Showing posts with label Swift. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Swift. Show all posts

Saturday 21 May 2022

Happy Birthday Frank Bellamy

Crosse & Blackwell advert 1971

It's the 21st May and in 1917 one of Britain's greatest artists was born in Kettering 105 years ago - not "600 years ago"! I'm happy to remember this date every year, but what to show you?

I've decided, for no other reason than these are images with a subject of "many years ago" to show you three pieces you will enjoy

The first (at the head of this article) comes from an advert drawn by Bellamy for the agency Lonsdale Crowther Ltd whose client was Crosse & Blackwell. Bellamy was paid £115.50 for the full colour battle scene titled "Life as it was 600 years ago". Notably there is no signature. This advert appeared in various comics (where they were printed in colour) including, but not exclusively Countdown No.12 (Week ending 8th May 1971) and Look & Learn No. 485 (1 May 1971). If anyone knows where the original artwork is, I'd love to know and if you spot the advert anywhere else, I'd add that to the listing. 

Eagle 28 August 1965 (Vol.16:35
The second piece appeared in Eagle in the summer of 1965 and shows one of the "Arms through the ages" series. You can see the others here. What's interesting is the missing panel which appeared bottom left on the printed cover. As it contains a somewhat violent image(!) it may have been cut out and omitted in a further reprint, but I've not found one yet! Bellamy was paid £44 for this.

Eagle 28 August 1965 (Vol.16:35

 And lastly, again through the kindness of collectors, I have another original art to show you. This comes from Swift Vol2:37

Swift Vol.2:37 (10 September 1955)

The seventh episode of "King Arthur and his knights" - copies of the whole story can still be found on Book Palace's website.

Monday 21 August 2017

Original Art: Garth on Heritage - Robin Hood & Bride of Jenghiz Khan (H264)


This "Robin Hood" appeared in Swift 24 Nov 1956
The Heritage auction this week contains not only another Garth original but also more excitingly, an original from the Swift comic, Robin Hood


They describe the piece, which appeared in Swift dated 24 November 1956, in this way:

Frank Bellamy Swift Vol. 3 #47 "Robin Hood," Episode 29, Page 2 Original Art (Hulton Press, 1956). Never a better Robin Hood than the series created by Bellamy for Swift, a British publication. Each large-scale panel throbs with painterly passion, and the facial expressions, body language, and cinematic compositions are on a par with the famous Robin Hood movie of 1938. The deep horizontal gutters, or white spaces, were designed to contain printed text in the published editions. Ink and greyscale watercolors over graphite on illustration board. Image area, 12" x 15.5". Excellent condition.
To demonstrate how it looked in the finished comic, I dug around in my collection and realised I don't own the actual comic from which this art came. But the one preceding is in my collection, so please enjoy that!.

Swift 17 November 1956 Cover

Swift 17 November 1956
Robin Hood and his Merry Men
Written by Clifford Makin and drawn by Frank Bellamy
Bellamy drew the strip in Swift, a companion comic for younger children, to the famed Eagle comic, from Volume 3:19 - 3:52, 4:1 - 4:8 (12 May 1956 - 29 December 1956, 5 January 1957 - 23 February 1957) and the strip became "Robin Hood and Maid Marian" after that until Volume 4:33 (17 August 1957).

If you want to read the whole of "Robin Hood" pick up a copy of the Book Palace reprint - 134 pages of lovely artwork and commentary by Steve Holland.

H264 episode of  "Garth: Bride of Jenghiz Khan" Drawn by Frank Bellamy

The second auction piece is continuing the story of Jenghiz Khan as outlined already many times on this blog, so there I shall leave it except to quote Heritage:

Frank Bellamy Garth Daily Comic Strip H264 Original Art (Daily Mirror, c. 1974). An insolent tongue has our hero and his bound topless maiden sidekick chained for vulture fodder on this high contrast thriller, numbered H264. Frank Bellamy is one of the celebrated titans of British comic strip art. This ink over graphite on illustration board daily has an image area of 20.5" x 5.25", and the art is in Excellent condition. From the Ethan Roberts Estate Collection.
As usual I will add the details after the auction of how much they sell for below


Robin Hood
WHERE?: Heritage Sunday Internet Comics Auction #121735
LOT #: 14005
SELLER:Heritage
STARTING BID:$
ENDING PRICE:$1,015.75 (inc. Buyer's Premium) = £785.58
No of bids:7

END DATE: 27 August 2017

H264 "Garth: Bride of Jenghiz Khan"
WHERE?: Heritage Sunday Internet Comics Auction #121735
LOT #: 14006 
SELLER:Heritage
STARTING BID:$
ENDING PRICE:$382.40 = £295.67
No of bids:7
END DATE: 27 August 2017

Monday 17 July 2017

CENTENARY ARTICLE: Part Two: 1950s - 1960s by David Jackson

FRANK BELLAMY - design and technique
Part Two: 1950s-1960s

By David Jackson
[Part One] [Part Two] [Part Three] [Part Four] [Part Five]

Boy's Own Paper April 1952 pp.40-41

Probably everyone reading this has a good idea what the Frank Bellamy 'look' looks like. Yet up to the mid 1950s nobody knew this - not even Frank Bellamy.

Drawing - fine art - is considered a difficult enough and praiseworthy talent in its own right - as a sort of human-camera translating the scene before the artist into line and or tone or colour. But, for the illustrator and comics artist there is an added difficulty - there is no such scene to draw from!
It is a task which makes doing a jig-saw without a box lid look like child's play.
Or, put another way, it would be a daunting task for anybody to take a blank sheet of CS10 board and make an exact copy of any illustration, let alone comic page or strip, by Frank Bellamy - even if they were allowed to use tracing paper, never mind 'by eye'...
Frank Bellamy of course had only a script and a blank sheet of paper to start with!
With pen and ink, just controlling the tools and materials is a 'high-wire' performance and always on the edge of a blot, a drip, run, or a slip or skid of the pen, rule or brush.
As Frank said himself in Fantasy Advertiser (Vol.3 No.50):
FB: "So again, no tricks...no easy way. In fact, I consider line drawing to be the most difficult form of drawing, because it is so positive. You can get away with murder with a pencil, but with a pen it isn't quite so easy."

Despite recognizable touches - seen in retrospect - overall his design and style at the mid point of the twentieth century was still to form. It was a work in progress - FB himself not then knowing what unique and distinctive originality he was developing towards; with his signature technique of pen and ink line-and-key-black with transparent waterproof ink colour washes still in his future...Two early, probably on-spec, portfolio sample try-outs (which were rescued by Alan Davis and are among early FB work on his own website) are mock-up book illustrations with what would be the printed text of a published novel represented by ruled lines, and featuring hand-drawn decorative title lettering: Treasure Island (despite FB's subsequent comments quoted below) and Colorado by William MacLeod Raine (a novel first published in 1928 and since reviewed on the web: "This book out-Westerns Westerns!").



The art materials FB was using at this time included opaque colour, on one occasion for his signature on a dark red ground. For whatever reason (and a job is a job) between 1950 and 1954, the International Artists agency found or assigned freelance romance story commissions from women's interest Home Notes magazine and other similar work, which were not at all Frank's preferred subject - as much due to the relatively static nature of the scenes to be illustrated as the romantic content of the stories.

Home Notes 27 July 1951
 As with the portfolio sample pieces, in these illustrations the treatment of graphic design elements, such as large title lettering and patterns within the scenes, required the sort of exacting drawing-instrument control which many an artist would rather avoid, but are the first component parts to be rendered with complete precision.
The figurework looks to have been drawn freehand and probably posed by Nancy and Frank.
Theoretically it may be possible to photograph posed scenes and trace-off or project these for the finished rendering, but meeting set deadlines of the day may not allow time for this.

FA: "When drawing characters or machines, do you prefer to draw from life or from photographs?"
FB: "The only time I'd use a photograph would be for convenience sake..."
FA: "...You can't get an elephant into the studio."
In theory, the advantages of a photograph is in its accuracy. Its limitations then being that the camera can only photograph what exists to be photographed. As a source of information, found reference of any three dimensional scene is reduced to two dimensions so that the true relationship between objects may not be correctly seen or understood, or outright misleading to the viewer (the family snapshot showing a lamppost apparently attached to the head of a relative being only an extreme and well understood example).
Such difficulties need to be overcome by the artist.Still today, tracing from photographs, and it's computerised equivalent, is a subject in dispute. It is a very nuanced issue and, as with anything else about art, it is easier in some way to go wrong despite it being possible to know how to get it exactly right.

BBC Children's Hour Annual [1952] Page 80

1952: The illustrations for the Children's Hour story "I'm proud of my father" are strong b/w inkwork, in a 1940's style of the era depicted, and in design terms with speed line hatching tones.
The March and April Boy's Own Paper credit: SCRAPERBOARD ILLUSTRATION BY BELLAMY. Other editions featuring various genre illustrations in other media and techniques continued into the following year.

Boy's Own Paper September 1953

1953
Frank Bellamy carried out a number of commissions for Odhams Press - with more East African themed subjects (including a cover featuring a rhino) for Boy's Own Paper. At one time, presumably in the early days, being unsatisfied with a work in progress, Frank had said to his son, David, 'I wish I could draw horses!'
To which my sentiment on hearing this decades later was: 'I wish I could draw horses like he couldn't draw horses!'
FB could have traced from a photograph but what he could have meant was, he'd wanted to understand - internalise - what horses looked like - so well as to not need to.
Of course, until the invention of the camera nobody could see how horses were actually galloping at full speed.If it appears that FB was taking the long and difficult route rather than the obvious easy short-cut, the comparison is one of ends and means; it is the difference between someone copying, by sight, writing which they themselves are unable to read, as opposed to someone who has learned how to read and able to write whatever is required, off-the-cuff, without copying. The aim is authorship. Fluency. Consistency. And the articulated solid-geometry which was a distinguishing characteristic of his ability and work.
Comprehensive knowledge is needed in creating scenes which never existed in real life to make all the assembled component parts of a constructed image both fit the dynamic 'flow' of the overall design and be at the appropriate angle, perspective, lighting, etc, in terms of realism.


In comic strips, more so than in other forms of representational art and illustration, the artist is required to take responsibility for conveying to the reader some of the information which in other literary formats would be described in the text. And so drawn details in the art which are there to carry the story must be sufficiently realistic to be 'readable' and clearly decipherable as opposed to merely decorative or impressionistic. Even a 'still frame' photo from an action sequence from a movie - in which, when shown in a cinema, everything looks perfectly realistic, whole and solid - can be reduced to indecipherable blurs in the elements which were moving fastest . Comic strip frames, in their classic form, generally combine both storytelling detail and action in the same shot.

From Eagle Vol 3 No 11

The first FB work in a strip-art form was in fact a series of advertisements, 'Commando Gibbs v Dragon Decay' printed in Eagle Vol.3. Despite being no easy task to spot the Frank Bellamy 'look' - had we not known that it was -this prefigured some sort of turning-point towards action adventure picture-strip art. Onward and upward incremental developments arrived in weekly instalments from here on in!

FA: "And when did you actually get started drawing comic strips?"
FB: "Very shortly after I started doing freelance work through International Artists. Apparently they wanted to see me up at Mickey Mouse Weekly. Up until that interview, I had only done one strip, an advertisement for Gibbs toothpaste which appeared in Eagle. They offered me a weekly comic-strip for Mickey Mouse, "Monty Carstairs". So, realising I couldn't draw for Mickey Mouse Weekly and do a staff job at Norfolk Studios, in 1953 I left the studio and became a full-time freelance artist. And I've been drawing strips ever since."
FB's breakthrough as a freelance b/w pen and ink continuity picture-strip artist was a detective series for Odhams Press - taking over from Kenneth Brookes - Monty Carstairs in a "Great New Holiday Mystery-Adventure" 'The Secret of the Sands' in Mickey Mouse Weekly 25th July 1953.

Mickey Mouse Weekly 25 July 1953

A reproduction of FB's first comics page was one of the examples illustrating the interview in Fantasy Advertiser. Not mentioned in that context, Frank's son David had posed for the drawn-from-life figures of the young boy in the story. This page is signed FRANK A. BELLAMY, (as is his last page in the series, but in some issues his surname only) but if this first page had been unsigned, the style is more that of the established form than immediately recognizable as being his. Even the word-balloon shapes are wholly untypical, even though lettered by FB. The banks of panels, in rows one above another, is the standard format for all the strips in the issue and all the b/w adventure strips art and some subject matter is stylistically near-indistinguishable one from another.

1954
Mickey Mouse Weekly also commissioned Frank to draw the colour centrespread natural history feature 'Walt Disney's true life adventures: Living Desert'. [see here and here ~Norman]
Other spot illustrations of wildlife and action adventure subjects were commissioned by Lilliput and Everybody's.In terms of the comic-strip, this year was to be the signal change. Frank breaks the banks of panels format in Mickey Mouse Weekly with a larger central frame in the 13th March issue. All the square and cornered word-balloon shapes go and by the end of April the word-balloon graphics are distinctively his own style.

Mickey Mouse Weekly 13 March 1954

FA: "And after these two strips for Odhams Press, you started work for Swift, which was published by Hulton Press..."
FB: I'd always had a feeling I'd like to get in on the Eagle/Swift/Girl group of comics..."
FA: "These papers were in competition with each other for artists and writers at the time, weren't they?"
FB: "Oh, yes. So, when it became a convenient moment to drop from Odhams, as the Hulton Press people had been making enquiries about me, I moved straight on to Swift, in 1954." 

Swift, as a companion junior title to Eagle, featured picture stories with both type-set text commentary below line and wash art, and caps-and-lower-case lettered word-balloons, intended for the younger reader. The house style standard format of the title as a whole was again banks of panels in rows one above another for all the picture stories in the issue and again the b/w adventure strips in both art and some subject matter are stylistically similar one to another.

Swift 2 October 1954
 Frank also illustrated several text stories for Swift. "The Fleet Family" in 'The Island of Secrets' one page b/w picture strip ran from Vol.1 No.22, 14th August - the opening episode being a stylistically seamless transition from the concluding pages of "Monty Carstairs".

Swift 9 October 1954

"The Swiss Family Robinson" one page b/w picture strip followed from Vol.1 No.30, 9th October.
Progress was one of accumulating sophistication. The episodes are uncredited and unsigned. But the distinctive style is recognizably Bellamy. Frames are small scale, ten or eleven each episode; with detail rendered in coherent graphic precision, albeit within a limiting editorial layout and genre.

FB: "I wasn't too happy on Swiss Family Robinson."
FA: "Why was that?
FB: "I think it was because it wasn't a very elastic script and the fantasy in it wasn't my type of fantasy. Everything was laid down for me and I had no way to improvise."
FA: "So, mainly you didn't like the Robinson set because it was such a famous story in the first place?"
FB: "Exactly. Can you imagine a more difficult task than having to illustrate a famous story? Imagine drawing Treasure Island. Everybody has preconceived ideas of what Long John Silver looks like, so the artist would have no scope whatsoever, and his rendition would be completely different to most people's mental picture of Long John. I've heard it said that one of the worst books to illustrate is, in fact Treasure Island."

Eagle 4 October 1957
Coincidentally, the second frame of "The Happy Warrior" illustrates a young Winston Churchill reading Treasure Island and visualizing a very identifiable Long John Silver.

Men Only was a small pocket sized publication (later better known when it turned to the 'glamour' market and published by Paul Raymond!) gave Frank work in three issues, black and white illustrations

1955-1956
Outspan magazine commissioned several issues of cover and/or interior text story illustrations ranging from drama, science fiction and wildlife adventure (several, including the 'Timeliner' artwork - prefiguring Apollo 11 moon landing and art - in the October issue, are reproduced in Notes to the Checklist) .

FB: "I also did a lot of story illustrations for Outspan - most of which was set in South Africa and all of those being big game illustrations. I was sticking my neck out a bit, but I've always been interested in big game. I can honestly say I've always been interested in Africa, and still am. So, as I said, you can see I was never cut out to do love strips for the IPC girl's paper. I'd have a go, but I prefer something with a bit of meat and guts."

"The Exiting Adventures of Paul English" was a one page b/w picture strip in Swift was taken over by FB from Vol.2 No.15 to No.30.


Swift 8 October 1955

"King Arthur and his Knights", "Robin Hood and his Merry Men" and "Robin Hood and Maid Marian", b/w picture strips with two pages of five or six larger frames each, continued until Vol.4 No.33 ended the run in 1957; with the episodes from Vol.3 No.44 on signed FRANK BELLAMY

FA: "In those days, the strips you were on had libretto under each frame, so you must have had little continuity from frame to frame...almost acting purely as an illustrator."
FB: "I did try to get as much continuity in as possible. Whereas a lot of my later strips have been separate frames, all totally disconnected... 'Churchill' was an example of that."
FA: "When it came to continuity, a breakdown of action, did you find this very hard to do, or did it come naturally from the start?"
FB: "Well, I must confess, it seemed to come naturally to me because, over the years, even back to the Swift days, when it was a hard format of probably nine frames per page with text at the bottom of each nicely squared-up frame, I always wanted to enlarge upon that format. I didn't like the normal, acceptable form of comic strip work, frame after frame, bank after bank...like so many daily newspaper strips stuck together to make up a page."

TO BE CONTINUED... Part Two of the 1950s - a very productive period for Bellamy

I hope David won't mind me adding an advert - all the Swift strips have been reprinted and are available at Book Palace. I don't get commission but have been given copies for my contributions over the years! ~"Honest" Norman

Friday 4 October 2013

Frank Bellamy and "The Missing Lynx"

When trawling through books, magazines and comics, in the hunt for Frank Bellamy artwork (or my other favourite, Raymond Sheppard for that matter) every so often I detect traces of his style in an illustration, but can't decide with any certainty whether he drew it or not. The earlier we go back in his endeavours, the more difficult it becomes, together with a rapidly diminishing likelihood of any authentic connections to Frank’s career. So it's fantastic when such a breakthrough occurs and helps us add to the list of Bellamy's known works. Therefore imagine my reaction when, in the course of the exchanges related to ‘Red Devil Dean’, the following account quite unexpectedly unfolded before me. AND today's my birthday!

As before, I’ll leave David Slinn to chronicle the circumstances:


“While it’s generally thought the “Commando Gibbs” advertisements, appearing in Eagle at the beginning of 1952, brought Frank to the attention of the Hulton Press, his earlier illustration work for Home Notes, two years before, had not gone unnoticed by the art editor, Arthur Roberts. During 1951, both he and Jodi Hyland, from Woman’s Own, left George Newnes to play a major role in the launch of Hulton’s Girl that November.

The distinguished judges of the painting competition including
Marcus [Morris], John Betjeman and art editor Arthur Roberts (third from right)
Taken from Living with Eagles, p.179

Home Notes illustrators, notably Ray Bailey, Stanley Coleman, Roy Newby, Philip Townsend and, later, Stanley Houghton were to draw strip features for the new girls’ title – together with, of course, Raymond Sheppard. Interestingly, Frank’s debut on an adventure serial wasn’t until 1953, with ‘Monty Carstairs’ for Odhams’ Mickey Mouse Weekly. However, the development of his strip illustration technique was closely monitored by Arthur Roberts with a view to persuading him to join the Hulton children’s magazines – eventually, the arrival of Swift, widened the practical possibilities of this coming about.

“The immediate impact achieved by Eagle and again, though to a lesser extent, with the advent of Girl and Robin, was unfortunately not repeated on Swift’s spring launch in 1954. While intended to attract younger readers from both sexes, by far the best picture-stories – Harry Bishop’s western strip, ‘Tom Tex and Pinto’, and ‘Paul English’ drawn by Giorgio Bellavitas – were clearly aimed at boys. ‘Nicky Nobody’, nicely handled by Leslie Otway, Eric Dadswell’s ‘The Fleet Family’ and ‘Sally of Fern Farm’, drawn by Girl regular Roy Newby, provided the counterbalance; together with Patrick Williams on Chad Varah’s, ‘The Boy David’; plus various cartoon strips from John Ryan, Dennis Mallet and the ubiquitous Roland Davies.

“Other artists from Hulton’s companion children’s titles, including Richard Jennings, Harry Winslade and Will Nickless, also contributed illustrations to a weekly series of complete short stories. These appeared on the page opposite ‘The Fleet Family’ which, from the issue dated 14 August 1954, I’d spotted was now being drawn by the ‘Monty Carstairs’ artist who signed that strip, “Frank A. Bellamy”. While his arrival in Swift’s pages was the key to Frank’s long-term future, within less than a month a little flurry of related coincidences also occurred.

“For, the very week Junior Express and, incidentally, Junior Mirror first hit the bookstalls on 4 September 1954, I attended an interview in Shoe Lane with Arthur Roberts, now senior art editor on the Hulton Press children’s titles. Once my, over-optimistic, teenage creative struggles with ‘Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future’, ‘Belle of the Ballet’ colour-strips and other specimen drawings had been thoroughly perused and put to one side, I was kindly shown various examples of finished artwork. Amongst these was the first episode of ‘The Swiss Family Robinson’, due to appear in Swift dated 9 October.

Arthur Roberts particularly drew my attention to the balloon-lettering and the title-piece, pointing out that both had been done by the illustrator himself – he offered the sage advice that, becoming proficient in those skills, would considerably improve the prospects for any burgeoning strip-artist. Also on the desk was the short story illustration for “Jumping Wildcat” – though, I recall, my eye wandering to the unlettered cover artwork, drawn by Harry Bishop for ‘Tarna – Jungle Boy’, as I endeavoured to take in as much as possible. A few weeks later, “Caught” was published in Swift, 25 September; “David’s Good Deed”, on 2 October; with the story, about a lynx missing from a travelling circus, appearing in the 30 October issue.

Swift vol.1no.33 30 Oct 1954

“Clearly, the natural assumption that, in the intervening, close to sixty years, someone else was bound to unearth their existence, turned out to be seriously flawed. Even, despite the illustrations being positioned a blink away from any researching eyes, forensically examining the ‘The Fleet Family’ picture-story on the adjacent page, for clues as to when it changed hands. Moreover, the ‘Red Devil Dean’ connection and the title of the second Swift story, only add to the bizarre coincidences?”

Heeding Mr Roberts’ initial advice, his subsequent guidance and encouragement, eventually led to David working freelance for the Hulton Press on Eagle, Girl, Swift and Robin; also with Express Weekly, TV Century 21 and other children’s titles. I took the opportunity to ask if he knew anything regarding the circumstances of Frank Bellamy taking over ‘The Fleet Family’ from Eric Dadswell.

Swift vol.1no.28 25 Sep 1954

“This came about when Eric Dadswell landed a national newspaper strip, based on the BBC serial ‘The Grove Family’; an early television “soap” – that, incidentally, included the Reverend Morris’s sister-in-law, Ruth Dunning, in the cast. What I’ve always half-suspected, however, is that Frank was originally approached by the Hulton Press to join Swift for the planned autumn “re-launch” in 1954.

“It was Hulton’s usual practice to give a new artist – which, of course, Frank was at the time – something akin to those short-story illustrations, as a try out before a major assignment like ‘The Swiss Family Robinson’ strip feature. Cecil Orr, who’d drawn ‘Monty Carstairs’ prior to Frank’s tenure, had also been enlisted to contribute ‘The Rolling Stones’ circus adventures.

“In the event, as he would still have been drawing ‘The Living Desert’ for Odhams, Frank’s propensity for working well-in-hand, will have enabled him to meet the editorial request to take on ‘The Fleet Family’ at short notice. This would also account for his last feature in Mickey Mouse Weekly, being so close to his first episode appearing in Swift two weeks later.”

Many thanks to David for providing the missing links! To finish, here’s the last of the three newly added pieces of Bellamy artwork and my little pun to complete David’s own pun in our title above!

Swift vol.1no.29 2 Oct 1954

Sunday 5 April 2009

SWIFT Cover update


INTRODUCTION

See my post and notes on the website regarding the Swift comic cover in question. I bounced a few emails to Steve Holland at the time and I don't now how but I missed the full story. Fortunately, having visited and met Steve for the first time a few weeks ago, I plied him with food and beer and found out the following. Steve kindly said I could quote him which helps me post this a bit quicker than normally do!

GUEST: Steve Holland:

SWIFT COVER STORY

Frank Hampson had finished working on "The Road of Courage" in Eagle in early 1961. It takes a few weeks to get the finished comic through the printing process so there's usually a lead-in period. The last episode of "Road" appeared in the issue dated 8 April 1961 but was probably completed by Hampson in February at the latest. This was shortly before the Fleetway took over the Odhams/Hulton group of comics. The deal was officially brokered on 22 March 1961.

To quote "Living with Eagles", "In May Leonard Matthews wrote that he would be 'taking up residence' at Longacre the following week." So you can see that various changes would have occurred during the summer of '61.

Hampson, meanwhile, was still drawing a regular paycheque from what was now Fleetway Publications. New editors and sub-editors began to arrive and the various titles began to reflect these changes. In September 1961, a new style of covers began to appear on Swift, each cover based around an event (the first Sputnik, the Battle of Hastings, the Gunpowder Plot, etc.). Some were new, some were reprints of old Thriller Picture Library covers.

Again, lead time for printing dates the decision to change the covers to around June/July 1961. Someone, possibly Alf Wallace or (more likely) Val Holding, who had been installed at Odhams by Matthews, realised that Hampson was still on their books and commissioned three covers from him.

The first (General Custer) was delivered and published in December 1961 (it would have been painted by Frank in September or October). Frank then fell ill and could not complete the second commission. This was passed on to Frank Bellamy who painted the cover featuring Amundsen reaching the South Pole which appeared the week after Hampson's General Custer cover on 16 December 1961. Hampson recovered and was able to complete the third cover (the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth I) which appeared in January 1962 and was probably painted in November 1961. This has been confirmed by David Slinn who was working for Eagle and Swift at the time, although the rough dating of events is mine.

OUTRODUCTION

Thanks Steve for clearing that up.

Click on "The Lost Characters of Frank Hampson" by Alistair Crompton & Wakefield Carter to see the Hampson covers mentioned above. Now how can I illustrate the blog without repeating a previous picture, well here's a bonus for you. An odd black and white picture from earlier in the year, but around the same period of time published in the Eagle 26 August 1961

Sunday 21 September 2008

King Arthur, Merlin and Frank Bellamy

I have missed two events this weekend.

The first was meeting Steve Holland for the first time at the excellent "The London ABC Show" which features amongst other things original art, British comics, newspaper strips, pulps and paperbacks but also book signings. I've been to a few now, seeing John Bolton, Graham Bleathman, Sydney Jordan and Al Davison amongst others.

If all went to plan Steve should have been signing specially flown in copies of the latest Bellamy reprint, Frank Bellamy's King Arthur and His Knights: The Complete Adventures. The book is due out shortly (presumably when copies arrive from China). The reprints are taken from the Swift comic (Vol. 2:31 - 2:53, 3:1 - 3:18 dated 30 July 1955 - 31 December 1955, 7 January 1956 - 5 May 1956) . I make that 41 episodes, 2 pages each.

The story of King Arthur here, was written by Clifford Makins (later editor of the Eagle) Bellamy shows great skill in depicting the knights and their armour, horses and weaponry. He shows long shots of British castles, and battlefields. Bellamy must have been extremely worried when he read "Merlin says to Arthur, “You must build a great Round Table to seat 100 men”". However, Bellamy pulls it off admirably in such little space – the 70 or so knights depicted around an enormous table are amazing. Comparisons with Foster's Prince Valiant, can't be helped, but they are two different products created for different markets.

The second event this weekend, that I'm not worried that I missed, is the BBC's new production for Saturday night, Merlin. I'm fairly sure Steve Holland and the Book Palace did not aim to have the Arthur book available because of the launch of this, but I'm sure it can't hurt. The BBC's modern take on the old story has been hyped a lot and is obviously important to the BBC Saturday evening schedule, but I found the earlier Robin Hood, done in the same vein, bored me so I'm a bit prejudiced. But I'm sure that won't stop you making up your own mind!

Used with permission

Friday 25 April 2008

Bellamy starts drawing Paul English in Swift




In my last post I highlighted the difficulties in trying to identify Bellamy artwork. None more so than the early material.

I have an early run of the Swift comic that enables me to scan two pages for your perusal of the strip that was illustrated by Giorgio Bellavitis. That much is agreed by sources over the Internet, but when exactly did Bellamy take over?

Above are  The Exciting Adventures of Paul English from 2nd and 9th April 1955. comparing the two weeks, I think I'm right in seeing one artist (Giorgio Bellavitis) and then another (Frank Bellamy) a week later. Why do I think that?

  • Compare the musculature and the ways it's drawn on the boys
  • Look at the lines to denote wooden beams
  • Look at the window in the room and how it differs
  • ...and most important of all, look at the horizontals and verticals that are drawn in the room in the first and not in the second!
Let me know what you think...

Monday 31 March 2008

Identifying art can be hard...or FB or not FB!

***UPDATE*** - See later piece

That great guy Steve Holland sent me a scan recently that staggered me. It is the front cover of the Swift comic from 16 December 1961 featuring
"Amundsen-the first man to reach the South Pole".
So what's the mystery?
Steve writes:
"I can't find the attached illustration on your site and maybe you're not aware of it. It's the cover of Swift vol.8 no.50 (16 December 1961), part of a series of covers celebrating various anniversaries ranging from the Battle of Hastings to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth I. ... The cover is reproduced (about 2" wide) on page 4 of the same issue in b/w along with a brief article:
The Story of our Front Cover This Week's Anniversary Amundsen First man to reach the South Pole"
When I saw the cover, I really wasn't sure who did it, but it appeared to me to be a Bellamy lookalike. However, the only name I could think of was Eric Kincaid.
I wrote back to Steve and he replied:
"Why do I think that Amunden pic is Bellamy? Because it looks like him. I sent a copy over to David Roach and he agrees... and I quote:


"Well it looks like a definite Bellamy to me too. The inks are a little rougher than he often did but then I've seen the odd job in this style - on a few Heros' for instance so it's not completely unknown." David's probably the best artist-spotter around so if he thinks it's Bellamy you can be 99.9% certain it is."

And there I might choose to rest my case as these two cannot be beaten in their knowledge of British comics (amongst other things!).

However, I can be stubborn - if you don't believe me look at the website!

Below is Bellamy's drawing (FB signature bottom right) of a similar snow scene and heroic man- Sir Edmund Hillary from EAGLE Vol. 12:46 (18th November 1961). If you look at the Swift piece, it appears very similar to Bellamy's work, but certain pieces make me wonder.
In the Everest piece he blends the colour of a boot into the snow without drawing an ink line to show the boot appearing through the snow. In the Everest piece, his snow colouring is distinctively sharp. There is evidence of a wind (as you'd expect up Everest) as there is in the Swift piece, but in the latter the snow looks fairly 'smudged'. The lines around the main figures and the clothing appear different.

I think the artist for the Swift piece is the same person who drew some of the Arms through the Ages series in the 16th volume of Eagle.
However, Bellamy did actually do Arms Through the Ages: No. 5: The crossbow and No. 6: The floating mine
To see a fuller version of my thinking and what I mean click on the note corresponding to the entry on the comics page of my website.

So all said and done, I have added an entry to the relevant spot on the FrankBellamy.co.uk website with corresponding note! A good British compromise!
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Sunday 2 September 2007

...ADDITION: Treasure

Steve Holland has padded out the data I had on the Robin Hood strips, which originally appeared in Swift. He points out that the reprints in Treasure were in fact from #197 - 261 (22/10/66 - 13/01/68). The later reprints in Storyland (new to Steve - a miracle in itself!) still need complete data.

Steve adds: "the Treasure Robin Hood reprint [...] was abridged and bowdlerised in various places. It also dropped two episodes" which explains the discrepancy with Treasure only having 65 episodes and the original running for 67 through the two titles Robin Hood and his Merry Men and then Robin Hood and Maid Marian. Thanks Steve.