Category: Best of British

By Graham (Mirror Books)
ISBN: 0-85939-120-5

Cartoons and gag-panels are a universal medium but we purveyors of sequential narrative have an unhappy tendency to become protective and parochial about our own particular specialism within the medium. How many times have I heard an artist or writer working on a hot new comic-book property, revelling in sales of sixty-to-seventy thousand monthly copies, disparage a strip such as Hagar the Horrible or Garfield whose daily readership can be numbered in millions, if not billions? Let’s all just try to remember that tastes differ, and that we all make lines on a surface here, and most especially that TV and Computer Games are the real enemy of our industry, shall we?

Rant over.

Mainstream cartooning is a huge joy to a vast readership whose needs are quite different from those of hard-core, dedicated comic fans, or even that growing base of intrigued browsers dipping their toes in the sequential narrative pool. Even those stuck-up stickybeaks who have pointedly “never read a comic” have seen and enjoyed cartoon strips or panels, and in this arena Britain has produced more than its share of classics.

Alex Graham, best known for the charming and reassuringly middle-class Fred Bassett strip, was a jobbing cartoonist for nearly fifty years and in that time produced a vast range of work that delighted readers on a wide range of subjects. He died in 1991, and Bassett was continued by his daughter Arran and artist Michael Martin. I’ll save the details for upcoming Fred Bassett reviews.

Augustus and his Faithful Hound is a less well-known strip that appeared in the late 1970’s in The Woman’s Journal, a home-maker’s magazine with a highly specialised demographic. The strip is a perfect fit: the gently amusing and reassuring exploits of a timid young lad and his equally timid, if boisterous, dog. The drawing is highly polished, captivating and charming; the gags undemanding and very reassuring – and that’s just what they’re supposed to be. This was not a venue for sarcasm, slapstick, surrealism or brisk, salacious vulgarity. These were cartoons to make your mum laugh, and as such they are perfect.

I’m sure there’s not much chance of this collection ever being reprinted, but if you chance across a copy, try it before dismissing it. The craft and skill is just as hard-learned as any superhero, fantasy or horror artist’s, the results fitted the brief perfectly and the audience was so very happy with the result. Other than a bigger cheque and global celebrity, what more could a creator possibly want from his labours?

© 1978 Woman’s Journal. All Rights Reserved.

By Les Lilley & Anthony Hutchings (Millbank Books)
ISBN: 978-0-95198-980-7

I’m always banging on about how British creators have been slighted and cursed with anonymity in our industry so I’m going to use this review to shine a light on one of the most egregious examples of that practise. Leslie Alfred Joseph Lilley was born in Dartford in 1924. After Navy service in World War II he joined the burgeoning pool of demobbed servicemen selling cartoons to the news trade. At a time when publications were toiling under paper restrictions, “pocket cartoons” were ubiquitous as column breaks in text-heavy papers (a practise pioneered by Osbert Lancaster). As the restrictions eased periodical magazines returned and flourished. Digests and magazines could expect to publish upwards of 40 gags and panels per week and many artists found them a vital source of income.

Lilley was never the world’s best artist, and as the newspapers adopted the US model for strip continuities, he moved from pencil to typewriter and became one of the most prolific scripters of cartoons and strips in Britain. With Ian Scott he formed an agency for cartoon scripting and began a lifelong career as writer, promoter and ambassador for the narrative arts. He founded the Cartoonists Club of Great Britain and was president of the Federation of European Cartoonist’s Organisations. He was instrumental – with Frank Bellamy – in creating the Society for Strip Illustration (which became the Comics Creators Guild in 1993).

Among his many works were the strips Jane, Choochi and Twink, Tiffany Jones, Scarth and hundreds of others. For IPC comics he wrote The Tin Teacher, Fiends and Neighbours, Son of Sherlock and much, much more, as well as an uncountable number of single panel gags. He also wrote entire Christmas annuals (128 pages of mirth and mayhem every Christmas!) for Wham! and Pow!

In 1964 he and Scott produced the scripts for the legendary BBC television series Vision On, and later ATV’s Golden Shot, and many others. Latterly he wrote Robbin’ Hood and Christopher Columbus for the Mail on Sunday; this last drawn by the award-winning cartoonist Anthony Hutchings.

Columbus was produced in 1992 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the epic voyage of discovery and is a gently comedic situation-spoof with plenty of laughs, a dash of satire and a great deal of heart. It’s a strip in the Grand British Tradition designed to raise a chuckle amongst everyday folk and does it very well indeed.

Credit never paid bills and modern creators have a much better time being noticed and acclaimed, even if the job opportunities are less than the industry heyday. Les Lilley died in 1998 so he got to see the changes occur, and in the long run the best way to celebrate a cartoonist’s work is to read it; and so you should.

© 1992 Grand Prix Productions. All Rights Reserved.

By Frank Bellamy, with Steve Kite, Graham Bleathman, D M Stokes & Keith Page, edited and compiled by Alan Fennel (Special Edition produced by Ted Smart for The Book People)
No ISBN:

There’s never an excuse to ignore a book with Frank Bellamy artwork in it so I’m here to tantalise all you internet shoppers and Jumble Sale hoppers with a rare book that seems to pop up quite often and which no fan can afford to miss.

When Fleetway revived their Gerry Anderson franchise in the early 1990s the comics featured artwork from TV21 supplemented with new and original material from another generation of fans and creators. Thunderbirds was far and away the biggest hit, resulting in five collections in slim graphic albums between 1991-1993. Some of that material was also re-collected for a limited edition hardback that had superb production values and a generous page count.

This volume contains the usual beloved assortment of cutaways, photos and profile features, plus earnest and entertaining strips from Keith Page (‘Terror in New York City’), D M Stokes (’30 Minutes after Noon!’) and the excellent Steve Kite (‘The Uninvited’ and ‘City of Fire’) taken primarily from Thunderbirds…: In Action and Danger Zone.

But as usual the real gold is the phenomenal and unparalleled work of Frank Bellamy, whose fantastic design, drawing and painted colour (which holds up rather well here, despite the limitations of modern print technology to accommodate the subtleties of the photo-gravure process) steals the show – and usually one’s breath away!

His five tales reprinted here are ‘The Trapped Spy’, ‘Operation Earthquake’, ‘Tracy Island Exposed’, ‘Brains is Dead’, and the unforgettable alien invader story ‘Visitor From Space’, with one of the most memorable monsters in comics history stealing the show on every page.

The work of Bellamy and his successors are a cherished highpoint of British comic-making. Even though it might be fun to hunt out these lost treasures surely there must a publisher somewhere willing to place these gems in a setting they deserve – a definitive high-quality collected edition?

© 1992 ITC Entertainment Group Ltd. Licensed by Copyright Promotions Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

By James Robinson & Paul Johnson (Escape/Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-85286-157-5

When this was released in 1989 many people remarked that it was great to see a graphic narrative that didn’t easily fall into a well-worn industry pigeon-hole. Many more hoped that the blend of the traditional and the innovative would lead to a grand new age of great graphic novels. Whilst we still aren’t at that point yet, this slim volume nonetheless still stands out as a superb piece of story-telling well worth your attention.

It is the height of the Blitz and the Capital of the British Empire is being pounded and burned by the Luftwaffe. But even incendiary hell cannot deter criminals with a quick profit in mind. When a Black Marketeer has second thoughts and is murdered for them, it results in an unlikely romance between Air Raid Warden Jack Brookes and professional Medium Sophie Heath.

Good natured Jack thinks he’s stopping a swindler but soon falls head over heels with the exotic and fearfully convincing spiritualist, who is in contact with the unquiet ghost of the dead man. But Jack’s inept investigation has turned over a few rocks and the murderers are still out there…

Atmospheric black and white art and a light touch with period dialogue make this a surprisingly enjoyable read (despite the admitted fact that the creators were learning their craft on the job) and the blend of war-story, murder-mystery and true romance – albeit with supernatural overtones – is one that has even greater resonance today. This is a book in dire need of re-release.

© 1989 James Robinson and Paul Johnson. All Rights Reserved.

(GARTH ANNUAL 1976)

By Jim Edgar & Frank Bellamy (Fleetway/IPC)
No ISBN/book number 85037-204-6

When Frank Bellamy was drawing the Daily Mirror strip Garth, it caught the public attention in a way seldom seen. I even recall having passionate conversations with school friends who normally sneered or at best uncomprehendingly accepted my strange addiction to comics over the two unmissable strips of the day (the other being Maurice Dodd and Dennis Collin’s unbelievably wonderful The Perishers – also in the Mirror and which I must get around to covering). Was it less the mind-melting adventure stories with eye-popping graphics and more that the stories contained, without exception, the most beautiful women ever seen in pictures, and that they were usually naked?

Whatever the reason for first looking, the strips soon made dedicated fans out of many who previously weren’t; a fact the publishers seemed to acknowledge with a couple of reprint editions during the traditional Christmas Annuals release period.

Whereas the first of these – The Daily Mirror Book Of Garth 1975 – was an A-4 format, full-sized book in the traditional manner, the second volume switched to a landscape edition with only two tiers of strip per page, possibly to bring it more into line with other cartoon-reprint paperbacks such as The Gambols, Fred Bassett or the aforementioned Perishers. For fans that meant fewer stories in the book.

This volume collects The Mask of Atacama and The People of the Abyss (both of which I’ve covered in Titan Books’ Garth: Book 2 – The Women of Galba, ISBN: 0-907610-49-8) but sandwiched between them is the rare and spectacular space-thriller ‘The Beast of Ultor’, which originally ran from February 19th to June 5th 1974. In it a pot-holing Garth discovers a strange egg deep underground that hatches into a stunning (and yes – naked) alien woman who reunites him with the Goddess Astra in a battle against Cosmic Evil on a faraway world.

Visually this is one of the most exciting stories Bellamy drew in his too short career, and is worth any difficulty you might have in tracking it down. But even if Personal Shoppers or Private Detectives are out of your reach perhaps enough chatter might induce a publisher (such as Titan – who have so successfully brought back other classic British comics masterpieces in recent years) to finally bring the British Superman back for good.

© IPC Magazines 1975.

By Jim Edgar and Frank Bellamy (Titan Books)
ISBN: 0-907610-49-8

The second 1980s Titan Books collection of the Frank Bellamy Garth spans the period from 7th September 1972 to 25th October 1973 and shows the artist at the absolute peak of his powers. (These great old volumes are still available through some internet vendors such as Amazon.com – and I know because I just checked – but it never hurts to simply Google the title of a book if you’re interested in it)…

Garth was the British answer to America’s publishing phenomenon Superman and first appeared in the Daily Mirror on Saturday, July 24th 1943, the creation of Steve Dowling and BBC producer Gordon Boshell, joining the regular comic strip features, Buck Ryan, Belinda Blue Eyes, Just Jake and the irrepressible, morale-boosting glamour-puss Jane.

A blond giant and physical marvel, Garth washed up on an island shore and into the arms of a pretty girl, Gala, with no memory of who he was, just in time to save the entire populace from a tyrant. Boshell never actually wrote the series, so Dowling, who was also producing the successful family strip The Ruggles, scripted Garth until a writer could be found.

Don Freeman dumped the amnesia plot in ‘The Seven Ages of Garth’ (which ran from September 18th 1944 until January 20th 1946) by introducing the studious jack-of-all-science Professor Lumiere whose psychological experiments regressed the hero back through his past lives. In the next tale ‘The Saga of Garth’ (January 22nd 1946 – July 20th 1946) his origin was revealed. Found floating in a coracle off the Shetlands, baby Garth was adopted by a kindly old couple. Growing to vigorous manhood he returned to the seas as a Navy Captain until he was torpedoed off Tibet in 1943.

Freeman continued as writer until 1952 and was briefly replaced by script editor Hugh McClelland until Peter O’Donnell took over in 1953. He wrote 28 adventures but resigned in 1966 to devote more time to his own Modesty Blaise feature. His place was taken by Jim Edgar; who also wrote the western strips Matt Marriott, Wes Slade and Gun Law.

In 1968 Dowling retired and his assistant John Allard took over the drawing until a permanent artist could be found. Allard had completed ten tales when Frank Bellamy came on board with the 13th instalment of ‘Sundance’ (see Garth: The Cloud of Balthus ISBN: 0-90761-034-X). Allard remained as background artist/assistant until Bellamy took full control during ‘The Orb of Trimandias’.

Professor Lumiere had discovered something which gave this strip its distinctive appeal – even before the fantastic artwork of Bellamy elevated it to dizzying heights of graphic brilliance: Garth was blessed – or cursed – with an involuntary ability to travel through time and experience past and future lives. This concept gave the strip infinite potential for exotic storylines and fantastic exploits, pushing it beyond its humble origins as a Superman knock-off.

This volume begins with the eerie chiller ‘The People of the Abyss’ wherein Garth and sub-sea explorer Ed Neilson are captured by staggeringly beautiful – and naked! – women who drag their bathyscaphe to a city at the bottom of the Pacific where they are at war with horrendous aquatic monstrosities. But even that is merely the prelude to a tragic love affair with Cold War implications…

Next up is the eponymous space-opera romp ‘The Women of Galba’ wherein another alien tyrant learns to rue the day he abducted a giant Earthman to be a gladiator. Exotic locations, spectacular action and oodles of astonishingly beautiful females make this an unforgettable adventure.

“Ghost Town” is a western tale, and a very special one. When Garth, holidaying in Colorado, rides into ‘Gopherville’ an abandoned mining town, he is drawn back to a past life as Marshal Tom Barratt who lived, loved and died when the town was a hotspot of vice and money. When Bellamy died suddenly in 1976 this tale, long acknowledged as his favourite was rerun until Martin Asbury was ready to take over the strip.

The final adventure ‘The Mask of Atacama’ finds Garth and Professor Lumiere in Mexico City. In his sleep the hero is visited by the spirit of beautiful Princess Atacama who brings him through time to the Aztec City of Tenochtitlan where as the Sun God Axatl he hopes to save their civilisation from the marauding Conquistadores of Hernan Cortés, but neither he nor the Princess have reckoned on the jealousy of the Sun Priests and their High Priestess Tiahuaca…

Of especial interest in this volume are a draft synopsis and actual scripts for ‘The Women of Galba’, liberally illustrated, of course. There has never been a better adventure strip than Garth as drawn by Bellamy, combining action, glamour, mystery and the fantastic into a seamless blend of graphic wonderment. Of late, Titan Books has published a magical run of classic British strips and comics. I’m praying that Garth also is in their sights, and if he is it’s up to us to make sure that this time the books find a grateful, appreciative and huge audience…

© 1985 Mirror Group Newspapers/Syndication International. All Rights Reserved.