Frank Bellamy visits King Solomon's Mines

Episode #1

Terry Doyle was kind enough to remind me I hadn't blogged anything about the scans he sent me recently (OK, Terry, it was January!). I originally wrote to Terry when looking at what I knew about Bellamy's activities in 1961/1962. I was aware that Terry had an unpublished strip on the wonderful ComicArtFans site (Terry's gallery is here).

We know that in 1961 Bellamy had drawn three complete stories in the excellent "Fraser of Africa" series, the last was completed for 12 August 1961 issue of Eagle. He then did an illustration in the 26 August 1961 of a rhinoceros crushing its way through the undergrowth and also for the issue dated 18 November 1961 "Men of Action No.5 Sir Edmund Hillary" (written about here). For a story magazine about true adventures, he produced three illustrations in Wide World (Vol. 128 January 1962). He then started the series in Eagle called "Montgomery of Alamein" in the issue dated 10 March 1962.

So my question was what did he do between the dates August 1961 and March 1962?

I know he exhibited at the Summer Salon 18th Annual Exhibition at Royal Institute Galleries, but other than that I have a big gap in my knowledge. All the usual sources are not all helpful on the detail

Episode #2

Here's where Terry enters the picture. he owns one of the three unpublished double page boards showing work Bellamy did on "King Solomon's Mines".

"Unfortunately, I don't remember who it was told me the story behind the aborted KSM strips. It came from a reliable source, and was not specualation. Just can't recall. Must be getting senile . . ! [So it's not just me then Terry!] ". It appears that the proposed series was scrapped after the editorial team felt another African strip was too much. Each strip will have taken one week to produce (plenty of evidence for that fact!)and it's likely he will have been paid for the strips.

But when were these produced? Back to Terry:

"Might be worth remembering that Bellamy's pre-"Dan Dare" episodes (for the back page of Eagle) were large-sized CS10 artboards. When he took over "Dan Dare", he illustrated his pages at the same size as the printed page, which conformed to the Hampson studio's method of working. When he left "Dan Dare", he continued with same size boards for "Fraser of Africa".

The King Solomon's Mines" strips were all illustrated same size (I've seen the other two Episodes in person). When Bellamy illustrated "Montgomery of Alamein" he continued illustrating at same size. When he illustrated "Heros the Spartan", he went back to large sized artboards. So, if nothing else, it makes sense that KSM is post-"Dan Dare" and pre-"Heros"."

Size comparison - thanks to Terry

There are few people on this planet who own large amounts of original Bellamy artwork and I have seen some myself, so I can bear out what Terry is arguing here.

I also found that Terry published his thoughts in "Illustrated Comic Journal" #31 (1998?), a magazine for British comics enthusiasts

So it appears that these three strips are very likely to have been done in this gap period. Nancy, Frank's widow, has no recollection of this specific time period (it is after all 49 years ago and I've forgotten to publish these strips since January!). Perhaps there is more Bellamy work to turn up for the period August 1961 to March 1962.

Episode #3

Thanks to the kindness of Alan Davis I share this preparatory work on Episode #1

Thunderbirds unpublished art for TV21 & Joe90

Shaqui has pointed out to me that I have omitted a piece of work that Jeff Haythorpe showed him. I'm ashamed to admit I did know about this already and had indeed left it out of my listing. This allows me the opportunity to tell you about it.

Frank Bellamy drew Thunderbirds in assorted formats for the comic TV21. He started by creating a double page spread in colour with an additional page in black and white halftones for the first 14 episodes. He then dropped the black and white page and completed a weekly colour centrespread for 76 episodes. Reproduction of these centrespreads was difficult in the international market and from issue 141 he created two separate colour pages. This method carried on for 102 more episodes until TV21 merged with Joe90 after which Bellamy drew, for issue 1 one page in colour, for issue 2, 2 pages of colour and finally for issues 3 and 4 he drew his first Thunderbird pages in black and white (x2)

At this point in 1969, Alan Fennell the editor of TV21 could see the writing on the wall and encouraged Bellamy, who quite frankly must have been really fed up with Century 21 Ltd to jump the sinking ship. Fennell let him know that Century 21 would no longer be publishing TV21 from 2nd of June 1969. The editorial packages would be passed to City Magazines Ltd who nominated Martspress to fill the pages. Bellamy, who must have been very frustrated with the changes in formats during 4 weeks, went on to lucrative work with the Sunday Times, Look and Learn, Radio Times and then moved to the prestigious work on Garth, the daily strip at the Daily Mirror

However, the story does not end there. Bellamy seems to have produced one more black and white page of Thunderbirds. Jeff Haythorpe, one of the many kind souls to display their collection of original art on ComicArtFans.com, has in his collection a copy of the Thunderbirds shown below.

Shaqui tells me that the story Bellamy started to illustrate here appears so similar to that of TV21 & Joe90's issue 35 that the script must have been put on the shelf for a later date after Bellamy had left the comic.




UPDATE
I have just been tidying up and found I actually have TV21 & Joe 90 New Series No. 35
So here is the awful version of the same story for you to compare with the Bellamy. John Tracy appears over the page, but I couldn't be bothered to scan that too!