Nursery rhyme and Folklore strips

[stevezodiac]

The picture of Jack and Jill feeding the birds reminds me of Gerry Haylock's art but i'm most probably wrong.

[Peter Gray]

Look forward to the thread on Hey Diddle Diddle comic you do on here...
Has said many times the nuresry comic posts must be collected together some how on comicsuk forum..

[matrix]

That's a nice 'Hey Diddle Diddle' page they have a slight 'Pogle' look are they the same artist?

In respect to 'Jack and Jill' that fishing on the path is a really nice piece, love the pig looking over the wall! I now think your pieces are from 1969 Phil and could well be by Mr felstead as I have covers that look like his work from the same year. They really didn't like signatures on the front covers of 'Jack and Jill', I can't find any which is unusual for above mentioned, and Hugh Mcneill isn't it? Unless they were trimmed, would they do that?

Did Gerald Haylock do any nursery work?

[matrix]

'Playhour' had similar artwork with these early 'Seven dwarfs' spreads, as 'Jack and Jills' 'Children who lived in a shoe', this style however did not last long in 'Playhour'.

Does anyone know the artist? Could it be Mendoza?

[philcom55]

How interesting - I assumed that Playhour had always featured coloured strips on its centre pages! I don't think that example's by Mendoza, but there are certainly some similarities to his style.

Fred Robinson was another one of Fleetway's main nursery artists who drew early episodes of 'Fun in Toyland' and 'Peter Puppet' before he was poached by the rival TV Land in 1960. Here's an example of one of the puzzle centrespreads he produced for that comic, with Jack & Jill's 'Old Woman who lived in a Shoe' clearly in mind:



- Phil Rushton

[Peter Gray]

Nice to see...Any other comics have a busy centre pages...Eagle had its cutaways..

[philcom55]

in early issues of Bimbo the centre pages were regularly invaded by a horde of teddy bears:



- Phil Rushton

[blaing]

On Friday, I visited a (now regular) spot where I occasionally visit for British comics, and I picked up a copy of Teddy Bear from the issue dated 6/2/65.

Here is a few pages from this issue...

the front cover



Next is the Teddy Bear story




and finally, the centre spread...

[philcom55]

At one point Fleetway actually released an 'Out with Mummy' annual devoted to those Teddy Bear centrespreads.

- Phil R.

[matrix]

Nice to see...Any other comics have a busy centre pages...Eagle had its cutaways..

'Robin' also had these busy centre spreads. I don't know how long they ran for or who the artist was?

[matrix]

'Tiny Tots' doesn't get mentioned as much as some of the other titles, I do not know enough about it to comment but from what I have seen the content at times does not look as strong?

The scans below though I feel would not have been out of place in Playhour, although only in mainly red and black it is a very impressive strip, this one being 'Ride a cock horse' the first in a series of centre spread nursery ryme strips by David Roberts.

This looks like a Ron Embleton piece to me, anyone?

[philcom55]

That's a fabulous strip Matrix - Ron Embleton really did get everywhere! Which issue of Tiny Tots did it appear in? To the best of my knowledge the title only really started featuring 'modern' Playhour-type strips during its final year when the covers adopted the same yellow border. Throughout that time Tiny Tots seems to have sacrificed full-colour interior pages in favour of its larger size, but the front and back covers were just as colourful as anything that appeared in Jack & Jill or Playhour. Which strip does your edition feature on its back page? As far as I can tell Mendoza's Katie Country Mouse appeared there from no. 1308 (July 26th 1968).

David Roberts was an exceptional writer, and the fact that he was often given a byline when comic writers were hardly ever credited shows how much he must have been valued by AP/Fleetway. In particular his verse captions could be quite brilliantly written - unlike the merely functional text that tended to appear in other children's strips such as Rupert Bear.

In addition to well-known nursery rhymes like 'Ride a Cock Horse' Roberts also contributed a series of completely original children's poems for Tiny Tots' centre pages under the heading of 'The New Nursery Rhymes'. Here's one called 'The Wise Old Owl'.





Anybody prepared to hazard a guess about the artist...?

- Phil Rushton

[matrix]

Phil, I know it's a slip of the keyboard but for the record here you mean 1958

The 'Ride a cock horse' is in the same series Phil, my fault I did not mention the full title 'The New Nursery Rymes' it is the first one No 1267, it has 'Tiger Tim' on the cover with 'Three little Kittens' on the back.
The previous issue had the reverse with a white border, so issue 1267 could be the first yellow border issue?

The following two weeks have 'Mary's Little Lamb and Betty's Pig' and 'Tommy Trout and Mr Wise' with different artists.

Could that lovely example be by Gordon Hutchings?

[matrix]

Another popular story handed down over the years is 'Jack and the Beanstalk' which probably appeared in many comics? This nice example appeared in 'Playhour' in 1957 running for about four weeks, I think the artist is E.T. Coelho?

[philcom55]

In point of fact I did write '1958' Matrix, but Bill Gates hates me so much that he's arranged for all my posts to be selectively scrambled before they actually appear. How on earth can one man be so petty!!!??

...Oh, OK, I admit it! I don't know why but I keep getting the 1950s and 1960s mixed up!

That's a beautiful version of Jack and the Beanstalk btw - I particularly like the final panel. Definitely by Coelho I'd say.

Incidentally, have you seen any issues of the current DC/Vertigo title Fables? To my mind this series (brilliantly drawn by British artist Mark Buckingham, who used to be a fellow member of the North Staffordshire Comics Society) does a wonderful job of bringing all those mythical characters into the modern world. A bit like TV's 'Once Upon A Time' but much better!

- Phil Rushton