Mr Licko and Mighty Mik are both Ken Hunter. Ken always seemed to be given these light comedy adventure strips to draw rather than out and out adventure strips like the Jellymen. Big Fat Boko, Sir Laughalot, Big Chief Running Chump, Mick on the Moon, Hornet Wilson, Danny's Tranny were all in this vein in Topper and Beezer. As well as his work for the comics he did do the odd strip for the girls papers and even the Hotspur picture paper early on, usually with Nature or animal themes. I've always thought, when in more serious mode, his style and that of Charlie Grigg were rather similar and open to similar uses. from Kashgar (Ray Moore)
from The Beano 1962...colour centre pages before the Bash Street kids won this place. Great fun seeing small animals so huge...even scarier when a Tiger is made bigger!! Ken is great at the title panel...it mixes in with the story in fun ways.
Hi Peter, I've just come across the interesting mix of text pages you've posted and, as always, I'd imagine you wouldn't mind a few artist identifications.
Ting-a-Ling Bill - Really interesting this one as this heading block isn't by the artist who usually did the heading blocks for this story but by an artist who isn't associated with drawing for the Beano at all, Pete Sutherland. He would be nearing the end of his tenure as a Thomson staff artist when he drew this filler illustration but he would return ten years later, after working mostly for the AP, to become a regular freelance artist working in the Thomson boys picture papers with his work on Alf Tupper - the Tough of the Track in the Victor being of particular note.
Sammy's Super Rubber - Allan Morley of course.
Simple Simon - George Drysdale
Maxy's Taxi - also George Drysdale
The Boy on the Flying Trapeze - James Clark
Kat and Kanary - Charles Grigg
The Wicked Wilsons - James 'Peem' Walker
The Nippers - Richard Cox.
Thank you Kashgar
The fact that from the late 1950's onwards Thomsons stored a version of the original artwork on film made no difference to how they produced the comics. It was only a secondary and more easily accessible method of storing artwork that had already been used.Thanks Kashgar for the info.
In the 1930's and 1940's and indeed the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's the actual production of a comic from the original artwork began in Thomson's process dept in Dundee. It was here that the original artwork was photographed and reduced onto a light sensitive metal plate and it was from this plate via chemical etching that the final printing plate was produced.
Once the printing plate was produced it was then used, if colour needed to be added to a page, to stamp out a very thin piece of papier mache called a flong and any colours that needed to be added, four for covers and usually single colours elsewhere would each be added, a colour at a time, to a seperate version of this flong.
The printing plates and the flongs would then be sent, from Dundee, to Thomson's two main printing works in Manchester and Glasgow were they would be used to set up the presses for printing.
If anyone has copies of old Dandys and Beanos in their possession you might well find if you peruse some of them that any added colour is sometimes offset a little from the artwork beneath and this is almost always because of the shortcomings of using papier mache flongs. Thomsons sent the printing plates and flongs to their printing works by train and in very cold weather or hot humid conditions the flongs had a tendency to expand or contract a little while in transit and as a consequence any plate produced from them at the printing works was similarly wrong-sized from the original art plate from which it was produced, thus making the colour either bleed or contract in the finished comic from its position on the original artwork.
In the very early days, i beleive they took a picture and engraved the lines into wood (or else the picture was engraved into wood to start with). Metal (melted antimony) was then poured over the wood block and when it was solidified the lines of the picture where "facing downwards" from the block, which could then be added to the press. I should think they had a slightly more high-tech process by the 30's, though. thanks felneymike
Just for completeness sake Peter I forgot to mention that in the late 1940's (1948-1949) Eric did a series of one-off strips for a series of one-off and short run titles published by Philmar publications.
60's Dandy annual. Eric loved drawing monkeys!
1966 Dandy annual.
His last published work of all was in the 1981 Dandy Book where he drew three comic features including 'Batty Books from Winker Watson's Library' and 'All the Nutty Neighbours who live up Korky's Street'. thanks Kashgar for info
http://www.comicsuk.co.uk/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=127&t=1672
A very creepy story...a very long story and you only got to see who they were at the end. The hooded men did some awful things to both teachers and students. They got arrested for there crime in the end.
