Bizarre Ballet Stories

[Tammyfan]

One thing I could not stand about some ballet stories was badly-drawn ballet. It was because:

1 - the artist did not draw the ballet positions correctly.
2 - their artistic style was not suited for ballet.
3 - Both.

Mind you, there were some artists who could draw decent ballet, such as John Armstrong (pity I only ever saw him draw one ballet story, Jill's Only Joy in Tammy) and Eduardo Feito.

[philcom55]

Of course, however bizarre comic strips about ballet were, very few of them dreamed up storylines that were anything like as implausible as the original ballets themselves. Here, for example, is the tale of Giselle (aka 'The Wilis' ) as featured on the back page of Princess during January 1967:





I wish I knew who drew this stylish and beautifully coloured series of 'Stories from the Ballet'. It reminds me a bit of early Angus McBride, if it wasn't for the fact that he could almost invariably be relied upon to smuggle at least one 'McB' past the editor.

- Phil Rushton

[Marionette]

Very pretty, but the ballet poses look unconvincing even to me, and my experience with ballet is limited to Red Shoes, Black Swan, and Tammy's various disabled prima donnas.

[philcom55]

Yes! The figures almost look like puppets or cardboard cut-outs!

I agree that John Armstrong was hard to beat when it came to drawing realistic girls. Leslie Otway's characters may have been less athletic than Bella (and I can't comment on his knowledge of ballet) but I always loved the sense of movement he injected into strips like the long-running 'Belle & Mamie'.



- Phil Rushton

[Marionette]

There's some real expression in those poses. It's lovely. John Armstrong clearly benefits from a lot of photo reference, so he may be technically better than most, but I'm not sure he gets the same level of emotion as John Otway does here.