Fans of Frank: Will Brooks and Frank Bellamy

Eagle 23 January 1960 Vol. 11:4, p1
Original art scan thanks to owner

Will Brooks works with digital art  and "is a freelance designer based in Cardiff Bay. His main work is Doctor Who-based, and previous clients have included Big Finish Productions and BBC Worldwide. Currently, Will provides photo cover variants for Titan Comics’ range of monthly Doctor Who titles".  Take a look at his gallery on Deviant Art and follow his Tumblr account.  He has become a follower of Frank Bellamy's work, and so I asked him to add some words to my infrequent feature "Fans of Frank" . Over to you Will....

Will Brooks

When I was first discovering Doctor Who at the tail end of 2003, most of my knowledge about it came from great big books I’d picked up at geeky specialist shops. Things like Justin Richard’s The Legend were my absolute bible. I’d sit there for hours just staring at the pictures from all these stories that seemed so far off and distant. While I’d started picking up odd VHS tapes from the library and the same geeky shops, I knew I was really better off waiting for the DVDs in many cases, and my calculations at the time suggested that at their current release rate, I’d not have a full collection until somewhere around 2025.

Everything I knew about Doctor Who came from books like that. Even now when I think of certain stories, the first thing that comes to mind is whatever image was printed as a full- or half-page in connection to them. It was in one of these books that I first came across the work of Frank Bellamy.

Radio Times 30 Aug- 05 Sep 1975, p.6
Note the punch holes - Norman was stupid in 1975!

Specifically, it was the gorgeous 3/4 page "Terror of the Zygons" piece for Radio Times [30 Aug1975-5 Sep 1975], with a terrifying but beautiful Skarasen lurching from the bottom panel while the Doctor muses on the nature of the threat they’re facing. Just in the way that I picture specific photographs when thinking of certain Doctor Who stories, when "Terror" crosses my mind, it’s [the above] image I see.

Radio Times 30 Aug- 05 Sep 1975, p.17
Such an unusual piece!

I’ve less clear memories of when I first saw the rest of Frank Bellamy’s Doctor Who work. Over time, it’s all sort of merged into that great big Who-flavoured soup in my head. That’s not to take away from any of the other art, though, because it’s all beautiful in its own way. There’s another piece from the Radio Times for "Terror of the Zygons" - a smaller, 1/4 page affair - which is very different in style to the first, but really sells those opening moments of the story. There’s a similar piece for the previous season’s "The Ark in Space", too, which brings together the Doctor, the Ark, a Wirrn, and one of the cryogenics bays in a way that’s more beautiful than any of the subsequent covers the story received for novelisations, or on video, or DVD.

Radio Times 16-22 August 1975 p34:
"The Ark in Space"

That "Ark in Space" piece might - just might - be my favourite one of these Radio Times pieces, looking at it again. Because it’s one that really sums up what it is I love so much about Bellamy’s design work. He’s got a way with layout, with compositing the elements together, that has rarely been matched in Doctor Who artwork since. It’s the use of negative space as much as the actual art itself - in this example the way the lines break up not only the distinct elements of the design, but cut across the images too. It’s an effect I’ve tried - and always failed - to implement several times in my own work. For now, I’ve decided it’s a technique best left to the expert.

Radio Times 16-22 August 1975 p34:
Norman's copy pasted in his scrapbook from the 1970s

It’s that real genius for layout that I love the most about Bellamy’s work, and it’s as distinctively ‘him’ as that terribly long signature that adorns so much of his work. It’s present in those preview pieces for Radio Times (as well as in his single episode images that accompanied many stories in the early 1970s), but it’s perhaps more obviously on display in his work outside the world of Doctor Who.

Eagle 23 January 1960 Vol. 11:4, p1

The more my interests around archive television have expanded, the more I’ve found myself bumping into Bellamy’s earlier work, and every time it’s instantly recognisable and totally distinctive. From his work on comic strips for Thunderbirds and Star Trek, and right back earlier than that to his time on Dan Dare in the late 1950s and early 1960s, his style is totally unique, so distinctly his. It’s also, dare I say, completely timeless. The way he arranges the panels on a page in a comic strip sets my imagination alight now at 27, so I can’t imagine what it did to a generation of kids opening up their copies of the Eagle each week to check in on their favourite pilot from the future. I’ve recently had a copy of the Thunderbirds Comic Collection as a gift (which means I can stop gazing lovingly at it in branches of Waterstones), and I’m pacing myself as I work my way through, taking time to really appreciate every page.

Will Brooks' montage a lá Bellamy
from Titan Comic's Third Doctor series

Recently, as a cover for an issue of Titan Comic’s upcoming Third Doctor mini series by Paul Cornell, I was able to try and mimic a bit of Frank’s work. It’s perhaps telling that of all the covers I’ve put together for Titan (it’s a lot, and the number keeps growing!), it was the cover that homaged his work that had the biggest impact. Every element is rather shamelessly cribbed from his style - the red circle picking out the Doctor is a lift from the Radio Times cover for 1972’s "Day of the Daleks", for example, while the lightning bolt and the way images are cut off comes directly from that "Terror of the Zygons" piece which introduced him to me.

Radio Times 1-7 January 1972 Cover
Much imitated, never bettered!

His style is totally ingrained in that period of the programme, and it suits the tones of the era. It’s a crushing shame he died so young, and I can only imagine what he might have done with covers to stories like "The Deadly Assassin", or "The Talons of Weng-Chiang". I’m at least comforted by the fact that there’s still so much of his portfolio out there for me to discover.

I rather like that while I started out as a Doctor Who fan who liked the work Bellamy did in connection to the programme, I can now claim to be a fan of Frank Bellamy in his own right. One day, if I’m very lucky and I wish very hard, I might even master even half his skill with layouts…

=========================================

Thanks a lot Will, for adding an entry to my Fans of Frank series where I unashamedly ask people to tell me why they love Bellamy. In return I am left to say, head over to Will's Tumblr to see his photographic collage work and follow links to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Behance, DeviantArt and even Etsy! When does he get time to work? I can't even post more than one blog article a month!

Fans of Frank: Jonathan Wyke

TV21 #81

I tripped over the fact that Jonathan Wyke had an affinity for Frank Bellamy and in the interests of getting someone else to write my blog for me here is Jonathan...Seriously I'm grateful to Jonathan for sharing his insights and I've enjoyed adding links to the names I would list in the great pantheon (Perez has no official presence on the web, really?) and also browsing Jonathan's own art.

Frank Bellamy

I was born in Kettering, Northamptonshire on the 21st May. On the exact date and in the exactly same place as Frank Bellamy. That means nothing of course, unless you're a young lad, who's just beginning to notice that the art in comics is done by different people. What it means then is that you spend your time hunting down examples of Frank Bellamy's work and pouring over them as if they're relics.

This obsession faded somewhat as I moved into my early teenage years and was seduced by the 4 colour wonders coming from across the Atlantic. These were exotic Marvels, and because I now knew to look at the art I began to like a whole different pantheon of artists - Byrne, Perez, Adams, Kirby, Kane - all great in their own way, but all really coming from the same source. Their roots were firmly set in the States, and didn't really speak to me. It was at this time I re-discovered Frank Bellamy.

In Kettering there was a second-hand book shop - the type you really don't see anymore - with boxes of books and magazines scattered around its two tiny rooms. On the counter was one small cardboard box of old Marvel comics - they were the reason I'd gone in, and as I was buying them (very early Fantastic Four and Avengers issues at 5p each), the owner of the shop pointed out a stack of annuals on the floor and said I might like to take a look. I added one to my haul and left. It was of course an Eagle Annual, and I went back the next day to grab the rest. Harris Tweed and his friends were interesting, but here was Dan Dare. And here too was Frank Bellamy. Bellamy's strengths were many. His draughtsmanship was without peer, but his astonishingly dynamic layouts were out of this world. Where the American comics I'd been reading were all pretty rigid - fixed grids broken up by occasional splash page, Bellamy's ripped through that. Circular frames that dragged the eye to them, cinematic viewpoints swirling around, fixing your focus onto what was important. And the drawings. No more cartoon like figures. These were real people. Real animals. Real spaceships. Frank Bellamy could make the extra-ordinary real.

Dan Dare and Garth are I suppose the strips that Bellamy's most remembered for, but my favourites will always be Thunderbirds and Heros the Spartan. Heros is a particular love. Bellamy's inspiring use of colour. The wonderful penmanship. The layout! This astonishing piece was begun in the early 1960s and the dynamism of the narrative is, I believe, unsurpassed to this day.

All of this influences me. From the first finding the coincidence of our birth dates causing me to start to draw, copying the crappy reproduction in the Kettering Evening Telegraph over and over. The first thing I'd ever seriously tried to draw. To being blown away by the re-discovery of his work which spoke to me far more than the stylised pieces coming over from the US. In everything I draw I try to portray the subject with a realistic air, and that comes directly from Frank Bellamy. My attempts at sequential narrative are influenced by the European New Wave cinema, but Frank Bellamy was, of course, there first too.

Frank Bellamy was our Jean Giraud. Our Jack Kirby. His understanding and mastery of the sequential form have never been surpassed, and I know that if anything I ever did held even a slight reflection of his work I'd be a happy man.

Regards,

Jonathan

Eagle Vol 14 #39

Jonathan's presence on the Net enables you to view his terrific work.  His blog "WobblyLines and Blotchy Colour" sounds too self-denigrating for such a good artist and he has a space on the wonderful DeviantArt site (took me a long time to realise this wasn't DeviantTart!) and he's on Twitter too. I'm sure you'll all head to his comic art but I loved this sketch.

 

St. John's Church, St. John Cornwall - by Jonathan Wyke

And like a lot of us I bet Jonathan can't wait for the Heros reprint (yes another shameless plug for Book Palace!)

Fans of Frank: Andy Walker

By Andy Walker

In my continuing series (where I unashamedly ask fans of Frank to tell me why they are) I had my attention drawn to this interesting piece on eBay which at first glance made me think of Orson Welles and then I realised it was in a style like Bellamy's. I wrote to the seller - Andy himself - and he replied:

I have just listed my Frank Bellamy inspired comic strip artwork on eBay. I think I first encountered his amazing artwork in the form of reprints of his THUNDERBIRDS comic strip in the pages of Polystyle's COUNTDOWN comic. The artwork that really struck me however were the illustrations he did based on DOCTOR WHO for the RADIO TIMES in the early to mid 1970s. He was one of those very gifted artists who had that almost indefinable extra something that always shone through all of this work. This artwork of mine is a humble nod to an amazing talent that has inspired an entire generation of artists across the globe!

 His description on ebay explains a bit further:

"THE TRAVELLER" ORIGINAL COMIC STRIP ARTWORK SIGNED BY UK ILLUSTRATOR ANDY WALKER. This is a high quality, full colour double page comic strip rendered in black Indian ink, coloured inks and gouache on thick watercolour board. It was originally commissioned in 1987 as a promotional piece of artwork for the "Traveller" series of books which failed to be published. My brief was to produce a double page comic strip splash in the style of the hugely popular British comic strip artist Frank Bellamy. "The Traveller" books were a series of 5 novels that sadly remains unpublished, however all 5 covers won me many future commissions and formed a crucial part of my original portfolio.The 5 stories concerned the journeys through time of a mysterious character known only as "The Traveller". Sound familiar? Perhaps that's why they remain unpublished!

Take a look at Andy's other sales to see more of his more mature artwork including another Traveller artwork which shows he had Brian Blessed rather than Orson Welles in mind (in my opinion!)UPDATE: and of course have a look at his website which I almost forgot to mention!

So for Andy here's the first Bellamy story form Polystyle's Countdown comic which was the 1970s answer to TV21 in which Frank Bellamy's Thunderbirds strips were reprinted (and Don Harley drew new art for Thunderbirds stories too). The editor was the former Art Editor of TV21, Dennis Hooper. Read more about it on Lew Stringer's ever interesting blog. I have reproduced the reprint of the first part of the story from TV21 #59 (5 March 2066). Presumably the reprint was cheap, but after hacking Bellamy's artwork from 3 pages to 2 and in black and white, surely it would have been easier just to reprint as was!

Countdown, #24, 31 July 1971

Countdown, #24, 31 July 1971

Andy mentions his love of Doctor Who too so here's a set of those famous cameos that were printed at size12/16 inch width by 1 inch tall - yes I checked! The paper of the Radio Times at that time was of a pulp feel and therefore reproduction wasn't superb. Here are three of the Doctors up to that point - from left to right Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton, William Hartnell

Radio Times - various

Lastly, just because we mentioned Countdown here's the cover of the issue that saw Bellamy's reprint start which shows, what I think must be Roy Cross artwork for the Airfix Saturn V - let me know if I'm wrong. A very iconic image for little boys my age - and covered later by Mike Noble on a cover of Look-In (where the former TV21 editor Alan Fennell was resident!)

Art by Roy Cross?

Fans of Frank: Tim Keable

My tentacles stretch far and wide throughout the Internet and my contacts are really good to me. Richard Sheaf alerted me to some look-a-like art that I may be interested in.  Off I went to Justyce Served: A Small Start with a Big Finish

Tim Keable's 'Justyce Served'

It looked so much like Bellamy I had to ask the artist about it. Sure enough it turns out Tim Keable's influences certainly include Bellamy. But I also felt that this looked like something I'd seen by Kelly Freas, the famous American SF artist. Why did I think this?

Kelly Freas 'Lorelei of the mist' borrowed from
http://mydelineatedlife.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/lorelei-of-red-mist.html

I'd seen the above many years ago and thought although obviously not Bellamy it had an aspect of his work and this helped me to think about FB's work in better terms.Look at the square thumb, the hairy arm, the impressionistic 'slashes' of lines and the shadowy implied figure, oh, and there's a naked woman.

Frank Bellamy: Radio Times17 June - 23 June 1972, p.12

Compare the above to Tim's drawing and you see immediate inspiration. The above was drawn by Bellamy to accompany The Quatermass experiment a programme about Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Hammer Horror films. "The blob that won the Queen's Award" was the byeline under the picture - sorry for the awful photocopy.

Frank Bellamy: Radio Times 11 - 17 May 1974, p.54

Another Bellamy extended arm, in this piece to accompany  The Movie Quiz Late horror show "Can you escape the icy grip of the Movie Quiz late horror show: 11.12?"

After asking Tim about this, he kindly wrote back to me regarding this work:

The brief was to do a Doctor Who illustration that couldn't have the Tardis or Daleks or anything that might be deemed as copyright material. That's why that box with the light on top might just be a rectangular spaceship passing in front of a big star! As to my influences you're right. Frank's RT horror pix are among my very favourite of his illustrations. Yes, Kelly Freas too.  I did the art on white scraperboard which allowed me to scrape away highlights much as Kelly Freas did.I think Frank used this technique and surface for some of those early magazine illustrations he did in the 1950s There's a pic of a lizard that springs to mind [Norman: see FB and Lilliput].I was also influenced by another Analog artist called called George Schelling. If you Google him you'll see that he shares a similar approach to his work that Frank had.

Frank Bellamy: Radio Times 29 May - 4 June 1971

 Frank Bellamy was extraordinary in so many ways. Firstly, as a comics artist the number one priority is clarity of storytelling. Frank always achieved this and then delivered a page that always had so much design going on there too.Then there is the impeccable draughtsmanship. Second to none in my opinion. He always knew when to apply the "less is more" principle and in most cases his drawings are much simpler than they look.This applies to his colour work as well. Often he used a very limited palette to achieve his desired result. Take the RT cover "Movie Crazy Years": Mostly brown but with a touch of green in there with very little red, yellow or blue to be seen. Add to this the speed at which he (and his contemporaries to be fair) had to work. There are few around today who could deliver this quality of work within the time frame. Often when I'm struggling I'll ask "How would Frank have got over this problem?" and it always helps! Once again Norman I'd like to congratulate you on a wonderful site. Keep up the good work! Kind wishes,Tim.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer my questions Tim and to allow me to add some new pictures to the blog.

Fans of Frank: Edoardo di Muro

Eagle 4 March 1961

Now I'll confess straight away that I had never heard of Edoardo, but an email I was sent set me off on a course researching his work and I thought I'd add a quick link for you to see what this is about.

In March this year, Eduardo's book "Noir et Blanc en couleurs" (literally 'black and white in colours') was published by édition roymodus. Even if your French isn't up to scratch, this video will show you that Eduardo has obviously been influenced by Bellamy's African colours and in particular by Fraser of Africa (from the Eagle in the UK and Il giorno dei ragazzi in Italy, his birthplace). This entry on the publisher's website shows a beautiful reproduction of a page in Italian - my translation of the webpage appears below - so don't blame anyone else!

In 1961, Edoardo di Muro was 16 years old  when he read the magazine "Il giorno dei ragazzi". On the last page, a strip by Frank Bellamy tells the adventures of "the intrepid Frazer".

More than a comic, it's an immersion in Africa that will impress the adolescent (di Muro) forever, but also the artist in his aesthetic quest

Edoardo di Muro:
 "Outside the town, towards the river between wasteland and scrub, hyenas like scruffy stray dogs roamed around! The round backs of hippos were like large polished stones upon which I jumped without fear of them opening their large mouths... Your beautiful drawings with their stippled shadows have sown the seeds for my career and at the same time formed the backdrop of my life. Thank you big brother Frank!"

You can read more about Edoardo's background here and you might like to follow Google's crude translation here   il giorno dei ragazzi was produced as a beautiful comic supplement for children and featured many strips from the Eagle as well as home grown comics  The only full reprint of Fraser to date is the Hawk Books reprint which appears on eBay, Abebooks and Amazon from time to time

Which reminds me, I'd love to hear what you think about the Amazon gadget on the left. I have so many email requests for reprints, I thought this was a neat way of adding a link. It;s unlikely I'll make anything but hey, it all helps!

Fans of Frank Bellamy: Steve McGarry

A while ago I read this blog entry  on Steve McGarry (whom I must confess I didn't know - you'll see why in a moment) and noticed that he mentions his favourite artist is Frank Bellamy. Once again on your behalf  I asked if he would be interested in adding to my series "Fans of Frank Bellamy" and the nice guy replied in the affirmative with the following story. Without sounding too sycophantic I also steer towards Steve's tastes in artists!


And before you go searching for the paucity of information on Trevillion, who Steve mentions a few times, he was the guy who did a brilliant job on the Munsters in TV21, for whom Bellamy did Thunderbirds of course.


Long before I knew who Frank Bellamy was, I was a huge Frank Bellamy fan.

Growing up in Manchester in the late 1950s and early 1960s, television was small, monochrome and limited to two basic channels that offered little programming designed to capture a youngster’s attention. So in those pre-videogame days, it was comics that fired our imaginations. We would graduate from The Beano and The Dandy, Topper or Beezer, to the adventure comics ... the girls to their Bunty or Princess and tales of ballerinas and gymkhanas, we boys to the likes of The Victor or The Hotspur. Each week, we would race to the newsagents on the day of publication, ready to devour the adventures of Alf Tupper or Gorgeous Gus and pocket the bonus swag – from football league ladders to cardboard gliders or contraptions that made noises - that was invariably included. Comics were printed in one or two colours on cheap, coarse paper, with one notable exception. In all its full colour, glossy glory, The Eagle was the undisputed king of comics. In addition, every Christmas there would be a football book and The Eagle Annual waiting for me under the tree.

By the early 1960s, I had moved on to the new Marvel comics that had begun to appear on a carousel rack at Fitton's newsagents. I can remember buying the first few issues of Spiderman, The Fantastic Four, Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos, Thor and sundry others that could have funded a retirement had they been carefully preserved, instead of consigned to a binbag destined for the corporation tip. But my two younger brothers were still loyal to the homegrown imprints, and The Eagle landed with great regularity at McGarry Towers. Having gown up with The Eagle, I'm sure I must have been familiar with the art of Frank Bellamy, but it was his work on Heros the Spartan that really grabbed me. I thought it was the greatest comic art I had ever seen ... and nearly 50 years later, my opinion hasn't changed.

Even so, I can't swear that the artist's name had registered with me, although I must have seen his signature. By the mid-1960s, my attention was fixed firmly on football, girls and pop music, and my appetite for comics had waned ... but I recall admiring the way Frank breathed life into the Anderson puppets in the TV21 comics my younger brothers avidly collected. And while I recognised his style instantly by then, I'm not sure at that point I could yet attach a name to that stunning artwork.

By my late teens, I was learning the ropes in an art studio and beginning to harbour thoughts of pursuing a career in illustration (on the off-chance that one of the many incarnations of my rock bands didn’t take off.) I was particularly interested in sports and music illustration. My inspiration came from the Daily Mirror that arrived on our mat each weekday morning and the assortment of Sunday papers we would take at the weekend. 

 

The Munsters drawn by Trevillion

By the early 1970s, Paul Trevillion was making a name for himself as the country's premier sports illustrator, and I was captivated by his bold depictions of footballers in the Sunday tabloids. It was around that same time that Frank Bellamy debuted on the Garth strip in The Daily Mirror, and the strip was instantly transformed. Dull, rudimentary line was suddenly replaced by the most vivid and exciting artwork ever to grace a newspaper comics page. I became a Frank Bellamy fanatic. I read the strip avidly for a couple of years, and finally could contain myself no more. Plucking up courage, I wrote to Frank, effusively praising his work and asking if he had any tips to pass on to an aspiring artist. He replied with a very gracious note, warning me that the business was tough but wishing me well. I saved that letter for years ... I even saved the envelope ... and was genuinely upset to discover I had mislaid it when we moved out to the U.S. many years later.

I sold my first illustrations, to the girls' comic Romeo in 1974 ( I was 21) and by 1977 I had taken the plunge and gone freelance. I did the occasional piece for comics, did some ad agency illustration work, and picked up a lot of work in the music business. I designed quite a few record sleeves, including album covers for the likes of Jilted John and Slaughter & The Dogs that showcased my illustration talents.

By then, of course, Frank was gone, having died of a heart attack in1976.

I was employing a linework approach heavily influenced by comic books, and although I was enjoying some success, I felt that I hadn't yet found my style. In those pre-Google days, most artists kept scrapbooks of reference material. Besides photos of interiors, cars, places and anything else I felt might prove useful down the line, I'd also clipped out illustrations from sundry publications, particularly sports and entertainment material. Leafing through one of those albums, probably in late 1980 or early 1981, I came across a Doctor Who cover illustration that Frank Bellamy had done for The Radio Times in 1972. I'm not sure why it hadn't registered with me up until that point, but it suddenly dawned on me that the stipple style he had employed to render Jon Pertwee was a natural fit for me. What if I employed that approach to render portraits of musicians for record sleeves? Better still, what if I tackled the kind of sports subjects that Trevillion covered with a similar stipple style?

In my spare moments, I began to experiment with the approach, using a rapidograph pen for the stipple and dip pen and brush for the hair. I was already a confirmed fan of CS10 line board, which was Frank’s preferred board of choice. The china clay surface accepts ink beautifully and mistakes can be scratched out with a razor blade without any feathering, so the art always looks pristine. Almost immediately, it felt perfect, and I was excited with the results I was getting over a period of a couple of weeks, I created a portfolio piece, a mock poster for Humphrey Bogart's "The Maltese Falcon" as I felt the "noir" subject matter was ideally suited to that style. The finished piece convinced me that I was now ready to try pitching. But who to approach?

The Daily Mirror used a lot of sports illustrations, but they already had Paul Trevillion and a great illustrator called Charles Dupont to call upon. (Which reminds me, I always suspected that Charles DuPont and another Mirror illustrator, Bob Williams, were one and the same. I’d love to know if that hunch was right!) I was a big admirer of Arthur Ranson, who was doing incredible things with biography strips of Abba and The Beatles for Look-In magazine, and I had seen his stuff in such papers as The Sunday Times. I was hesitant to approach any publication that was already working with such outstanding artists, figuring I probably wouldn't get the time of day. Then it struck me that The Daily Star, which had only launched a couple of years earlier, might be in the market for illustrations ... and it was the only national newspaper whose editorial offices were based in Manchester, not a mile away from my studio. The FA Cup Final was approaching and I knew that a lot of papers liked to do special pullouts, usually featuring illustrations. I stuck a photocopy of my ”Maltese Falcon" illustration and a brief note in the post and crossed my fingers.

A few days later I got a call from the paper's art editor, Mike Burnham, who invited me for a lunchtime drink and a chat. One liquid lunch later, I was being introduced to the Daily Star's sports editor, Arthur Lamb. He loved the "Maltese Falcon" sample and loved the idea of doing an FA Cup special. We agreed a very generous fee and shook hands on the deal. On Saturday, May 14, 1981, to commemorate my beloved Manchester City taking on Spurs in the FA Cup Final, I made my national newspaper debut with a giant centre-spread illustration featuring all 24 players and two managers ... all rendered in my new Bellamy-inspired stipple style.

I can honestly say, I've never looked back. Soon, I was illustrating a Steve Davis snooker series for The Daily Star. Then they gave me my own weekly sports illustration spot, as well as commissioning front page illustrations for general elections and such. In 1986, they launched my daily series The Diary of Rock & Pop. By then, I also had my own series each week in the soccer magazine "Match Weekly" and my clients included Look-In and The Daily Mirror. The syndication arm of Express Newspapers began to sell my soccer features worldwide.

United Media, the giant New York syndicate who gave us Peanuts and Garfield, spotted my work and I was invited to sign my first US syndication contract in 1989, the same year that my "Badlands" cartoon launched in The Sun. I moved my young family to California that summer.

At one point in the early 1990s, "Badlands" was appearing daily in The Sun, my "Pop Culture" strip was appearing daily in the Today newspaper and syndicated to 600 newspapers worldwide through NEA, I had a weekly series in the News of The World and a weekly series in "Shoot!' magazine, The Sun was running my daily soccer strip and I was supplying a monthly to SIForKids magazine [Sports Illustrated for kids]. I've slowed down a little since then ... but I still make the majority of my income from drawing pop stars and footballers!

We've now lived in sunny California for 20 years and my work is still syndicated all over the world. I'm a two-term former President of the National Cartoonists Society and am the first artist to win Illustrator of the Year awards from both the NCS and the Australian Cartoonists Association. And I can honestly say that I owe all of my professional success to the inspiration that Frank Bellamy's genius provided.

As I write, I find myself occasionally glancing at the framed piece of art that hangs directly above my drawing board. It's a Frank Bellamy "Garth" strip (H105 from The Beast of Ultor series) that I bought from Frank's widow, Nancy, a few years after his death. It's one of my most- treasured possessions.

Many, many thanks to Steve for this extensive romp through his contact with Bellamy and his own story. Take a look at Steve's site www.stevemcgarry.com My parents never bought a paper but a friend of the family kindly cut out the Garth strips for me, and we certainly didn't see the later Sun, Today, or News of the World - thus i missed Steve's excellent work until now. Steve, I hope you like the accompanying illustrations.

Now if any of you have an easy was for me to get to John Byrne or Al Williamson, I'd love to add them to my 'Fans of Frank' series

---

FOOTNOTE::
From Steve:
"Incidentally, Trevillion is currently appearing on The Guardian site each week with his long-running "You are the Ref" series, that now runs in The Observer:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/apr/30/you-are-the-ref-laws"

Thanks Steve

---

Fans of Frank Bellamy: Les Edwards

BE WARNED:
I am about to steal hours of your time!

I've been reading comics, comic strips and graphic novels for approximately 50 years. But the name Les Edwards was new to me until a few years ago. If you look at his amazing artwork, (www.lesedwards.com) you may be saying "who is this guy?" or if younger than me, "what kind of an idiot are you, Norman? How could you not know Les?".

It seems logical to me that we all favour and concentrate on those we get to know. Richard Bruton (no spelling mistake!) reviews new stuff on Forbidden Planet's Blog. This year he has talked about Largo Winch (amongst many others) and I'm now hooked! I will now watch out for the Belgian creators Philippe Francq and Jean Van Hamme.

I'm going to confess something here: I have never been able to read Discworld - and therefore never bought the calendars! I did read Anne McCaffrey's Pern series in the Eighties and early Nineties (thus missing Les' excellent covers in the 'Noughties'). I have never followed role-playing games. And I gave up browsing bookshop science-fiction shelves quite a while ago, and thus missed Les' fascinating covers. Anyway enough of my confessions. Les, I'm sorry to have missed your work for so long. I'm sure that a lot of people reading this will also be discovering your work for the first time! I can certainly see some Bellamy influence (compare the rockets in the above Eagle cover and Les' 'Cygnus' painting).

Les kindly offered to add to my mini-series of 'Fans of Frank Bellamy'. Over to Les:

Like most boys growing up in the 50's I was a fan of the Eagle which was streets ahead of other comics of the day in terms of quality. My main interest to begin with was Dan Dare, because it was Science Fiction and because it always had a large splash panel on the front page to grab your interest. It was also beautifully drawn by the other great Frank;- Hampson, although, if the truth be told I was too young to appreciate the artwork at first. At this time the centre pages of the Eagle were given over to the famous cut-away drawings which can still put a gleam in the eye of men of "a certain age". Whoever decided to put a double spread strip in their place deserves a medal.

I'd been aware of The Happy Warrior on the back page and Montgomery of Alamein but I considered them subordinate to the main attraction which was still the adventures of Dan and Digby and their nemesis the evil Mekon. However, when Heros the Spartan began to run in the centre pages I switched my allegiance at once. I've tried in the ensuing years to decide why I found Heros so attractive but while I have lots of "grown up" reasons I'm not sure why my twelve year old self was so hooked.

Taken from Eagle 7 Sept 1963, Vol 14 36

In my memory Heros was always very dark and richly coloured which gave it a moody and brooding atmosphere, something which I still try to replicate in my own work. In looking at panels from the strip in later years this is clearly not always the case. Indeed one of the stories, obviously inspired by Lawrence of Arabia, David Lean's magnificent film, was set in the desert and brightly lt. Still my abiding memory is of dark shadows and twisted trees, swamps and monsters and almost Neanderthal barbarians. It was a kind of proto-Sword and Sorcery, long before I'd ever heard the term.



There was plenty of action. Indeed everything in a frame of Heros seemed to be in motion, whether it was the creases in someone's clothing, an expressively gesturing hand or the sweep of a sword. Again, this rather a "grown up" appreciation and I'm sure I reacted to this strip on a much more fundamental level.



Eventually I became interested in the artist. Of course it was Frank Bellamy. I tried, without much success to imitate his style and I think there are still elements of him in what I do now. It was an influence that followed me to Art School, to the bemusement of my tutors, and I did not, nor did I want to, shake it off. I doubt very much that I would be doing what I do today without Heros.



When Bellamy moved on to do Thunderbirds for Century 21 his work became ever more accomplished. Indeed some of his renderings of non_Thunderbird hardware are absolutely stunning. But while you might argue that this is more mature work, it never quite had the resonance of Heros the Spartan for me. I look forward to the day when someone republishes the whole of Bellamy's Heros work in a large format. Maybe then I'll be able to put my finger on the element that made it so crucial to me. I'm not holding my breath, but they did it for Dan Dare and I can't be the only wanna-be legionnaire out there.

Taken from TV21 201 23 November '2068'

Thanks a lot Les. Let's hope Titan Books are listening and will publish Heros as a complete run. I hope you like the selection of Bellamy art - I was tempted to add a Hampson, but felt a Bellamy blog ought to have Bellamy and as I could see a similarity between your Cygnus and Bellamy's hardware in the Dan Dare story above... Also I could have shown the Heros 'desert' story, but felt the issue above shows that some bright colour did indeed appear in the strip despite your and my memory of it being dark! I threw in some Thunderbirds hardware and 'barbarians' too for good measure.

Fans of Frank Bellamy: Jon Haward

I tripped over an interview between Jon Haward and Terry Hooper with loads of fine examples of Jon's artwork, in which he praised Frank Bellamy. Click on the link and spend time there after you finish here!

I took the liberty of emailing Jon (via his website) asking if he could say more about the influence that Frank Bellamy had on him. He very kindly agreed to me publishing the following:

'What does Frank Bellamy the artist mean to me?'' Well firstly, he's my all time favourite artist full stop, he wasn't just a artist who worked for comics he was a all round illustrator who could draw beautiful nudes in stipple nib pen , he could illustrate film stars, animals, machines, planes, basically anything the Editors wanted he could draw.

He could design fantastic covers for magazines, he was a all round artist who had a terrific graphic design sense with shadow and colour and he used lettering to good effect too he was a master craftsman of his trade.

Radio Times 1st January 1972 - 7th January 1972 "Doctor Who - Day of the Daleks"

He was copied by other artists of his generation but none of them could match him , he was a one off, his work still has a freshness to it even after 33 yrs since he passed away

When I was at art college in 1981 my art history thesis special project was a book all about Frank Bellamy where I put interviews /art and my reasons why I liked his work I got a 70% pass for my efforts


Over the years as a comic pro I've been very lucky to draw Dan Dare and Thunderbirds and draw the odd Dr Who illustration all three Bellamy had drawn in his career, my work never touched his for style and impact, I admit my Dan Dare was one of my first jobs so I was a green horn learning as I went along , Thunderbirds was difficult I tried drawing it on cs10 board with coloured inks like Bellamy but it was a lot of hard work and being forced to draw the characters in puppet character proportions didn't help me either and I was never really happy with my efforts . Dr Who was a storybook so I could not go too wild with the artwork or design so you see I just couldn't match the master craftsman.

Eagle 7 November 1959 Vol 10:38 "Terra Nova"

Bellamy still inspires me I put little nods to him in my layouts with the odd character pointing to the reader and when I draw things in outer space I draw stars like Bellamy, my explosions I try and draw a Bellamy blast that breaks out of the panel box.

His work was very clever he could draw fantastic atmosphere with black figures and a one colour tone over them for background and it still looked terrific, he could draw fantastic fight scenes and amazing battle spreads (Heros), but what hooked me first was his work on Garth a black and white story adventure strip in the Daily Mirror. As a young boy I would copy and copy the art from my brothers scrap books of the strip my all time favourite is The Bubble Man a ''Mekon'' type alien who's ship had crewmen like giant insects I'm thrilled Spaceship Away are reprinting this work for a new generation to discover, I'm also pleased Book Palace books are reprinting his Swift work which is new for me to discover being a 60's child not old enough to see it first time round.

Eagle 3 August 1963 Vol 14:31 Heros the Spartan: The Eagle of the Fifth

Bellamy never handed in a bad piece of work ,he shows that the art form can be exciting and fantastic, dynamic and to me that marks him as a all time great of the medium of Art not just comics.

He died when I was only 11 yrs old before I could send him a fan letter or one of my drawing but he'll never be forgotten thanks to the Internet, publishers and fans like me who will always marvel at his wonderful body of work . Jon Haward http://jonhawardart.com/

I must mention Jon's involvement with the Classical Comics project. I've read both his Macbeth and Tempest as well as some others in the series, and have enjoyed them enormously. Mike Collins, who kindly contributed to this blog recently, has done a title in the series - Christmas Carol and a contemporary of Bellamy's John Burns has two titles in the series. And no, I'm not on commission! All the graphic novels are published in three simultaneous editions (see an explanation here) and are available in the usual virtual and physical bookstores.

Here's an example of a comic frame where Jon might have been influenced by Bellamy's habit of shaping the frame to enhance the breaking action! For the curious, it's Ariel, Propsero's sprite in the Tempest

Jon Haward's art from The Tempest

Fans of Frank Bellamy: Mike Collins

Here's a new feature that I hope to add to occasionally

Mike Collins is a British artist who has successfully worked for DC, Marvel, Eclipse (I loved them!) and many more, as well as the famous UK comic 2000AD. He recently made a brilliantly visual comment about Frank Bellamy's art in the Garth strip:

"Frank Bellamy's art boiled my brain with its unbelievably dynamic energized art"

Taken from a (now-defunct and not archived in 2020) Alan Moore Senhor do Caos blog - which even if you don't know Portuguese, I'm sure you can translate



I plucked up the courage and emailed Mike a request to say more, and got this by return:

"I was stunned as a kid to see that artwork... it was odd things, like the way he'd draw an E Type Jag roaring down a country lane and make it look just the most dramatic thing you'd ever seen, or how he'd compose a battle scene which had you convinced you were seeing the whole of Little Big Horn or some Conquistadors getting the sharp end of his sword from horseback, or breathtaking alien or sea environments, all in these frankly tiny squares of art—and sometimes not even squares... Bellamy's brilliant design sense (which I loved on the Gerry Anderson stuff but was probably too young to realise it was the same guy) gave us panels which more resembled crazy paving images that only enhanced the kinetic drive of the work. Oh and, god, could he draw sexy women! He managed like no artist before or since to make that thin strip of art into cinescope in your head. I've worked on newspaper strips -notably Judge Dredd for three years-- and know just how hard it is to utilize that space into something eye catching and spectacular. Frank Bellamy did it with artistic verve that I can't get near for trying."



I am honoured to present this, and know that if he had said this to Bellamy himself, Frank would have replied in the same humble way about Mike's art, as he did with fans of his such as Sir William Russell Flint.

The pictures, in order, are taken from :

• The Beautiful People K25 and K26 (one of the never reprinted stories)
• The Beast of Ultor H50 and H51

Copyright Mirror Group Newspapers Limited

Thanks Mike for giving me an excuse to browse my Garths and fulfilling your desire to see one aspect of Garth, although you mentioned several!