Crockle Saves the Ark


By John Ryan (Hamlyn)
ISBN: hardback 600-754022   paperback: 978-0-60030-461-6

John Ryan was an artist and storyteller who straddled three distinct disciplines of graphic narrative, with equal qualitative if not financial success.

The son of a diplomat, Ryan was born in Edinburgh on March 4th 1921, served in Burma and India and after attending the Regent Street Polytechnic (1946-48) took up a post as assistant Art Master at Harrow School from 1948 to 1955. It was during this time that he began contributing strips to Fulton Press publications.

On April 14th 1950 Britain’s grey, post-war gloom was partially lifted with the first issue of a new comic that literally shone with light and colour. Avid children were soon understandably enraptured with the gloss and dazzle of Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future, a charismatic star-turn venerated to this day. The Eagle was a tabloid-sized paper with full colour inserts alternating with text and a range of various other comic features. “Tabloid” is a big page and one can get a lot of material onto each one. Deep within, on the bottom third of a monochrome page was an eight panel strip entitled Captain PugwashThe story of a Bad Buccaneer and the many Sticky Ends which nearly befell him. Ryan’s quirky, spiky style also lent itself to the numerous spot illustrations required throughout the comic every week and he produced ‘Lettice Leefe, the Greenest Girl in School’ for Eagle’s distaff companion comic Girl.

Pugwash, his harridan of a wife and the useless, lazy crew of the Black Pig ran until issue 19 when the feature disappeared. This was no real hardship as Ryan had been writing and illustrating the incomparable and brilliantly mordant ‘Harris Tweed – Extra Special Agent’ a full page (tabloid, remember, an average of twenty crammed and meticulous panels a page, per week) from The Eagle #16 onwards. Tweed ran for three years as a full page until 1953 when it dropped to a half page strip and was repositioned as a purely comedic venture.

In 1956 the indefatigable old sea-dog (I’m referring to old Horatio Pugwash, but it could so easily be Ryan: an unceasing story-peddler with a big family, he still found time to be head cartoonist at the Catholic Herald for four decades) made the jump to children’s picture books. Ryan also drew a weekly Pugwash strip in the Radio Times for eight years, before going on to produce a number of other animated series including Mary, Mungo and Midge, The Friendly Giant and Sir Prancelot as well as adaptations of some of his many children’s books and the item on offer today.

In the late 1970’s Ryan wedded his love of maritime adventure, devout faith and facility for telling engaging tales to the young to re-examine the Biblical story of Noah in another delightful animated series.

The Ark Stories comprised a selection of delightful cartoon books in the style of Pugwash (eleven in total, I think) initially released by Beaver Books in 1979, which were translated into a series of ten-minute animated TV shorts, written, made by and presented by Ryan himself with voices by famed animal-imitator Percy Edwards. The show was produced for Trident/ITV by Yorkshire Television in 1980, after which Hamlyn re-released them in both hardback and softcover editions.

Crockle Saves the Ark is my favourite; whimsical, charming, superbly illustrated and just plain funny. In the days just before the big flood, as Noah and family were filling the Ark with animals, two by two, the youngest son Jaffet brought his best friend Jannet along.

The little lad and lass brought with them a pet baby crocodile and for forty days and nights Noah turned a blind eye whenever he counted all his animals since the giant vessel already had its full compliment of reptiles…

The reason was simple: just when the deluge began and the waters started to cover the land, the fully-laden ark had not risen. Indeed the bottom of the boat began to fill up and all the water-loving beasts thought that they had their own indoor pool.

Luckily little Crockle – for that was the scaly tyke’s name – was small enough to explore the hull of the rapidly-filling vessel until he found the leak and smart enough to fix it, after which the rest of the creatures all pitched in to bale out the water…

This magical, wry and enchantingly smart yarn is one of Ryan’s very best and long overdue for re-issue – as are they all (and the original 1981 video collection too please!) and a sure winner with fans of all ages if you can find it.
© John Ryan and presumably the Estate of John Ryan. All rights reserved.