Comics UK

Having just acquired this nice page of original artwork from the second (1980s) series of Girl I was wondering if anybody could help me to identify the uncredited artist. To my eye the statue looks a bit like the work of Mike Dorey, though I'm not aware of him drawing for girls' comics. Any suggestions would be most welcome. (I'd also quite like to know how the story ends if anyone has a copy of issue no.168)

Oh, that's easy - Carlos Freixas.

The girls check out the playground and find it is being haunted by Crabb's waifs. They can't rest until the truth about him is acknowledged: he was a cruel man who mistreated his charges. Armed with this information the girls begin a campaign to get the statue removed, and it gathers strength once people start investigating the orphanage records and find disturbing things, such as a very high death rate. The mayor, of course, resists it all. But then an HT vehicle comes to life of its own accord for no apparent reason and knocks the statue down. As time goes by, the mayor makes no effort to restore the statue; he seems to have given up on his ancestor for some reason. Meanwhile, the pall over the playground has lifted and kids are flocking to it. The girls find a bunch of violets there and take it as a sign from the ghosts that they are now resting in peace.

That's brilliant Tammyfan - thanks very much! I really ought to have recognized Carlos from the strips by him that have already been covered on Comixminx's Jinty blog. He has a lovely clean style that makes every story he works on a joy to read: I'm so pleased to have such a nice example of his work in my collection (I also picked up the very first page of Mike White's 'Dream House' from Tammy at the same time!). From the sound of the story The Haunted Playground wouldn't have been too out of place in Misty or as one of the Storyteller's tales from The Strangest Stories Ever Told.

Tammyfan wrote:Oh, that's easy - Carlos Freixas.

Just what I was going to say! Very distinctive.

It's nice to see another original piece of IPC artwork has survived too.

I think the dealer I bought it from had the entire story available, but I could only afford the one page.

Just as a matter of interest, Phil, what sort of ball-park figure are dealers asking for one page of one instalment of a serial, and what sort of size would it be?

Prices can range from about £30 at the lowest to £100-plus for painted picture library covers, etc. (though pages by a handful of superstar artists like Frank Bellamy and Frank Hampson go for much more). Compared to this American comic art from the same period rarely sells for less than $1,000 these days. Unfortunately DC Thomson's policy of holding on to original artwork means that pages from their own titles rarely turn up, while the supply of AP/Fleetway/IPC material is quite hit-or-miss with the entire backlog of many titles (Misty, Jinty, Tammy, etc.) having been thrown away to save storage space during the 1980s). Since Norman Wright retired the main dealers are Phil Clarke (who acts as Pete Hanson's agent) and London's Book Palace, who have a marvelous selection available but tend to charge significantly more for most items. You can see the Book Palace gallery here:
https://bookpalace.com/acatalog/Artists_A-B.html
...while Phil Clarke regularly offers a tiny selection of his huge stock on this Ebay site:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/psconbo2003/m ... 7675.l2562

Older art from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s can generally be quite large (at least twice the printed size on heavy illustration board), whereas later work like the page shown above tended to be drawn one-and-a-half up on flexible paper.

Thanks Phil. I'm just looking ahead to the artistic decor in my not-yet-bought house when I move to Cornwall.