta (Glass Records 12032, distributed by Beggars Banquet), an EP which contained four tracks inspired by the comic. The A side, "This Vicious Cabaret", was a song that had appeared in issue 12 as part of the strip when it ran in Warrior (Aug 1983). The B side consisted of three tracks: "V's Theme (Intro)", "Incidental" and "V's Theme (Outro)". The EP was released on CD in 1998 by Cleopatra Records, as was a compilation of David J. material, On Glass, which included "This Vicious Cabaret", "Incidental" and "V's Theme (Outro)".

Musically, nothing else was heard from Moore for some time, although he was famously referenced in the Pop Will Eat Itself song "Can U Dig It" ("Alan Moore knows the score"). Moore wrote "Murders in the Rue Morgue" (Cold Spring Records, 1990) for The Satanic Nurses, but the song was never released commercially. The song was later illustrated by Neil Gaiman as one of Moore's 'Songbook' songs in Negative Burn #13 (Jul 1994). The Nurses included guitarist Curtis E. Johnson who was shortly to join the Emperors of Ice Cream.

Moore subsequently recorded "Madame October" with folk musician Tom Hall for the album Watering the Spirits (Sure Head Music, 1994; also available on the compilation Rocking for Rumania, Builth Balkan Crew, 2005) and wrote "Me and Dorothy Parker" for The Flash Girls' Maurice and I (Fabulous Records fcd 001, 1995).

On 16 July 1994, Moore and other performed at the Bridewell Theatre in London, Moore's spoken words backed by music from Tim Perkins and David J. Moore recalls:

Me and Tim Perkins, who was also in the Emperors, we stuck together and just after that I got into magic. The first thing that we did was this big performance in '94 at Bride Lane, off Fleet Street, Subversion in the Streets of Shame. It was Paul Smith from Blast First records had got Iain Sinclair to put together a three day event of, I suppose, subterraneans, really. I was reading; there was Stewart Home; Robin Cook [aka] the crime writer Derek Raymond, that was his last reading before he died, he came and did a reading about death, very ill ... and then Kathy Acker turned up unexpectedly halfway through the performance and did the best reading I'd ever seen her do. Dear, sweet, lovely Kathy Acker. She'd got kind of Mary-Jane shoes on. And socks. I don't know whether it was some kind of paedo-thing that she was going through but she looked kind of— I mean, like, you know, she was in her fifties, nearly fifty but she look so sweet and cool and cute and she did this brilliant reading. So we finished off the Saturday night with this hour-long magical extravaganza. That came out, it was Cleopatra records, in the States, they brought out the CD that's just called The Moon and Serpent—Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels.

A track from this performance, "Hair of the Snake That Bit Me", appeared on the Hexentexts: A Creation Books Sampler CD (Codex Records CODE1, 1995) whilst the full performance was released by Cleopatra Records (Cleo 96882) in 1996.

A second performance, on Moore's 42nd birthday (18 November 1995) at a Victorian magistrate's court in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was released as The Birth Caul: A Shamantism of Childhood (Charm/Locus CHARRMMCD22) with music by David J. and Tim Perkins.

The next thing we did was The Birth Caul and then we did a thing at Highbury [London], which is the one that's just coming out in a couple of week's time. Steve Severin from [Siouxsie and] the Banshees, he's got his own record label now, Re: records and The Highbury Working is going to be coming out and we're very proud of that.

It's still spoken word, with music, but with The Highbury Working we did something really different. Say, with The Birth Caul, the words and the music are still integrated, obviously there's bits where I'm saying something, then something happens in the music and their obviously connected, which is not bad when you consider that The Birth Caul is actually a live recording and that I was reading to prearranged tapes, so I had to kind of time every word that I said for that hour. You see, with The Birth Caul, the music and the words are integrated but the music still tends mainly towards the ambient. It's more like kind of patterns of sound or fields of sound or drones or whatever, whereas with The Highbury Working, as opposed to The Birth Caul, what we're doing is more like dance music—one track on it is very much like drum 'n' bass—and the integration between the words and the music is a lot cleverer. It's a lot more dancey. It's probably the most accessible piece we've done. Like I've said, there's always been a dance element in my mysticism. Yeah, so, you know, I'm looking forward to this and John's done a really great cover and a really great package for the CD. It's a little Sergeant Pepper, that we've got here.

The Highbury Working was released by Re: (RE:PCDN03) in 2000 and was followed by two other Moore performances, Angel Passage (ASIN B000068PYJ, 2000) and Snakes & Ladders (RE:PCD05, 2003), with Tim Perkins, the latter recorded at Conway Hall, near Red Lion Square, for the Oxford and London Golden Dawn Society.

In between, Moore had produced a spoken-word adaptation of Brought to Light (Codex Records CODE5, 1998), with music arranged by Gary Lloyd, based on his half of the Brought to Light book drawn by Bill Sienkewicz.

To date, these have been the last of Moore's spoken-word releases, although a new 45rpm vinyl single, which included Moore singing "Immortal Love", was intended to be released with the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen volume Black Dossier. The single was cancelled from the hardcover edition of the book that appeared in 2007 and was announced for the Absolute Edition that was to appear in 2008. It was subsequently dropped, meaning that the $100 AE had almost no additional features (beyond its larger size, slipcase and new endpapers drawn by Kevin O'Neill) that had not appeared in the original release.

A note by Adi Tantimedh on The V forum noted:

The reason the record isn't included in the Absolute edition is that DC's lawyers were played the songs and were worried that they sounded too similar to old British Sixties pop and TV shows, including the Thunderbirds theme. Fearing charges of plagiarism—as opposed to pastiche or homage—they refused to press the songs for the book. Moore was only told this much, much later, and is pissed off, because, you know, if Oasis can do Beatles riffs without getting sued, why can't a song that pastiches Sixties pop?

So the songs are still owned and controlled by Moore and his co-composer to do as they please, as long as DC has nothing to do with it. Moore is supposed to still control the masters and copies have not been circulated so far.

Moore, it seems, was only told at the last minute that the record would not appear. However, Pádraig Ó Méalóid has reported that Moore has said that the single will see the light of day at some stage.

Notes
Lots of details of the various strips that appeared in Negative Burn, most of which were subsequently collected in Alan Moore's Songbook, can be found here.

The interview with Alex Green (Apollox, 1995) can be found online here.

Comic Cuts

Just a brief note. I was out for most of the weekend, hence no posts. Yesterday was the ABC show, which I thoroughly enjoyed. As I had nothing to sign, I spent the day wandering around, chatting and even managed to sneak off for a coffee. Normally I rush a couple of photos onto Bear Alley when I get home but (a) I forgot my camera and (b) the trains were an even bigger mess than usual so I didn't get back 'till late and watched the first episode of the new No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series instead of blogging.

Normal service will be resumed shortly.

Something I was pleased about yesterday was the good reaction we had to the news that we were reprinting Frank Bellamy's First World War series from Look and Learn. I dragged my laptop up to the show to let people see what it would look like and generate a bit of interest for the book. I also picked up from Geoff a photo of one of Bellamy's original art boards which I've been able to compare to the cleaned-up version I produced last week from a scan off the page. One or two people were a little nervy when I said we were using scans where we had to but I hope you'll agree that the scanned version holds up pretty well in comparison and I think the book will look spectacular once it's printed.

(* Artwork © Look and Learn Magazine Ltd.)