Weblink: Garth - Cloud of Balthus

Rod McKie, illustrator extraordinaire, has mentioned his love of Bellamy's Garth on his blog. He reproduces some pages from the Titan Book reprints and reminds us why Bellamy's Garth was so loved by many.

Note: Martin Asbury, who replaced Bellamy on the strip, illustrates the head of Garth in the illustration below, (and he did the cover for the reprint book too.)

For those unfamiliar with Rod's work, he kindly shows some examples here.

...Addition: Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph

I've managed to get a few of Tony Smith's articles on Bellamy, written after Frank Bellamy's death Tony did however meet and interview Frank. Alas his first published work on Frank was his obituary.











This one is from 17th July 1990 and was written "to mark the 40th anniversary of the legendary Eagle comic" - to you and me that means the Hawk reprint books, The Adventures of P.C. 49, Harris Tweed, Riders of the Range and, of course, Fraser of Africa .

One particularly interesting feature in this article is a reprint of the rarely seen Bellamy work in the Football Telegraph or Pink 'Un, the sporting paper insert for the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph. (18 October 1949) "All forms of transport were used by Kettering fans to see - Kettering win"

The readers at the time (1947) would have been familiar with the football clubs' nicknames - see my key on the NET page- and Tony Smith kindly provides clues in his 1990 article

Alan Class, Ally Sloper and Bellamy

ALLY SLOPER number 1 was published in September 1976 by Alan Class with Denis Gifford as editor. Frank Bellamy created "Swade", for the comic/magazine, a Wordless black and white 3 page strip. Unfortunately he died before being able to do a strip for the second issue (in which his obituary appeared).

I knew that Bellamy had been invited to the launch of Ally Sloper but Nancy, his widow, couldn't remenmber if he actually attended the event in London.

Terry Hooper has managed to interview Alan Class and he kindly put the question to Alan regarding Bellamy's appearance.

I'll leave you to read the full article which includes reference to the launch aboard "the Steam-ship “Tattershall Castle”,which was berthed on the Thames near Blackfriars Bridge". The master-of-ceremonies was, apparently, the comedian Ted Ray - a name I haven't heard for ages.

Read the full interview at Terry's site http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2007/08/04/exclusive-an-interview-with-alan-class/

...Weblink: Comic Librarian's heaven!

I have always enjoyed seeing annotations to some of those popular graphic novels of the Eighties - Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Sandman etc. In the prehistory of the WWW, we had command line interfaces and boy, were they tough to learn! I always tested them by looking for any comics related materials and starting dribbling on discovering text files of this sort of material! Remember this is before web browsers, and images on the net!

Anyway, Peter Karpas and friends have put together all these miscellaneous web references in one place on their strangely-titled enjolrasworld.com including reference to one FrankBellamy.co.uk!

I feel humble as there are few UK entries!

Pictures taken from the Eagle strip "The Happy Warrior"

....ADVERT: Andersonic

I have avoided taking any income for the Frank Bellamy site - and I will keep it advert free.

But what happens when one correspondent sends you information and asks you to author an article? Well, I have thanked Richard Farrell for his info, accepted the request to write an article and.... promised to put the following on my Blog - click to enlarge:
Andersonic is a small fanzine which I found entertaining but have never seen advertised extensively. Richard says "No need to use the cartoon - hardly up to the standards of an FB site! The next issue will be out around September and will include a feature on Bellamy and Harley's Thunderbirds strips and Starcruiser from Look-In"

I like the cartoon! Instantly recognizable! I didn't write the article on Bellamy, but look forward to seeing it - as I haven't even been offered one for this advert
Norman

...Correction: Comicon 76

Richard Sheaf has supplied the following information on Comicon 76. It appears that the Comic Convention brochure contains a simple Bellamy entry. Opposite the advert for (what I remember to be) an interesting fanzine is the following message taking up the whole page.

"In memory Frank Bellamy 1917-1976" No black border; no pictures; no biography, just a reminder we had lost a major person in the comic world!

Weblink: Look and Learn - Fortunino Matania

Head over to the Look and Learn site to view a picture show (great feature gentlepersons!) and view Fortunino Matania's works in that magazine.

You can read a short biography on BookPalace's excellent site and buy original artwork and prints of his work

Why am I highlighting this? What's the Bellamy connection? Matania was admired greatly by Bellamy who wrote a fan letter or two to Matania and also received Christmas cards from his hero. Whether they met is still a mystery, but it's always interesting to see who influences whom.

There's a long list of his war work with loads of samples on "The Great War in a different light" website. But he is remembered , like Alma Tadema, for his drawings of classical antiquity with his 'accurate' detailing.

Fortunino Matania's version of Armistice celebrations (from the Sphere magazine Nov 1918) and Bellamy's from the series he did with Mike Butterworth on World War One (from Look and Learn #462, 1970 © Look and Learn Magazine Ltd)